The True Blood of the South: hypermodern portrait of the mythological figure of Maenads.

The True Blood of the South:
             hypermodern portrait of the mythological figure of Maenads.

Introduction: Prime-Time blood.

True Blood (Alan Ball, 2008-present), HBO’s greatest ratings success after The Sopranos
(David Chase, 1999-2007), debuted on September 2008. Despite the fact that initial
impressions were mixed, critical reception of True Blood’s first season has generally been
favourable. However, its biggest ratings accomplishment was not reached until the second
season’s premiere in June 2009. While in Nielsen’s Top Ten U.S. Lists for 2008 True Blood
is absent, in the lists for 2009 it occupies the fifth position, becoming the most viewed
programme on HBO since the series finale of The Sopranos – the most successful cable series
in the history of television.

The popularity of True Blood lies in three different interrelated factors: the channel, HBO;
the creator, Alan Ball; and the main topic, vampires. Both HBO’s most known and latest
slogans, ‘It’s Not TV, It’s HBO’ and ‘It’s More Than You Imagined. It’s HBO,’ work as a
declaration of principles since they represent the channel’s main objective: to be different.
As Gary R. Edgerton notes in the introduction to The Essential HBO Reader, ‘HBO invested
its considerable cache of subscription dollars into hiring the best available talent, reaching
deeply into the creative community’ (13). Alan Ball, creator and producer of the series, was
one of those ‘available talents.’ After his triumph with the Academy awarded script for
American Beauty (Sam Mendes, 1999), Ball arrived to HBO with Six Feet Under (2001-2005),
a somehow risky project if we take into account that the protagonist family run a funeral
home. Following Six Feet Under’s success, Alan Ball took advantage of the freedom of the
channel to carry on the even riskier project of adapting to the screen Charlaine Harris’
Southern Vampire Mysteries books.

Within the present-day indigestion of the Vampire genre – chiefly due to Stephanie Meyer’s
bestseller Twilight series of books and film adaptations, True Blood manages to stand out due
to its extravagant photography with kitsch, pulp and Southern Gothic touches; as well as to
its openly transgressor and dryly-symbolic narrative. It’s taboo contents – explicit violence
and sex, drugs, homophobia and racism, thus, manage to survive in Prime-Time television
mainly for two reasons: its high visual quality HBO’s budgets allow and Alan Ball’s
subversive revision of the always popular Vampire genre.

True Blood presents a planet where human beings coexist with vampires and other non-
human creatures. After the invention of synthetic blood by a Japanese scientist, vampires
suddenly become world citizens. Even if they do no longer need human blood to survive, a
rather wide percentage of population still rejects them. Other non-human creatures, such
as the telepath Sookie Stackhouse (Ana Paquin) – female protagonist who has the power to
listen to other people’s thoughts – or the shapeshifter Sam Merlotte (Sam Trammell) –
owner of the pub where Sookie works as a waitress, though keeping their nature secret in
most cases, also live together with ‘normal’ human beings.

In contrast to other cities or states where authorities had already taken decisions regarding
vampires’ citizenship’s legality, that judgement is yet to be made in the fictional town of
Bon Temps – Louisiana. While some characters like the more conservative Sheriff Bud
Dearborne (William Sanderson) fiercely refuse vampire’s integration into society, others
like Sookie – who knows how it feels to be different – defends it. In addition, Sookie’s
struggle is strongly reinforced when falling in love with Bill Compton (Stephen Moyer) –
vampire and male protagonist. Nevertheless, to the same extent that not everybody likes
vampires, not all vampires are as righteous as they are supposed to be or they want people
to believe them to be.

Right at the beginning of the series the peaceful everyday life of Bon Temps is broken
when a number of mysterious and brutal murders start to take place. Although vampires
are obviously the first to be blamed, strange things gradually surface and the whole
problem gets even more confused. Since vampires’ implication in the crimes becomes
uncertain, everybody in town seems to start hating each other to the point of accusing their
own neighbours. However, when things could not get worse, a new and somehow
disturbing character arrives into town.

At the end of the first season, Maryann Forrester (Michelle Forbes) makes her first
appearance in Bon Temps. Tara (Rutina Wesley) – Sookie’s best friend – is the first one to
encounter her. Earlier in the season, Tara’s alcoholic mother – Lettie Me Thornton (Adina
Porter), believing that being possessed by a demon was the true reason of her addiction,
convinces her daughter to pay her an exorcism. Tara, starting also to have problems with
drinking after being repeatedly abused by her mother, decides to have an exorcism
following her mother’s steps. Realizing some time later that the exorcism was a complete

fake, Tara has a mental breakdown and ends up arrested for driving under the effects of
alcohol after crashing her car. Though certainly drunk, the foresight of a naked woman
with a pig – Maryann and a shafeshifter – staring at her is the real reason of Tara’s accident.
Maryann, supposedly brought to Bon Temps by Tara’s exorcism, introduces herself as a
social worker and bails Tara out of prison. Though suspicious at the beginning, Tara finally
accepts Maryann’s offer of moving to the ‘informal halfway house’ she runs. Once there,
Tara is completely shocked by the sumptuousness of Maryann’s house and the luxuries she
can freely enjoy. Not only material things – like the huge swimming pool, the charming
bedroom or the exotic food, but also Maryann’s motherly cares and the prospect of a
future love relationship with ‘Eggs’ (Mehcad Brooks) – an ex-convict also residing there
and to whom Tara will soon get involved.

