Women Setting Boundaries in True Blood S4 Finale

WOW. I mean, really, WOW. There's so much that can be said about the unreal True Blood S4 finale that aired this past Sunday, "And When I Die".

Multiple viewings of it may in fact be truly hazardous to your health!

Case in point: I crashed at Rebecca's house on Tuesday night, and we decided to re-watch the episode together. Just as the opening credits began, our brother pulled into the driveway and we shot each other looks acknowledging the fact that as soon as he came in the door and realized we were watching it AGAIN, he might just kill us!

You see, Johnny's a fan of the show too, but for him watching each episode once is enough. And when he comes in from work, he likes to relax in front of the tube and decompress. So as the key turned in the door we braced ourselves and when we heard him in the hallway, we both grimaced and Rebecca almost timidly called out, "hey man" to test his mood. 

Luckily for us, his shift had been good and he was feeling benevolent. Striding up the stairs, he caught the strains of Bad Things rising and joked, "third time's the charm, huh?" before briefly taking inventory of the fridge and descending back down the stairs to his room.

Whew, close call. We were now free to watch "And When I Die" yet again, and although each of us had already seen it at least once (we viewed the finale together late Sunday night and Rebecca had re-watched the next day and taken notes), we were both still feeling the effects of the fangover and attempting the process the show's dizzying chain of events. 

As I mentioned at the beginning of this post, so much happened during the finale that we could discuss here at the PPT. But since the Web has been abuzz for several days with recaps, reflections, and questions concerning the central action, I'd like to address a subtly nuanced theme of female empowerment nestled within the episode's dizzing action.  

Easy to overlook in light of the general craziness of the S4 finale, this theme is made evident in the pattern of several female characters drawing boundaries for themselves in their relationships that emerged during the course of the show, particularly in relation to Sookie, Jessica, Luna & Holly.

Rebecca and I started to flesh out our ideas on this topic on Tuesday night.

When the episode ended, we joked a little about how I had, in a moment of denial that the season had actually come to its conclusion on Sunday night, told her "no, we've got to see the coming attractions" when she lifted the remote to switch the station. Rebecca had astutely pointed out on Sunday that there would be no trailers for next week and that I'd have to face the fact that a sobering nine months of True Blood withdrawal stretched out like a barren wasteland before us.

Maybe a little over-dramatic, but true nonetheless.

So we laughed a little about that again, and Rebecca quickly turned our attention to an article she had read online that pointed out how, in her two-way break up with Eric and Bill, Sookie has actually chosen herself.

Although leaving without either of them in her life caused she and both her lovers great heartache, Sookie realized - perhaps due in part to the poignant words of her dearly departed Gran's spirit - that being alone is nothing to be afraid of.

And that maybe the best thing for her to do instead of trying to choose between Bill and Eric was to take some time to discover and get to know herself, outside of a relationship. Although shocked and deeply hurt, both vampires respected Sookie's wishes enough (at least for now) to let her go.

Similarly, during her sexy Halloween night tryst with Jason, Jessica verbalized her own sense that she is just barely getting to know herself.

Jessica is Rebecca's favorite female character for the reason that she feels the baby vamp displays the most real, believable [human] emotion. Sorry Sookie - Rebecca's words, not mine ;-) but I don't disagree.

Despite their strong mutual attraction and genuine caring towards one another, Jessica was brave and authentic enough to draw a mid-coitus line in the sand, telling Jason that she did not want to be his girlfriend. It's not that she doesn't want him; she's simply not ready to commit to him yet because she recognizes her inexperience in relationships and she doesn't want to hurt Jason the way Hoyt ended up hurt when they broke up.

In this scene, Jessica asserted herself as a sexual woman and vampire who is beginning to know what she wants and needs and isn't afraid to articulate that to the man in her life. And for his part, Jason was understanding and accepting of Jessica's reticence to jump into a committed relationship with him or to be intimate enough with him to drink his blood; as Jessica said, at least not yet.

Luna, too, put the breaks on a close encounter that could have heated up into quite the romantic night for she and Sam.

Not because she's not ready to stay the night with Sam or for them to be an official item (although that may well the be the case), but because she felt her baby girl Emma may not be. Luna and Sam both displayed the emotional maturity required to take their budding relationship slow; let's hope the snarling wolf that confronted Sam just as the van carrying Luna and Emma home drove up the Merlotte's driveway towards the parish road and out of view doesn't put the permanent brakes on this promising couple!

