1. True Blood and Twilight 21 st Century Vampires

2. Paola Marrati Marrati places both True Blood and Twilight (briefly) in conversation with the historical, political, and cultural events happening at the time and then uses this insight to make philosophical claims. “Against all myths of oneness these strange couples attest that separation is necessary to love and desire” (985) True Blood “change[s] our perception of social and political issues and in this regard they contribute to the larger conversation any democratic society needs to constantly reassess its values and transform itself” (994)

3. Relation to the Violence of History “The red of the fruits smeared across the mouths of children, of the blood dripping off a dead opossum, or the quite glamorous red on a pair of lips inhaling cigarette smoke, not only brings to mind the blood that vampires (or, rather, humans who endlessly invent and reinvent their stories) have always been obsessed with, but also the blood that spills from the wounds of the Civil War, from centuries of violence, suspicion and hatred tied to the history of slavery, up to the blood shed during the civil rights movement that ended segregation. And, I would suggest, beyond and before this relatively short sequence, the blood that haunts human history as such” (986-987)

4. True Blood and Equal Rights True Blood assumes the principle of equal rights Questions whose lives are “worthy of respect and recognition” (990) Disrupts the boundaries of the human Judith Butler asks “us to understand, and hence challenge, the mechanisms by which certain lives are perceived as worthy of being mourned while others remain invisible and, as a result, their very loss anonymous and unaccounted for, barely registered in statistics few read and almost no one really cares about” (990)

5. Vampire Rights Analogy “In True Blood nothing distinguishes the vampires’ quest for recognition from the older or more recent ones of African Americans, religious or ethnic minorities, women, gays and lesbians etc. The American Vampire League speaks the same language, that of equal rights, and the stakes are the familiar ones of legal and social equality : rights of property and marriage (including mixed marriages), possibility of donation and inheritance, legal recognition of family ties, security, non-discrimination and the like” (988)

6. Relation to Death and Aging Twilight : Central issue in the relationship between Bella and Edward Paternalism, negotiation of rites of passage (birthdays/prom), Bella’s discomfort with growing old while Edward remains “perfect” True Blood : Less of an issue in the relationship between Sookie and Bill Vampires’ relation to death is central to their acceptance/rejection in human society “True Blood reveals how the boundaries of human, or, to put it differently, the relation to otherness, are constantly negotiated on a case-by-case basis” (992)

7. Bildungsroman A novel that recounts the development of an individual from childhood to maturity, to the point at which the protagonist recognizes her/his place in the world “It’s true that their experience often arises out of a series of extravagant and extraordinary adventures, but its content nonetheless remains ordinary: it always pertains to what we know and learn about ourselves, the world and others” (Marrati 985). Does Twilight function as a bildungsroman ?

8. “Good” Vampire/“Bad” Vampire True Blood “Mainstreaming” vampires “Nests” Twilight The Cullens The nomads What are the differences between the “good” and “bad” vampires? What are the assumptions operating in terms of who deserves sympathy/human rights? How does this relate to the politics and/or cultural assumptions of contemporary American culture?