Two Questions...

[leahbobet]

...both spawned by the never-ending parade of posts about how terrible Twilight is.*

1) So two major YA series hit big in the last ten years: Twilight and Harry Potter. In the early part of each series, you saw what can be charitably called low production values in terms of craft, plots that revolved around blatant wish-fulfillment, and wholesale rips of the tropes of already established subgenres. Potter is the poster child for mainstream acceptance. Twilight is excoriated regularly in newspapers, the internets, and local bookstores in reenactments of the Five Minutes' Hate.

What's the difference? What causes that?

I have my own theory, but I want to hear yours.


2) Where do people get the idea that exposing a child to a worldview or idea at all means the child will automatically agree with, adopt, and adhere to that worldview or idea?

Really, peoples. You met kids?


*Haven't read it, not gonna, no opinion on the matter.

Comments

[buymeaclue.livejournal.com]

1. I find Twilight both unsettling in ungood ways and unfun, whereas I find Potter unsettling in ungood ways, but basically fun.

I don't think that's necessarily the difference for most people, but it's the difference for me. (Thus my this-is-ridiculous-but-I-kind-of-adore-it appreciation of many books with similar content done in more entertaining ways.)

2. I don't think my recent funny-thing-happened-at-the-barn bit falls into the category of posts-about-how-terrible-Twilight is, but just in case: I don't, of course. But I do think that people sometimes/often gravitate towards stuff that reinforces a worldview they believe in or (in the case of kids in particular, though they're likely as not to grow out of it) are experimenting with. So I think a certain amount of leaning on a set of assumptions that a kid seems to be lapping up in a book is not necessarily a bad thing.

Can I ask a question? Why are people suddenly freaking out about the series? Not you, but I've seen a bunch of stuff lately about it, and man, nothing people are upset about wasn't basically there in book one, years ago. Why has slamming it suddenly become the new black?

[ex-fandrogy.livejournal.com]

My guess is that the upcoming film has created extra buzz.

[leahbobet.livejournal.com]

I don't think my recent funny-thing-happened-at-the-barn bit falls into the category of posts-about-how-terrible-Twilight is

Nope. Thinking more about the reams of internet that are recently devoted to concerned essays about/mocking of/outrage against/etc., which, all knowing me, I am really just...over now.

The funny thing is (and maybe it's to do with where I'm looking), the slam-Twilight conversations don't seem to involve leaning on kids' assumptions. They're conversations between and targeted to adult audiences: not talking to kids about book content, but about kids and book content.

Can I ask a question? Why are people suddenly freaking out about the series? Not you, but I've seen a bunch of stuff lately about it, and man, nothing people are upset about wasn't basically there in book one, years ago. Why has slamming it suddenly become the new black?

I have no idea. But I suspect it has something to do with it never even hitting adult radar until there was a movie. Nobody ever freaked out about Pullman before they optioned The Golden Compass either.

(Trick to avoiding excoriation and censorship for your book? Don't sell the movie rights. You can say anything until then!)

[lisamantchev.livejournal.com]

I could get into a very long post on the differences, but I think the primary differences between the books are:

1) the worldbuilding. JK wrote a world that people still want to wallow and play in, whereas Meyer's series is based in the Real World (and we won't talk about how much of the Pac NW she got wrong.)

2) the sources of conflict. JK's is a Good vs. Evil story with Harry and his comrades battling Voldemort and the end of the world, whereas Meyer is relying a romantic conflict (with religious overtones, control-issues, and bonus stalking!)

[leahbobet.livejournal.com]

1) the worldbuilding. JK wrote a world that people still want to wallow and play in, whereas Meyer's series is based in the Real World (and we won't talk about how much of the Pac NW she got wrong.)

I actually see both as one-point-of-differentiation from the Real World types of settings: in Potter, it's the real world except there's wizards. In Twilight, it's the real world except there's vampires. And both build the hidden social structures and institutions that one point of differentiation implies.

