Resurrecting Steve Newlin's Argument That Because Vampires Don't Respect Death They Can't Respect Life

Here’s a provocative (perhaps overly) philosophical concept.

Remember how back in Season 2 Steve Newlin challenged Nan Flanagan on TV, baiting her with the logic that because vampires don’t respect death they also can’t respect life? He was essentially implying that their undying bodies are an affront to the endless cycle of death and rebirth―of course, his vision of rebirth being one awash in His Holy Light as the immortal soul splits from the body, leaving this mortal coil behind.

Pam’s decay, while utterly horrifying to her (and us!), can be seen as a return to the natural processes of birth, death, and renewal.

Our culture worships birth and its correlates youth and beauty, but it can’t acknowledge and uplift that single phase of life alone; we need the goddess of death to chew and destroy the unneeded so new forms can emerge.

I’ve spoken about the neglected value of the death aspect of the goddess before, i.e.  Who Is She Who Munches The Dead? and Pam's Taken The Veil.

Let’s think about the process of death and rebirth in cosmic terms. A fundamental truth, the most profound property of time, is that nothing lasts forever; this plays out on earth and in the depths of space. 

A supernova burns out to a nebula with a tiny point of light at its center―the remnants of a star crushed to oblivion by its own gravity. In the nebula― a gas cloud of elements―all the elements a star produced in its life and death is pumped out across the universe yielding greater complexity, the seeds of our own existence.

supernova

Orion nebula

But eventually, all life on this planet will cease to exist.

Decay, entropy, and disintegration will rule as the universe becomes less ordered. According to the 2^nd law of thermodynamics― everything tends from more to less order.

Stars cannot shine forever.

In 6 billion years our sun will explode.

The cosmos will one day be plunged into eternal night when the stars fade and die―the end of the stelliferous era.

Only black dwarves―dark dense balls of decaying matter―will remain.

black dwarf

Then, only a sea of photons tending towards absolute zero.

Life only exists for a fleeting, bright time.

But in death to old forms once again comes the potential for new life.

Life is the cosmos made conscious, how the universe understands itself.What new life will emerge from the death of our universe?

A new big bang…

…come on, sing it with me

our whole universe was in a hot dense state…



As we've seen, True Blood alums can be reborn on CBS's The Big Bang Theory!
  
None of it’s possible without the old forms first passing away.


Now, we know vampires’ undead bodies are static and unchanging, seemingly closing them off from life's cycles.



But their minds and hearts, as we’ve seen over the course of four seasons of True Blood that that’s another story entirely.


What deaths and rebirths of the mind and heart can we expect from our undead friends in Season 5?

We’d love to hear your ideas!


~ Rachel

Ginger and Pam & The Power of Female Friendship

The late radical feminist philosopher, academic and theologian Mary Daly espoused the controversial idea that women's primary loyalties should be to other women.

Seeing phallocracy as the root cause of "rapism, racism, gynocide, genocide, and ultimate biocide" (p. 203), she urged women to drop their ties to all patriarchally created groups and tribes, including ethnic, religious, and national identifications and to cleave to their bonds with each other.

Allowing that women (for example, slave-holding women) have often expressed unspeakable cruelty to each other, she understood this cruelty as a function of the patriarchal "soul molding sado-institutions" (p. 203) we are socialized into that enable our oppression of other women, that desensitize and dissociate "the woman who has 'power' from her more oppressed sister" (p. 202).

While Daly's view that women's primary loyalties should be to other women is disputed by other feminist thinkers who, while sharing Daly's commitment to women, also affirm other loyalties, her work does point to the importance of female relationships and friendships.

Although in her essay "Be-Friending: Weaving Contexts, Creating Atmospheres" Daly wrote, "I do not mean to suggest that every woman, or even every feminist, can 'be friend to' or 'be friends with' every other woman" (p. 199) she did envision, in stark contrast to the hair-pulling, eye-gouging state of perpetual and allegedly natural female rivalry hyped by reality TV, "the creation of an atmosphere in which women are enabled to be friends".

Imagine that.

Imagine that it might be possible for women whose existences couldn't seem more divergent from one another's to become friends.

Women like Ginger and Pam.

Oftentimes it seems that Ginger is Pam's only true friend in the world; and a dedicated friend she is.

In Pam's moment of anguish over the loss of Eric who is seemingly the single most significant figure in her life, it was Ginger who braved her wrath and offered her comfort.

And although Pam's cutting words and tone warned Ginger to back off, the vampire was in desperate need of the solace Ginger's simple embrace offered; the human woman remained steadfast and held her boss close despite her fear. Like the hug Holly asked for from Andy, it was just what Pam needed, and ultimately she realized this and accepted it.

Ginger has always been there for Pam; a woman who despite her extreme femininity could be characterized as an Athena woman - a woman born of man (she was made by Eric) who, like Joan of Arc, or Queen Elizabeth I seems "constitutionally born for a man's world" (Ward, 2006, p.127). An archetype described by Carl Jung as "a man who is accidentally a woman" (Ward, 2006, p. 127). Pam's sexual attraction to and preference for female partners does not necessarily translate into an appreciation of and desire for friendship and mutuality in platonic relationships with other women.

Is Ginger a participant of sorts in in what Daly saw as the process of Be-Friending; a metapatterning in personal relationships, in political activity, in a work or theory or art, in spiritual understanding, or all of the above that makes our friendships possible? That allows us to break through the rancor society fosters between us to invent new ways of living and being? That helps us accept our own femaleness?

Ward writes of the misogyny of Athena. Can Ginger's olive branch of friendship open the Athenian Pam to the power of female friendship?

I hope so.

~ Rachel  

References

Daly, M. (1989). "Be-Friending". In Plaskow, J. & Christ, C. (Eds.) Weaving the Visions. (pp. 199-207). San Francisco, CA: Harper.

Ward, T. (2006). Savage Breast. New York, NY: O Books. 

Some more thoughts on Pam & the (postmodern) veil

So as far as we know of, Pam is still cursed, right?

