Customer Reviews

True Blood and Philosophy: We Wanna Think Bad Things with You (The Blackwell Philosophy and Pop Culture Series)

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

In the introduction of True Blood and Philosophy the editors state their confidence that our "enjoyment of True Blood will be enhanced by the time [we] spend...pondering some of the more philosophical quandaries" raised by the show. Does the book live up to that? Boy does it ever. It certainly did for me. My enjoyment of the show was enhanced so much by the end that not only do I have a greater appreciation for the show itself, but I now also hope to read Charlaine Harris's Southern Vampire Mysteries which the show is based on.

One of the qualities of the show True Blood that makes it so enjoyable is the way that it intelligently draws us into thinking about challenging topics. Some of those topics are so challenging that my ability to articulate them in my mind while watching the show was limited. But this book is great because it enhanced the way I could understand the show in often impressive ways. A couple of examples from my experience with the book should demonstrate how it did that.

While I continually recognized the glaring irony in the way most humans in the show have prejudices against vampires, True Blood and Philosophy led me to a fuller understanding of how that irony serves as a decisive social commentary about how humans in our "real world" treat other human beings and even how we treat other forms of life: it may be easy to recognize human propensity for prejudice when the objects are fang-wielding, blood sucking vampires, but it's through that easy recognition that we can see the more difficult prejudices we sometimes have against (among other groups) homosexuals and even animals (these particular themes are discussed in chapters 3 and 7). And it's that kind of revealing, thought-provoking writing that makes philosophy so enjoyable.

The fact that True Blood and Philosophy is able to reveal these kinds of insights so effectively is a testament to the many excellent contributions made to this book.

A second example of how this book enriches the True Blood experience is how it also helped settle a subtle question that followed me throughout the show: what is so attractive about vampires? A brilliant answer to that question is provided (in chapter 9), and it is a succinct one: "True Blood is a Freudian fable: a saga of our species doing what comes naturally." And that sentence is priceless. Fortunately, it's not by any means the only one you'll find.

But, if you think that sentence sounds strange given all the "unnatural" events in the show, consider this: we enjoy the show True Blood because it shakes off the fetters that society places on our "instinctive gratification." Shows like True Blood let us try to experience a world in ways that we aren't able to in our own world, but through that experience we may learn to better accept the world we do have to experience--and it's this kind of penetrating reflection that the book can provide.

I've only scratched the surface here on the many treasures that await the readers of this installment of Blackwell's Philosophy and Pop Culture series. I recommend you sink your teeth into it yourself to uncover even more.

"True Blood and Philosophy: We Wanna Think Bad Things with You" is a philosophical look at the cultural implications within the world of the HBO series True Blood. As it is not likely that the issues presented by the presence of vampires in our human society will actually become a problem for the world any time soon, this book shows the reader the parallels between the True Blood world and our own. The same issues that the vampires in True Blood experience (racism, hypocrisy, the fight for equality) have been seen throughout history by any number of minorities. Women, Homosexuals and almost every race at some time or another has fought the "norms" of society to include them and afford them the basic rights given to everyone else.

"True Blood and Philosophy: We Wanna Think Bad Things with You" is a book that any intellectual can enjoy...assuming they also have a bit of imagination and don't mind being compared to vampires in one way or another. So, sink your teeth in.

I'm a huge fan of True Blood but also a professor about to use Dead Until Dark in First Year Seminar, so I was hopeful of using some of this text in class. Honestly I was expecting the same sort of limited level I've come to expect from these books. No offense to the Philosophy community, but they are certainly books useful only in philosophy classes since most of the material in previous texts has been marginally clever but mainly...well argument for argument's sake.

This text will not give the real fan of the show anything new or enlightening, in fact if you are a fan of both the novels and the show you will find a few plots mistakes. But there are a couple of articles, especially Dressing Up and Playing Human or To Turn or Not to Turn, that I found fun and interesting. Both articles would work for non-fans of the show and asked some interesting questions that would translate well to a first year classroom (even if they offered no credible answers - why do philosophers like to talk in circles so much?!)

Again this is not ground-breaking stuff, it's more along the lines of articles these academics seem to have written because they are fans of the show and needed to get something published for their cvs (no offense but you know it's true). There are very few sources, and I'm not convinced that, as a group, they know much about vampires beyond this particular show or the novels. I kept thinking about how much better a chapter like Joseph Foy's Signed in Blood would have been if he had more material on the history of the vampire and personal rights. Plus I doubt these would have been published anywhere else with the extremely limited scholarship demonstrated. But it had me nodding my head on occasion and laughing out loud (well okay smiling) once or twice.

I'm glad I read it and I'm pleased that it might be worth using in class. But honestly if you are as much of a vampire nerd as I am who sees True Blood as part of a longer tradition, then you won't learn anything new. I say buy it, as someone who has a philosopher as a best friend I know how hard it is for these guys to translate their thoughts for a populist audience. Plus it's a lot better than the other two books on the show I wasted my money on (yes I'm talking about you Fangbanger's Guide & Truly Madly Deeply.)