Curious -- why specifically do you think a romantic conflict will (or should, if you think it should) get the booting more than a standard quest-type one?

[ex-fandrogy.livejournal.com]

For a lot of young readers (and their parents) these books are the first time they consider issues like female agency, or what is appropriate for "children". So I think it's easy for the critique to get especially heated because it's part of a larger discourse of feminism, female readership and its relationship to sexuality, and the discursive creation of "childhood" (itself a relatively recent invention in the Western World, and a product of leisure time when youths no longer had to work). I think especially with the Meyer books, it might be the first time that these readers have thought critically about gender representation, which seems to be the chief complaint among paid critics who have shunned the series. And this may be only tangentially related, but it may also be the first time some readers encounter a Mormon author (unless they've read some Orson Scott Card). LDS has a tradition of "celestial" or eternal/spiritual marriage which, in a series about immortal beings, could be read as especially important.

I should also add that all I know of the books is what I've read on Wikipedia (I know, I know) and what my mother has told me of them. Yes, my mother reads the series.

[leahbobet.livejournal.com]

A big chunk of this is part of why I think people are up in arms, yes.

I do have to ask, though: what's with the Mormon thing? In terms of mainstream American culture, I mean. I suspect I do not get that part of the discourse, since really, all you Christians look the same to me. ;)

[maradydd.livejournal.com]

All I know about 'em is what I've read on Wikipedia too. I've also only read the first Harry Potter book, and it didn't do a lot for me.

Neither of them are telling particularly new stories. Harry Potter taps the tradition of British school fiction, e.g. Tom Brown's Schooldays, with a dash of Dickens at least as far as the naming conventions are concerned. The summaries of the Twilight books that I've seen come off to me as tapping into ... daytime soap opera. That's enough for me to say "sorry, think I'll pass."

Harry Potter also arguably did a decent job of presenting supernatural characters who were about more than just Being Supernatural Characters. People have families, start families, are part of a community which has internal tensions and tensions with the larger community which it both belongs to and is separate from, and are also part of that larger community. For all that HP didn't really do it for me either, I appreciated that; it's something I've recognised and appreciated in other well-done stories about a Community Apart. (I watched the movie Fame for the first time about a week ago, and it handles this quite smoothly.) I'd expect the same thing from a story about, oh, I dunno, grad students or professional show jumpers or any other chosen community which demands a lot of time and effort from people who ultimately still have to pay the rent.

I get the impression that once the Twilight books get into supernatural territory, the rest of the world becomes an annoyance, something that exists only to distract Our Heroes from their Sekrit World of Supernatural Awesum.

[joeboo-k.livejournal.com]

Just guessing about the reason for Twilight bashing vs less Potter bashing is two things:
1) vampires
2) Meyer is Mormon.

On the flip side, there was pleeeeeenty of Potter bashing regarding witchcraft and Christianity. Just depends where you look.

[leahbobet.livejournal.com]

Hrm. Why d'you think vampires will get the kicking more than wizards?

(And if you have anything to clue me in re: the Mormon thing as per my question to fandrogyny, I'd appreciate it.)

Indeed there was -- interestingly, not in what I guess I could term the "mainstream culture": the kind you see in newspapers, on TV, etc. (http://cristalia.livejournal.com/272536.html?thread=2312600#t2312600)

[stillnotbored.livejournal.com]

1. Harry Potter is a semi-classic chosen one story set in a modern setting. Good vs evil and lots of things real kids can relate to: the games, the friends, being the odd one out, bullies at school, etc. There are adults in the books, but a whole lot of the story is about kids in a child's world.

Twilight from what I've read about it, discussions I've followed and interviews I've read with Meyers online, is a story about adult relationships and adult roles: marriage, pregnancy, childbirth and motherhood. Meyers admits to having the Bishop in her LDS ward vet her books. If half of what I've read is true, and I think it is or people wouldn't be so upset, the male/female relationships in this book are twisted and abusive. Anti-feminist religious propaganda disguised as fantasy, where women will put up with abuse and men have all the power.