Despite Maryann’s initial angelic façade, it soon becomes clear that she has some hidden
intentions. Through the obsessive control she desperately exerts over Tara, Maryann
gradually manipulates the whole town. By means of her non-human powers – such as the
capacity to control other people’s minds, she drags Bon Temps’ inhabitants into frenzy
mental states in the huge bacchanal parties she organizes. However, her main interest falls
only on one character: Sam Merlotte. Already in the first episode of the second season –
just two episodes after Maryann’s arrival, worried about Tara, Sam goes to Maryann’s
house. Waiting for Maryann in the foyer, he is taken back in time by an old decorative
figure in a table realizing that Maryann is an old acquaintance.

With just seventeen, abandoned by his family after discovering his real nature, Sam invades
Maryann’s house looking for food. Discovered stealing that same decorative figure,
Maryann believes him to be a signal from her worshipped god: Dionysius. After a sexual
encounter with her and before being sacrificed to pay tribute to Dionysius, Sam escapes
with 100,000 and some other valuable things. As a result, what lies under Maryann’s return
to Bon Temps is the paying off a debt to her deity. Up to this point, the question left about
the topic would be, then, to find out more about Maryann’s nature – actual matter of this
essay.

Maryann’s true nature: ‘was there no God?’

Though vampires could be easily interpreted as a symbol of the most marginalized sectors
of society and at some points as a personification of human evilness, they do not
necessarily stand for any gender issue – such as the connection between gender and
evilness. It is with Maryann’s arrival, then, that this question comes into the foreground.
Maryann with all her abilities – control over other people’s minds, non-human strength or
the capacity to shift into a monstrous creature – clearly embodies female evilness. From
ancient times, women had been constantly portrayed as evil beings. Many are the examples
of wicked women to be found in Greek mythology, but just two which are in close relation
to Maryann’s character: maenads and the minor goddess Circe.

In Robert Graves’ revision of The Greek Myths, in the chapter devoted to his nature and
deeds Dionysus’ troubled birth is explained. When Zeus’ bastard son Dionysus was born –
‘a horned child crowned with serpents’ (103), Hera ordered the Titans to chop him into
pieces and boil them in a cauldron. However, thanks to his Grandmother Rhea’s help he
came to life again. Though after Zeus’ several failed attempts to hide the child Hera finally
accepted him as Zeus’ son, she drove him mad. From this moment onwards, Dionysus
wandered around the world with his tutor Silenus and an army of Satyrs and Maenads,
‘whose weapons were the ivy-twined staff tipped with a pine-cone, called the thyrsus, and
swords and serpents and fear-imposing bull-roarers’ (104).

Maenads, as described by Matthew Dillon in Girls and Women in Classical Greek Religion,
‘were women devotees of Dionysus, possessed by him and dancing ecstatically in his
honour’ (140). Since they just existed as a multiple entity; always in groups, these nymphs
made sacrifices in honour to Dionysus – in contrast to other deities, he accepted sacrifices.
These macabre practices normally took place during the festivals or bacchanalia maenads
frequently celebrated. In these excessive parties – meant to worship Dionysus, maenads
went into trance by means of the intoxication of wine, drugs and raw flesh; as well as by
the practice of hypnotic dances and wild sex. After reaching a phase of mental ecstasy,
maenads were supposed to commune with Dionysus. Even if only maenads reached this
mystic stage, humans were indispensable in their bacchanalia. Through maenads’ special
abilities and the use of drugs and alcohol, they were driven into a frenzy and hedonist state,

loosing all rationality and behaving as wild animals. When possessed in the orgies, humans
provided maenads with the necessary ‘energy’ to enter into communion with Dionysus.

Regarding maenads’ physical appearance, Matthew Dillon’s detailed analysis of ancient
Athenian vases provides a rather accurate depiction: young women with long dark hair,
dressed in leopard or panther skins, barefoot, sometimes tattooed, handling snakes or using
them as decorative complements – as a headband, for instance – and always taking a
thyrsus. Their hair for the celebrations was normally unbounded and ‘elaborately styled’ –
sign of their liberation. Their worshipping dances consisted of ‘tossing the head and
whirling around’ (144), emulating butterflies’ movements.