3 stars for content and 1 more for effort.

I have been fascinated with vampires, werewolves and witches since for as long as I can remember. It used to be that vampires were repulsing creatures who felt no remorse and had no soul. In today's world, becoming a vampire is a romantic notion. I have often wondered why this idea appealed to me and even though I can't quite put my finger on the how or why that I like it, all I know is I've been seduced by the thought of being a supernatural creature.

I have always thought that the big reason we like vampires is the same reason that we would choose the "bad boy" instead of a good one. We are attracted to the idea that we can change someone and we're interested in finding out if someone can change us. Little did I know that there are a lot of reasons that I had never thought of.

This book dives into questions such as "does God hate fangs" and "are all vampires created equal". This was a fun and interesting read. Fans of True Blood don't want to miss this!

What makes this a useful book for approaching the Sookie Stackhouseverse is the editors centered the discussions around the Jace Everett song: by subtitling the work, "I wanna do bad things with you" they have clued us to the ethical arguments of their work, along with the novels and Television show. True Blood's popularity as an HBO show as well as Harris' rising star in the contemporary fantasy genre resulting from it, make a work that centers on the ethical, religious and philosophical conundrum an essential for anyone using either the TV show or one of the novels in the classroom. Students love to discuss the complexities of intellectual and moral ideas and True Blood abounds in both. Dunn and Housel's selection of essays will give anyone want to teach or learn what the depths these novels are a good jumping off place. It is not exhaustive in that the essays do not address all of the novels in the series to date but it does address the earlier novels as well as the first two seasons of the show. I would not be surprised if the editors create a companion volume in a few more years addressing the remaining novels; it would be a welcome companion in any library as is this book.

True Blood and Philosophy: We Wanna Think Bad Things With You is an interesting book that discusses and analyzes True Blood the television series and The Sookie Stackhouse books. This book is food for thought. It takes different themes in True Blood and discusses them in detail. I think this book is a great conversation piece for fans of the show and books.

I haven't watched the show True Blood, but I have read the first in the series of books, Dead Until Dark, and enjoyed it.

Some of the discussions in this book are 'The Ethics of Making Vampires', 'Coming Out of the Coffin and Coming Out of the Closet' and 'Sookie, Sigmund, and the Edible Complex'.
The writers do plenty of 'what if' situations. Like what if vampires were real and living among us, would they have to pay taxes, since they don't need health care? Would they be served with life sentences in prison if they committed crimes, or would that be considered cruel and unusual punishment since they are immortal? The book also discusses homosexuality and the comparisons between coming out of the coffin and coming out of the closet. Are the prejudices gay people face similiar to the ones vampires face?
Another topic for discussion is whether vampires are evil or not. Some vampires such as Bill are turned without choice, are they considered evil?

My one issue with this book was the repetitiveness of certain excerpts from the books and show. I'd read one chapter that quoted a certain conversation and discussed it, then I'd read the next chapter, only to find the same quote being brought up again. It didn't happen that often in this book, and it didn't deter me from enjoying this read, but I did notice it. I think it may have happened because there were different people writing the chapters, the topics overlapped a bit.

After reading this book you realize there are plenty of philosophical questions that can be raised by the Sookie Stackhouse books and True Blood. This is an interesting read, I enjoyed it. It is definitely a very detailed book, you can see that the writers are true fans of the series. I like how they would discuss great minds like Freud and Socrates and apply their theories and ideas to True Blood.

While certainly enjoyable, this book only scrapes the surface of true philosophical thought. Clearly written for the non-intellectual or only casually interested. It is certainly interesting and fun as a diversion, but I personally believe the philosophy of True Blood is far more complex than this book claims.

I give this book 3 out of 5 stars because although the writers are educated academics or professor types (therefore they are legit).. their writing is scattered and hard to follow. In some chapters they start discussing a philosophy by Sartre or Socrates, but then they don't seem go in depth and the chapter kind of drifts off with the feeling that it's unended.
Now... i'm not a philosophy buff so it could be that i simply don't see what they're implying, however they should make the reading of the passages more simplified, with more concrete example for us fans of the show. After all... we are not philosophers. I read the book twice, just to make sure I didn't miss anything.
Another gripe I had about this book is that they used the same 5 examples over and over in every chapter, which made it feel very washed out and boring. They should have chosen a broader range of examples from the books and movie.
Some of the passages WERE interesting, like the 1st chapter about choice. The author of that chapter really went into detail about choice, and what it means, and who gets to choose, and the different levels. Excellent JOB! It was also well written. Many chapters just sucked, like the author didn't see the show or read the books AT ALL.

Though I am a big fan of the series, I honestly wasn't a big fan of of the book. I guess I wasn't expecting something so utterly philosophical and educational. It read too much like a text book and with me not being in college anymore, I really didn't want to think that hard on the series.

I can imagine this would be a good book to use in an actual philosophy course in college. It would be a relateable topic for the youth of today!