Love bites
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- July
- 31
The “Harry Potter”-like frenzy building for the midnight release of Stephenie Meyer’s novel “Breaking Dawn” — the conclusion of her teen vampire romance series — is but a taste of things to come.
On Sept. 7, HBO premieres “True Blood,” a sultry vamp series from the folks who gave us “Six Feet Under” by way of Charlaine Harris’ sassy Sookie Stackhouse novels. I’ll post a full review Sept. 5. But I couldn’t resist commenting now on a striking parallel between Meyer’s PG books and the R-rated HBO series, which partly answers the question Freud posed — What do women want?
The setting for “True Blood” is one of those Southern towns beloved by Hollywood where people spend an awful lot of time having sweaty, kinky, steamy sex. All except Sookie, a local waitress played with saucy innocence by Oscar winner Anna Paquin. For one thing, Sookie is the kind of young woman who lives with her grandmother (Lois Smith) and would never take Jesus’ name in vain.
For another, she has a special quality that could be considered an impediment to an intimate relationship: She hears peoples’ thoughts.
So Sookie remains an untouched blossom in this overrun, savage garden. Then along comes Bill Compton (Stephen Moyer) — out of the coffin, thanks to new vampire-rights legislation — and, well, Sookie is ready to be plucked.
Just as high school student Bella is drawn to the coolly beautiful Edward in Meyer’s novels, Sookie is immediately attracted to the gorgeously tortured Bill (seen below, courtesy of HBO), and vice versa. We’ve been down this path many times before: Vulnerable bad boy meets spunky good girl. It’s catnip to fiction.
But if contemporary vampirism still makes the bad boy alluringly dangerous, it also serves as a kind of purity ring. Both Edward and Bill resist having sex with their beloveds for fear it will bring out the beast within. (The notion of the man, rather than the woman, putting the breaks on sex has been a recurring theme this summer. In “The Incredible Hulk,” hunky Bruce Banner stops short of making love to a disappointed Betty lest he unleash his green alter ego.)
In our post-feminist, post-AIDS world — in which females are under pressure at increasingly younger ages to engage in sexual activity — vampirism has become a metaphor for old-fashioned courtship and romance. Gail Collins discussed this in a recent New York Times’ column on the Meyer’s phenomenon, and while I’m more of a Maureen (Dowd) than a Gail, I do think Collins is on to something.
Bill was turned into a vampire around the time of the Civil War, having suffered great deprivation and loss. So he savors the sensuous, is chivalrous to Sookie and her grandmother and forbearing of her knuckle-headed brother (Ryan Kwanten).
Undead, he appreciates life — and one life in particular, that of the woman he loves. He’s willing, then, to walk the fine line between ardor and honor. And isn’t that what a woman wants in a man romantically?
Call it the Mr. Darcy effect. (Meyer is said to be a big Jane Austen fan.) A girl likes a guy who’s a bit ruffled but is still able to wear a ruffled shirt.
Bill, a courtly, raffish Southerner, is a dash of Rhett laced with a bit of Ashley.
And since he is virtually deathless, tomorrow always is another day.
This entry was posted
on Thursday, July 31st, 2008 at 1:51 pm by Georgette Gouveia.
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