• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

Is it really necessary to read politics into pure entertainment? If the answer is no, then we’re left to believe that art doesn’t have the power to inspire and alter when we know that not to be the case. And while even Alan Ball has referred to the storylines of True Blood as “lady porn,” he’s never shied from making statements in popular fare, which is why he draws such a diverse audience.

So, there’s no doubt that True Blood is queer-friendly, but would Juergens go so far as to say that True Blood is a queer show? Absolutely, he says. “True Blood is as queer as they come, even if the gay characters and elements are sometimes not front-and-center.” He continues, “But the show itself comes from a place that is decidedly left-of-center in its overarching moral structure . . . Everything that the show discusses, from the persecution of minorities in society to the challenges faced by an independent woman in the South to straight sexual addiction, is filtered through a queer lens . . . It’s easily the queerest mass-market show since The Golden Girls.”

Being Bad Never Felt So Good

True Blood’s Opening Credits

“I’m not a fan of title sequences that parade the actors’ faces . . . You’re about to watch an hour of these people, so why would you need to do that?”

— Alan Ball

“We knew from the start that the best way — the only way — to create a powerful introduction was to insert ourselves into the middle of Louisiana and find out what happens — unmannered and unvarnished.”

— Digital Kitchen press release

“When Mariana Klaveno was added [to the credits] . . . I had the hot girl in her underwear, but alphabetical order pushed me back to the slow motion snake strike! Nobody wants that creepy baby.”

— Todd Lowe (“Terry Bellefleur”)

With the first strains of Jace Everett’s “Bad Things,” True Blood’s opening sequence unfurls a sweaty montage of swamplands, sex, snakes, and sacred ritual. With not a vampire to be found, nor the familiar rotation of cast shots, Alan Ball strives to treat the supernatural as something primal rather than that which originates outside of nature. The sequence supports that, rotting roadkill and all, setting the mood for ritual and ecstasy, be it bar or baptism. It’s also lustful and sticky, which works in beautifully complicated opposition to the other themes: redemption and forgiveness.

The people at Digital Kitchen are the design masterminds behind True Blood’s Emmy-nominated credit sequence. They’ve also produced the opening credits for Alan Ball’s hbo series Six Feet Under, as well as Dead Like Me, Queer as Folk, House M.D., and Dexter. With offices in Seattle, Chicago, Los Angeles, and Manhattan, Digital Kitchen’s clients include Budweiser, Coke, Showtime, Sundance, AT&T, and Microsoft, making them one of the leading digital agencies in the U.S.

Conceptually, Digital Kitchen decided to contrast images of sex, violence, and religion to play off the idea of “the whore in the house of prayer,” progressing from daylight to nighttime, when the predatory voyeuristic thrill reaches a feverish peak. The team’s hope was to string the tension so tight that the viewer couldn’t take anymore, arriving at an iconic image of cathartic release: the original sin washed away in the sacrament of baptism. The crew borrowed inspiration from Andrew Douglas’s film Searching for the Wrong-Eyed Jesus, pulling from the charms of its southern surrealist cinema. Searching for the Wrong-Eyed Jesus follows a country singer on a road trip through the Deep South, framed by his encounters with a marginalized subculture of churches, prisons, biker bars, and coal-mines. (Some argue that Digital Kitchen borrowed a little too heavily from the film with at least one scene — the night baptism — appearing almost identical to one in the film.)

To achieve the home-movie effect of the “found” footage, the team took a four-day trip to Louisiana looking for inspiration in the smallest details.