Even from this minimal description, it is immediately obvious that Maryann’s character was
modelled after these mythological figures: they share similar physical and stylistic features
and practice similar rituals. Though apparently older than maenads – she seems to be in her
late thirties, Maryann’s beauty could be described as ‘ancient beauty:’ she has long dark hair
and there are not many differences between the dresses and jewellery she normally wears
and the ones which were in fashion in the ancient Greece. Most of the times she walks
barefoot – especially when at home or in the bacchanalia and, though daily wearing her hair
loose, she visibly changes her hairstyle – tiding it up or decorating it with flowers and
brooches – for the celebrations as maenads did.

Concerning the rites, most maenads’ characteristic rituals are reflected in the massive feasts
Maryann organizes: huge quantities of wine, drugs, exotic food – especially fruit – and both
cooked and uncooked human flesh – in ‘Timebomb’ (2:8), she prepares a human heart
pudding – to drive humans out of their minds and then absorb their energy during the
orgies. Since the main objective of her bacchanals is of course to commune with Dionysus,
animal and human sacrifices are also made. During the last and biggest of her bacchanals,
which lasts for three episodes (2:10, 2:11, 2:12), Maryann pretends to finally sacrifice Sam –
Dionysus’ elected – to reach the highest step in the communion. Even if she does not
succeed with her plan, the whole ritual is elaborately depicted: the building of a statue made
of food in honour to the God, Maryann’s dressing as a bride for her symbolic marriage and
Bon Temps’ inhabitants’ reaching the highest degree of hedonism.

Though there is no evidence to prove maenads were able to shift form, Maryann gets that

ability from the same Dionysus: ‘... Dionysus himself invited them, appearing in the form
of a girl. He then changed his shape becoming successively a lion, a bull, and a panther, and
drove them insane’ (Graves 105). Moreover, there are two main references to the many
animals – lion, serpent, bull, goat or rum – connected to Dionysus: the repeated symbol of
horns and the transformation of Sam into a bull. The constant symbol of horns – in
Maryann’s valuable statuette stolen by Sam or at the top of the food-monument, for
instance – do not necessarily belong to any animal in particular since, as Graves explains in
‘Dionysus’s nature and deeds:’ ‘he [Dionysus] is described as a horned child in order to not
particularize the horns, which were ‘goat’s, stag’s, bull’s or ram’s according to the place of
his worship’ (107). In ‘Frenzy’ (2: 10), Bill decides to visit and ask The Vampire Queen of
Louisiana how to kill Maryann, who tells him that the only way to make her vulnerable is to
‘let her meet the God who comes.’ The God who comes is of course Sam in the form of a
bull: one of the forms in which ironically Dionysus was supposed to have been killed – ‘he
[Dionysus] was born in winter as a serpent (hence his serpent crown); became a lion in the
spring; and was killed and devoured as a bull, goat or stag at midsummer’ (Graves 108).

Aside from the many resemblances between the two fictional characters, however, some
noticeable differences can be traced. The maenads’ dance is reproduced by Maryann in
exactly the same way though not as a dance. Maryann’s tossing and whirling around has
two main explanations: reaching an ecstasy state when having sex – as in her sexual
encounter with Sam, absorbing human’s energy in the bacchanals – as shown in the second
season finale, and when forcing a shapeshifter to shift into another form – as she does with
Sam in ‘Keep This Party Going’ (2:2). In addition, and most importantly, maenads did not
exist individually; they existed as a multiple entity, acting always in groups. The fact that
Maryann has an individual existence, together with other apparently disconnected details,
explains the character’s connection with the second mythological evil women: Circe.

In Homer’s Odissey, Circe is the ‘awesome goddess with a human voice’ (195), hostess of
Odysseus and his men in the isle of Aea. Built of ‘polished stone’ (197) in the woods, her
mansion is rounded by lions and wolves which in truth are men she bewitched with her
‘evil drugs’ (197). Welcoming, Circe delights Odysseus’ men with wine and a succulent dish
– cheese, barley meal and yellow honey. However, what the warriors did not expect was
that Circe had poisoned the food with some of her ‘malign drugs’ (198). Being the men
completely drunk and having lost all past memories as a consequence of the drugs, Circe

takes the opportunity to transform them in pigs with her magic wand. Luckily, on the way
to rescue his men, Odysseus meets Hermes who gives him a special herb to protect himself
from Circe’s power. Though the herb works and the men recover their human form, they
leave the island in tears after facing the news about their next journey: travelling to Hades.