Last but not least, we've got fairy-costumed Holly, who, despite (or maybe because of) her mental and physical exhaustion brought on by the drama of the night had the gumption to tell it like it is to a persistent, Halloween bouquet-toting Andy Bellefleur.

Here's the dialogue courtesy of Television Without Pity: 

Andy: "Sorry about the last time, when I took your flowers."
Holly: "That's okay, you were nervous."
Andy: "No, I was a drug addict. V. thought I needed it to do the job, and to talk pretty ladies like you... So I didn't feel like a loser all the time. It worked for a while, then it didn't."
Holly, wearily: "Okay look, honey. You're really sweet and everything, but this is all just too much for me right now."
Andy: "It's no problem. Lot of baggage, I get it. I just wanted to say that I'm sober and I'm lonely. And I can be good to someone if they let me. 'Night."

After taking in and weighing what he had to say, Holly asked Sheriff Andy for a much-needed hug, which I think may have been balm for both their souls. I look forward to seeing what will come next for these two, and if the kind of "rigorous honesty" the tragically doomed Debbie Pelt had talked about having with Alcide might prevail for both of them; given their respective pasts (Holly as a survivor of sexual assault and Andy as a recovering addict) should they become involved.

Now, the above is not to suggest that self-actualization and being in relationship are mutually exclusive. In fact, as the introduction to the section on self-in-relation in the book Weaving the Visions: New Patterns in Feminist Spirituality asserts, the idea of self as relational is prominent in feminist thinking.

The concept of the relational self has not caught on in the traditions of dominant Euro-Western philosophy and theology in which Descartes's' vision of the self as essentially rational, disembodied, and solitary holds sway. From this perspective, it is easy to see how relationships could be seen as detrimental to the growth and development of the self - especially for women - whose stereotyped roles as nurturers and caregivers of others threaten to swallow us alive.

Another vision of the self suggests that we are by nature embodied, passionate, relational, and communal. Many feminist adhering to this viewpoint stress that identity is found in community. Black womanist theologian Delores S. Williams coined the term "relational interdependence" to name Black women's struggles for freedom from racist and sexist stereotypes within the context of relationships, family, and community. In this view, women's independence is relational.

There is no you without me; no me without you. The self is forged in relationship.

Even so, drawing healthy boundaries for the relationships that structure our lives and bind us to others is necessary, and it's refreshing to see the women of True Blood taking these steps - and their men responding in kind!

Yours in TB withdrawal...

~ Rachel

Boy, I wa-wa-want whatchu wa-wa-want...

...give it to me baby like boom, boom, boom...
what I wa-wa-want is what you wa-wa-want na nah...
                                                      ~ Rude Boy by Rihanna

After such a long wait the new season of True Blood is finally under way! But before we launch into our review of its premiere episode, "She's Not There", I'd like to first take a look at a particular piece of Season 4 promo material.

In this poster we see Sookie seated in the center of the frame surrounded by three suitors, each with a hand on her, staking a claim, wanting a piece. Which one will she choose? Which supernatural contender for Sookie's affections will prevail, who will win? Because it's a competition after all, and she's the prize - the object of strong male sexual desire being fought over. She's the spoils, the booty - her booty going to whichever alpha male can assert himself over the others.


That's one way of looking at it.


But this image isn't really about Team Bill, Team Eric, or Team Alcide, is it? It's about Team Sookie.


For me, it's no accident that she's the central figure in this poster. Look at her posture; her body, and indeed, her countenance as she gazes directly into the camera exudes relaxed confidence. An at-easiness with herself and who she has become.


Gone is the virginal innocent we met in Season 1. Swathed in deep red, this Sookie - like our tavern's heraldic pomegranate with its abundant scarlet seeds so evocative of the redness of the fertile womb - is the picture of blooming female sexuality.


Her hair is loose, unconstrained - quite unlike the tight ponytail stretching her facial features that she wore in "Strange Love", when she was so utterly thrown for a loop by the sexual banter of her co-workers at Merlotte's.

