Currently browsing 'True Blood'
Do Vampires Need Car Insurance? Razor? Motorcycles?
Do vampires even need car insurance?
This is kind of interesting. In an effort to promote the second season of “True Blood,” HBO launched a marketing campaign in which real brands like Geico and Harley-Davidson pretend to reach out to vampires.
“Harley offers a TrueBlood motorcycle that helps vampires ‘Outrun the sun,’” Ad Week reports. Then there’s Gillette with its “Dead Sexy” ads for its razors.
Would these ads appeal to the living dead? If you were a copywriter, how would you target vampires with your products?
According to Ad Week, “vampire brand loyalty is legendary, often stretching for a thousand years.”
Step right up, Moyerettes…True Blood begins soon
Let’s put aside the “Twilight” madness for a moment. Because the other fictional – cough, cough – vampire story “True Blood” starts its second season on June 14. Just as teenage girls are ga-ga over Edward, grown women appear to have their sights set on Bill Compton, the lead character in the HBO series. Are you a Moyerette, a Bill’s Babe, on Team Edward, or neither? The LA Times reports that the show has a largely female fan base.
What is it with you chicks and vampires???
Why are vampires so appealing?
I often ask myself as I lie awake at night wondering why I have been chosen to disseminate the truth about the world of vampires: what is it that makes the undead so appealing to the masses?
Evidently, it’s because they’re “culturally adaptive,” the Examiner.com reports! (Are they cute and cuddly too?) An English professor quoted in the article says, “Vampires are the perfect vessels into which we can pour our current cultural anxieties.”
Ah, the old vessel theory. So what are you pouring into the vessel of Edward then? Or Bill Compton of True Blood?
Or it’s just because vampire admirers see them as objects? Objects for you know what! Vampires have insatiable appetites for everything, including…
Anyway, I think that’s why people are fixated on them.
What do you think?
Priests as Vampires…
You know about the sparkly vegetarian vampires in “Twilight,” you know about synthetic blood drinking ones in “True Blood,” you probably even know about the dreadful, soul-sucking ones in Guillermo Del Toro’s upcoming vampire novel “The Strain.”
But there’s a new fictional vampire about to join the ever-swelling world of vampire fiction and this one might just be your spiritual leader too.
The South Korean film director Park Chan-Wook, best known for his award-winning film “Oldboy,” is releasing a movie at Cannes in May called “Thirst.” And in it, a Catholic priest becomes a vampire during a medical experiment.
In an interview with Reuters, Park said “I thought I could add some changes to this old genre by approaching the subject — vampire-ism, so to speak — without the usual mystery or romanticism but from a realistic perspective where being a vampire is sort of a disease.”
What do you think, friends of BCNN? Should we root for “Thirst” to win big at Cannes?
Yours in Vampire Preparedness,
Chris
P.S.: As always I welcome any and all news tips at bloodcastnewsnetwork@gmail.com.
Just because they’re hot doesn’t mean they’re good!
What’s with the “bite first, ask questions later” mentality? Because sometimes I think everyone is just kind of offering up their necks without thinking twice. It’s like people are all swoony and moony and thinking vampires are just so hot and anything hot has to be good, so they want to get all lusty and lovey with a MEMBER OF THE UNDEAD!
People! Stop, think, listen…
I am bringing this up because pop culture’s fascination with vampires has reached a fevered pitch. Now I’m hearing that the CW is premiering a new television series “Vampire Diaries” this fall. It’s based on a bestselling series of novels of the same name and centers on a teenage girl – I know, this is going to be a big shock – who’s in love with a vampire. Actually, make that two vampires – two brothers – one is evil and one is good.
“Vampire Diaries” comes on the heels of “Twilight” and “True Blood” and this trio of visual vampiric depictions is causing me some serious concern. Because clearly there is a shift occurring in the public’s perception of vampires and everyone seems to think there are now good vampires and there’s nothing to worry about! I have to say the idea that there might be good ones has always seemed just a tad bit dangerous to us here at the BCNN.
Am I the only one sounding an alarm? Did I go to sleep for 100 years and wake up with the vampire infestation solved and all bloodsuckers turned into harmless little supernatural creatures? What do you think?
My Greatest Dream: The Gospel of True Blood Spreads
When I say the word “Utopia,” what comes to mind?
I bet I’m not the only one who thinks of HBO’s “True Blood.” Have you seen this show? It really should be hailed as the apex of vampire storytelling because it represents the nirvana to which those of us who understand the truth about the world we live in (yes, that’s it’s inhabited by vampires) aspire. The premise of the show (and the book series from Charlaine Harris that spawned it) is that vampires and humans can finally coexist because vampires have learned to survive on synthetic blood. This is only like my greatest dream! Anyway, I bring this up because word on the street is that “True Blood” will be getting a bigger audience because it’ll also be shown on HBO’s sister channel Max now. (Guess Cinemax isn’t just for late night lovin’!). I’m all for the gospel being spread widely.
Yours in Vampire Preparedness,
Chris
P.S.: As always I welcome any and all news tips at bloodcastnewsnetwork@gmail.com.
True Blood’s Social Commentary?
Are you a True Blood fan? If you are, I have a question for you and this is something I’ve been thinking about for a while. Clearly the politics of discrimination are supposed to be an underlying theme of this show with racism against vampires serving as a proxy for discrimination against, frankly, any oppressed group.
After all, vampires now have artificial blood from Japan to satiate their thirst in the HBO series thereby – theoretically – preventing them from feasting on humans. The premise behind the show is vampires have “come out of the coffin” and are now free to live amongst us because they won’t hurt us or kill us due to the artificial. I think the message is supposed to be acceptance and that the humans who are vamp-racists are just as bad as any other kind of racists.
But here’s the issue – Bill seems to be the ONLY vampire on the show who tries to suppress his instincts. He drinks True Blood, rarely feasts on humans and has only killed a human once in his 150 years and that was because he was sentenced to turn a human into a vampire at the vampire tribunal (incidentally, the vampire tribunal is a brilliant invention). Most of the others though seem intent on feasting on and killing humans, so I’m not really sure if the social message is the right one here.
Thoughts?