Character Spotlight: Hoyt Fortenberry - Hall of Shame

Hoyt Fortenberry, you have been charged with numerous counts of verbal, emotional, and psychological abuse. How do you plead?........

     It is with a heavy and utterly broken heart that I place Hoyt Fortenberry in this installation of our True Blood character Hall of Shame. We have created this space for those characters who at one time garnered nothing but respect and admiration but through a series of uncharacteristic behaviors have fallen from our good graces. We here at the PPT believe in the redemptive qualities of the human (or not so human at times) spirit; and reserve the right to remove any character who can rise above and move beyond their previous and or current offenses from these Halls. That being said let's take a closer look at what landed Hoyt here in the first place.

     How could you do this to us, Bubba? How could a man once so gentle, loving and kind turn into this angry, hate filled, abusive person that we saw last week? You were the only person in Merlottes with a kind thought for Dawn after her murder in the first season. You stood up to your mother calling her out for all her  racist beliefs (secret or otherwise). You have been a good and loyal friend to Jason, even when he referred to Rene-the murderous, misogynist, psychopath as his best friend (I know how much that must have hurt!). You met and fell in love with a beautiful, strong, smart and caring women who just happens to be a vampire.  Throughout all the discord you were our rock, a constant reminder of how good people can actually be. You gave all the bad boys of the world something to think about, proving that the nice guy COULD get the girl. These and many other selfless acts of blind love, and dedication to your moral compass are what made us all (Jessica included) fall in love with you.

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     At the beginning of this season we saw a side of Hoyt we thought we'd never see. He has been argumentative, moody, insensitive, emotionally and verbally abusive towards Jessica; cutting her down to the quick with his words. He has violently lashed out, punching walls, throwing lamps and God knows what else around the house, and even though these actions can't physically hurt Jessica they can leave a very visible scar emotionally and psychologically. These abuses rank among the top offensives in most cases of domestic violence! He has made several unsubstantiated claims of Jessica's infidelity allowing his own self-consciousness to bubble up and pollute their relationship. This unhealthy pattern of behavior lead us to this scene as it played out last Sunday night. Re-watch this clip taken from True Blood season 4 episode 8: Spellbound for the last straw that landed Hoyt into our Hall of Shame.

 


      Couples fight all the time, but it is the way Hoyt fights that upsets me so much. He knows that he is not a physical match so he attacks Jessica verbally and emotionally. He tears into her, accusing her of sleeping with another man. Hoyt then goes on to commit what I consider to be a cardinal sin....he calls Jessica a bitch. While many women feel as though they have "taken back" the sting of being called a bitch, softening the blow by making the word theirs, I still find this word offensive and hurtful. When we think of the archetypal "bitch" what do we see? Does she come anywhere close to resembling Jessica or her actions in any way, shape, or form? I think not, which is precisely why the use of this word is so offensive. How can you say this to someone you love? "You don't deserve me" he yells "and I sure as hell don't deserve you". He goes on to list all the reasons he deserves someone better than Jessica. He attacks her nature both feminine and vampiric. "I deserve someone who's not gonna be a fuckin virgin for all eternity." Women have been simultaneously revered and shamed for their virginity; we are expected to be pure and virtuous yet taught to feel unwanted or inadequate if still a virgin. "I deserve someone I can have a normal life with, with babies....and daylight!" These are all things Hoyt was well aware of while falling for Jessica, things she cannot be held accountable for. Note her reaction as she hears these words. It's as if his words are literally wounding her...as Rachel pointed out, stabbing her like a knife in the chest. As if this weren't bad enough he lands his final blow by exclaiming he deserves someone who's "not fuckin dead" then with a look of disgust on his face revokes Jessica's invitation to their own home. When Hoyt slammed the door on Jessica, leaving her demoralized and sobbing on the front porch, did he also slam the door on any hope that this relationship can be mended? I, for one eagerly await the answer to this and would love to see if Hoyt has it in him to redeem his character's good name. Still a few hours until our next hit, just enough time to see what everyone else is thinking....Thoughts?? ~ Rebecca

Not 'cause some mean man shoves you in a shed and says you got to...

Jason's Hot Shot ordeal was absolutely horrific.