In the Show Your True Colors poster above Sookie is shown as being possessed of a healthy, active female-centered sexuality. Kind of like in Rihanna's Rude Boy - is it so shocking to think that women could want what men want...a gratifying sex life...and that our sex drive can be just as strong, just as audacious, and just as pleasure-for-pleasure's-sake seeking as theirs? And that it's normal, natural, and healthy - and doesn't make us deviants, whores, or hypersexualized vixens performing for men's benefit alone?



In the video above, a self-assured Rihanna sits astride a lion. Could it be that women aren't (or aren't just, only, or always) lithe prey animals made for men's hunting pleasure; or as 1970's pioneer of erotica and Imaginative Sex author John Gorman writes, "the smaller, more sleek female who is natural quarry and game" (p. 33)?


Writing as Pat Califia in 1997, the transgender activist now known as Patrick Califia-Rice described Gorman's work as "unrelievedly heterosexual" and as positing "a world in which biology is supposedly allowed to dictate the social and sexual roles which men and women will play - dominant and warlike, submissive and servile, respectively" (p.vi)..."the hero or the dazzling object of his desire" (p. xiii). But even Gorman (whose writing, Califia wholeheartedly admits, is focused on the arousal, excitement, and gratification of the female "slave" much more so than that of her male "Master") allows that women are not passive, that "She, too, has needs. She often provokes the male to her hunt" (p. 33).


OK, maybe sometimes we want to feel that we are being chased, caught, and "ravished in a thoroughly satisfying manner" (Califia, 1997, p. xii) by a determined, energetic, and worthy partner - on our terms. As agents of our own fate, not commodities for male consumption. And for mutual pleasure, not just his. But maybe, just maybe, sometimes we'd like to be the hunter.


Califia writes, "The process of creating a sex life or love life for oneself is at least as much about learning and teaching as it is about discovering one's secret, innate self" (p. xi, italics are mine). What if, as Sookie's secret, innate self - the seat of her sexual self - is bubbling up to the surface, she'd like to be something other than "game, sleek, beautiful and desirable, frightened of him, who could be caught and owned, and tamed, and who, in his snare, would writhe and cry out" (Gorman, 1974, p. 21)?


Hypothetically, why does she even have to choose between Bill, Eric, and Alcide?


Of course, that's a somewhat rhetorical question since we know that in this culture, the industrial family ethic - which was preceded by the colonial family ethic, insists that the proper place for a woman is in a monogamous relationship with one man. I'm not saying that coupling up is wrong, or that women (or men) of any sexual orientation who want to do so are somehow less liberated.


What I am saying is that it's limiting and outright damaging - especially to women - to insist that this is the morally ordained, right, and only way to live.


As Mimi Abramovitz writes in the feminist classic, Regulating the Lives of Women: Social Policy from Colonial Times to the Present (1996) our contemporary social structures are still based upon the patriarchal family ethic that emerged during the early 19th century primarily as a means of controlling and regulating women’s productive and reproductive labor, placing them in their husband’s home and subordinate to him as the male head-of-household.


Seems like the basis for the Defense of Marriage Act - under which marriage = 1 man + 1 woman only - the fangs-out fight over which happily ended in marriage equality in my home state of New York just this past weekend.


In Bram Stoker's 1897 novel Dracula we meet a female character reflective of a new social order - Lucy Westenra.

Sadie Frost as Lucy Westenra in the 1992 film Bram Stoker's Dracula

Like Sookie, she too had three suitors - and collected marriage proposals from all of them on the same day. As Susan Parlour (2009) writes in her essay, "Vixens and Virgins in the 19th Century Anglo-Irish Novel: Representations of the Feminine in Bram Stoker's Dracula", even though she failed to postulate a new image of feminine roles in the the workplace - as her best friend Mina, who might on the surface appear more of an expression of the New Woman in that regard, did - Lucy nonetheless shook up the strictures of the Victorian patriarchal machine.


According to Parlour, Lucy demonstrated her voracious sexual appetite. She admitted to being a "horrid flirt". These behaviors certainly transgressed the accepted Victorian etiquette demanded of young ladies. But Lucy took it a dangerous step further in her desire to marry Arthur Holmwood, Quincy Morris, AND Dr. John Seward. "Why can't they let a girl marry three men, or as many as want her, and save all the trouble?" (Stoker, 1986, pp. 73, 78) Lucy wistfully wondered, and in doing so, embraced some of the more radical ideals of the New Woman's challenge to prevailing sexual values. In the minds of the Victorian patriarchs, could a destabilized society and accelerated moral decay be far behind?