In her desperation to prevent a world without Bill in it, Sookie's amped-up fairie power knocked the spell right out of the attacking amnesia Eric, restoring him to his former Viking god state with his memories of his entire life - both human and vampire - up until the present intact.

Rebecca thinks this is a nod to the exceeding complexity of a woman's psyche; with a snap of Sookie's microwave fingers Eric has recovered his "true" self , but for Pam, a solution is not so simple.

Because although Pam has looked none the worse for wear since undergoing Dr. Ludwig's unconventional full body spa treatment and a painful series of daily injections administered by the dizzy-but-stalwart Ginger, she continues to rot from the inside-out.

When she's been on the receiving end of the lady vamp's rage, Tara's made it all too clear that Pam's putrefying innards continue to emit a horrific smell despite her back-to-glamour-puss appearance.

And (high maintenance) glamour-puss Pam is! In my last post on this topic, Pam's Taken the Veil, I referenced The Vault interview "Kristin Bauer talks about her 'face-off' in which the actress remarks that Pam's predicament is an intolerable affront to her vanity: "Having her skin peel off in ribbons of goo is a massive blow for Pam".

She's a woman whose priorities include Eric and her appearance, not always in that order. Putting her face on is a deeply embedded part of who she is.

Remember when Bill tried to suggest that perhaps there was a cosmetic solution to her plight; that maybe a little more lipstick might help?





Now, although for the most part I try my best to remain non-partisan here at the PPT, I admit that I love Bill with the best of the Team Bill girls. But come on, Bill, seriously? How clueless can you be? A little extra make-up is not going to solve a problem that runs far more than skin deep, and to suggest that it might smacks a smidgen too much of the dismissive recommendations male medical practitioners and others have made for ages when it comes to "female ailments".

For example, there's Sigmund Freud's notoriously biased and inadequate understanding of women whose perspectives formed the once-common diagnosis of female hysteria in which a woman's unmanageable emotional excesses (or maybe her wandering uterus, since according to Plato and others down the line, female psychology and biology are ruled by the reproductive system) was to blame for her ills. Feeling weepy and irritating the men in your life? You must be PMSing, or maybe you're on the rag - pop a pill and get over it. Crass, I know, but I'm fairly certain that most women have been blown off with such patronizing comments when they're facing legitimate life challenges that extend beyond that time of the month.

I found an interesting take on the idea of Pam taking the veil that actually relates to her penchant for make-up, and Bill's tragically (but typical guy?) misinformed impression that a little extra lipstick might help her situation.

An article on veiling entitled Some thoughts on the Veil appears on Max Dashu's Suppressed Histories Archives. It's in her confronting oppression section on taming the female body and it addresses some fascinating topics like the gender and class implications of veiling from a historical perspective far older than Islam - which is, aside from the communion and bridal veils common in Western culture, what most people think of when it comes to the practice. 

It also raises some interesting points about make-up as a post-modern veil, citing its near-compulsory use in certain contexts (like shielding Pam's disfigured face from the innocent gaze of hapless onlookers who should not have to be exposed to such female monstrosity?).

Here's an excerpt from the article, which picks up after the mention of the compulsory use of make-up:

It remains so in the workplace, at the employer's whim, according to a ruling by the California Supreme Court in 2000. The judges upheld the firing of Darlene Jesperson, a longtime bartender at Harrah's Casino in Reno, for refusing new requirements that women wear lipstick, face powder and mascara on the job. This court decision also allows employers to dictate dress, hair length, and other grooming decisions for their employees. These strictures have special ramifications for African-American women; employers often bar them from wearing their hair in natural and cultural styles (or simply refuse to hire them).

Here the rationale of enforcement is economic; in the Iranian context, it is religious. There, both the state and the family act as enforcers. Posters in Tehran explain that "Bad hijab [incomplete covering of hair] is equal to prostitution. Lack of hijab means lack of man's manhood." With these kinds of controls in place, lipstick looks like freedom to many Iranian women...

...which the article goes on to state has been scraped off the faces of Muslim women with a razor blade.

Damned if we do and damned it we don't, huh? What do you think of this catch-22? I wear make-up, and I won't stop wearing it because of the perspective offered in this article (which I do encourage you to read) but the idea of make-up as a post-modern veil has certainly occurred to me before.

This taps into related debates about cosmetic surgery, advertising culture, the cult of beauty, whose beauty is beautiful, etc. You can never be too young, too rich, and too thin, right?

Please share your thoughts on this!

Oh, and keep your fingers crossed that Pam's curse is lifted before the Season 4 finale...is it 9 yet!?!

~ Rachel            

Pam's Taken the Veil

So Pam's taken the veil.

And last night, she was hiding under a blanket to evade Eric's gaze when they were thrown in King Bill's subterranean slammer together.

Did she really have much of a choice?

Ever the style maven, last week's Pam—dressed in funerary black lace with a heavy veil covering her decaying face (“Even when her face is putrefying, she comes up with an outfit for putrefying,” Kristen Bauer van Straten remarked in an interview posted to The Vault)—had to deal with the aftermath of a spell cast on her by possessed witch Marnie that has caused her immortal vampire body to rot.

And this week, it's only gotten worse!

I found it interesting that HBO on Demand's description of last Sunday's episode, Me and the Devil, makes mention of this fact with the phrase, "Pam takes the veil".

What's so intriguing about this verbiage?

Thefreedictionary.com defines this term as the life or vows of a nun.

And when I think of  becoming a nun, one of the first mental pictures that comes to mind is that of a woman retreating from the world and hiding (or being confined) behind the imposing walls of the convent.

Let's take a look at thefreedictionary.com's definition of veil:

veil

n.

1. A length of cloth worn by women over the head, shoulders, and often the face.

2. A length of netting attached to a woman's hat or habit, worn for decoration or to protect the head and face.

3. The part of a nun's headdress that frames the face and falls over the shoulders.

4.

a. A piece of light fabric hung to separate or conceal what is behind it; a curtain.

b. Something that conceals, separates, or screens like a curtain: a veil of secrecy.

v. veiled, veil·ing, veils

v.tr.

