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?

[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!)

[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.

[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!)

[buymeaclue.livejournal.com]

Oh, good. I guessed not, but I keep overreacting to everything this week so I figured, why stop now? :-p

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.

Not just where you're looking, alas. Insert so many nods that I look like a bobblehead.

[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?

[lisamantchev.livejournal.com]

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?

The stated or implied sexual overtones leave the door WIDE open for approval/disapproval. Twilight deals with adolescent lurve, and way the two main characters deal with their attraction; any decision the author makes on their behalf is subject to approval or condemnation by adults, parents, and teens.

[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.

[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]

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]

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. ;)

[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!)

[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)

[cucumberseed.livejournal.com]

While I have every reason to suspect it's a foul book, and not fun at all, I cannot just dismiss that factor. Also, while I like a story with love, I am a hard sell on a story solely about love.

[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.

[csinman.livejournal.com]

I hadn't even heard Meyers was LDS until this post! haha

[leahbobet.livejournal.com]

Eh, I'm sorta there too. I generally don't care for books centred around a romantic conflict, unless there are wider repercussions to that romantic conflict. Like, say, A Fine and Private Place's major conflicts could be termed romantic, but being in the relationship or out of it isn't...the referent? It's both itself and a symbol for the question of being alive, being dead. How much you engage with the world, and what the benefits and drawbacks of that engagement are.

*steers comment off tangent*

It's when the romance is the be-all and end-all, unexamined, I think, that I am not the reader for the book. But what I find puzzling and, I admit, a little funny, is how most of the discourse has jumped over "I am not the reader for this book" straight into "EEEEVIL".

[maradydd.livejournal.com]

we'd need to pair Twilight off with a Magical Girlfriend series

I can think of loads of Magical Girlfriend stories, but they're all movies: Amelie and everything else hewing to the Manic Pixie Dream Girl archetype. Don't know of any involving YA protagonists, though.

[leahbobet.livejournal.com]

Much hay has been made on The Internets about Twilight as mind-stealing LDS propaganda.

As I said above, all you Christians look the same to me, so I have no context or background to even begin to evaluate this idea.

[cucumberseed.livejournal.com]

I will say that it makes me nervous that my 12 yo sister read the series and loved it, but then, everything makes me nervous for her.

[joeboo-k.livejournal.com]

Wizards could be expected and accepted in a children's book. Seems to fit the genre / expectation. Wizards, in the sense of kindly old Dumbledores and Merlins are far more in what I would conceive of the culture in children's fantasy lit.

Vampires are Anne Rice, sexual and nasty (I know all about Buffy and the more modern potrayal). Vampires are dark and dangerous and scary for the conservative who would protest / complain about a book.

That's my perception.

The Mormon thing - Mormons are the red-headed step-child of the Christian faith. Very likely misunderstood and perceived as either being polygamous or the two guys who show up at your door trying to convert you to your faith. Mormons, like vampires, are scary.

To some.

[erinya.livejournal.com]

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

[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.