In Body Matters: Essays on the Sociology of the Body, editors David Morgan and Sue Scott write, "Historically, women have been defined by their 'biological potentiality' (1993, p. 11). Indeed, the same could be said of Jason's recent predicament - strapped down to a filthy cot and forced to be Ghost Daddy stud to the females of the compound, each one having been programmed to obediently and dutifully fulfill her "reproductive destiny" (Sanchez-Grant, 2008, p. 78).

Crystal to Jason, "I got a duty to my kinfolk to propagate the bloodline" S4E2 You Smell Like Dinner

Becky to Jason, “Uncle Felton says I'm old enough and you'd better give me a cub!” S4E4 I'm Alive and On Fire

Bound and nearly helpless himself, Jason was valiant in his determination to have the young Becky spared from such a debasing and dehumanizing fate, displaying the generosity of spirit his captor Crystal lauded him for earlier.

To recap:

Jason, horrified upon seeing Becky approach him from the rear of the breeding shed, shouts out to anyone in earshot: “Oh no, hey she's just a little girl!”. 

Old man Luthor, looking in, yells: "Never you mind, breed Ghost Daddy, breed."

Jason tries to reason with Becky, whose sense of duty to her clan and overriding fear of Felton compelled her to take her place on the breeding line: 

Jason:  “You ever do sex before?”
Becky: “Sure, lots of times...No, but I ain’t scared.”
Jason: “This ain’t the way it should be, your first time. It should be special. With a boy you really like, who brings you presents and candy.”
Becky: “Boys do that?!”
Jason: “They sure do. And, hey, you make love with him cause it’s the right time. Not ‘cause some mean man shoves you in a shed and say you gotta.”
Becky: “I don’t wanna do this with you, I don’t wanna do this at all.”
Jason: “Then cut me loose.”

And she does, exhibiting the bravery and decency that not a one of her kinfolk would, or could. But not before Jason's and many of the women of Hot Shot's bodies were bent to the will of others; their spirits trampled, their humanity utterly violated.

Jason was undoubtedly used, abused, and traumatized at Hot Shot, but so too were the women in the breeding line. The women queuing up to be recepticals for Ghost Daddy's seed have been been manipulated, bullied and exploited by their men; forced to do the bidding of a small number (perhaps only one, truly - Felton) who sit atop the werepanther social heap.

Here's an interesting angle on this.

In their article "'Katrina That Bitch!' Hegemonic Representations of Women's Sexuality on Hurricane Katrina Souvenir T-Shirts", Kris Macomber, Christine Mallison and Elizabeth Seale (2011, p. 529)point out that within the framework of androcentric cultural production, far more derogatory terms exist in English for women than for men [and] sexual slang terms that insult men often simultaneously insult women (e.g. son of a bitch). Applied to the context of the Hot Shot breeding mill, a torment that insults and injures a man also insults and injures many women.

Take for instance the woman who, grunting in frustration as she rides an unwilling Jason, works in vain to reach the orgasm she has been denied her entire married life.

Jason: “Come on now...Get off me!"
Woman: “I ain’t done yet.”
He repeats it, shouting and rocking from side to side, unbalancing her so she is forced off. She starts crying.
Jason: “I don’t know why you’re crying, I’m the one what getting raped.”
Woman: “My brother husband, he just bites the back of my neck, and he holds me down 'til it’s over. You’re the best I ever had.
She pads off, slumping as she yells, “Next!”

Heartbreaking. Jason's rape is unforgivable, but so is the tragedy of a woman's sexuality blunted; pleasurable physical intimacy and the warmth of a loving relationship denied her.

Where does healing begin? For Jason, maybe through the bonds of friendship. In Sunday's episode we witnessed Jason share his pain and suffering with Hoyt. His openness is surprising - but encouraging - given that statistics show male survivors of sexual assault or intimate partner violence are slow to report such crimes or even talk about them at all when their attacker is female. I'm guessing few men [and boys] relish the thought of being re-traumatized, as they will likely be shamed and made to feel less of a man for being victimized by a female. For the women of Hot Shot, now under the paw of Crystal "Big Mama Kitty" Norris, who knows... 