1. To cover with or as if with a veil: Dense fog veiled the bridge.

2. To conceal or disguise.

One word in particular is repeated over and over: conceal.

This is significant because it speaks to what a woman must do when her beauty is marred. She must hide, separate, screen herself off. As The Vault interview "Kristin Bauer talks about her 'face-off' states, "Having her skin peel off in ribbons of goo is a massive blow for Pam"; an affront to her vanity.

And for a woman whose priorities include Eric and her appearance (not always in that order), this presents quite the predicament.

Pam: "I can put up with a lot, but fuck with my face and it's time to die!" S4E5 Me and the Devil

To understand why this fate is worse for Pam than, say, her maker's would be, let's take a moment to consider the core difference between the spells the possessed Marnie cast on both vampires.

The spell cast on Eric wiped clean his mind, that part of the self envisaged in Cartesian dualism as being characteristically male. The one cast on Pam disfigured her body, that which is associated with the female; the second-mentioned and therefore lesser valued of the male/female pair of lhierarchical dualisms.

Applying this framework of gendered hierarchical dualisms, the biblical Adam is revealed as a soul type, while Eve is of the flesh (Stone, 1976). In Christian theology, it was asserted that women must become more "like a man" (more "rational" and "spiritual" than is her "nature") to come into relationship with God, who was envisaged as masculine.

Feminist scholar Carol Christ writes that according to poet, essayist and feminist Adrienne Rich, such views have made the body "so problematic for women that it often seemed easier to shrug if off and travel as a disembodied spirit" (1997, p. 148). If only it were so easy for Pam; if only she could escape the prison of her rotting flesh like her ghostly harasser Antonia has. But there can be no such simple solution for Pam. As a woman, she is, as Rich writes, controlled by being lashed to her body - "the carnal flesh to which the elevated mind is shackled" (Sanchez-Grant, 2008, p. 78).

As Sanchez-Grant writes, if the mind is allied with culture and reason, it follows that the body is associated with all that is "other"; if woman is inextricably associated with the body, and the body is regarded as inferior to the mind - then surely woman is the inferior Other.

This theme has run through several of my last posts.

That's why the curse Marnie (under Antonia's influence) uttered, "Corrupt unsanctified corpse who walks behold your true self" is so torturous for Pam; for woman, dualism insists that the body is the true self, the essentialized ground of our being.

Under this logic, had the spell beset Pam's mind as the one cast on Eric did, it wouldn't be so bad.

This sexist construction of gender holds that the [feminine] body is entirely separate from the true inner self.

Intriguingly, under the witch's magic, amnesia Eric has become more endearing - he's playful, gentle, contrite for past offenses; he openly displays emotion and seems perhaps more his authentic self.

You know something? The more I think about it, maybe in his current state amnesia Eric is even more than his authentic self. He seems transcendent, self-sacrificing. Godric-like, even.

And he gets the girl, since he is more attractive to Sookie than when he is cold, cruel and calculating, swaggering "real" Eric.

While it's true that he must hide in Sookie's house for fear his vulnerable state may make him an easy target for anyone gunning for him (i.e. the witches, Bill, etc.) Pam must truly hide behind a mourning shroud - lamenting the death of her "true" self since the face a woman shows the world is how she is judged.

This connects to Sam Trammell's uneasiness at his character's yelling "damn, you're ugly" at a female bar patron as he crashed into Merlotte's fresh off his bender; hung over, agitated, and over-the-top belligerent. In my post on Dragon * Con 2010 I noted that it seemed Mr. Trammell sensed the egregiousness of assailing a woman's appearance, since aside from impugning her sexuality (i.e. labelling her as promiscuous, a whore, a "dyke", etc.) it's is one of the most cutting attacks someone can level at a female in our culture.

And here's a (depressing) dose of reality: Nearly half of men questioned in a recent poll of 70,000 people said they would ditch a partner who gained weight, compared to only 20 percent of women. Talk about how the body "feeds" identity, how a woman's "corporeal experience" influences her overall experience (Sanchez-Grant, 2008)!

Pam's own maker has made constant reference to how he could never harm Sookie because she is so beautiful. Where you suprised that in last night's I Wish I Was the Moon Eric recoiled only slightly from Pam, that he didn't all-out reject her ruined visage?

She has become the dreaded Rotting Goddess.

Hecate, She who repels. "A hideous hag and flesh-eating ghoul, her skin pallid and decaying, her robes a shroud...the repository for all the dark and fearsome forces of the feminine divine" (Ward, 2006, pp. 152-153).

She is Rot. Ooze and decay may have no place in the life of the disembodied [rational, male] mind, yet the messiness of birth, sex, and death - the cycle of embodied life - refuses to disappear. This is Hecate's realm. To exhume Her is to face the death aspect of the Goddess and the fusion of need and fear She arouses.

According to Ward (2006), the fear we projected of the Rotting Goddess onto witches long ago we now put onto ordinary women. He writes:

I get a flicker of something vile when I contemplate the image of the Rotting Goddess. She viscerally repels me, yet draws me, as if she holds a secret for me inside her fetid mouth, a flicker of truth about men's revulsion towards feminine flesh. I remember a friend of mine - he was only in high school at the time, and yet he understood this all too well - he told me he had found an easy way to break up with a girlfriend after he no longer wanted to be with her. When they started making out he said he would keep his eyes open, and he would just examine her, as if through a microscope. He would stare at the glistening pores, pimples, blackheads, the creases, hairs, erupting moles and folded skin. He would feel nauseated, and that would be the end of his attraction for her. In my 20s, in India and Thailand, I learned Buddhist techniques for eliminating sexual desire that followed much the same course. I was instructed to imagine a woman's body split up into five heaps of skin, nails, hair, teeth and internal organs, or to visualize a woman as nothing but sacks of blood and pus and shit. Feel sexual desire for that? Thus men learn that it is to treat women like dirt (as matter, not Mater) and break their spell over us.

WOW.

Perhaps, in her current spellbound state, Pam can teach us about how men at large have been socialized to see women.

References

Christ, C.(1997) Rebirth of the goddess.  New York: Routledge.

