During this past month, I have been involved with planning and facilitating events in honor and celebration of National Women's History Month, both at my full-time job as a social worker in the non-profit sector and at my part-time gig as a college professor. The overarching theme of these events carries over from the strong messaging of great organizations like the National Women's History Project and the Long Island-based Herstory Writers Project: the need to write women back into history.
These organizations are dedicated to bringing the contributions and voices of women - often unsung and historically silenced - from the margins to the center of our collective narrative. There is a need for women's stories to be brought forth in such a way that - as Artistic & Executive Director of Herstory says - moves a stranger/reader to care, towards the ends of both personal growth and healing and social justice and transformation. There is a need to open space in our culture for women's stories to be seen as worthy or being told - received and truly heard.
I strongly believe that stories and storytelling are basic to human existence; they're the communicative and meaning-making spindles we use oh so naturally to spin the flax of our lived experiences into the glittering gold of our personal narratives.
We meet and shape the world through story; what is history but a story?
Story is basic to humanity, but it's also a very feminine means of expression that's deeply connected to women's ways of knowing and being.
And boy oh boy, can Alan Ball and the True Blood writers spin a story!!!
Where would the True Blood tale be without the female characters who populate it, not least of whom would include Miss Sookie Stackhouse herself - the eponymous heroine of the Charlaine Harris-penned novels that birthed the show?
Could the True Blood story even be told without them?
For me, the female characters True Blood invites us into the lives of are drawn with bolder lines and brighter colors than are the less fully developed women on other shows; they are multidimensional and relational, complex personalities. No all-brain-no-affect-socially-crippled intellectuals, empty-headed-buxom-bimbos, or any other types of caricatures here.
I feel like these are real, actual women. A little eccentric, kind of crazy at times, conflicted and wild, yes; but real.
Do they contradict themselves? Yeah, sure, but don't we all? As Walt Whitman wrote in Leaves of Grass over a century ago, Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself, (I am large, I contain multitudes.) If we are living, breathing human beings, how can we not?
In light of National Women's History Month and the associated slogan, "writing women back into history" I got to thinking about how the lives of the women of Bon Temps and its environs are portrayed on True Blood, how their stories are told.
I came across something that got me to thinking more...
As the video says, this isn't a means of determining the quality of a movie (or TV for that matter, the formula applies), or whether or not it's feminist; it's a gauge for the presence of women in film.
How do you think True Blood stands up to this test? How do you think the test stands up to True Blood?
Do you think there's anything to this test? Taking it in the context of True Blood, what does it say to you about the presence and representation of female characters? I'm hoping you'll share your thoughts :-)
~ Rachel
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