True Blood: I Got A Right To Sing The Blues


Popular Culture has an obsession with vampires these days and it's scary. TRUE BLOOD is the new black and black is definitely in. I can't even lie, the show is amazing but this weeks episode, I Got A Right to Sing the Blues, portrayed the show's minority characters in a quite disturbing light. As a good friend of mine said to me while we were watching: "This is what all of America is watching right now". (SPOILER WARNING) Tara, who is not a vampire, bites someone in the neck and breaks through the skin after a questionable sexual abduction. I happened to be watching the episode with some spanish boyfriends and they were offended to see that the only hispanic character on the show was a homosexual, pursuing an African-American character. Later, we watched ENTOURAGE and the only African-American character on the show was the maid.

The television line up made me think about the correlation between classism and premium cable. It might be a stretch to connect the dots but I'd like to make the argument that premium channels have a unique  political battle that has already been fought over basic cable but to a lesser degree. In my experience, minority characters on channels like Showtime and HBO are made to be wildly exotic, if present at all...a splash of color to a very traditional setting. Am I being sensitive? If you watched the show this week, feel free to comment.  

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