Do I want legions of little girls adoring this and taking it as a role model? No.

2. I have met kids. Majored in psychology and child development and raised a couple of my own. What you have to keep in mind is that not all kids are strong. Not all of them are you or me or most of our friends.

There are kids out there who will soak up the ideas and the attitudes in these books like a sponge, especially if they don't have role models in their life to counter what they read or who pay attention, or actually talk to them once in awhile. Way too many kids are looking for something to latch on to in terms of how things are supposed to work.

World views and ideas of how adult relationships work start in childhood, they don't come pre-installed. And exposing kids to everything only works if the adults in their lives are there to discuss why letting your boyfriend smack you around isn't a good thing or why every woman's role in life isn't to be a wife, mother and servant to her husband.

[cucumberseed.livejournal.com]

Not having read Twilight, not sure, but I have some guesses, and take these for what they are worth, which is not an awful lot at all. Take these also with half a question mark at the end.

1) Twilight got recognition after the Potterdammerung, and perhaps that vein in adult readers of YA can only be mined once.

2) Similar production values does not mean similar outcomes. Rowling and Meyers may be comparable writers but their books are quite, I'd imagine, different. There might be differences in style that make one more engaging to adults than the other.

3) Potter's POV is a boy, Meyers' POV is a girl. Both of them display reasonable facsimiles of average gendered/age behavior, and for some unfaaaaaaathomable reason, readers find one set of behaviors more irritating than the other.

4) All wish fulfillment is not equal; I might argue that being a special snowflake because you have magical powers and a great destiny appeals to more ages/sexes/sexualities than being a special snowflake because a pretty magical thingamabob decides you are their soulmate. OTOH, to test that, we'd need to pair Twilight off with a Magical Girlfriend series to make sure that, again, the wish fulfillment is not constructed to be highly gendered (and not to skew the data before the test, but I have a conclusion and therefore would not be the best one to test it).

5) Girl Cooties.

6) On the other side, I've heard that the Twilight books promote some very fucked up relationship and gender dynamics, and while the Potter books have some fucked up dynamics (relationship and gender dynamics, no less) a lot of them are kind of mitigated by the fact that the POV characters are other than us, they are magicians, and a lot of their creepy dynamics involve use of wish-fulfillment power. Bella is a normal human being and her dynamics involve being in a relationship with a controlling, jealous person (with super powers, who sparkles).

[csinman.livejournal.com]

Somewhat guiltily, I admit #5 is one reason I've not read it. In fact, when I picked it up in the store and realized the main conflict was centered around whether or not some people end up snogging, I had to wipe my hands on my pants.

(Seriously, romance is good and all, but Twilight didn't appear to have the political and social plotting depth of Potter. No $17.99 from me!)

[csinman.livejournal.com]

I haven't read the Twilight series, so don't relate this specifically to those books.

That said, regarding #2: Wizards and vampires serve as metaphors; I'm sure it's no surprise to anyone here that the people who assume children are stupid, malleable sheep are the same people who don't know what a bloody metaphor is.

[leahbobet.livejournal.com]

I suspect it's what they're metaphors for that gets people so upset, actually.

[erinya.livejournal.com]

Because Twilight is poorly written and imagined, while Potter provides that rich fantasy world that grown-ups and children crave?

[leahbobet.livejournal.com]

I think the problem is that's entirely subjective. What I read of Potter (maybe a third of the first book?) I found poorly written and imagined -- which is to say that's more to do with what kind of reader you are, what you want from a book, than any essential quality of the book itself.

Clearly enough people found both a rich fantasy world that fit their reading needs -- they both sold huge amounts of copies. And anecdotally, we had several very broad and intelligent teenage readers who were store regulars who utterly flipped out over Twilight -- clearly it met a need for them.

