From Blood Bonds to Brand Loyalties: Poppy Z. Brite’s Lost Souls and Alan Ball’s True Blood

Abstract

Poppy Z. Brite’s Lost Souls (1992) is a significant transitional text that anticipates the complex symbolic economies established in True Blood and other postmillennial vampire narratives. The novel interrogates the relationship between violence and the sacred and the sacred-violent blood bonds that maintain order within fragile vampire communities. In True Blood, the nature of the pre-millennial blood bond dramatically shifts in that blood is not only a sacred substance but also a commodity, a brand. ‘Tru Blood’ is the brand name of the blood substitute that has ostensibly removed the need for vampires to prey on humans. This chapter examines what it terms the transition from blood bonds to brand loyalties in True Blood through the work of Girard on sacrificial violence and Slavoj Žižek on capital and commodities.