In a previous post, I explored the connections between True Blood and the movie, Psycho, to suggest that Bill murdered Gran instead of the man who received the blame, René. Further indication that the murderer was not René can be found in another film, Frenzy.

Frenzy has been described as the penultimate Hitchcockian film because it was made after the demise of the Hays Code, allowing Hitchcock to depict all the sex and violence he wished and even include nudity.

With characters that includes a politician, a pub manager, barmaids, veterans, and businessmen the cast seems very familiar, especially if you substitute the blue collar workers in Bon Temps for the city dwelling businessmen. The plot should be familiar too. In fact, the season 1 serial killer storyline is Alan Ball’s homage to the movie.

A rapist and murderer strangles women and frames their common lover, a friend of his. Since Ball made his killer a construction worker instead of a businessmen, the murder weapon in True Blood is a belt instead of a necktie. Noticeably absent from Frenzy is a murder committed with a knife, as Gran’s was. Of course we know which Hitchcock murderer uses a knife, one with mother issues like Bill. Another thing strikingly absent in True Blood is the emotional impact that Frenzy has on its audience. Ball stripped that from the storyline completely by keeping the identify of the real killer hidden until episode twelve.

The shock in Frenzy comes from Hitchcock subverting traditional storytelling conventions. Only when the audience is convinced they know who the killer is, does Hitchcock reveal the psychopath to be someone else. Twenty minutes into the movie, Hitchcock reveals who he is when the audience watches him in the act as he rapes and kills. He not only makes the audience voyeurs, he makes them complicit in the crime. The camera puts the audience in the killer’s place, so the audience becomes the rapist and experiences what it’s like to look into the eyes of the victim at that point.

In True Blood, the real mystery is why did Ball, never one to shy away from shocking his audience, ignore the very aspect that makes Frenzy one of Hitchcock’s most compelling movies? Here’s where another Hitchcock movie comes in, Vertigo. Hold on tight because the world is about to shift 180 degrees. Alan Ball is following in Hitchcock’s footsteps and going for the big emotional payoff. He is letting the suspense build, so that when the truth is revealed, the shock will cause the audience to question everything they have seen up to that point because the reality they believe will turn out to be an illusion. The audience is like Sookie, self-satisfied and judgmental. We think we know what is really going on just like Sookie does with her insider’s view of the vampire world and her inability to be glamoured. Sookie will have a a humbling experience that makes her question everything that has gone on when she discovers how Bill has manipulated her. We will go through the same experience because Alan Ball wants us to learn the same lesson that is in store for Sookie. Not learn it, but internalize it and be changed by it. Alan Ball is employing the shock doctrine on us.

Andy Bellefluer knows that book knowledge is just for the test and will be forgotten the next day. He tells Jason to just get through the police exam so that he can learn to become an officer on the job like everyone else. This is also what Tara is learning the hard way. In the very first episode she reads The Shock Doctrine and soon after shows us that she understands how it works by wondering if Maudette’s death will cause Jason to have a paradigm shift. Theoretically she understands the process, but she hadn’t internalized it and been changed herself by that book knowledge because Maryann comes in and plays her lide a fiddle., using a personal crisis to remake Tara into the image of whatever it is Maryann wants her to be.

Tellling audience that book knowledge isn’t knowlege. Telling the audience that peeople are maniplated and taken advantage of whenExperiential learning is so effective because it’s not based on book knowldge. It doesn’t teach, it’s transforms. To do that, we have to go through the same transformative process that she does. The fact is that Bill manipulated Sookie and Ball is manipulating the audience.  Ball’s homage to Frenzy wasn’t René framing Jason for the murder of fangbangers. It is Bill framing René for the murder of Sookie’s grandmother.

This is the picture of a man with many faults who is framed by a sadistic psychopath. His one redeeming feature is that he has the capacity to be a good friend.

So is this.

This the the picture of the framed man’s current girlfriend. She is a barmaid. You wouldn’t know it from this picture, but she has bright red hair.  The killer will rape and murder her.

This is the picture of a woman who will share the same fate.

This is a picture of a sexually sadistic psychopathic serial killer. His mother has red hair, and one of his favorite colors is lavender.

So is this.

The psycho killer in Frenzy was a sadist who viewed women as ripe fruit to manhandle and squeeze until bursting and consume. With imagery, symbolism, and metaphor Hitchcock makes it clear that the killer views women as food and he is a careless devourer of flesh. Could this description fit Bill any better?

To further connect True Blood with  Frenzy, Ball picks up on Hitchcock’s editing and framing techniques. The most notable is the foot shot. It’s in the Frenzy trailer. As Steven Moyer and Alexander Skarsgard mention in their 2.09 commentary, nothing good comes from shots of  feet. We all know that right? We knew it when we saw a pair of feet enter Jason’s bedroom in season 1.

It’s hardly a coincidence that Hitchcock and Ball would both frame shots of their villains that way so they wouldn’t give away their identities. It’s a cliche that was used again to hide the identity of the villain in season 2. The camera followed Luke’s footsteps down the street and up to the door of Godric’s nest in ”Timebomb,” but then something strange happened. We didn’t see what we were expecting. Instead of Luke entering the building, Lorena came in. This misdirection is an editing technique that Hitchcock used in Frenzy.

So what was the purpose of  the shot of Bill’s feet as he entered Olivia’s house? I appears that he didn’t harm her, and his identity wasn’t a secret. Why was the well mannered and genteel Bill depicted as an animal stalking his prey and going in for the kill? It’s because with Bill’s second murder, the killing of Olivia, Alan Ball is starting to take off the mask that the true Bill has been hiding behind.” When the mask is stripped away, the audience will become not only witnesses in a rape and murder, but complicit in it, horrified and unable to do anything to stop Bill or to warn Sookie. She  will, no doubt, learn a few unhappy truths about Bill along the way, but she will not know him for who he really is until the end of the series.

*Based on Sunny Nala’s theories that Bill killed Gran and Olivia.

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