What I'm hoping to get at is why the general discourse seems to feel as you said: that Twilight is some kind of evil.

[amy34.livejournal.com]

The difference for me is that Harry Potter is an empowering series--about kids, both boys and girls, taking action to fight the bad guys when adults are unwilling or unable to help--while Twilight is disempowering for women, about submerging one's identity for the sake of a boyfriend who possesses all the power and makes all the decisions.

[redplum.livejournal.com]

Well, on the Mormon thing, fundamentalist Mormons have been in the news a lot in the last few years in the U.S. because of the pedophilia/sexual abuse/forced marriage/polygamy scandals related to Warren Jeffs, et al. So a lot of people are probably more sensitized to issues of sex and power coming from a Mormon author than they would be if she were, say, Lutheran. (And a lot -- maybe the majority -- of non-Mormon Christians in the U.S. don't consider Mormons to be Christians at all, given the different scriptures, etc.)

As to the main question, most of the concern I've seen has to do with two things: 1.) the sex and power relationships in Twilight strike many people as obviously troubling, and 2.) a lot of Twilight fans are more Edward-fans than fans of the series as a world. I'd say it's more comparable to the reactions of adolescent girls to Elvis, or to boy-bands, than to the more heterogeneous passions of Harry Potter fans. There's a lot of "Edward Cullen has spoiled me for real men! I'll never love anyone but Edward!" going around; a friend of mine who's a high-school teacher and teen bookseller hasn't ever seen anything like it. I think the sexual passions of young girls tend to freak people out for several reasons, including a generalized disapproval of young female sexuality and a more specific disapproval when said sexuality when directed at a character many readers consider to be borderline abusive or otherwise troubling.

Admittedly, most of the anti-Twilight essays I've read have been fairly moderate.

I'm really interested in your take.

[leahbobet.livejournal.com]

(And a lot -- maybe the majority -- of non-Mormon Christians in the U.S. don't consider Mormons to be Christians at all, given the different scriptures, etc.)

Sorry, I have to pause to tangentially giggle a little. You believe in a dude named Jesus and that he was divine? DING! Christian! We follow the one-drop rule around here!

Okay. Sorry. Done now. *g*

2.) a lot of Twilight fans are more Edward-fans than fans of the series as a world. I'd say it's more comparable to the reactions of adolescent girls to Elvis, or to boy-bands, than to the more heterogeneous passions of Harry Potter fans.

While I agree that there's a lot of boy-band thing going on here, I suspect that's not something eldritch and weird, but merely a side-effect of who the target market is. As you said, same effect as with musicians. Just this time, it's for a character.

Also, I would believe you more about Potter fans if I did not know the utter horror of its fanfic community, sprawled across the internet like a giant pornographic beast, holding flamewars because someone dared dis their OTP. :p

[noizangel.livejournal.com]

I've read 'em. I've read Midnight Sun. The icon says it all. The thing that scares me is how close love and violence are linked.

I'll say more maybe, when not working, but I wasn't horrified at first.

I think a big part of it is the writing of both authors - JKR seems to me to have a better grasp of it then Meyer, who seems to reject all 'authorly' type things. After Twilight, the writing goes sharply downhill.

[barbarienne.livejournal.com]

Caveat: I have not read Twilight.

Potter is enjoyable even for an adult. There are levels where it deals with morally complex issues in morally complex ways. Furthermore, the story grows and changes over the course of the seven books, moving from Gary-Stu-but-Fun to a fair degree of thoughtfulness about the price of being a hero. Potter also has an essentially idealistic mindset and message re tolerance, standing up to injustice, sticking by one's friends, etc.

Twilight, from what I hear, has a main character who is essentially a Stupid Teenage Girl (as opposed to a Clever Teenage Girl), and few adults can enjoy that. If one was never a STG, then one certainly hasn't developed more tolerance for it with age. And if one is a former STG, being reminded of it is probably painful rather than entertaining.

