True Blood: When Philosophy and Pop Culture Collide

http://thoughtcatalog.com/2010/true-blood-and-philosophy-blackwell/


As an avid fan of the show True Blood, this article caught my attention. I appreciate Thought Catalog's articles in general for their ability to blend pop culture and academics, something it seems people are often afraid to do. While I'm no expert on pop culture or television shows, (who has time to watch?) I do allow myself a few guilty pleasures, True Blood being one of them. While some of the philosophy connections seem a little farfetched, it's nonetheless interesting to consider them. As a student of writing and literature, and someone who hopes to eventually teach both, I am interested in the unconventional ways of learning and the ability to use entities that appeal to the masses in order to help explain ideas that are otherwise fairly complex.

This summer I spent most of my theory class contemplating such things, as I tried desperately to grasp the beautiful yet convoluted thoughts of my professor. A man I truly admired for his unyielding propensity to go against the grain in his methods of teaching. He died this week. I feel both privileged and enlightened at having been given the opportunity to learn from someone “whose favorite approach was to take the conventional wisdom about a subject and turn it upside down or otherwise expose it to radical skepticism” and whose students “loved his wide ranging intellect and imagination: his ability to make quick, unexpected connections between theory, literature and popular culture,” as he was described by one of his colleagues.

I can’t imagine what it must have been like to live inside of his head, but perhaps it wouldn’t hurt for us all to strive for this type of thinking every now and then; to question the norm rather than accepting it, and to always remember to ask the why.

Well, until next time.