Truly, Madly, Deadly_ The Unofficial True Blood Companion - Becca Wilcott [39]
— Poppy Z. Brite, Love in Vein
By the time viewers had taken their first taste of hbo’s True Blood, vampires were already among them, revealed along with their supporters and detractors in a viral marketing campaign that spanned print, electronic, and online media. Not since The Blair Witch Project (or much earlier in 1938 when Orson Welles ushered in a nationwide panic with the radio play The War of the Worlds) had audiences seen such commitment to advance buzz for a film or television series. The biggest difference, of course, was a viewer who’s savvier than ever, along with a host of blogging platforms, Facebook, and Twitter acting as the tools of choice for the make-culture generation of civic journalism. It’s the stuff of a marketer’s dreams and nightmares: how to engage an audience so they don’t call hoax before you’ve had a chance to roll out your campaign, and how to entertain them so they won’t cry foul for flogging your product.
Enter vampires, and the accompanying fear surrounding their lifestyle, and whoever was orchestrating this extravagant production had caught our rapt attention. Some of the campaign riffed off lgbt rights (one public service announcement stopping just short of equating vampires — gays — with pedophilia), prompting some bloggers to question whether the pieces were intended to be anti-gay. These psas appeared to unearth the worst fears of the ultra-conservative right wing while simultaneously confirming them. Conversely, some argued the other extreme, ranging from savvy societal comment to a direct opposition to the democratization of lgbt life.
The question lingers: was it proper to satirize homophobia in absence of a larger context or an accountable creator? Even after the campaign revealed itself to be more than just a gag, there was still the question of intent. What did this all mean? And would hbo be able to sustain the excitement, not to mention intense mystery, it had awakened in a viewing public that had yet to see the show? And, who, exactly, was this show for? What audience was it trying to attract?
Not to worry, because beyond building buzz, the campaign was an ingenious precursor to the series, something that had already succeeded in encouraging viewers to suspend both belief and disbelief, straight out of the coffin. And not just mainstream viewers, but hardcore paranormal fans as well. You’d be hard-pressed to encounter a metaphor more malleable than the vampire, but fans of the genre tend to be as polarized in their opinions of what makes a “real” vampire as some in the lgbt community are about bisexuals. Which is why True Blood succeeds on so many levels. It takes chances, using the media to educate, entertain, and titillate. By the time Bill Compton first walks into Merlotte’s, the debate of natural versus unnatural is already on the fringes. The core of the story is more akin to the Kinsey scale — there are extremes, but most of us fall somewhere in between.
Brian Juergens writes and reviews for a number of horror-themed websites, notably Camp Blood (www.campblood.org), where he also co-hosts with illustrator Andy Swist the “Blood Work” vlog, a campy recap of True Blood episodes. When asked how and why the horror genre and queer community intersects, he points to a recurring theme, what he notes is queer viewers’ “appreciation for the uncanny, the over-the-top, and the beautifully chaotic.” He continues, “A lot of queer folks grow up feeling hemmed in by a world that they don’t feel that they belong to, and horror movies tend to explode society’s