Sanchez-Grant (2008).  The Female Body in Margaret Atwood's The Edible Woman and Lady Oracle. Journal of International Women’s Studies, 9, #2, 77-92

Ward, T. (2006). Savage breast: One man’s search for the goddess. New York: O Books.

You aren't supposed to think, you're supposed to follow protocol!

So said King Compton to his [grudging] subject Pam in S4E4 I'm Alive and On Fire
This quote speaks well to a major theme I detected in that episode: hierarchical, authoritarian power & control

IN THE FAMILY

Joe Lee has a choke hold on Tommy and Melinda Mickens 

IN THE COMMUNITY

Crystal: "I'm big mama kitty now, finally. Everyone gonna do what I say"

AND IN THE NATION

the newly crowned vampire king of Louisiana

How is such autocratic rule achieved? How is it maintained? Is it legitimate? Effective? Do we have any alternatives? How can we throw it off?

If we are to organize ourselves and act to get out from under oppressive rule, we've got to be able to determine who's really in charge.

For example, Bill looks rather more presidential than kingly here, no?

In countries where there are both royalty and systems of representative government, the royals are generally seen more as figure heads than politicians; that label being reserved for those in elected office. Interestingly, Bill is being portrayed as the later. 

And he certainly seems to be more involved with matters of state than the two other vampire monarchs we have met thus far on True Blood,  Russell & Sophie-Ann, ever were. Yet, it seems someone else is really in charge.

Now, we all know that at least in this country, there is [supposed to be] balance of power. The executive branch of government is not omnipotent; the president must answer to the congress, etc.

On the surface, at least, this appears not be the case in the vampire nation.

So far this season, King Bill's power seems rather absolute and iron-fisted. Pam's telling him she wouldn't risk lying about Eric's whereabouts because word of Bill's ruthlessness as king has travelled far and wide is seemingly evidence of that. And then there's his condemning the vampire caught on YouTube feeding on a human to the true death without benefit of a trial (I want to take this case to the Authority!" Bill: "I am the Authority, you idiot !"). S4E3 If you Love Me, Why Am I Dyin'

But in this week's episode, we found out that things aren't so simple.

With Bill cast as somewhat of Nan's puppet - his distaste for power wielded unilaterally & unjustly made clear by his sarcasm when she inquird about the execution - could this be a critique of the U.S. system of government? Is True Blood suggesting that our elected officials from the school board to the Commander-In-Chief aren't really holding the reigns, the [fill in the blank - multinational corporations, shadowy interest groups, others in government, etc.] are?

Hhmmm...

Thoughts? Please share below.

~ Rachel

COUNTDOWN'S ON! THE PIERCED POMEGRANATE TAVERN IS RE-LAUNCHING FOR SEASON 4 OF TRUE BLOOD; HERE'S WHAT'S TO COME AS PART OF OUR SOFT REOPENING!

22 DAYS TO GO UNTIL SEASON 4 OF TRUE BLOOD PREMIERES ON HBO, AND THE PIERCED POMEGRANATE TAVERN IS RE-LAUNCHING FOR THE OCCASION!
HERE'S SOME OF WHAT WE'VE GOT PLANNED FOR OUR SOFT RE-OPENING
BETWEEN NOW AND S4's PREMIERE ON JUNE 26TH AT 9PM:

IT'S LAST CALL FOR SOME OF THE IDEAS DISTILLED AT THE END OF SEASON 3 THAT WE HAVE YET TO SERVE UP; AT LEAST A FEW OF THESE TASTY LIBATIONS WILL BE WHIPPED UP INTO POSTS HERE AT THE PPT BEFORE SEASON 4 PREOCCUPIES US (AND YOU!):

• "Ain't I a Woman?": Protection, Privilege & Preferential Treatment
• The Heroine's Journey: A Non-Linear Path
• The Great Goddess in Bon Temps
• MINE
• The Shifter's Tale: A Passing Narrative?
• Good Girls, Bitches, Fang Bangers, & Powerful Women
• An (Unlikely) Ecofeminist Philosopher
• Pack of Wolves"
• "There is NO Excuse for Domestic Violence"
• "Take It To Him Tommy": Passage to Manhood through a Crucible of Violence
• Paradigm Shift: Images of Holism in True Blood  
• A Series on Tomorrow's Man Today

Part I: The Liminal Man
Part II: A Wounded Warrior
Part III: Chivalry is Undead
Part IV: The Ladies Man...And It's Not Who You Think
Part V: The Ladies Man...And It Is Who You Think

WE'LL WHET YOUR WHISTLE FOR TRUE BLOOD'S "SEASON OF THE WITCH" WITH ANALYSIS AND COMMENTARY ON THE S4 CLIPS & TEASERS RELEASED BY HBO, LIKE:


Season 4 Sneak Peek

Rebecca's been brewing up a piece on the parallels between fangbangers and groupies; isn't it interesting the way guys get to be fans, but when it comes to females, there's always that sneaking suspicion that we've got some sleep-with-the-band-or-bust ulterior motive?

In this Season 4 teaser, we see the pejorative fangbanger applied for the first time to a straight man (if you recall, Mike Spencer's 19-year-old assistant, burned to death along with the Monroe vampires in Season 1, was also called a fangbanger but it appears as though he gay, and gay men are certainly no strangers to essentialist views of their sexuality, being judged and disparaged for their sexual preferences, etc.).

Hoyt is goaded by a Light of Day Institute t-shirt wearing fundamentalist rabble rouser who calls him a fangbanger. After Hoyt defends his relationship wiht Jessica and challenges the pro-Steve Newlin's hate-fueled so-called Christianity, his friend who is videotaping the steadlily escalating exchange outside Fangtasia calls Jessica a vamp whore (what a suprise; a woman being judged based on assumptions regarding her sexuality!) and the tense mob scene quickly devolves into violence.

This teaser is rife with sociopolitical material to dish about - hopefully a sign of things to come for Season 4!