Would Sookie ever suggest a similar solution to the Team Bill, Team Eric, or Team Alcide quandary? What if she did?


Do you know what became of that little minx Lucy? She fell prey to Count Dracula, was turned vampire, and as such became a "phallic woman", having fangs with the power to penetrate and draw blood; a sexually empowered aggressor. This, of course, could not stand. Lucy was subjected to a particularly brutal "second death" at the hands of four men - including her three suitors and the famed Dr. Van Helsing - during which she was staked in a manner reminiscent of gang-rape.

Vampire Lucy is destroyed in Bram Stoker's Dracula

The violation of her vampiric body yields the restoration of her benign femininity; her threat to the symbolic or social order extinguished (Parlour, 2009).


Is this the fate of the overtly sexually desirous woman? I'd like to think not, but one need only reflect back on René Lenier's Season 1 rampage to be reminded of how our society often treats its fangbangers, sluts, and bad girls (i.e. women whose sexual behavior transgresses the clearly demarcated gender roles mapped out for them).


This is a topic that is deserving of a lot more fleshing out and continued discussion. For now, suffice it to say that although I'm not holding out hope for Sookie to choose not to have to choose between Bill, Eric, Alcide, and whoever else may come her way (I'm not even saying that's the best option for her, anyway) I AM glad to have an image that we can claim as one representative of Team Sookie - where her needs, wants, and desires can be seen as central.

~ Rachel    

References

Abramovitz, M. (1996). Regulating the Lives of Women: Social Welfare Policy from Colonial Times to the Present. Boston, MA: South End Press.

Califia, P. (1997). "No Fantasy, Please, We're Americans: A Foreward by a Feminist". In Gorman, J. Imaginitive Sex. (pp. v-xiv). New York, NY: Masquerade Books.

Gorman, J. (1997).  Imaginitive Sex. New York, NY: Masquerade Books.

Parlour, S. (2009). "Vixens and Virgins in the 19th Century Anglo-Irish Novel: Representations of the Feminine in Bram Stoker's Dracula". Journal of Dracula Studies, Number II.

Stoker, B. (1986). Dracula. Penguin edition.  

     

And Pluto Can Start Bein' A Planet Again, Connected To Stuff...

Aahhh...Jason Stackhouse. Poor, gorgeous Jason Stackhouse. He of the farm boy good looks, perfect abs and wide-eyed man-child persona.

As Kirsty Walker writes in her essay appearing in the book "A Taste of True Blood: The Fangbanger's Guide" titled True Stud, "The people of Bon Temps don't take him seriously and, for the most part, neither do we. Both Jason and his storylines are usually played for laughs" (p. 111, 2010).

Perhaps Lafayette described Jason best, "that boy is sex on a stick!" (S1E1 Strange Love). But he's so much more than that, too...

A recent "Science Friday" on my local NPR radio station featured a piece on Pluto's demotion from planet to dwarf planet to FLR (Fairly Large Rock - I know, ridiculous and kind of sad, right!?!). For the past several years the former ninth planet of our solar system has been caught up in a wholesale redefinition of planethood that has seen it's celestial status bumped down a few notches.

What does this have to Jason Stackhouse, you ask? Or, more accurately, what would anything related to science ever have to do with Jason Stackhouse, you ask?

Not that I really need an excuse to think about Jason and his many charms ;-) but listening to the promos for this piece on Pluto reminded me of an exchange between our boy and Amy Burley right before they partake of V together for the first time:

Amy: God, I love your place, man. It's very un-self-conscious. So off-the-grid.
Jason: It was my parents' house. Haven't really done much with the place since they passed.
Amy: That's even better. I mean, this place goes back to like a more legitimate time, you know, before everything got totally out of whack.
Amy: Your parents are part of Gaia. You know what Gaia is, right? Theory of Gaia?
Jason: Yeah!
Amy: The earth is a living organism. Makes weather, which is good for us. Plants give us the chemicals we need. Everything is connected. But you know that.
Jason: Yeah, I don't like how they keep takin' stuff away. Like Pluto's not a planet anymore and a brontosaurus stopped being a dinosaur. You can't say somethin' stopped being what it's always been.
Amy: Do you live by yourself?
Jason: Yeah. Come on, let's do the V's.
Amy: Slow down, baby. Do you even know how this stuff works?
Jason (softly): No.
Amy: It's blood. It carries oxygen to our organs, right? That's what makes them function. So it keeps us goin'.
Amy: It's like gas in a car engine.
Jason: OK.
Amy: Vampires, they don't need oxygen. Everything just runs directly off the blood.
Jason: Ah, like those cars that run on corn.
(Amy holds up a vial of V and looks at it)
Amy: I've had this blood for like...forever, so we're gonna need to take some steps to keep it from coagulating.
Jason (whispering): Coagulating...!
Amy: Aspirin. Thins it.
(Amy opens the jar of aspirin, and places two in the mortar)
Amy: We'll get the full effect faster, and more intense.
(Amy opens the vial of V, puts a dropper in it, and withdraws some of the V. Jason gets off the sofa and kneels beside Amy as she places a single drop of V onto each of the white aspirin pills. The V quickly turns each pill blood red)
Amy: You just know this is what Holy Communion is symbolic of. This is the real deal here. None of that lame-ass empty ritual. This is nature's greatest gift.
(Jason smiles as he watches Amy grind the V-soaked aspirin pills with a pestle)
Jason: I thought they'd get all mushy.
Amy: No. See, the V adapts. It wants to be in us.
(Amy scrapes the red powder from the mortar with a blunt knife, and places the powder in two small doses on the small plate. Amy bows her head and prays)
Amy: We honor Gaia, and seek the deepest relationship to her.
(Amy looks at Jason, who wasn't praying. Jason bows his head, and Amy does likewise)
Jason: Uh, yeah. Me too. And Pluto can start bein' a planet again, connected to stuff.

Transcript for S1E7 Burning House of Love courtesy: http://www.losttv-forum.com/forum/showthread.php?t=56485

The bolded part of dialogue above points to how very much - at this particular juncture in his life  - Jason longs to restore the familiar. There's been an awful lot of change swirling around him and it seems to me that Jason would love nothing more than for the spiraling Milky Way to slow down a bit and for his universe to go back to being fixed and stable.



slow down already, will ya! you're making me dizzy with all this spinning!!! 

Why can't Pluto be a planet again, just like his matronly third grade teacher taught him it most certainly was? Why can't the status quo remain enshrined? Why must the proverbial they take things away, shake things up, make things change?

BECAUSE AFTER ALL, I'm just saying there's a reason things are the way they are...it's called, "this is how we do it!" (Jason Stackhouse to Bill Compton, S1E2 "The First Taste").

Jason spat this defensive retort to Bill when Bill pointed out that the reason things are the way they are is called injustice; it's not just the normal, established and right order of things maintaining itself. With Amy, however, we see Jason take a less aggressive stance; his tone is one of yearning, an innocent plea for life and the world to be as he knows it once again.

In True Stud, Kirsty Walker writes that True Blood shows us a society in a unique state of change. In many ways Jason's journey since Season 1 is the perfect barometer for the impact of a society in flux. According to Walker, as a white, heterosexual male (and I would add, a handsome former football god in the deep South where high school pigskin is the only game in town and its gladiators the home town heroes) Jason should very clearly be part of the dominant group in this patriarchal society. Except, in Bon Temps - backwater outpost that it is - even here vampires are "coming out of the coffin" and they, along with other supernatural (and supernaturally endowed) males like shifters and werewolves are threatening his elite status.

You see, especially in Season 1, Jason's identity and sense of self are very much wrapped in in the neat little package of masculinity; the "traditional" version of masculinity in which his physicality and sexual virility mark him as male - as master of his realm. As Walker writes, Jason can't seem to gain the respect of the female characters - his sister Sookie who tells him he doesn't have enough sense to pour piss out of a boot, or any of his various liaisons who call him a "moron," a "horn dog," and a "loser" (p. 115).