That said, my understanding is that Twilight is appealing to many despite the STG behavior--the author does enough hand-waving and other entertainment to make the books enjoyable. I think, however, the implosion came down on the last book because instead of STG becoming capable and smart, she went fully down the STG road; in addition, the melodramatic stuff moved into silly and squicky, and broke the suspension of disbelief.

I suspect that more than one ex-reader of the Anita Blake books now has a trigger point for when a vampire author moves from the interesting to the ludicrous.

Potter never crossed the ludicrous line.

[veejane.livejournal.com]

In re #1, the difference is that Snape is not sparkly. He is greasy. If he were sparkly, I would larf and larf possibly people would opine about it.

(Also, I mean, the latter HP books have been judged somewhat harshly by Yours Truly, but I don't think they ever inspired a review in the Washington Post that ended, "Reader, I hurled." I don't know what happens in books 6 and 7 of the HP series -- not having read them -- but I can't recall their being described as actually sucking. Sloppily edited and overinflated, yes.)

In re #2, the whole idea of exposing children to things in a positive way is that they model the behavior they witness. Not in all ways, and not by any stretch a complete world-view, but... monkey see, monkey do isn't a saying for no reason. So yes, exposing a child to a worldview gives that child the chance to espouse that worldview later on. Where normalizing behavior that is beyond the pale is concerned (wherever you set the pale to be), the chance is more than most prefer to take.

I speak primarily from the perspective of somebody who points and laughs rather than takes the ramparts in these arguments. Although, I have to say, Twilight is SO much more point-and-laughable than HP. Even the excerpts I have managed to subject myself to have included Felonious Abuse of a Thesaurus in the First Degree, to say nothing of "Oh shut up and tell me what happened already, you fulminating author" syndrome. And anyway, it has sparkly vampires and that will never stop being funny.

[pnkrokhockeymom.livejournal.com]

I don't know if I can say why there is THAT much of an uproar about the books. I read them. I disliked them heartily. But I read them because I fancy myself a future YA writer, and one who writes about female protagonists in a fantasy setting, and those books are immensely popular. The fact that I may find them (as I do) so poorly written as to be annoying (and more so book after book) does not change the fact that teenage girls really liked them. So I thought that I might be able to learn something of value by reading them.

But I don't think they are the biggest EVIL on the planet or the biggest danger EVER to teen girls. I tend to not get all up in arms about teen reading except to the extent that they are NOT reading. I was a teen reader. I read the most "inappropriate" stuff from the age of 10 on, and I seem to have turned out okay. I don't tend to think that groups like PTAs should be getting together to talk of banning books or thinking that they are the worst things that could ever happen to their children.

That said, I am *bothered* by the books and think they are ripe for and should be subject to strong criticism that creates discussion about the stories. The difference for me between the Potter books is that to a large extent the Potter books are about what Harry *does*, while these books are about what is *done* to our heroine. That greater emphasis on being acted upon, *especially* in a female protagonist, bothers me. In, you know, the academic, subject to criticism sort of sense.

Also, I do think there is an emphasis on "Love is Possession" in the Twilight books that ought not to be celebrated in books aimed at tween girls. The conflation of love/ownership/potential for violence/passion, presented without a critical eye but instead almost as something to celebrate, seriously squicks me out.

But this is not something new or unique, right? So many of the romancesI read when I was younger--including those aimed at teens--had this same focus. Or, you know, *Gossip Girl* type TV shows (which I do admit I sometimes watch), or music videos or slasher flicks. The "your boyfriend's crazed jealousy means he loves you" trope is neither new nor unique to Twilight. So while I dislike the books, and I think there is a lot in them to which we could and should apply social/feminist criticism, I'm not about to start a bonfire in my backyard, either.

Sorry this got so long.

[lotusice.livejournal.com]

I really like what you have to say, here.

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

Potter escapes because it's for kids, and though its structure is dead cliche, the decoration (the spells and so forth) are rife with wit and cleverness.

