True Blood: Why can't anyone be happy?

Last year, I wrote a little bit about True Blood and some of its resonances in theme with the story of Hadrian and Antinous. (In fact, that was almost a year ago!) That reflection was made after seeing everything up through the end of season three. Over the last month or so, I’ve been able to see almost all of season four (minus episodes 7-9), and the first four episodes of season five, and now I have more to talk about in this regard…

You may recall that the thing upon which I focused previously was that Talbot and Russell Edgington seem in many respects to be like Antinous and Hadrian, respectively, especially since Russell was the King of Mississippi. (Of course, Russell was far more cruel and sadistic than Hadrian ever could have been in anyone’s worst nightmares, but anyway…!) That particular theme, of a pair of same-sex lovers (usually male) with one of them dying (usually the younger) and the elder lamenting them, is a very common one throughout Greek mythology, with many examples of it, including Herakles’ lamenting of Hylas. That is one “class,” you might say, of these myths, with which you’re all very familiar, especially if you’ve been looking at this blog for a long time.

There’s another “class” of those myths, though, which was explored in the final episode of season four, and it seems to be a continuing matter for season five.

Here, we have Jesus (not pronounced that way!) and Lafayette. Lafayette, of course, has been the fun and fabulous cook, occasional v-dealer, and in general breath of fresh glitter to the show. Jesus was originally a nurse working in the mental hospital where Lafayette’s mother lives, and they got to know each other and to start dating; of course, it is later revealed that he’s a brujo (“male witch,” for lack of a better term) with a family tradition of some sort of Meso-American shamanism (possibly with some Afro-Diasporic elements thrown in…hard to say…and, as revealed in later episodes, Santa Muerte also seems to be involved somehow…), and he’s part of a Wiccan coven. (My question at that point: for heavens’ sake, why?) Lafayette starts to learn that he’s a medium, both with Jesus and in the context of some of the coven’s doings. All of the stuff goes down with the coven and its leader throughout season four, and everything seems to be okay in the aftermath…that is, until Lafayette gets possessed by the dead coven leader, and she kills Jesus to steal his power on the (horribly pronounced!) festival of Samhain. Everything gets sorted out as far as getting him de-possessed and putting everything right goes, but of course Jesus is still dead and Lafayette has to live with the fact that he’s the one who did it–even though he wasn’t in control of his body at the time, it was his hand that plunged in the knife. Jesus appears to him that night, pretty much says “It’s all good!” and says it doesn’t really matter, because Lafayette is a medium and so he can talk to Jesus anytime he’d like. And, on to season five…

This theme is of one of the other “classes” of homoerotic myth: the one where the slain lover is slain by the other lover, whether they are elder or younger–elder in the case of Apollon slaying Hyakinthos, younger in the case of Cú Chulainn slaying Fer Diad. It is, by far, the more tragic form of this myth: it’s bad enough when one’s lover dies, but it’s even worse when, whether inadvertently or not, one lover is the reason that the other is dead.

Now, while there’s a good deal to be said about the visibility of homoeroticism in True Blood, and the fact that many characters on the show seem to be rather sexually-fluid, in a manner of speaking, there’s also a bit to critique in these portrayals. Lafayette was initially getting his v-supply from a middle-aged, relatively unattractive gay vampire who he could easily convince to donate; that vampire later gets tied up and imprisoned, drained of v, and killed with impunity. Talbot and Russell are a long-time gay couple, and when Talbot decides to have fun with Eric Northman, he takes it up the ass on camera for a few seconds before getting staked. And then there’s Jesus and Lafayette, who have a cute courtship, but then jump right to “lesbian bed death” domestic bliss, it seems, before a whole lot of crazy shit goes down and then Lafayette has an angry and frustrated Wiccan HPS possessing him and killing his boyfriend to take his magic. About the only homoerotic things in the show that don’t end horribly are the relationship of Tara with her girlfriend, which just sort of gets dropped when she moves back to Bon Temps; and the little dream that Sam has of Bill after he’s ingested some of his blood, but the two of those characters have rarely if ever been in the same room since that occurrence, so nothing is ever going to happen there.

Of course, now that it seems Russell Edgington is back, who knows where things will go from here? (Russell manipulating Lafayette in some way to exploit the latter’s magic? Hmm…) And, we’ve got the further fun development of Rev. Steve Newlin re-appearing as a vampire who is also gay (he’s been repressing it so hard that he had to fight against something, so why not “God Hates Fangs”?–which is another issue altogether, and a fallacy that I think doesn’t always play out in reality, but let’s leave that aside until we know more), which has been amusing, to say the least, thus far. And now that Tara is a vampire as well, perhaps she’ll have a girlfriend or two along the way as well. Bon Temps is their oyster, really, so who knows what might happen…

It is interesting to me, though, that this immensely popular show is drawing on some of these “classical” themes in relation to homoeroticism so directly, even if the writers may not realize it as they do so. At the same time, though, I have to ask–as in my subject line above–why can’t there be a homoerotic relationship on the show that actually works out, where one person doesn’t kill the other or just forget about them? There have been so many “get out of death free” cards issued for the central (straight) characters, why not have one for the gay characters? And the fact that of the three main gay relationships/dalliances in the show mentioned above, all of them have the “tinge of evil” associated with them–whether they’re vampires or powerful magic practitioners–that’s also something to perk up one’s ears over, I think.

If you’ve seen the show up to this point, and have some thoughts in these directions, I’d be very curious to read them!