Violence In True Blood

Kimberly Gauthier
10-12-2010
English I
Analytical Paper
TRUE BLOOD: Violence in sexuality

True Blood portrays violence in sexuality in a positive light by showing pleasurable yet violent sex scenes. The show portrays these violent acts as being a source of both pleasure and arousal for both participants. Although violence is a recurring theme throughout the entire show, it’s the violence that carries over into the “bedroom” scenes that seems so fascinating. The show has countless sex scenes and more often than not they involve violence, ranging from hair pulling to murdering humans for the purpose of having sex in their blood. True Blood may be showing just how far society has come towards being more open minded about what used to be
A woman is lying on a couch, seemingly uninterested, as a man performs oral sex on her, but he quickly discovers an odd mark on her thigh. The mark he soon realizes are the fang marks from a vampire. Although he seems disgusted at first, he soon becomes intrigued and wants to learn more about her sexual encounter with the dead man. She shows him a video she made of the pair together and he quickly becomes quite aroused. This leads to the show’s very first graphically violent sex scene. Jason hangs Mawdette from the ceiling with her hands tied up in chains, and then proceeds to have sexual intercourse very violently with her. Jason calls her several contemptuous names and then begins to choke her aggressively. Mawdette seems to also enjoy this behavior, as she has gone from uninterested to begging for more. This scene shows what most would consider to be a brutal act, but yet both participants were shown to find it extremely sexually
In both scenes the foreplay is extremely rough containing everything from hair pulling to full on masked assault. In one scene Dawn slaps Jason in the face violently and he begs for more. The sex is also tempestuous, with bodies being slammed against walls and arms being pinned to the bed. Dawn even comments that the best sex she has ever had was the destructive sex with the vampire male. The scenes portray two ordinary people finding tremendous pleasure from both being violent, and being violated. The scenes were both graphic and highly violent, but yet seemed commonplace in the lives of the average characters. Many aspects of what True Blood demonstrated in these scenes are now mainstream ideas that can be seen in many shows and movies. The once taboo idea of violence and sexuality is now thought of by many as another form of sexual