{"id":2241,"date":"2008-09-08T11:00:30","date_gmt":"2008-09-08T11:00:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/idolchatter\/2008\/09\/true-blood-does-god-really-hat.html"},"modified":"2008-09-08T11:00:30","modified_gmt":"2008-09-08T11:00:30","slug":"true-blood-does-god-really-hat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2008\/09\/true-blood-does-god-really-hat.html","title":{"rendered":"&#8216;True Blood&#8217;: Does God Really Hate Vampires?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span class=\"mt-enclosure mt-enclosure-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"truebloodpic.jpg\" src=\"https:\/\/wp-media.beliefnet.com\/sites\/87\/import\/imgs\/truebloodpic.jpg\" width=\"200\" height=\"173\" class=\"mt-image-right\" style=\"float: right;margin: 0 0 20px 20px\" \/><\/span>Not according to me!<br \/>\nI am happy to announce that HBO&#8217;s &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.hbo.com\/trueblood\/\" target=\"_blank\">True Blood<\/a>&#8221; is finally here&#8211;and I eagerly watched the premiere episode, &#8220;Strange Love,&#8221; last night.<br \/>\nMy thoughts so far (and surely there will be more to come):<br \/>\n1) The show is setting up an interesting dichotomy between religion (in particular Christianity) and the vampire community. The most interesting evidence of this shows up in the series theme song-montage, which is an eerie, fascinating juxtaposition of the southern sacred&#8211;Gospel choirs, charismatic religious experiences, road sings outside churches that read &#8220;God Hates Vampires&#8221; instead of the more typical, &#8220;Jesus Saves&#8221;&#8211;and the erotic profane&#8211;naked bodies entangled, vampires sucking on necks. You get the idea.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><br \/>\n2) I love the Louisiana setting. The swampy, buggy, humid backwater community is perfect for both the vampire angst and loner angle, as well as adding a dash of humor.<br \/>\n3) So far the characters seem a bit awkward&#8211;not quite sinking well into their roles, save Anna Paquin, the lead as Sookie Stackhouse, who is winning, funny, and full of life (for now). She&#8217;s running the show (so to speak) so far. I hope her fellow cast members pick up the slack in the episodes going forward.<br \/>\nWhat did you think?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Not according to me! I am happy to announce that HBO&#8217;s &#8220;True Blood&#8221; is finally here&#8211;and I eagerly watched the premiere episode, &#8220;Strange Love,&#8221; last night. My thoughts so far (and surely there will be more to come): 1) The show is setting up an interesting dichotomy between religion (in particular Christianity) and the vampire&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":105,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fbia_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7,1,2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2241","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-entertainment","category-television","category-trends"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>&#039;True Blood&#039;: Does God Really Hate Vampires?<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2008\/09\/true-blood-does-god-really-hat.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"&#039;True Blood&#039;: Does God Really Hate Vampires?\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Not according to me! I am happy to announce that HBO&#8217;s &#8220;True Blood&#8221; is finally here&#8211;and I eagerly watched the premiere episode, &#8220;Strange Love,&#8221; last night. My thoughts so far (and surely there will be more to come): 1) The show is setting up an interesting dichotomy between religion (in particular Christianity) and the vampire&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2008\/09\/true-blood-does-god-really-hat.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Idol Chatter\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2008-09-08T11:00:30+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/idolchatter\/files\/import\/imgs\/truebloodpic.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Donna Freitas\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"'True Blood': Does God Really Hate Vampires?","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2008\/09\/true-blood-does-god-really-hat.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"'True Blood': Does God Really Hate Vampires?","og_description":"Not according to me! 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