Why the Twilight Series Is so Popular?
Sammy Bratcher
Greg Hagan
Eng 101
4-3-13
Classmates Why the Twilight series is so popular?
“Twi-hards,” fans of the infamous Twilight series, are known to be some of the craziest and feverish fans out there. Ever since the series was first launched as books in 2005 and later released as films in 2008, the vampire/werewolf craze has invaded the American culture and has even extended into international cultures, becoming a popular commodity of our consumer culture. Why has the series become so popular? Why are Twi-hards a particular type of audience with such eccentric characteristics? This is because the Twilight reader/spectator is sucked into both the fantastical world of the fiction novels and the cinematic world of the sci-fi romance film series as part of both the literary and cinematic apparatuses while the series could be considered a postmodernist “pastiche” of traditional monster stories, making it appealing to contemporary mass culture. Fredric Jameson’s postmodernist consumer society approach is the applicator model to follow.
First let’s examine the character analysis of the books of Twilight relating to the postmodernist concept of “pastiche.” The characters Twilight author Stephenie Meyer created are a normal human girl that happens to fall in love with a vampire who thirsts for her blood and befriends another boy who will later transform into a werewolf. “Pastiche” is part of the complex concept of postmodernism. Jameson describes postmodernism as “specific reactions against…high modernism” and “the erosion of the older distinction between high culture and so-called mass or popular culture,” and specifies postmodernism’s use in “that newly emergent social order of late capitalism” (Jameson 1-3). The Twilight story does not exactly fit all aspects of this certain definition and usage of postmodernism, but it applies postmodernist consumer theories in a way. Using a “pastiche,” “the imitation of a peculiar or
Greg Hagan
Eng 101
4-3-13
Classmates Why the Twilight series is so popular?
“Twi-hards,” fans of the infamous Twilight series, are known to be some of the craziest and feverish fans out there. Ever since the series was first launched as books in 2005 and later released as films in 2008, the vampire/werewolf craze has invaded the American culture and has even extended into international cultures, becoming a popular commodity of our consumer culture. Why has the series become so popular? Why are Twi-hards a particular type of audience with such eccentric characteristics? This is because the Twilight reader/spectator is sucked into both the fantastical world of the fiction novels and the cinematic world of the sci-fi romance film series as part of both the literary and cinematic apparatuses while the series could be considered a postmodernist “pastiche” of traditional monster stories, making it appealing to contemporary mass culture. Fredric Jameson’s postmodernist consumer society approach is the applicator model to follow.
First let’s examine the character analysis of the books of Twilight relating to the postmodernist concept of “pastiche.” The characters Twilight author Stephenie Meyer created are a normal human girl that happens to fall in love with a vampire who thirsts for her blood and befriends another boy who will later transform into a werewolf. “Pastiche” is part of the complex concept of postmodernism. Jameson describes postmodernism as “specific reactions against…high modernism” and “the erosion of the older distinction between high culture and so-called mass or popular culture,” and specifies postmodernism’s use in “that newly emergent social order of late capitalism” (Jameson 1-3). The Twilight story does not exactly fit all aspects of this certain definition and usage of postmodernism, but it applies postmodernist consumer theories in a way. Using a “pastiche,” “the imitation of a peculiar or
Cited: Hardwicke, Catherine. Twilight. 2008. Summit Entertainment. Film. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S2T7d8j6I5I Jameson, Fredric. 1988. “Postmodernism and Consumer Society.” Postmodernism and Its Discontents. Ed. Ann Kaplan. London: Verso. pp. 13-29. Meyer, Stephenie. Twilight. Little, Brown and Company, 2005. Print.