WE'LL ALSO GIVE YOU A FIRST TASTE OF SOME OF THE ELEMENTS AND FEATURES THAT WILL BE ON THE PPT'S REGULAR MENU OF ANALYSIS AND COMMENTARY COME SEASON 4, LIKE:

• "2fers" -  You'll get your first taste of this Season 4 regular menu item in the form of the forthcoming piece Rebecca and I will write on our recent interview with True Blood's Tanya Wright, written in a back-and-forth, co-authored, conversational style

Also, I have been reading Ms. Wright's debut novel Butterfly Rising and will have a review posted soon! 
More about our soft re-opening to come in our next post, please stay tuned!
~ Rachel      

It's Still the Month of Love...For All!

All over town today I saw St. Patrick's Day flags flying; it's an encouraging sign of spring but it's too soon...don't get me wrong, I want to see the patches of snow here and there along with their larger, more imposing dirty pile counterparts dotting the neighborhood melt away as much as the next girl, but...it's still the month of love!

I can't bring myself to put out the greens until the first day of March, and while that's right around the corner, let's stay in the present -  like it or not, February is for Valentines.

Valentine's Day

I know that V-day (pun intended!!!) has both supporters and detractors, but it can't be denied that the month of cupid, chocolate and flowers kicks our culture into overdrive for the ideal of romantic love; an ideal that is usually represented in a manner consistent with heteronormativity.

That's where GLAAD comes in...

You may know that True Blood has been nominated for a GLAAD Media Award in the category of Outstanding Drama Series. YAY TB!

Put on by the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) (a non-profit organization whose mission is to promote understanding, increase acceptance and advance equality by amplifying the voice of the LGBT community, empowering real people to share their stories, holding the media accountable for the words and images they present, and helping grassroots organizations communicate effectively) the GLAAD Media Awards are  - according to the organization - the largest, most visible LGBT gala in the nation. And this year, GLAAD is celebrating it's 25th Anniversary with awards shows held in New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco bringing 5,000 attendees, corporate partners and celebrities together to recognize outstanding representations of the LGBT community in the media and GLAAD's vital work to achieve full equality.

While I was checking out GLAAD's website for information on the New York awards show (who knows, the PPT may have to make an appearance on the scene ;-) I discovered a timely piece on Valentine's Day; it's a resource kit for crafting V-Day coverage that integrates LGBT couples' romantic celebrations. While aimed at the media, I think it's such a great resource for everyone - a real awareness and sensitivity raiser - that I've pasted some of it below; click here for the whole thing, plus links to local and national organizations and resources for marriage, marriage equality, civil unions, and commitment ceremonies:

Valentine's Day Media Resource Kit
BACKGROUND

Valentine's Day receives a great deal of media attention. Print and electronic press outlets nationwide share stories of couples proclaiming their love and commitment for one another. However, lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) couples are often excluded from Valentine's Day media coverage—and LGBT couples of color receive even less attention in both mainstream and people of color media. GLAAD hopes that the following resources will help you produce Valentine's Day stories that reflect the true diversity of our society by including LGBT couples in the coverage of this romantic holiday.

LANGUAGE

LGBT people and relationships are often excluded by the kinds of language media professionals choose to use. Consider the language used to describe couples in general: Does it assume that all couples are heterosexual? Does it allow for non-traditional families? Does it subtly endorse opposite-sex relationships while marginalizing same-sex commitments? GLAAD encourages media to use words and descriptions that can be universally applied to all couples – gay and straight – and that respect the significance of their commitments.

LGBT people use a variety of terms to describe their relationships and significant others, including: partner, spouse, girlfriend/boyfriend, lover, husband/wife, companion, same gender loving couples (for couples from communities of African descent), marriage, partnership and family, among others. We encourage you to ask people which term they would like you to use. Also, please do not put quotation marks around the description, as this implies the described relationship is somehow illegitimate.

GLAAD'S Media Reference Guide contains a comprehensive glossary of LGBT-related terminology.

NEWSPAPERS ACROSS THE COUNTRY RECOGNIZE SAME-SEX UNIONS

A growing number of newspapers are committed to reporting on weddings, civil unions and commitment ceremonies for gay and lesbian couples. In 2008, six years after persuading The New York Times to open its Weddings/Celebrations pages to same-sex couples and launching its Announcing Equality campaign, GLAAD now reports that 1,049 newspapers – nearly 72 percent of all daily newspapers in the United States – now accept wedding and/or commitment ceremony announcements for gay and lesbian couples. In late 2002, only 70 newspapers said they would print such announcements.

DIVERSITY

In reporting on LGBT couples, please also remember that they are as diverse as the rest of society, crossing lines of gender, race, age, income, class, family structure, religion, geography and political affiliation. We encourage you to reflect this diversity in your coverage.

STORY POSSIBILITIES

Please consider integrating LGBT couples into your Valentine's Day feature story. You might cover topics such as:

- Couples looking back at how they met

- Valentine's Day weddings and anniversaries

- Dating trends (meeting online, dating services, blind dates, etc.)

- Anniversaries of marriage equality legislation: Massachusetts (2004), Connecticut (2008), Iowa (2009), Vermont (2009), Washington, D.C. (2009) and New Hampshire (2009)

- Valentine's Day events for singles

- Long-distance relationships

- Surprise marriage proposals on Valentine's Day

- Retired couples re-igniting romance

- Planning a Valentine's Day getaway

- Couples' favorite poems, songs, vacation spots, etc.

- Choosing the perfect Valentine's Day gift

- High school sweethearts

- Celebrity couples and break-ups

- Wedding-day successes and disasters

- Balancing romance and family obligations

- Workplace romances

- Bi-national couples’ stories

- Making Valentine’s Day dinner reservations – especially at the last minute

-Finding a babysitter on Valentine’s Day

Also:

- Include romantic lesbian/gay-owned restaurants in your area in your list of Valentines Day dating recommendations.

- Include lesbian/gay-themed comedies or dramas in your list of all-time most romantic movies.

- List relationship development books for same-sex couples in features about keeping romance alive.

- Talk to local jewelry stores, wedding planners, bakeries, florists and other companies that offer services and products for same-sex couples' commitment ceremonies.

