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Why Were There So Many Confederate Vampire?
🕑 Added 2022-12-28 02:20:28 +0000 UTCIn the late 2000s and 2010s, the three major vampire series of the time: True Blood, The Vampire Diaries, and Twilight—all featured male vampire characters who were members of the Confederacy. Bill Compton, Damon Salvatore, and Jasper Hale. We are going to try and figure out why? Why those character backstory decisions were made, the legacy of the Confederacy in cinema, and most importantly, what it says that all these choices were made and primarily uncritically dealt with in or outside the universe.
Sources:
The Confederate Flag and the Meaning of Southern History by Kevin Thornton (https://www.jstor.org/stable/26235412)
The Civil War at the Sesquicentennial: How Well Do Americans Understand Their Great National Crisis? By GARY W. GALLAGHER (https://www.jstor.org/stable/26062064?read-now=1#page_scan_tab_contents)
Lost Cause Motherhood: Southern Women Writers by Glenn Robins (https://www.jstor.org/stable/4233937)
https://stepheniemeyer.com/2009/11/new-moon-qa-with-stephenie/
https://rsc.byu.edu/civil-war-saints/what-means-carnage-civil-war-mormon-thought
"The Fall of the House of Dixie"
Comments
Kalkail
As a related aside on white people getting married on plantations — Cheney McKnight of Not Your Mommas History did an interview with fellow historical costumer Abby Cox discussing her plantation wedding (first marriage not current one) which is worth a watch on how the experience of Black folks and bloody history of these places rarely registers. Centuries later plantations continue to generate wealth for those who chose to benefit from it.
Maishadow1115
I've been so ready for this video and it did not disappoint! You did an excellent job at really unpacking this topic and putting into words something that's always unsettled me about mainstream vampire fiction. I remember reading Twilight as a teen and just auto correcting Jasper to being a union soldier as they tried to paint him as so, so dignified and it confused me so much. As a black woman, the concept of a "good confederate gentleman" just could not exist for me, especially not in a modern setting. These characters are jarring, and even more tragic (just not in the intended way) with the added context.
Maria Metaterran
Re: Firefly, I was like, if you want to explore life on the losing side of a war why not an Indigenous take? And then I remembered that the reavers exist in that universe and that Whedon has been afraid of natives since at least that time he wrote a scene with a white woman beating on a native man screaming "why won't you die?!?!?!?!"
Maria Metaterran
True Blood is true proof of what happens when we let the white gays speak for ALL forms of marginalization
queerly beloved
This was so good!!! I learned a ton watching it. Out of the three main examples you examined, I was really only familiar with "The Vampire Diaries," so learning this was a trend that had been done in other fairly recent vampire shows was a surprise. :O