Twlight is supposedly for an older audience, it is a fairly blatant argument for abstention, substituting lots of emo and angst for sexual activity.

[pnkrokhockeymom.livejournal.com]

Oh, yes, this. And not just emo and angst, but emo, and angst, and the threat of certain violence if you go too far.

[shiroiko.livejournal.com]

I've read all but the last of the Twilight novels and all of the Harry Potter novels.

Harry Potter was fun fluff. Yes, it was annoying how all the adults were generally painfully stupid and Harry lucking into the solution to the main problem of each book was a bit simplistic, but overall they're an entertaining read and feature some great side characters (Weasley twins for the win!).

Twilight was insipid. Really... just horrific. I really just can't take another idiot Mary Sue protagonist. Bella is boring as all hell, and yet everyone loves her. The author never SHOWS why everyone adores her so much, she just SAYS they do, and that there is some shoddy writing.

On top of that there's the quite disturbing relationships that Bella involves herself in. Both of her love interests act in extremely creepy and abusive ways and yet the author's viewpoint is that this is romantic, not a warning sign of dysfunctional relationship. I cannot stress how purely disturbed I was with the actions the two main love interests throughout the first three books. Pnkrokhockeymom summed it up well in defining the theme of both romantic relationships as "love is possession". It makes me frightened that Meyer thinks this is what romantic relationships should be like.

As for the Mormon thing, having real nearly everything OSC has written and then reading the Twilight books makes me wonder if it's just a coincidental link between the two writers writing some weak and painfully underutilized female characters or if the religion both share has somehow influenced both of their views of what females are capable of (or NOT capable of, in both cases) and what their roles in life should be. I'd really want to read more fiction by Mormon writers to find out.

[tithenai.livejournal.com]

So far as I'm concerned, I will never read Twilight because the actual books couldn't possibly be better than cleolinda's recaps of them. And even there I got bored at a point. I really enjoy the industry of mockery that's sprung up in its wake, though.

1) I enjoyed the HP series. There was often stuff to nitpick, but I enjoyed it. On the other hand, I picked up Twilight, flipped it open randomly, read two pages, and burst out laughing. The writing was just terrible. Rowling, for all her flaws, at least had invisible prose mos of the time. But Bella's first person narrative is so syrupy and ridiculous that I couldn't stand it. I may yet try to read them, but knowing how the series develops, I can't really be bothered.

2) You know, I mocked the Bible Belt's book burnings (alliteration ftw!) and their notion that children would START PRACTICING WITCHCRAFT ZOMG if they read HP. But I think there's something more insidious going on with the Twilight books. I mean, to be perfectly honest, I think 19th century novels inform my morality alot more than I like to admit. I don't think it's a reason not to read books, mind, or to keep your children from reading them; I think it's all the more reason to encourage discussion of books kids read.

(edited to provide actual link)

[leahbobet.livejournal.com]

I really enjoy the industry of mockery that's sprung up in its wake, though.

I'm sort of tired of it now. :p Which is why I am attempting to gather data/make Socratic points via LJ. My theory on why it happens has a lot less to do with the thing itself and more to do with...how groups construct their identity, I guess?

You know, I mocked the Bible Belt's book burnings (alliteration ftw!) and their notion that children would START PRACTICING WITCHCRAFT ZOMG if they read HP. But I think there's something more insidious going on with the Twilight books.

See, that's the thing. I think they're exactly equivalent. Something's shown up that rattles whatever you'd label People Like Us in the same way that HP rattles the Bible Belt. And it is not being taken very gracefully. Which I say in observation, not in harsh beardy Godlike wrathful judgment.

[takumashii.livejournal.com]

I'm loath to think that I have anything new to say after 68 comments -

I read Twilight when I was in library school, when only the first book was out, and I had a really mixed reaction, roughly:

-That it was fair-to-middling on a craft level, perhaps half a notch below Harry Potter. But I think that our culture considers romantic writing more mockable than non-romantic writing - even among romance writers, there are web sites dedicated to mocking purple prose or bad covers, and Fabio is a joke that I can't find any parallels for in Tom Clancy war-porn-suspense or another genre marketed at men.

