“Blood Petroleum”: True Blood, the BP Oil Spill, and Fictions of Energy/Culture

Abstract

The third season of the HBO series True Blood, set in fictional Bon Temps, Louisiana, aired in a mediascape shaped by coverage of the BP oil spill that wreaked economic and ecological havoc on the US Gulf South during the summer of 2010. A retrospective examination of the series in this context, and against the grain of critical consensus labeling it mere escapism, demonstrates that taking True Blood seriously can yield compelling insights into the US Gulf South as a site in which convergences of the global and the local, of reality and representation, and of energy and cultural production result in the formation of a hybrid: energy/culture. Analysis of the storyline featuring the Vampire King of Mississippi shows how True Blood extends the long-standing cultural practice of making vampires screens for projecting collective desires and anxieties. Through a “camp aesthetic” that weaves into the Vampire King's maniacal pursuit of blood in various forms dire warnings about excessive consumption and environmental apocalypse, True Blood offers fictional ways to make meaning of the actual conditions and consequences of energy production and consumption brought to the surface with great urgency by the BP oil spill.