But Jason's never pinned his sense of worth or value on his smarts (although, in our estimation, he's underestimated himself and been similarly written off by most people he knows) - it's when his sexual potency is challenged (and fails) that he really starts to feel second best to the supes who seem to be beating him out "in the masculinity stakes" (Walker, p. 115) at every turn. When he loses his erection with Dawn, for example, she rebukes him, yelling that he was at one time the best sex she had ever had until he distanced himself from her, she hooked up with a vampire (likely Eric) and found that such uber-males never go soft, so to say.

Seems like Jason's manhood is shrinking like the diminished Pluto...

...and all the crude "size matters" jokes kind of apply - since a man can effectively be reduced down to his penis, right? (you're picking up the facetious tone I'm putting down here here, yes?)

 

 We know that in times of change the "haves" who feel they are losing ground seek a scapegoat to blame (usually the "have-nots") for their perceived loss of power and privilege. 'Cause as rights that were once accorded them exclusively are now more equitably distributed, they must be losing out, right? (more facetiousness)
In a semi-comical, semi-tragic sequence spread over several episodes in Season 1 we see Jason start to experience vampires as the bane of his existence...they're inescapable - on every TV channel, moving into his 'hood, "dating" his paramours, and now even putting the moves on his (virtuous) baby sister!

Jason's fear and loathing of vampires and his animosity towards them as they continue to unseat him from his throne of former glory and upend his comfortable and familiar - if narrow and unfulfilling - world climaxes in Season 2 when he joins up with the creepy/scary Fellowship of the Sun and is recruited into the paramilitary arm of this fundamentalist cult. At the FOS's summer/boot camp the Light of Day Institute, he takes the idea that "God hates fangs" to heart and funnels his hurt, rage, and alienation into his training to become a Soldier of the Sun.

Fortunately, this is not a straight path to destruction for Jason. Although we've seen his attempts to "man up", as Walker writes - in Season 1 through sex (and love) and in Season 2 through power and violence - by imitating overtly masculine male role models and stereotypes blow up in his face, it is the Lukenator, and not Jason, who blows himself up for the cause of preserving the status quo at all costs.

Jason - who prayed in S2 "Scratches" for God to give him a sign, "'Cause I'm lost. I'm so fucking lost" (Walker, p. 117) - finds a way to renegotiate the deconstructed concept of masculinity. According to Walker, sex and violence prove to be failed ideologies by which Jason could become self-actualized yet we find that we has taken steps in the direction of growth and development as a man and as a person.

Specifically, Walker sites 2 shifts; one in his (sexual) relationship to women and another in his relationship to vampires (or at least one specific vampire - Bill Compton).

We see Jason move away from sex as tool of selfish gratification, conquest and domination and towards sex as a mutually pleasurable and bonding experience - contrast his "American Psycho" nod, pointing at himself in the mirror in a self-congratulatory way while hooking up with Dawn with his practically melting together with Amy. Granted, his relationship with Amy was built upon a foundation of manipulation and glued together with V, but Jason does seem to have moved away from a "hit 'em and quit 'em" attitude towards women with her.

As Walker writes, "he had begun to use his masculinity to compliment femininity, rather than dominate it" (p. 121).

We know that by the time Jason had seen the error of his FOS ways and saved the day by nailing false prophet Rev. Steve Newlin right between the eyes with a paintball, he had also reconsidered his blanket condemnation of vampires and was willing to accept Bill if Sookie loved him. Yeah, yeah, he pulls a 180 on Bill after that nasty little incident when Bill nearly (accidentally) drained Sookie in S3, but it was a start, right?

And so, as his world continues to change; as the idea of masculinity and what it means to be a man, his family relationships, his town and the larger culture, and yes, even that distant rock-that-used-to-be-our-ninth-planet Pluto continue to be defined and redefined, Jason continues on his journey of self-discovery. Maybe things are spinning a little too fast for him at times; maybe it's hard for our Quixote of the Grabbit-Quik to keep his bearings as more than windmills turn around him.

But maybe, it could also be that Jason - like the oft-maligned Pluto - is part of a wholesale reconfiguration and realignment of life in the 21st century. If what we know, or take for granted, about our very heavens and the hunks of rock, metal and ice that hurtle through them can change, be reclassified and evolve, can't we? Can't our societal structure? Can't the way we think about and do...sex...relationships...masculinity and femininity....self and Other...power and equity?

I, for one, cast my vote for progress...and I'm rooting for you, Jason!

~ Rachel