- Talk to pastors who conduct same-sex ceremonies at inclusive churches, particularly in communities of color.

So I'm thinkin', in our current media and cultural climate, how might True Blood couples like...



Lafayette and Jesus

Russell and Talbot

Sophie-Ann and Hadley

...negotiate the joys and pitfalls of Valentine's Day? Would there be venues for their tales of couplehood to be heard, validated, celebrated?

I make no judgement on these relationship in the sense that I'm neither lifting them up as model unions nor denouncing them for their flaws; these are not perfect relationships (if there were such a thing) but I have singled these couples out for a reason.

Sure, hooking up is fun and who am I to say that recreational sex is bad (I wouldn't say that, but that's neither here nor there) whether you're gay, straight, bisexual, transgender, queer, or...Pamsexual (OK, OK, a silly play on words - I mean pansexual which is the way Kristin Bauer van Straten describes her character Pam). But for the purposes of this post, hook-ups aren't what I'm talking about... 



Pam and Yvetta

Nor am I referring to vampire blood-induced homoerotic dream sequences played out for comic impact:



Bill and Sam...saved by the cell!

 The reason I chose to highlight Russell & Talbot, Sophie-Ann & Hadley and Lafayette & Jesus is that despite the problems of representation that we see in some homosexual couples and couplings (i.e. the camera cuts away from love scenes with Lafayette & Jesus just before, as Nelsan likes to say, they "do the do" yet the camera stays fixed as Eric, posing as a gay man, graphically "seduces" and stakes Talbot, etc.), in each of these couples, Alan Ball and the writers have allowed us to see moments of true caring and connection and moments of tenderness - physical and otherwise. Evil as he is, Russell's pain and grief at Talbot's death is palpable. As it turns out, Hadley really is the closest person to Sophie-Ann, human, vampire, or otherwise. Lafayette may just be willing to get out of the player game for Jesus.

We don't often see complex and nuanced homosexual relationships on TV, but that's changing. Back in October fellow TB blogger sunnynala posted on True Blood Underground, True Blood found to be the most inclusive television program of LGBT characters. That piece also draws from GLAAD - as mine does - and gives good stats on LGBT characters on broadcast and cable TV plus a good discussion in the comments section  on the topic.  

Even Sookie and Bill - who at the end of S2, were it not for the no-good-rapscallion-V-head weres kidnapping the groom-to-be would have been celebrating a very special engagement, since human-vampire marriage does not yet enjoy universal marriage equality in the world of True Blood - bring issues of injustice that are relevant to the LGBT community to the fore...



.reinforcing for me that, as Alan Ball says, while the vampires are not stand-ins for the LGBT community per se; the show is conveying a broader message more like that of Martin Luther King, Jr., "Injustice anywhere (and to anyone) is a threat to justice everywhere (and to everyone)". [parenthetical phrases are mine, but I think are in MLK's spirit].

On that note, nighty-night all!

~ Rachel

Raise a Glass to Real Grrrl Power: Women in Solidarity Part II - Theme 1 - of Mothers and Daughters

Confronting "Girl-On-Girl Combat"
In Part I of this series I outlined some questions Naomi Wolf's Harper's Bazaar piece Girl VS. Girl raises about the nature of female conflict and rivalry:


• Is it inborn or are we socialized to engage in emotionally devastating struggle with one another?
• Are there alternatives or other ways of being?
• What kinds of social conditions would have to exist for different relations between women to emerge?
• If this dynamic is based more in nurture than nature, who suffers most and who stands to gain by the way women are acculturated to be in fierce competition at all times?
• Are women's relationships distorted in the media and pop culture to insinuate a higher prevalence of rancor and social sabotage - and if so - who is getting their kicks at our expense?

How best to wade into the whirlpool of these questions?

I will tap into the twin wellsprings of True Blood and the surging movement of women's studies - scholarship, (and particularly feminist scholarship) in the areas of history, religion & spirituality, anthropology, archeomythology, linguistics, art, literature, and more. Bubbling up from both of these abundant sources are the stories, allegories, images, narratives, and analysis that can support us to:


• Understand contemporary women's relationships within the context of our prevailing (dominator) culture and to take a look at how its social structures (i.e. dating & courtship, career ladder, marriage, and family) can impact on a woman’s ability to maintain continuing, fruitful connections with other women

 • Explore the assumption that all women feel isolation and separation from or animosity toward other women; is it part of a larger trend towards conceptualizing women's experiences in universalizing terms that exclude diverse perspectives (i.e. women of color, indigenous women, etc.)

 • Seek representations of, or models for, the creative dynamic of women living in relation with one another; multigenerational patterns of connection, continuity, cooperation, and community amongst women to foster deepened insight into our relationships with each other at the personal, cultural, and archetypal levels

SO LET'S DIP INTO THE FONT, SHALL WE?

A Swimming Pool for the Metaphoric Mind

You remember my last posts' overview of the metaphoric mind, right? Well, to carry along the water metaphor I started above, what follows is a a virtual swimming pool for the metaphoric mind...and it ain't no kiddie pool, folks! 

No, dear friends, it's a near-bottomless well in which we can dive deep into select images that illuminate women's relationships on True Blood and surface with insight into the parallels that exist between the complex interpersonal dynamics and story arcs of the show's female characters and the art, myth, narratives, and histories of archaic cultures and living traditions that bring nuance to our ways of being and interacting with each other. Let's try to plug into our metaphoric minds and see where they take us...