On a larger, systems level, we've got to recognize that sexual violence and exploitation is deeply entwined with the prevailing culture of violence; the ethos of domination. As feminist scholar Carol Christ (1997, p. 158) writes:

To transform the cycle of violence, we must proceed simultaneously on several levels: We must change ourselves and our intimate relationships, especially those with our children, we must transform the deepest values of our culture, and we must reconstruct our social institutions.

We need sweeping paradigmatic change, and it it really does start with us - our own ways of thinking and being, the way we move through the world. Integral thinkers agree that the point at which to leverage the greatest potential for change within a system is at the level of mindset.

When a show like True Blood presents - or perhaps the better word is confronts us - with images of that which is abhorrent, (i.e. Jason's ordeal), it can catalyze within its audience deeper reflection upon the way things are and get us to think and talk about how they might be different. And, maybe unseat some taken-for-granted assumptions and habits of mind along the way. Not a bad place to start, if you ask me!       

Transcription credits: Fangs, Wands & Fairydust

~ Rachel

References

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


Macomber, K. Mallinson, C. & Seale, E. (2011). "'Katrina That Bitch!' Representations of Women's Sexuality on Hurricane Katrina Souvenir T-Shirts". The Journal of Popular Culture. (525-544). Vol. 44, #3.

Morgan, D. & Scott, S. (1993).  "Bodies in a Social Landscape. In Body Matters: Essays on the Sociology of the Body by Morgan, D. & Scott, S. (Eds.). pp. 1-22, London: The Falmer Press.

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

"You Smell Like Dinner"

Your blood tastes like freedom, Sookie; like sunshine in a pretty blond bottle.
                                                                            ~Eric Northman

As I sit here nursing a ginger ale on the rocks, I wonder if maybe it isn't high time for Sookie to start wearing a different eu de toilette. I mean, after all, Eric isn't the only one who has "complimented" her on her scent, in a more-menacing-than-admiring kind of way. You haven't forgotten Liam's "Man, she smells fuckin' sweet!" (S1E3 Mine), have you? I doubt Sookie has, either.

Thing is, there's no lotion, potion, body splash, perfume, or other such fragrance-emitting product that's responsible for the way Sookie smells.

In Season 3 Sookie began to struggle with her identity and self-worth after discovering that it's her blood - and its scent and taste; the delicate bouquet (in S4E3 If You Love Me, Why Am I Dyin'? Eric sniffs the air, catching her perfume which he can only describe as being "Like wheat, honey and sunlight") and exquisite flavor of it that has drawn Bill, and perhaps others as well, to her. She starts to think that it's not her - not who she is, but how she tastes; how her blood can service others - that matters. She's just the [pretty] packaging. 

And everyone, meaning every supe, has noticed. Her special palate, that is - although perhaps one might be sensitive to her growing sense of self-doubt, too.

Lorena may have hated Sookie, but she sure didn't mind her taste: "No wonder Bill was drawn to you. You're delicious.” (S3E7 Hitting the Ground).

While Bill insisted to Sookie, "it is not your blood I love. I love you. Your heart, your mind, your soul... you have brought light back into my life", he did admit that hers was, "the most delicious blood I've ever tasted" (S3E10 I Smell A Rat).

Last season, upon meeting Sookie - decked out in a lacy white top and cute denim mini; looking as much the fish out of water at Lou Pines as anyone likely could - Alcide's werewolf bouncer buddy eyed her up and down and quipped, "you look like dinner". In the next scene, if you recall, she was nearly sexually assaulted.

Even good 'ol Sam's thoughts echoed this "you smell good enough to eat" theme when Sookie listened in on him during their G-rated Season 1 canoodle in his office. Is that really any wonder, though, since his go-to shift is a collie, and we all know that man's best friend's nose is a mighty powerful organ! Even still, knowing that her smell is probably a big part of what caused her sexy boss to pine over her for so long has got to be quite a blow for Sookie. 

And the list goes on. The cavalcade of vamps, weres, and shifters itching to get a taste of Sookie seems virtually never ending.

We may well be onto something here, as if the episode's title alone wasn't enough of a hint. In her essay, "The Female Body in Margaret Atwood's The Edible Woman and Lady Oracle" Sofia Sanchez-Grant points out society's view that the (patriarchally encoded) female body is consumable.