-That it was, despite craft flaws and feminist doom, kind of sexy and compulsively readable.

-That it was hella creepy from a feminist point of view, to such an extent that I had read the entire thing fully expecting Bella to figure out that it wasn't wise to have a vampire boyfriend with an anger problem and jealousy/possessiveness issues.

-That in my own youth I had read my way through Sailor Moon, Fushigi Yuugi, and later a long run of Japanese romance novels, all of which exposed me to hella creepy views of relationships and sexuality, and I hadn't been brainwashed by them, and it was vaguely condescending of me to expect other children to be brainwashed by them. (I was also much annoyed by Naomi Wolf's excoriation of Gossip Girls and similar novels, for the same reason.)

I think my reaction got less mixed as the books became both creepier and sillier as the series went on - to the point where I'm not particularly concerned about The Children, I just think they're hilarious.

[leahbobet.livejournal.com]

That is indeed new to say.

We are indeed harder and worse on romantic writing. I suspect it's still classed as Girl Stuff. Versus other things, which are Important Stuff.

And yes. It's more than vaguely condescending. This is a large component of my problem with the LJ discourse on the topic. It is being rather shitty to the readers whose welfare it purports to be concerned with.

[kateelliott.livejournal.com]

#1

Rowling has wit; there are some really funny bits and passages in the Potter books. Also, I liked many of the characters and the way they interacted. There were also plenty of cliches and lazy writing, but her cleverness out weighed that, for me as a reader (although I found the epilogue disappointing). Not Michael Chabon level writing, needless to say, but an enjoyable light read with some deeper themes.

I could not get far into Twilight. The writing fell flat, it was too angsty serious, the girl bored me, and I, having grown up in a small town, could not even for a heartbeat believe the beautiful high school vampires. It just all struck me as dumb.

#2 Dunno.

otoh, my children have extremely similar political and worldviews to my own, so I wonder if I brainwashed them!

[leahbobet.livejournal.com]

Perhaps I approach things this way because my sister and I both have extremely different worldviews from those of our parents. And they're two very opposite different worldviews. Even though, for all our formative years, we went to the same schools, had the same family friends, and attended the same religious institutions.

A lot of what I dislike about the LJ discourse on Twilight is how it neatly ignores the whole idea that teenage readers have agency.

[ginny-t.livejournal.com]

There's too many comments to read them all, so I apologise in advance for repetition.

There's the validation effect, that says that the more often someone is exposed to something, the more likely they are to respond positively. It's something that advertising and politicians use a lot (and darned depressing).

The whole tween industry relies on malleability of young minds. Someone who's already vehemently opposed to the unhealthy relationship that's at the heart of Twilight probably won't even finish the first book. On the other hand, afaik (I also haven't and won't read it) it plays to the Disney-style fairy tale of Grand Romance™ that trumps everything, even common sense and individuality. It's a horribly unhealthy relationship, but so are most relationships in mainstream media. Stalking and romantic behaviour are frightfully similar, after all. (Which is something I think Criminal Minds is playing with lately [sorry to tangent].)

The thing that disturbs me more than the kids reading and loving it is the adults, the mothers with children eating it up like candy. It's bad candy, but they want the sugar fix, the fantasy, the escape. It rots the brain, and they should know better. Instead, they happily gobble it up as fast as they can.

As for the difference between Twilight and HP (disclaimer: haven't read one, read the other grudgingly), I think it might have to do with that fix. HP wasn't great and had some deep flaws. I found it very wanting. However, it was at least more satisfying, and to a larger demographic, than Twilight. HP at least involved some empowerment, and some of the characters worked at that. Twilight is about being rescued. HP was partly about coming together to form a team (more or less).