White Vamps, Black Witches: Race Politics and Vampire Pop Culture

And then there’s the Bennett family of witches, who are all (relatively light skinned) African Americans. Ok, I get it, they’re a family – genetically related – and therefore it makes sense they are all similar ethnically. But there are no other Black people around this town? (Except random walk ons who then get eaten?) And more importantly, WHY is this family of witches Black? We are told the Bennetts are supposedly descended from some ‘powerful Salem witches.’ Are the makers of the show hinting that they are descended from the slave woman named Tituba who supposedly ‘read the fortune’ of all those young white Salem girls and got their vicious imaginations spinning?

But no, Tituba is never mentioned by name. Nor ever, ever, ever the word slavery. Which is weird, no?

Because here is a show about a small Virginia town (Mystic Falls) that is, yes, overrun by hot vampires, but also obsessed with its past. Its’ Civil War past, to be precise. And not just the mythic/mystical town, but the show itself is obsessed with Scarlett O’Hara et al. There are frequent flashbacks to times of crinolin and Confederate soldier-y. In fact, back when he wasn’t, er, un-dead, hottie Damon was a Confederate Soldier. Yet, we are pointedly told that Damon quit the army because he “did not agree with their ways” (huh? because he was against slavery? spit it out, writers!)

There are also references to a Black woman/witch named Emily (pictured above in bonnet, foremother of hazy witch Bonnie) being the ‘servant’ of the super-baddie and super-skinnie white vampire chickie Katherine. Yet, despite both the show and the town’s historical obsessions, not once do I think the word ‘slave’ or ‘slavery’ is ever used. (Nor do we ever get close to finding out how, in Civil War era Virginia, an Asian woman and her daughter could own a store, and said Asian woman could romance a white ‘founding father’ of the town. REALLY, writers? You think us Asian folks could just sweep into town in our hoopskirts and set up shop in the 1800′s? Gimme a break.)

Instead, we see the creators attempting to approach the issue of race but in strangely obtuse ways. (Yes, this is the maker of Dawson’s Creek I’m analyzing here for his racial politics, forgive me academic colleagues). As Lisa Nakamura and her colleagues comment in this great article, in HBO’s Southern Gothic Vampire melodrama True Blood, vampirism becomes a (only somewhat successful) metaphor for racial politics and oppression. In this show, vampires fight to make vampire marriage and other vampire rights legal. Anti-vampire sentiments become ways to explore homophobia and racism.

And yet, as Janani Subramanian notes in this other great article also from Flow TV, Vampire Diaries is Gothic-lite. One could even say, with all intentions of being ironic, that it’s race-lite (yes, I did just bold the word race, read into it what you will). It uses race as an organizing principle in its Southern narrative, without ever really talking about it beyond such ridiculous sentences, as this one uttered by a Black warlock to Bonnie: “it’s hard being different.” (REALLY, writers, REALLY? That’s the best you could do?)

Much has been written about the sparkly, white ‘good’ vampires of the Twilight books being some sort of a metaphor for the ideal Mormon family who are, per their scriptures, “white and delightsome.” Then, of course there is the fact that these white and delightsome (yet, oops, bloodsucking) folks are fighting brown skinned Native American werewolves. Yea, too much to even get into here.

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