And not just Sookie's body.

Other women are consumable commodities, too.

Now, of course, I know men are fed on as well, I do watch the show; but I think the sociocultural meaning of some of the examples I've pulled out here makes the consumption of females a little different.

Remember how Eric paid a "blood hooker" so that he could feed on her - and he seemed to prefer that she struggle and pretend that she didn't want it?

And when he consumed Hadley against her will as leverage to get her paramour the Queen to reveal  information about Sookie, he rated the other Stackhouse girl's taste like he was reviewing a take-out joint for the local paper: "Mmm-mmm. I 'd give her three stars." (S3E7 Hitting the Ground).

Speaking of take-out joints, perhaps you'll recall how Russell and Lorena deliberated before commanding Bill to procure a woman from a strip club for their dining pleasure, just like they were ordering off a Chinese food menu:

Russell: In the mood for anything in particular?
Lorena: Someone smoky. Not too fatty.
Russell: See, I was thinking... ethnic.
Lorena: Mm.
(S3E4 9 Crimes)

Once procured, they feasted on this "disposable sex worker" with relish - her blood running out of their limo and onto the ground like a perverse chocolate fountain.

Russell's appetite for "something ethnic" calls to mind the language of "gastronomic sexuality" Raquel Z. Rivera (2003, p. 129) describes as being part of the hip-hop lexicon when it comes to the "sweet, thick, pretty, round and various shades of brown...blackberry molasses to butta pecan" women that populate many rap music videos.

If you remember dancing to Big Pun's hit "Still Not A Player" in the clubs back in the late '90's like I do, you know that blackberry molasses to butta pecan reference above alludes to this song. The line's actually, "I love from butta pecan to blackberry molass' I don't discriminate, I regulate every shade of that ass".

Back in S4E1 the drunkard hanging around the back alley near the cagefighting ring tossed similar language at Tara and Naomi, labeling them for his consuming gaze as: "...some of that chocolate banana swirl...every woman's got a price".

In her essay, "Butta Pecan Mamis: Tropicalized Mamis - 'Chocolate Caliente'" Rivera points out that while the video's camerawork alternating between groups of lighter and comparatively darker-skinned women in order to punctuate the singsong chorus, "Boriqua, Morena" is meant to distinguish between these two groups of women, they come together by virtue of Pun's sexual desire.

According to Rivera, these women are eroticized and exoticized, as Pun lays claim to both Puerto Rican and African American "ghetto brunettes". Boriquas and morenas, "brown" women and "black" women may be distinct, but as he and other artists including Jay Z ("Who You Witt II") and Son Doobie ("XXX Funk") construct them, they are part of a commercialized landscape of desire. Sistas and mamis are "their" women to be consumed.  

Here we have the beginnings of the transcultural reality of the "I-want-them-all" mentality, where women are not real subjects, complex and distinct, but interchangeable; "infinitely substitutable beings" (p. 145).

Tim Ward illustrates this concept clearly. In his book Savage Breast: One Man's Search for the Goddess (2005, p. 28) he recalls a translation of old Tibetan meditations that contained his ultimate sexual fantasy:

The sutra instructed the reader to visualize a Bodhisattva sitting in meditation while he projects 200 emanations of himself, each one appearing to a dakini, a powerful and beautiful female spirit. Immediately the 200 dakinis become sexually magnetized to his 200 emanations, and they couple in passionate embrace. To each feminine spirit, the Bodhisattva appears as if he is the only one, and each of them gives herself completely to him. But the true Bodhisattva, he sits alone in his meditation in perfect detached repose. I realized that this was my fantasy, to have every beautiful woman magnetized to me so I could enjoy them all, while giving myself emotionally to none of them. That's what I wanted with the women I had affairs with. Not that I ever once said that I loved them, ever once tried to fool them. Is that evil? I don't know. I don't think so. Is it shitty? Well, I imagine the dakinis would be pretty pissed off at the Bodhisattva is they knew... 

He wanted them all - all for his consumption.

In the sphere of the commercial consumption of female sexuality, women are "indispensible as members of the collective at the core of male pleasure - females, honeys, hotties, bitches, hoes, freaks, chickenheads, pigeons, chicks - they are branded with the 'mark of the plural' that makes them expendable and easily substitutable as individuals" (Rivera, 2003, p. 147).   