No Simple Answers

Here's what this discussion isn't meant to be:

• An attempt to idealize women and our relationships with each other, deny our rivalry and conflict, or to paint us in broad, reductionist brushstrokes. After all, the feminine is no simple construct. I'm not saying Naomi Wolf has it all wrong; we women get along just fine all the time, thank you very much. To do so would deny the need to critically engage, interrogate, and challenge female conflict.
• An exhaustive, authoritative, or all-encompassing review or history lesson; it's a discussion of women's relationships organized around a sampling of True Blood images on the themes that stood out for me and the parallels that emerged from the historic and sociological record.
• An argument for the superiority of the mythopoetic worldview which speaks clearest to the metaphoric mind; it is a call to strike greater balance between this way of thinking and being and the linear-rational that dominates today.
• A call to retreat to the past. Even though many of the preeminent scholars of archaic Goddess-based cultures (Marija Gimbutas, Merlin Stone, Carol Christ, Max Dashu, Riane Eisler, Vicky Noble, etc.) agree that the Neolithic and pre-Classical cultures which flourished in Old Europe and the ancient Mediterranean, Near, and Middle East showed all the signs of peaceful egalitarianism - no fortifications or caches of weaponry which would speak to the presence of war, no palaces which would indicate royal hierarchy or the existence of haves and have-nots but the remains of housing which evidences a comfortable quality of life enjoyed by all, and an artistic tradition which documents the free, joyous, and sophisticated societies our forebearers lived in - we can't, and shouldn't pine for a time machine that can take us back to those days. As Gadon (1989, p. 377) writes, "We cannot - would not - wish to return to some golden prehistoric age; but in reclaiming our lost heritage we can build upon the values encoded in the prehistoric survivals".
• A recommendation that we engage in cultural appropriation or a justification to think  - misguidedly - that we can graft some romanticized vision or version of other cultures or lifeways upon our own.

The main idea here is that WHEN WE ARE MET WITH...AND SEE THAT THERE HAVE BEEN - AND STILL ARE - ALTERNATIVES TO THE STATUS QUO, new paths open and we see that the way things are isn't the way they have to be.

We are washed out into floodplains of new and expanded human possibility in terms of women's relationships with each other. 

A Exploration of Women's Relationships Organized into 5 Themes

Here's the 1st theme:  

The Archetypal Mother-Daughter on True Blood: Themes of Separation and Connection

TARA & LETTIE MAE


Let's begin by looking at one volatile rendering of a most primal of female bonds; that of mother to daughter, which seemingly reinforces Shakti Woman author Vicki Noble's assertion, "The Feminine is fragmented, shattered, and scattered about the earth. Women have been isolated from one another" (1991, p. 3): Tara and Lettie Mae.

In her feminist reconceptualization of the Demeter-Persephone myth, Charlene Spretnak (1989) affirms the power of this original matrix and the fundamental importance of female relationships, asserting that the sacred story of archetypal Mother and Daughter long pre-dates the Christian deification of father and son; in the ancient Eleusinian (pre-Classical Greek) religion it was celebrated as an expression of the central human mystery.

The myth of Greek Goddesses Demeter and Persephone is the classic story of descent, death and rebirth, and of separation and reunion between archetypal Mother and Daughter (Austen, 1990).

Terracotta statuettes of Demeter and Persephone from Myrina, c.100 BC. British Museum
It's easy to see how much they cherish each other

In the myth's most well-known (patriarchal Greek) version, mother and daughter live together in a bliss state until Hades, God of the Underworld, rapes and abducts Persephone.

Demeter so mourns her daughter's loss that the world begins to wither.
Persephone finally returns to her mother, but because she was tricked into eating a few pomegranate seeds, she must go back to the underworld for part of the year, during which time winter reigns on earth above.



Austin (1990) posits that in the original mythology, Persephone chose to leave the paradise of life with her mother of her own free-will; perhaps she descended to the underworld to experience another side of herself like the Sumerian Inanna did, perhaps to gain wisdom from Hecate, the ancient Goddess of the Underworld.
 Either way, each version tells the story of descent and re-emergence, of separation from and reunion with the mother.

In her book Stories from the Motherline: Reclaiming the Mother-Daughter Bond, Finding Our Feminine Souls psychotherapist Naomi Ruth Lowinsky quotes feminist poet and essayist Adrienne Rich who reiterates the mother-daughter bond’s power:
Although there have been some poignant moments of tenderness between them, we have certainly seen more painful estrangement than deepest mutuality in Tara and Lettie Mae's relationship as they struggle to repair the frayed cord of their mother-daughter bond:

There is nothing in human nature more resonant with charges than the flow of energy between biologically alike bodies, one of which has lain in amniotic bliss inside the other, one of which has labored to give birth to the other. The materials are here for the deepest mutuality and the most painful estrangement. (1992, pg. 53) 

 

Lowinsky's (1992, pp. 34-35) vision of the pain and separation that punctuates the mother-daughter dance mirrors Tara and Lettie Mae's relationship:

We are all born of deeply wounded mothers...In listening to the stories from my patients' Motherlines, I can usually trace the deprivation or anger back for generations...They look at their daughters with the hatred they feel for their own female selves, and profoundly stunt their daughter's development.

Video courtesy of YouTube user kathchick7, thanks!

She continues, "In a great collective leap we distanced ourselves from the lives of our mothers and grandmothers...Mothers and daughters suffer a wrenching distance between them" (Lowinsky, pp. 28, 31).

Gadon (1989) writes that separation and reunion, the restoration of the primary relationship to the mother, is the great motif underlying the Demeter-Persephone myth. We have seen Tara and Lettie Mae cycle back and forth between separation and reunion; they seem in constant conflict and yet also seem to always - in one way or another - long for each other. Will we see their mother-daughter bond ultimately repaired and restored? Does this story arc comment on the value our society accords the mother-daughter bond, or women's bonds in general?

JESSICA

As Jessica's ties to her family of origin - and to her biological mother - give way to the new blood tie between she and her maker/father figure Bill, Season 3 of True Blood finds her involved in a trio of pseudo mother-daughter relationships that speak more to separation and strife than to connection:



Arlene tries to ward Jessica off

What is she so afraid of? Is she fearful because Jess is a vampire,

or is it something else altogether?