Although not rounded by wild animals, Maryann’s mansion is also in the forest and,
through its decoration – like the columns in the garden, emulates ancient Greek palaces.
Circe’s ability to turn humans into animals seems to be also shared by Maryann as openly
implied in the two occasions (1:10, 2:3) she appears with one of her followers – Daphne
(Ashley Jones), a shapeshifter – in the form of a pig. In addition, not only does Maryann
use food, drugs and wine to attain human vulnerability, but also her exuberant beauty and
open sexuality – as Circe does when trying to enchant Odysseus. However, the most
important feature Maryann’s character inherits from Circe is the indisputable fact of
embodying the opposed protective and evil sides of female personality.

As Nel Noddings explains in Women and Evil, since Ancient Times femininity has been
characterised and repeatedly portrayed by its double-nature:

            Surely creatures who have themselves been branded as evil or peculiarly
            susceptible to evil must develop a special perspective on evil, especially when
            they are also, and paradoxically, exalted as possessing a special and natural
            form of goodness. The paradox is resolved when we realize that the
            dichotomous view of woman as evil (because of her attraction to matters of
            flesh) and good (because of her compassion and nurturing) served as a means
            of control. (2-3)

After returning Odysseus’ men into their human form, Circe takes care of them while
Odysseus discusses with his other men their near future plans: ‘Meanwhile, with kindness,
Circë, in her halls, cared for my other men: she bathed them all, and then she smoothed
their skins with gleaming oil and wrapped them in fine tunics and soft cloaks’ (205).
Similarly, even if just to achieve her evil objectives, Maryann still has a protective side –
which indeed is her character’s presentation – reflected in her hospitality and motherly
cares towards ‘Eggs’ and Tara.

Conclusion: Devil vs. Angel.

In this brief look at the character of Maryann Forrester, it becomes clear that – since her
very first appearance in the series – the character turns out to represent human evilness. In
a deeper analysis, however, the connection between her gender and her wickedness is
revealed. Furthermore, considering that the character was modelled mainly after two
mythological figures, the recurrent association between women and evil since Ancient
Times moves into the spotlight. Through the combination of maenads’ and Circe’s most
salient features, thus, Maryann’s character displays a number of patterns which can be
applied to other portraits of female evilness.

The antagonism between Maryann and Sookie may be seen as one of those patterns. To
the same extent that evil female characters had always been a constant, their evil nature had
also been frequently reinforced by the presence of an opposite type of woman: the kind-
hearted. Within the context of the southern society portrayed by the small town of Bon
Temps, the figure of the so-called Southern Belle or Angel in the house – visibly
represented by Sookie – becomes particularly important since, as the first chapter of
Giselle Roberts’ Confederate Belle exemplifies, the states of Mississippi and Louisiana – Bon
Temps’ state – are Southern Belles’ birthplace.

Sookie’s depiction as a Southern Belle is fairly obvious, but of course it does not show all
the features of the traditional ideal. With the indispensable support of a man – first the
father, then the husband – to survive in society, a traditional Southern Belle was expected
to elevate ‘the moral temperament of the household’ (Roberts 20) with her purity,
righteousness, well manners and devotion to God. Though Sookie does not have any
masculine support – no father, no husband – or any household to honour – all her family
died except her brother, kindness and righteousness are what best characterize her. In
addition, considering present-day society, the suggestion that Sookie did not have any
sexual relationship before meeting Bill emphasizes her aura of purity.

With Sookie the figure of the Southern Belle is pushed to its limits in the same way as
maenads and Circe are with Maryann. Apart from the recurrence of their character’s
nature, thus, Maryann and Sookie have something else in common: both can be interpreted
as hypermodern portraits of archetypal female models. Taking into account Lipovetsky’s
idea that the “the label ‘postmodern’ is starting to look old” since it ‘has exhausted its

capacities to express the world coming into being’ (30), the correct word to tag True Blood’s
revision of the three classical characters – Maenads, Circe and the Southern Belle – would
then be hypermodern and not postmodern. The postmodern return to traditional forms –
by breaking with its conventions – and the open use of intertextuality are carried to
extremes with hypermodernism. Through the fragmentation of boundaries between genres,
as well as through the subversive picturing of traditional forms, True Blood definitely
exceeds postmodernism’s main principles.

Bibliography:

GRAVES, Robert. The Greek Myths. London: Penguin, 1992.
NODDINGS, Nel. Women and Evil. Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1989.
ROBERTS, Giselle. Confederate Belle. Columbia: Univesrity of Missouri Press, 2003.
HOMER. Odyssey of Homer. New York: Bantam Classic, 1991.
DILLON, Matthew. Girls and Women in Classical Greek Religion. London: Routledge, 2002.
EDGERTON, Gary R., and JONES, Jeffrey P., ed. The Essential HBO Reader.
Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2008.
LIPOVETSKY, Gilles. Hypermodern Times. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2005.

Online resources:

True Blood in HBO’s official web page, www.hbo.com/true-blood
Imdb TV database, www.imdb.com/sections/tv
Nielsen Ratings, http://en-us.nielsen.com/rankings/insights/rankings/television