Entries in the Category "bram stoker's dracula"
The Twilight Phenomenon
Can I talk for a minute myself about the Twilight phenomenon? You might have heard that New Moon is kicking ass at the box office, thanks to the expendable incomes of both 14-year-old girls and their 45-year-old mothers. You might also have heard that the movies are adaptations of an adolescent book series.
I have not read these books. I’m not particularly interested in reading the books. I’m not a huge fan of the vampire thing anyway—I love Gothicism, but as it happens I’m more about ghosts and haunted houses, although I will grant that Bram Stoker’s Dracula is actually really good—and the romance element of it means nothing to me. I have never read romance novels, and again, I’m not particularly interested in starting.
On the other hand, I know a lot of people who have read the Twilight books, both people in real life and people in literature forums online whose opinions I trust. Most of them acknowledge that the writing is a bit amateur, but that the stories are undeniable page-turners. The literary equivalent of a TV crime procedural. Twilight and Order. CSI: Forks, WA. Although I don’t like it when people want to compare guilty pleasure reading with canonical literature (“oh, Twilight is just as good as Pride and Prejudice, you’re just being a snob about it”), I don’t have fundamental issues with people who want to float around in the guilty pleasure camp indefinitely. There are a lot of corners of my life in which I unapologetically take it easy.
Besides, one thing that is emphatically in the Twilight series’ favor—which can also be said for the Harry Potter series, which I have also not read—is that it appeals to people who are in general non-readers, and this, I would never quibble with. Reading is like pot—it’s a gateway drug! The more you do of it, the more you want to do it. (P.S., Mom, I speak hypothetically having never smoked pot.) If some fourteen-year-old girl wants to read Twilight from cover to cover and then tentatively graduate on to Wuthering Heights? I want to encourage her to do so. (Even if she doesn’t move beyond Twilight, at least it’s a couple hours she won’t spend watching The Real Housewives of Atlanta, know what I’m saying?)
One question I’ve been entertaining myself with is whether I would have been one of those Twilight obsessives if it had come out ten years earlier, or fifteen, or twenty. Looking back, completely clear-eyed, taking into consideration the goofy stuff I liked at various ages, I think I can honestly state that by fourteen or fifteen I would have been too old for Twilight. I had already started reading really good stuff by that age, and even though you can graduate on to Wuthering Heights from Twilight, I don’t think that you can go backwards.
I don’t want to play like I’m too cool for Twilight, though, because I really don’t think that’s the case. I watched Supernatural for two seasons because the brothers were hotties. And those airdates won’t lie, either; I was indeed in my twenties at the time. As a preteen I swooned over many a piece of even more ridiculous tripe. Had Twilight been placed into my hands around age twelve? Yeah, I think I would’ve fallen for it.
I will say this much: I am glad that I am a grown-up now and not feeling peer pressure to turn on to Twilight. One night I happened upon the Cracked.com complete series recap. I was not aware of the actual plots of these books—especially the later ones—and when I read this for the first time I was utterly shocked. Understand that if you read this, you may have an extreme reaction, such as bleeding out of the ears. (I am not kidding. Prepare yourself.)
In case that was too graphic for you, try this: the hilariously embittered commentary of Will and Tara at Sling Blog (who every week see the #1 movie of the previous weekend).
11:40:56AM Will Edmondson: I mean, if there's anything to be said in defense of the movie, it's that it definitely knows its audience, and it appeals to that audience. The problem is: that audience is not something that I want to admit exists.