Spontaneous Musings

Watching Being Human S2 in the background, while hunting through more flats/apts. Being Human is actually better written and acted than most of the Supernatural/horror shows but methinks it takes itself far too seriously. I feel like I'm watching some PBS Masterpiece Theater Literary Dissertation on what it is like to be a monster. Very talky tv show! Sort of The Seventh Seal with Vampires or maybe My Dinner With Andre meets Dark Shadows. More humor, less sturm and drang? And maybe less talking? Say what you will about Vampire Diaries and True Blood but they are incredibly funny in places and don't take themselves all that seriously. Also show more, tell less. Trusting their audience to fill in the blanks. Being Human is a bit like watching Angel wander about looking constipated guilty with lots of voice overs accompanied by tragic violin solos, while the other shows are bit like watching Spike wander about snarking at people and having a grand old time. Or a better analogy? Vampire Diaries and True Blood is watching Midsummer Night's Dream with blood and naked sex, while Being Human is well Hamlet. Or eating chocolat mousse vs. broccoli rabe. Oh well, it has a decent soundtrack, and I rather like Galvin and Daisy. But Annie gets on my nerves. She's so whiny. Hee, I just burst out laughing when Saul tried to force Annie through the gateway to hell, then went himself instead because he just couldn't do it. It's was so absurdly funny. Something tells me that was not the response the writers intended. But hey, humor!

Finished episodes 5,6 and 7 of True Blood S2 last night. Release Me, Never Free Me, Hardhearted Hannah. Lots of fun. This series gets better as you go.

The last three episodes of it really did a satirical tap dance on religion. The whole giving of yourself completely to the cause or religion, letting it take your free will, your soul, so you are its bitch or puppet. The theme of True Blood or through line is basically choice or free will. Last season was about addictive substances interfering with your will. This year it is about abdicating or giving your choices to someone else - a lover or a religion. The desire to have someone else make your decisions for you. And it is actually fairly subtle about it, and hilarious in places. Jason Stackhouse story this season is hilarious, he's so adorably dumb. And dumb in a way that comes from a character place...than you know, damn, the writers are idiots place.

Sookie and Jason really do think with their crotchs. Both of them. And Eric? Actually kind of hot this year. I give Alexandre Starsgard a lot of credit. He's hilarious in places. And he looks like he could be a 1000 year old vampire. He and Bill's scenes are quite funny. As are Pam's. This show is satirical and incrediably snarky in places. Not surprising, when you consider the creators other work includes American Beauty. I was sort of reminded David Lynch's Blue Velvet, although it's not quite as surreal.

And have to say, Michelle Forbes is having a blast playing a witchy/bitchy maenade with attitude. In the Maenad story arc - Tara gives herself over to the maenade, gives up her free will - much as her mother last season gave it up to drugs, but was granted it back by religion and spirituality, here Tara loses her will to religion, but believes it is pot. This is contrasted with Sam who struggles with being a Shifter, but refuses to give up his free will to Maryanne - the Maenade. She can only control him, fill him with her essence, if he willingly gives himself to her.

Compare and contrast to the Fellowship of the Sun arc - where Christianity, specifically fundamentalist Christianity is shown as a type of cult, where people also give up their will for the cause of the church and become little more than brainless robots. Which is worse - the zombies who tear people apart in a frenzy, forgetting everything, drunk on the power of the maenad flowing through them, or the willing desire to join a mob-like mentality to destroy someone or something else that is offensive to you? The Fellowship of the Sun followers embrace hate, they aren't filled with it. They choose to kill and willingly join the church, knowing what they are getting into. While the Maenad's followers are drunk on wine, and don't really know what they are doing, and if they did? Would be horrified.

If you know anything about American cult religions - you may see the parallels. The speaking in tongues and drunken frenzy is similar to the evangelical religions in the deep south. I remember seeing more than one documentary on it while in college, and reading numerous folklorist accounts. It's a huge religion in the Lake of The OZarks, and TableRock in Missouri.
It never goes quite as far as Maryanne, and you see pictures of it in the opening credits of True Blood. In these religions, your will is taken over by something else, you leave your body.
And the spirit fills you. That's the folk religion. The one that gets explored in horror films and feel-good films about the mountain folk - from Shepard of the Hills to Wicker Man and Harvest Home.

The other religion in the South - the bigger one, is the Televangelical Churchs - that pack close to 2,000 or more. These churches are huge. And the sermons are often on tv. With lots of best-selling books. The church's themselves look a lot like the Fellowship of the Sun, and
their pastors are beautiful young couples, who look great on camera and do a lot of press junkets. They also have retreats and camps. Taken to the extreme? We end up with survivalist groups like WACO. America is known for its religious cults. And our culture is full to the brim with horror stories of cult activities.

In this season's True Blood, Ball doesn't just satirize these religious sects, demonstrating what happens when we give our will to religion and let religion dictate who we are - becoming little more than sheep or pigs as it were, he also discusses how at the root of these religions is sacrifice. A blood ritual. Both the Fellowship of the Sun and the Maenad wish to sacrifice someone. The Maenad's take is more pagan, more earthbound and supernatural and her victim - a shifter or a human. The Fellowship wishes to take out a vampire -by burning him on a cross.
The vampire is not depicted as a nice guy. They aren't white-washed. If anything the vampires in True Blood make the ones in Whedon's stories seem a bit reserved. We see in graphic detail Lorena and Bill tearing apart a couple. Eric and Pam torture and almost suck dry LaFayette.
And when vampires die they don't just go poof, they explode in blood and guts. Can Bill ever be good? We don't know. To live they kill. Each sacrifice one that lies in blood - much like the religions that humans participate in - where a beloved son is repeatedly killed, from Osiris to Jesus and back again.

Sookie doesn't think either should kill. But in a way, as Rufus states she is assisting in the killing, condoning it. She tries to ignore it, but knows it is there. Jason is doing the same with the Fellowship of the Sun, as is the preacher's wife Sara, who is aware her husband is a killer - who kills people who aren't vampires along with vampires. But she excuses it. Indirectly complicit. It's not directly asserted, so much as inferred.

Just as Tara or for that matter Eggs is necessarily killing anyone or condoning it by playing with Maryanne, but they are indirectly complicit in all her acts - by giving up their will to her. They have to be aware of it. But they pretend not to see.

Ball discusses through True Blood how we are complicit or permit hate-crimes to happen by turning the blind eye. There's a scene between Jason and his roommate about what is sin.
The roommate basically states that sex with a married woman, sex out of wedlock, sex with a person of the same sex, being a homosexual, or sex with a vampire, particularly gay sex with one is an abominable and unforgivable sin. But murder? Is okay. It's quite funny - in its absurdity. Yet scary, because that is how these people really think. Reminds me a bit of some of Mel Brook's comedies about the Nazi's. Ball makes fun of homophobia in True Blood.
He points out how people are okay with blood and violence, but "sex" scares the heck out of us.
And why. And in True Blood - both are over the top. True Blood reminds me a bit of Titus Andronicus or Vaugner by way of Gilbert and Sullivan, without the music. Dark, yet witty,
campy, but insightful. Am oddly impressed.