MURCIA. In the world in which we are going to immerse ourselves during these two pages, the same thing happens as in the popular meme: the vampire hesitated. But, here, vampires are not satisfied with existing, they are also in the process of integrating into our society. Thanks to a synthetic blood preparation obtained by Japanese scientists, vampires no longer need to kill humans to feed themselves. Its life support has been marketed under the name Tru Blood and any undead can draw nourishment from it. Said like this, everything seems very simple, but in practice it is more complicated. Many humans are wary of living with a species that, if it could, would continue sucking their blood. And there is also a group of vampires who believe that, being a superior race, they should not be compared to those weak and sad beings. Besides, why settle for living on a substitute when real blood is so tasty? That is the context in which the plot of True Bloodreleased in 2008.
The setting of the series is the town of Bon Temps, located in the southern part of the state of Louisiana. there lives Sookie Stackhause (Anna Paquin), waitress with telepathic powers. Because, at this point, it must be said that there are werewolves, fairies and shape-shifting beings here too. Sookie works at her friend’s bar Sam Merlotte (Tremmol himself) which, in addition to being a hoster, can metamorphose into an animal. Sam is attracted to Sookie, but a 173-year-old vampire stands in his way. Bill Compton (Stephen Moyer), who has decided to settle in the mansion that his family built in the town. These and other characters were created by the writer Charlaine Harris in the novel Dead until nightfallpublished in 2001, the beginning of a saga known as The Southern Vampire Mysteries. The producer and screenwriter Alan Ball He began reading the book while waiting at his dentist’s office. He bought it to have something to fill the time until the doctor called him, but he couldn’t put it down until he finished it. That was the origin of True Blooda series that passed like a steamroller over a lot of taboos.
The supernatural was fundamental to the plots, but sex was closely linked to the desire for blood and the interrelation between humans and vampires. There were themes that appealed to religion and faith, and also to addictions, because if a human drank Tru Blood, the effect it produced was the same as a hallucinogenic drug. It was so much so that conservative politicians like Ted Cruz They criticized her without hesitation. And when HBO proposed the Republican Sarah Palin to play a small role in the last season of the series, she indignantly refused, claiming that it was not enough to offend the Republican women who now wanted to make fun of one in particular.
Blood and eroticism
The protagonists of the series, Paquin, Moyer and Alexander Skarsgardwho played the vampire Eric Northmanthey formed an erotic triangle in fiction that transcended to the screen. Rolling Stone He dedicated a cover to them in which the three appeared naked and covered in blood, exhibiting their sexual magnetism. That cover, which, of course, generated controversy, perfectly synthesized the soul of the series. And although the love axis of the story is heterosexual in nature, the series was loaded with powerful symbolism. If we replace the vampires with the LGBT community, everything fits. A society afraid to accept creatures it fears. A group that has factions that believe that trying to imitate the heterosexual way of life is absurd. For the author of the novels, this topic was something that she had in mind from the beginning. Once the series was released, Ball—homosexual—tried to downplay that parallelism, because there were those who found it instructive that the gay world identified with characters who, in many cases, were still monsters. But, as one of the promotional texts for the series said, in the world of True Bloodthe vampires had come out of the coffin.
Charlaine Harris once commented that what interested her most in the story was humans interacting with vampires. Anna Paquin must have seen it very clearly, because her agent insisted that Ball audition her for the role of Sookie. Ball thought that Paquin’s dramatic profile—he had won an Oscar for The piano at twelve years old—he was light years away from that role. That was the same opinion of the actress, who wanted to play a character that was radically different from what she had done until then. Paquin ended up marrying Moyer, with whom she had two children. As the actor said Chris Bauerwho played sheriff Andy Bellefleur, True Blood It showed two different, but similar-looking, species trying to understand each other.
All about Alexander
HBO was never afraid of nude scenes. It also encouraged frontal male nudity, something that Alan Ball cultivated in Two meters underground. In True BloodAlexander Skarsgard refused to wear, as required by the rules, a sock that covered his genitals. “If you are naked, then you must be naked.” The scene became a powerful cliffhanger which closed the sixth season of the series.
The series in data
Duration: Seven seasons, broadcast between September 2008 and August 2014. In Spain it premiered in December 2008 on Canal+.
Prizes: Anna Paquin won the award for best television fiction actress in 2008.
The curiosity: Alan Ball had won an Oscar for the screenplay of American Beauty and came from creating Two meters underground for HBO.
How to see it?: On HBO and Netflix.
