Southern Insensitivity?

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My Response....

I think you miss the point. The show is not a show case for Southern Culture. Sookie would not belong to a book club necessarily. Both her character and Jason have made it clear they feel the divide of socio-economic class between her and someone like Portia Bellefleur. And actually I think Pam and Sookie's dialogue was less about being southern and more about making fun of the Oprah Winfrey book club sort of feminist who believes "I read She's Come Undone...I'm a feminist now"....As far as Hot Shot, yeah, I agree with you there, but I live in the south and I know there really are people like that in the back of the holler who are Uncle Daddy Calvins.....As far as it being a departure from the book, yeah and it pretty much sucks...But I am not watching it for the southern accents or the Hot Shot bunch or to check it for South of the Mason Dixon cultural accuracy. I am here for the hot Vampires...

I agree with your response Aslinn. The show may be based on Harris' Southern Vampire Mysteries, but there is no one-size-fits-all southern culture. Like Ball, I was born and raised in Atlanta, where nowadays you would be hard pressed to find as many native Atlantans as transfers. The further you travel outside the metroplitan area, the closer you might get to Bon Temps though, sans the vampires, shifters, and weres. And the accents are different southern dialects. Each southern state has its own kind of accent, with additional regional dialects in various parts of each state (In Season 3, remember after killing the were Eric says to Sookie, "He had a Mississippi accent. Can't you people tell the difference?") But I don't see TB trying to represent southern culture as much as representing a supernatural culture in a small, relatively poor rural town, which happens to be located in the South because it is the region with which Charlaine Harris is familiar.

On the site containing the article, I noticed several people wrote comments complaining about the southern accents portrayed on the show. I really disagree there. Considering many of the actors are not even Americans and may speak English as a second language (at least for Alex), I think they do a pretty damn good job.

Alyssa Rosenberg: But it's engaged with ideas about Southernness, and the way Ball is processing them appear to be pretty strange.
10 hours ago · Like

Mindy Sedberry: I like to analyze everything too, but for goodness sake can't we just watch the show & take it for what it is? I'm from west Texas, we are pretty redneck, and let me tell you, I have seen some people like those at Hotshot, maybe a bit more dramatic on TV, but people die around here all the time from using the drive for a heater, etc! And have you ever watched swamp people.....
9 hours ago · Like

Mindy Sedberry: Sorry, stove not drive!
9 hours ago · Like

Aslinn Dhan: Ah, well, Westexan, she is a Yale Graduate, that's it...The Yankee in her doesn't understand that the strange and bizarre is as much a part of the south as Rhett and Scarlett...
2 hours ago · Like

Alyssa Rosenberg: It's not really that, it's that there are cooler things to do with the strange and bizarre!
about an hour ago · Like

Aslinn Dhan:

Let me ask you something, if you want real New Orleans style food, do you go to a Popeye's chicken and then say you have experienced true NO/Cajun cuisine? Of course you don't. Then you should not be looking for Southern authenticity in a show acted by a Londoner (Stephen Moyer), a New Zealander (Anna Paquin), an Aussie (Ryan Kwanten), a Swede (Alexander Skarsgard) and a Dane (Alan Hyde). Certainly the book is written by a lady from Arkansas and produced by a fellow from Georgia, Alan Ball does not write all the episodes and he does not direct all the episodes. Like I said in my original post, the intent is not to be a showcase for Southern Culture. It is a show case for yummy Vampires.
about a minute ago · Like

Yeah, and here are the responses Westexan and I had for her on FaceBook...If she is looking for authenticity and truth in story telling and sort of yankeefied view of what constitutes true South, then True Blood ain't it...If there was a character like her on True Blood, she would not survive the first ten minutes. Could you imagine her? She would likely want to convene a seminar on the spot...Pam would just say.."Fuck a Zombie!!!" and rip her throat out before she could paint the first protest sign...Get the flowers out of your hair child...time to get bloody...

Honestly, accents are tough. Jason's sounds the best and authentic to me. BUT let me add, no one thinks they sound that hick-y until they hear themselves on a machine or voicemail!!