Exotic Otherlands, Headquarters of Death: Sub-tropical Land- and Cityscapes in The Southern Vampire Mysteries

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.25120/etropic.16.1.2017.3566

Keywords:

The Southern Vampire Mysteries, sub-tropical Gothic, New Orleans, exotic tourism, sub-tropical nature, miscegenation

Abstract

The landscapes and cityscapes of the sub-tropical Southern United States, with their opulent nature, exuberant cities, boisterous cultural diversity and troubled history of conflict and violence have long offered an alluring locale for Gothic narratives. This article explores the ways in which The Southern Vampire Mysteries (2001–2013) – the best-selling literary series by Charlaine Harris and the basis for the HBO TV series True Blood – construct the Gothicised imageries of the American South as the terrain of confusing ambivalences; of glamour and exoticism, death and the uncanny. Informed by the discourses of tropicality, Tropical and Urban Gothic and exotic tourism – and the ways they interweave with the concept of Otherness – the paper seeks to illuminate the process of interrelating and consequently exoticising the figure of the Other and Southern sub-tropical land- and cityscapes. It also examines the tropes of urban interspecies relations articulated in the series as a metaphor for the Southern racial/ethnic heritage with its anxieties of miscegenation, transgression and “excessive” heterogeneity. A particular emphasis is placed on the accounts of New Orleans as the liminal space of cultural blending and touristic exploration of the figure of the Other.

Author Biography

Agnieszka Stasiewicz-Bieńkowska, Jagiellonian University, Poland

Dr Agnieszka Stasiewicz-Bieńkowska, a researcher and lecturer at the Institute of American Studies and Polish Diaspora, Jagiellonian University in Krakow, Poland; author of Constructing Ethnic Identity of Swedish-American Children (1889-1962) (JU Press 2011, in Polish); co-editor of Monstrous Manifestations: Realities and Imaginings of the Monster (Inter-Disciplinary Press 2013) and Hospitality, Rape and Consent in Vampire Popular Culture: Letting the Wrong One In (Palgrave, forthcoming). Two-time scholarship holder of the Swedish Institute. Academic interests comprise young adult culture, gender representations, and the fantastic.

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Published

2017-05-30

How to Cite

Stasiewicz-Bieńkowska, A. (2017). Exotic Otherlands, Headquarters of Death: Sub-tropical Land- and Cityscapes in The Southern Vampire Mysteries. ETropic: Electronic Journal of Studies in the Tropics, 16(1). https://doi.org/10.25120/etropic.16.1.2017.3566

Issue

Vol. 16 No. 1 (2017): Special Issue: Tropical Liminal: Urban Vampires and Other Blood-Sucking Monstrosities

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