Dead Until Dark v. True Blood: Similar Yet Very Different

Dead Until Dark v. True Blood: Similar Yet Very Different

By: Isabella Hess

            

            Charlaine Harris’ Dead Until Dark is a novel centered around vampires attempting to live in a human world with a struggle between some wanting to mainstream/integrate into society and others wanting to continue to live in their nests and avoid conformity. The book focuses on the relationships between vampires and humans, specifically romantic relationships as well as the hatred of vampires from humans. True Blood is an HBO television series based off the Charlaine Harris book with some adjustments to characters and story lines. Between the novel and the TV series there is a good amount of overlap, and the two closely relate to each other. Most of the relationships between characters and the plot are the same, but the show did make some creative choices that differed from the original text. The first notable difference between the book and the television series is the introduction of Sookie’s friend Tara. The book doesn’t mention or include anyone by the name of Tara, but the show decides to add her into the series. The shows creative liberty to add the young woman could be seen as a way to add another story arch to help the shows complexity or it could be that they were trying to fill their diversity quota, but I see Tara’s role as being just another woman whose main focus is on trying to get the attention of a man. In the show Tara is constantly pining after Jason Stackhouse and eventually sleeps with Sam Merlotte, but there isn’t much character development for her other than some backstory on her home life. It seems that Tara is there to only further any romantic plotlines the writers seem fit, as if there weren’t enough of them already. The second difference that stood out between the book and the TV series was the switch from Sino-AIDS to Hepatitis D. Charlaine Harris originally wrote that the disease that could infect vampires and make them weak enough to kill was called Sino-AIDS which becomes even more problematic with how closely Harris related vampires to individuals in the LGBT+ community. The choice to take AIDS and slightly change them to Sino-AIDS as if that makes it any different really speaks to Harris’ view of gay people and how much she projected homosexuality into the vampires in her novel. The show decided that Sino-AIDS was too closely related to the gay community and opted to change the disease to Hep D, which was a good move on their part. By taking the different form of AIDS out of the story, it helped to take some of the explicit homophobic views out of the series and lessen the obvious comparison between undead vampires and homosexual individuals. While the TV series does have mostly similarities, for better or for worse, the show does offer some important differences to make note of. Unlike Dead Until Dark, the character named Tara is not present and only seems important in furthering romantic plotlines within the show. The last important difference to take into account is the adjustment from Sino-AIDS in the book to Hep D in the TV show. This adjustment seemed to create less of a comparison between the LGBT+ community and the strongly disliked undead. However, the differences between the two are few, they are still important creative differences to note and understand their reasoning behind them.  

           

Homosexuality and Heteronormativity in Vampire Fiction

Homosexuality and Heteronormativity in Vampire Fiction

By Syeda S. Raza

With the predisposition of seducing, biting, penetrating and sucking vampirism is perhaps the highest symbolic representation of eroticism. Vampires in literature are often not fixed in their sexuality but prefer both men and women. They are often polygamous and driven by a thirst of blood combined with sex. While vampires represent eroticism broadly, a recent trend has materialized in vampire fiction, particularly Dead until Dark, that focuses on the association between vampirism and homosexuality. Contrastingly, a frightening tendency toward the normalization of bloodsuckers within Twilight is also seen.

In Dead until Dark where vampirism is presented as an illness, homosexuality is also presented as an illness. Like homosexual couples, the novel portrays that vampires are also not able to conceive biological children. In the novel, the bill explains Sookie “We can have sex, but we can't make children or have them” (78). Also, vampirism and homosexuality both are presented as an illness specifically when Charlene portrays the homosexual vampire infected with the “Sino-virus1”. Where Sino-virus makes vampires sick, weak and could even kill them, it also provides evidence that Charlene Harris is comparing Sino-virus with AIDS and HIV among homosexual men. Moreover, the fictional term “fan-banger” seems to be adapted from the word fag hag. A “fag hag” is a heterosexual woman who associates mostly with homosexual or bisexual men. While fan bangers are not respectable women in the novel, so are fag hags in contemporary society. Sookie describes fan-bangers in the novel as “…extraordinary, and extraordinarily pathetic”. (110). Thus, it is evident that Charlene Harris has stigmatized homosexual men as vampiric. Not only do homosexual men and vampires share the same stigmatizing traits but the vampirism itself is shown as a metaphor for homosexuality.

However, Stephanie Meyer’s chaste and conservative Twilight demonstrates this tendency toward the “so-called” normalization of the vampire figure. Despite the obvious ambiguity of Edward’s sexual appeal, there are no homosexual couples in the novel nor even a nod to the fact that not everyone on the planet is hetero! As for the widespread heteronormativity the book upholds, all characters are represented as heterosexual in a hetero-monogamous marriage and thus represent the ideal. Twilight mostly centers around a morally righteous family of vampires referred to as ‘The Cullen’s’ who construct an image of vampirism that is white moneyed, educated, patriarchal and domestic; contrary to what is shown in Dead until Dark. It seems as if in the light of Cullen’s, Stephanie Meyers was representing the American dream family. The question arises as to why Meyer’s chose to make every single character heteronormative and have monogamous relationships?

As simple as it seems, Stephanie Meyer and Charlene Harris are a representation of so-called ideal writers who show no compliance in their own writing. Meyer’s representation of an ideal vampire or non-vampire shows that it is extremely likely that she herself believes homosexuality is wrong or because she didn’t have confidence in writing of a homosexual character. Similarly, Charlene Harris’s presentation of vampirism and homosexuality as an illness, and also the representation of homosexuality in minorities shows how limited she is in her writing. I believe, the writing of both authors depicts their conservative thinking and their in-acceptance of the fact that we live in a society where there are freedom and liberty in the choice of one’s sexuality. Thus, writers should focus on portraying that diversity in their writing without stigmatizing the beliefs of people that are distinct in their practices.