While a white dude blows away a bunch of black people, no less. I don't even know what I'm supposed to think of all that.

I think the juxtaposition was purposeful, I just don't think it necessarily worked.

I feel like the season would have been tighter if it had looked strictly at female vs. male power, but at the same time it would have been less interesting -- it's not as if all women everywhere are united womanhood, and we all know it. But if you're going to do both, do it ... better? We've never even seen Marie interact with anyone outside the Salem witches for any length of time (aside from LaLaurie), and Hank, who was introduced as an element of the Salem witches' story. Marie's coven, or whatever, doesn't have a lot of purpose except to react to/antagonize Fiona's crew.

So far the Patti Lupone thing is another bad mother example, I guess? So far all the mothers of boys have been horrors -- her with the enemas and the Bible-thumping, and Kyle's mother with the incest. Hank's mother seems conspicuously absent.

But I don't know what they're saying about motherhood in general -- none of the girls' mothers are shining examples of maternal warmth, either.

I get the feeling that someone was trying to write about racial issues without the knowledge to handle it. Like talk to some actual Black people,dude or dudette.

One blown opportunity: Queenie. She was an obese Black girl, but in the first episode she mentioned being at the top of her class in math. And yeah, she was stuck in a shitty chicken shack, but was the manager. At like I think 16? And on the other hand she did not seem to get people very well. And I was like; cool. They are playing against stereotype. They have a fat black girl who is a book smart, and people and street dumb. A female geek who is not just a male geek fantasy.

And from then on, absolutely nothing showed her as being book smart. In this last episode she is picking films to educate LaLaurie about racism. And she picks the Roots series? Which is know for lousy history? And freaking Mandingo? I have no problem with her being pushed around like a chess piece by people like Fiona and LeVeau who are clearly master class manipulators and button pushers. But, in spite of occasional articulate outbursts of insight, Queenie seems stupid about everything. Which makes her a stupid fat black girl. In short a really awful and prevalent racial stereotype.

Or again LeVeau - much more of a stereotype than she needed to be. The historical LeVeau owned slaves. And her second husband was white. And she had tons of white followers. I'm not saying they need to be historically accurate. And even given the background, hundreds of years of disappointment every time it looked like things were going to get better could well have changed her attitude. But still, it seems like they are not making her particularly a complex character. Fiona gets to have contradictions, doing horrible things but still caring about her daughter, and maybe even (for selfish reasons while she is dying and no longer had a long term ftures) even about her coven. We have seen her do at least one random act of kindness. LeVeau seems to pretty much exist to get rich, and get the Salem witches. It takes being the sole survivor of a massacre to get her past that. She is not allowed the complexity and contractions of Fiona. Even LaLaurie is allowed more complexity than LaVeau is.

So should I watch AHS? What I'd heard about the first season sounded too creepy for me, but my juniors are addicted to the show and keep telling me how much it connects to what we've been talking about in class (?!?). I don't want to watch something that will creep me out completely, but I would like to be more informed about how "accurate" it is re: American history. Is it weirder or more disturbing than True Blood, for example?

Uh. I'm pretty sure accuracy is way down the list on the things the show is concerned about.

Yeah - the object is to tell a good story. Concern with accuracy is close to zero. I will say it is worth watching for over the topness and fuckedupness. And amazing acting.

What are you guys studying, Pix?

I haven't watched TB in yonks, so I can compare, but there's some disturbing stuff, for sure, but also some really funny momemts.

It's discussion-worthy, for sure.

We talk a lot about big ideas of American identity, especially in terms of race and gender. We are about halfway through Huck Finn currently, so we've been talking a lot about caricature; I did a lesson on minstrel shows and blackface recently to talk about how Jim starts out as a completely stereotypical Jim Crow caricature but then develops (at least somewhat) into more of a real character as the story continues. We've also talked a fair amount about the tension between the Old South and the New South (mainly when we were reading Streetcar, but in Huck too) and realism vs romanticism.

Watching the show could spur a lot of interesting discussions about race, but like Dana said, historical accuracy, not so much.

Pix,

Having never watched the show until this season, my feeling is that AHS:Coven is kind of a masterclass on how to troll on race and gender issues.

It is not more gory than True Blood (hard to be since this is FX), but it shares TB's over the top aesthetic.

I would agree that it trolls rather than explores.