The bust of Hermes in Russell Edington’s living room, identifies him with that god.
According to Wikipedia, ” The Homeric hymn to Hermes invokes him as the one “of many shifts (polytropos), blandly cunning, a robber, a cattle driver, a bringer of dreams, a watcher by night, a thief at the gates, one who was soon to show forth wonderful deeds among the deathless gods.” He is the guide to the Underworld, the patron of boundaries and travelers, shepherds, herds, thieves, liars, orators, and commerce. He invented several musical instruments including the lyre, the forerunner to the modern harp. Before he was reduced to being Zeus’s errand boy, Hermes was a trickster god and the original sandman, waking and inducing sleep with the touch of his caduseus.
This aspect of Hermes is reflected in True Blood with the emphasis on sleep at Russell’s palace. When Bill arrives at the palace Russell and Talbot put him to bed. During Bill’s second night at the palace, Russell does something extremely odd. After telling Bill to ‘sleep on’ the things they’ve been discussing, he touches his pointed index finger to Bill’s forehead. This is the sandman inducing sleep, bringing Bill the dream that will induce him to change his mind and his loyalties.
One myth that is probably going to come into play is the one about Hermes stealing Apollo’s herd of cattle. There has been a lot of speculation that Russell may have killed Eric’s father Ulfric and stolen a pack of werewolves that he controlled and used for military purposes.
The idea of Russell Edington being the patron of travelers is like Sam’s mother’s repeated declaration that her family are not alcoholics. The very oldest pre-Olympian Hermes was represented by carved phallic stones which were used as boundary markers. One night all these stones in Athens were vandalized. That act set in to motion the events, which led to the execution of Socrates when his pupil, Alcibiades, was implicated in the crime. This bit of history is especially worth noting since Charlaine Harris links Alcide with Alcibiades in a number of ways. First she uses the real Alcibiades’s family and political history as the basis for Alcide’s. She then uses Plato’s fictionalized jealous romantically confused version as the basis for Alcide’s chaotic lovelife and alludes to Shakespeare’s Alcibiades who searches for the lost Bill Timon. The first night at Club Dead when Alcide introduced Sookie to Debbie, twice she is called a prostitute, first by Debbie and later in the thoughts of one of the patrons, alluding to the two acerbic prostitutes who accompanied Alcibiades in Timon of Athens.
Herveux isn’t an authentic surname, so what meaning can be derived from this made up name? ‘Her’ could be traced to Hera the same way etymologists link the first part of the name “Hercules’ with the goddess, and ‘veux’ is French for calf. Alcide’s name indicates that he is the one who is watching over Hera’s Bill’s heifer, Sookie, while he’s away, just like Argus did for Hera. Remember that the possible involvement of Alcibiades in the vandalism against Hermes’s phallic monuments led to the execution of Socrates? Is Alcide implicated in Talbot’s death or the destruction of the palace? Is this what leads to Eric being brought before the magister? . The name Sookie, is used as a cow call in the South to this day. Alcide better watch his back because Russell Hermes killed Argus.
So if Russell is the messenger god Hermes, does the bust in Bill’s office of Artemis in Bill’s study link him with the goddess of the moon and the hunt?
What about the bronze in Eric’s office?
*In the Sookie Stackhouse novels, Alcide was one of Eric’s alter egos, but in the episode 3 postmortem, writer Alexander Woo says that Alide’s character parallels Bill’s in True Blood.
updated 6/30/10
Not Just a Pretty Face
by anna tsogyal
When I first saw this image of Talbot I wasn’t sure who it reminded me of, and then I remembered this from Derek Jarman’s film, Carravagio. A younger version perhaps?
Caravaggio was a 16th century Italian painter, born in Milan, who spent some time in Rome where he painted A Boy with a Basket of Fruit, on which the still from Jarman’s picture is based. There has been some controversy about whether Caravaggio was gay or bisexual; however he did become something of a gay icon, which would have appealed to Jarman who was both a painter and film director.
The fruit in this painting is not perfect, some of the leaves are blemished or diseased which seems to be unusual as most painters of the time idealised whatever they painted. Caravaggio painted other naturalistic still lifes, and the table decorations in Russell Edgington’s mansion have centrepieces of flowers and fruit that look as if they were inspired by a still life painting.
Connections have been drawn between Russell as the Celtic god, Lugus, and Talbot as his companion, Rosmerta, so I’d like to add another tale to the mix. It seems that Julius Caesar was responsible for connecting Lugus to Hermes, and others have included Lugh and Llew Law Gyffes as counterparts as well. The Welsh Llew Law Gyffes doesn’t seem to have as many parallels but there is an interesting story about him in the Mabinogion. He was forbidden to take a human wife so a woman called Blodwyn was created for him out of flowers.
We’ve already learnt from Alan Ball and Daniel Minahan’s Frenzy commentary that they took some of their inspiration for Queen Sophie Anne’s palace from Pasolini’s controversial film Salò which is an examination of the abuse of power.
Since one of the themes this season is political extremism, it seemed to be worth looking at other Italian and European films which might have provided some kind of inspiration, conscious or unconscious.
Pasolini was closely linked with the neo-realist school of Italian cinema and one of the subjects of neo-realist films was Italian fascism. The neo-realist directors included Bernardo Bertolucci whose film, The Conformist, was a exploration of the mentality of those who became fascist and the possible causes of their involvement.
The Conformist tells the story of Marcello, a young man living in Italy at the time of Mussolini, who is desperate to create the illusion of normality by rejecting his past, which includes a homosexual incident with the family chauffeur and a murder. Marcello joins the Fascist Party and his attempt to conform to society’s expectations includes marriage and later, on the orders of the Party, the murder of an anti-fascist professor. His story is told mostly in flashbacks and on occasion even those flashbacks have flashbacks. After the fall of the fascist regime Marcello is prepared to accuse others of his own actions to save his own skin in another attempt to conform.
The illusion of normality sounds to me a bit like mainstreaming and the flashbacks and the unsavoury past of the young man in question also reminded me of how the writers are telling Bill’s story. Both characters use the veneer of civility to hide their inner selves. Marcello uses the conventions of bourgeois society, and Bill the manners of a Southern gentleman.
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