Demeter and Persephone were so closely linked that they were simply known as "The Two Goddesses"; as Gadon (1989) writes, in the early 5th century B.C.E. bas-relief to the left, mother and daughter are nearly indistinguishable in appearance - the maiden is characterized only by the flower she carries, the mother only by the fruit. The key to understanding the symbolic meaning of this image, as mother and daughter gaze intently - smilingly and knowingly, even - into each other's eyes, is that flower and fruit, narcissus and pomegranate, represent their respective roles. For Jungian Eric Neumann, the unity of Demeter and Persephone is the central content of the Eleusinian Mysteries; the goddesses belong together in their seamless transformation from one to the other. Gadon (p. 161) quotes Neumann, "the daughter becomes identical with the mother; she becomes a mother and is so transformed into Demeter. Precisely because Demeter and Kore (Persephone) are archetypal poles of the Eternal Woman; mature woman and virgin, the mystery of the Feminine is endlessly renewed.

Is it such a stretch to cast Arlene and Jessica similarly as archetypal poles? Think back to when Sam first hired Jessica - do you remember Arlene chastising him, saying something like, "you know there's only one redhead at Merlotte's!"?  Arlene sees a younger version of herself in Jessica, and when they're face-to-face in matching Merlotte's uniforms it's hard not to see a resemblance. Arlene fears being displaced by her "younger self"; a fear not entirely unwarranted in our youth-obsessed culture. Rather than embracing the vulnerable baby vampire, either as a young woman in need of a mother figure or as a symbol of the cyclical pattern of eternal rebirth, Arlene allows her fear to cast her into competition and conflict with Jessica.

Jessica's relationship with another potential surrogate mother figure; Maxine Fortenberry, her on-again-off-again human boyfriend's mother, doesn't fare much better (for different reasons), as these images attest:

 

 

 

Jessica yearns for mothering, and we can tell from her video blog that she'd like to think maybe she's found it (what she herself refers to as a "big-sister-crush") in Pam - a female vampire she looks up to and turns to when in need and no one else is around to help her - but who is also a a party to Jessica’s stolen humanity - she too can be seen as a (begrudging) surrogate mother figure:

Here's Pam callously kicking Jessica into her grave...

And yet, Like Athena before her, Pam herself is a "daughter of man" who has and needs no mother.

Athena came into being after her father the Sky God Zeus killed the Goddess Mettis and swallowed her; from his head was born Athena, fully formed and girded for battle (Christ, 1997)

And so it is that the Goddess comes from God, female from male; like Athena born of Zeus, Aphrodite was born from the severed genitals of Ouranos (Christ, 1997), the ancient Egyptian God Ptah caused all the other gods to come into being through an act of masturbation, thus totally eliminating the need for a Divine Ancestress, and as the Judeo-Christian Adam and Eve story - which to a certain extend pervades the collective consciousness of today's Western culture - states, "For the man is not of the woman but the woman of the man" (Stone, 1976, pp. 227-228).

Not only does this kind of mythology deny the biological truth of birth (thinkers like Christ and Stone posit that this was almost certainly a political move undertaken by the molders of these revisionist myths as a shift from matrifocal to patrifocal social structure was taking place), but it also paints a very different picture of the importance of the mother-daughter bond than does the Demeter-Persephone myth: it totally subverts, refutes, and disavows it.

Does this type of thinking - that the mother-daughter (and by extension, the woman-woman bond) is inherently prickly, has little real meaning, and is therefore expendable - have any bearing upon today's female relationships?

SOOKIE & TARA 

What do Tara and Sookie as surrogate sisters have to do with the theme of separation and connection between mothers and daughters? True Blood offers us some images of them in close sisterly bond which radiates out - at least in part - from their orbit around the same mother figure: Gran.

The relationship between Tara and Sookie has its ups and downs - like relationships between any sisters (Rebecca and I included) or very close friends usually do - but despite their differences and the trouble that always finds them they are joined by a deep mutuality. Their relationship sometimes comes to blows over men but it is never minimized or overcome by the men in either of their lives.  

They (try to) keep each other real!

   

Their caring for each other is born of the love they shared with and received from Gran, the same woman who was not their mother but to varying extents played that role for both of them from their childhood.

Lots to think about, huh? So what do you think?

If you'd like to explore my take on the Archetypal Mother-Daughter bond, which (as evidenced in the images from True Blood we see here) can manifest through a connection we have with a woman from our own bloodlines, or with a woman of an alternative or chosen lineage such as an adopted, surrogate, spiritual, or mentor mother figure further, you might be interested in checking out a paper that I presented at a conference on spirituality and social work in Canada in 2008: Re-Imagining the Myth of Demeter and Persephone: Exploration of the Constructs of Marriage and Nuclear Family  

In it, you'll find a practical guide for tracing the Motherline, which is what Lowinsky describes as a name for a pattern, for the oneness of body and psyche, for the experience of continuity amongst women. She conceptualizes it as a central organizing principle in the psyche of women, "like the stem and the roots of the tree of life, through which a woman is related to the ancient earth of female procreation" (p. 4).

Whether or not we feel a close connection to our mothers, whether or not our mothers are still living, the Motherline heritage this is passed down to us, or that we choose to subscribe to, can provide a rich exploration of our deepest selves. Tracing it might open new windows on the concept of female rivalry and conflict.

 

In the next installment, I'll look at images of  women's relationships in True Blood and their parallels in the art, stories, narratives, and histories of the past and present in the context of these themes:

• Female Competition Manifested in the Classic Love Triangle
• Women Sharing Support, Connection & Compassion
• Female Allies, Helpers & Guides
• Women United in Ritual

Bye-bye for now!

~ Rachel

References

Austen, H. I. (1990). The heart of the goddess: Art, myth and meditations of the  world’s sacred feminine. Berkeley: Wingbow Press 

Christ, C.(1997) Rebirth of the goddess.  New York: Routledge

Gadon, E. W. (1989). The once and future Goddess. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco 

Lowinsky, N.R. (1992). Stories from the motherline: Reclaiming the mother-daughter bond, finding our feminine souls. Los Angeles: Jeremy P. Tarcher, Inc.

Spretnak, C. (1989). The Myth of Demeter and Persephone. In Plaskow, J. & Christ, C. P. (Ed.), Weaving the visions: New patterns in feminist spirituality. (pp. 72-76). San Francisco: Harper and Row.

Stone, M. (1976). When god was a woman. New York: Harcourt, Inc.