Vampires Suck

This article uses content and discourse analysis to identify parallel narratives in the HBO series True Blood and American society, then applies Young's politics of difference to identify counternarratives suggesting that knowledge, culture, and customs are not universal. The three primary characteristics of the politics of difference—democratic cultural pluralism, equality, and postmodernism—provide a lens to explore the identified narratives. It is argued that American discourse, like True Blood, is embedded with strategies of Othering that shape policy design and implementation in such a way as to benefit those deemed advantaged.