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This article analyses the role of blood in the American series True Blood. It opens with a reassessment of sexual readings of vampires that complements previous work on their metaphorical significance for Queer Studies and focuses on the complex AIDS burger sequence,in Season One. The article then explores how artificial blood, ‘TruBlood’, may function as a radical attack on vampires which mirrors how commodity culture has adapted to suit the needs of marginal communities. Lastly, the article turns to non-genetic blood ties to show how ‘true’,blood (i.e. personal or individual) is the only substance that actually unites creatures in the series.
. Is this because AIDS is just a more difficult problem than medical science has dealt with before, but with persistence will be conquered, or could there be something fundamentally wrong with the scientific investigation of the illness? In this chapter I endeavour to examine the AIDS science that claims that AIDS originated in Africa and the possibly racist underpinnings of this science. I discuss the alternative
If you noticed, when you ask me about the history of AIDS… I can talk forever, because there are very few people with whom I share that. The majority of them have died. And even if I have new friends from a younger generation… Sometimes I feel like I don’t wanna put the burden of this history on
5 AIDS, pornography and the condom In the previous chapters I discussed the impact of the mass media, school-based sex education and the social sciences in producing knowledge of the condom and (hetero)sexuality. In this chapter I consider the impact of social and cultural theory in the context of AIDS. I do so in relation to theories of pornography from the 1980s and 1990s. Addressing accounts of eroticised images of safer sex, this chapter aims to make explicit that, while there is much debate as to the effects of cultural representations and their
TBA_C03.qxd 08/02/2007 11:20 AM Page 74 3 Gay rights, same-sex marriage and AIDS As the 2000 presidential election approached, George W. Bush’s gubernatorial record in Texas gave rise to mixed feelings among gay and lesbian campaigners. It seemed to have a contradictory character. At times, Bush and some of the other Republican governors appeared to be differentiating themselves from the Christian right by downplaying moral concerns and condemning the politics of ‘divisiveness’ (see pages 63– 4). In April 1999, Bush refused to join those Senate Republicans
immediately drew harsh criticism from fellow academics, especially the president of the Academy, Nikolai Blokhin, who interrupted him by saying: “Somewhere in America … a handful of queers got sick and you are making such a big deal out of it ….” 1 The vast majority of doctors in the Soviet Union remained unaware of the new disease. But as the number of cases in the US was growing and the disease, which now had a name – AIDS – was found to afflict heterosexual people and children, it became increasingly
1 AIDS, the condom and the history of heterosexuality: an introduction Before her death in 1990 Linda Singer made a number of observations regarding the nature of power, control and regulation in relation to sexuality. Comparing the social context of the 1980s with the 1960s she noted specific changes in the history of sexuality. This includes a shift from sexual revolution and a ‘politics of ecstasy’ to sexual epidemic and a ‘recessionary erotic economy’ (1993: 116). For Singer the former can be characterised by ‘a revolutionary transformation of sexual theory
HIV/AIDS was from the beginning a heavily politicised disease. 1 The epidemic exposed conflicting value systems and disagreements within science, medicine, public health, and clinical practice. It raised challenges to the power of doctors to privilege some while marginalising others, and it exposed how medicine constructs boundaries. The construction of ‘risk groups’ by
For one anxious caller to the Welsh AIDS Helpline in 1987, it was the probable impact of the widening health crisis on his cooked breakfast that prompted a tentative enquiry. Putting various bits of knowledge and gossip together, he wondered aloud whether the virus could be contracted from black pudding – which he liked to eat raw – since this was made from dried blood. As
The impact of HIV/AIDS on prisons (and vice versa) has received minimal attention within histories of the epidemic. Yet, researchers agree that ‘HIV hit prisons early and it hit them hard’. 1 Prisons were flagged as locations of concern very early on. Their residents, like other already-marginalised groups whose lives became entangled with HIV/AIDS, became a source of