Sookie deflects Eric's characterization of her as being consumable; his leering gaze as he utters the phrase, "Well, aren't you sweet" suggesting that she is, in fact, as Rivera (2003, p. 127) writes of the six chocolate-drenched young women [of color - chocolate caliente] swirling in a cup of hot cocoa on the cover of the 1998 rap album The Rude Awakening "sexily awaiting ingestion". Sookie replies, "Not really." (S1E4 Escape from Dragon House)

So she's seen as consumable alright, even though she's like not to be - but perhaps not so interchangable. There's something different about her that sets her apart, that makes her extra-special-tasty. References to Sookie's "sweetness" are constant; no doubt, they are a marker of her "alignment with the good" which makes her not unlike Dracula's Mina Harker. In the words of the character Abraham Van Helsing, the fictional Mina is:

...one of God's women, fashioned by His own hand to show us men and other women that there is a Heaven where we can enter, and that its light [emphasis mine, sound familiar?] can be here on earth...so true, so sweet, so noble...(p. 226)

According to Susan Parlour (2009), the text of Dracula is littered with references to Mina's sweetness, who, though she transgressed the role of women in Victorian society to a certain degree, was readmitted to the patriarchal machine due, largely in part, to her sexual reticence and acceptance of the sexual mores and etiquette of the times.

Likewise, might Sookie be seen as an avatar of virtuous and virginal [white] womanhood? After all, according to prevailing stereotypes at least, women of color are more primal and sexual but in the world of True Blood the taste of virgin blood is the best of all, second only to baby's blood. When she was a virgin, Sookie's blood was covetted, to be sure...but like butta pecanness, her fairy blood's got an enticing flavor all its own that makes her a highly sought after commodity.       

She does it again, thowing off amnesia Eric's hungry advances in Season 4's 3rd episode, yelling at him, "I'm not your fucking dinner!". Later in the episode, she reminds Eric of how he tasted her against her will; that he basically "fang raped" her. He seemed genuinely taken aback and sorry.

Must we be seen as essentially edible? And if we are, does this essentialism isolate us within our conmumable bodies from other facets of ourselves, i.e. the "masculine" brain and the "feminine" body?

Atwood's character Joan rejects the multi-breasted Diana of Ephesus as a symbol of "the essence of femininity itself"(2003, p. 80).

It is, rather, a "paradigm of the patriarchally controlled female body"  (2003, p. 80):

She had a serene face, perched on top of a body shaped like a mound of grapes. She was draped in breasts from neck to ankle, as though inflicted with a case of yaws: little breasts at top and bottom, big ones around the middle. The nipples were equipped with sprouts, but several of the breasts were out of order.

I stood licking my ice-cream cone, watching the goddess coldly. Once I would have seen her as an image of myself, but not any more. My ability to give was limited, I was not inexhaustible. I was not serene, not really. I wanted things, things for myself. 

Sanchez-Grant writes that Joan's assertion is a protest against a society that situates her as a reproductive machine, suggesting as the food imagery and the character's unromantic terms imply - to be endlessly giving, to nourish and sustain others is "simply to be edible" (2003, p. 80).

My conclusion is that woman can be drained, she is not just a font of nourishment for [male] others.

Here's some other references to the edible & the consumable in You Smell Like Dinner:

• When Sookie walked in on Jessica feeding on a man other than Hoyt in the ladies room at Fangtasia, the baby vamp spat, "I can eat who I want"
• Bill's response to Nan Flanagan when in London, 1982, she asks him why he doesn't kill his prey: "They might be dinner but they don't deserve to die"
• The conversation within Sam's new shifter entourage about the ethics of factory egg farming and the bourgeois attitudes of some animal rights activists

What do these themes mean to you? We'd love to hear your thoughts. Please share them in the comments space below.

~ Rachel

References

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, # 11.


Rivera, R. Z. (2003). New York Ricans from the Hip Hop Zone. New York: Palgrave.


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


Ward, T. (2006). Savage Breast: One Man’s Search for the Goddess. New York, NY: O Books