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

[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.

[pnkrokhockeymom.livejournal.com]

Thanks! I am not being extremely articulate today or very, um, smooth grammatically; I'm all clunky and hopped up on some meds. But I *think* that was about what I wanted to say.

And, also, *girl cooties.* To some extent there is probably a "girl protag/popular book" ewww thing going on. I know that I gave my son loads of grief when he was making fun of Twilight, because he likes those blasted Paolini things and I can't talk him out of it. I told him those were of approximately the same quality, with the same wish fulfillment and Mary Sue yick, as the Twilight books, but he refuses to believe me. Why? Girl cooties.

But he is really liking Scott Westerfield's Uglies, and that has a female protag. So I think I can beat that out of him by providing good materials.

And you know, that's my solution. Don't tell the kid they shouldn't or can't read it. Let them read it, discuss it critically, ask questions to problematize the relationships, and then it's a learning experience that might actually get them thinking about those "Love as Violence" tropes. And then provide lots of other quality reads to add to, complicate, and vary the message.

How else will you learn to discern if you aren't allowed to read crap?

[leahbobet.livejournal.com]

Yes. Not new, not unique, really mostly it's just in the air, in the cultural atmosphere. To the point where stuff like Criminal Minds can refute it or undermine it without even having to explain the setup.

(And do not apologize for like, talking. :) )

[pnkrokhockeymom.livejournal.com]

To the point where stuff like Criminal Minds can refute it or undermine it without even having to explain the setup.

This. I am surprised to hear people say that the Twilight books present this love/possession/sex/violence trope as a model for teen relationships, as if it is somehow the first popular *anything* to do so, as if that is not the *standard* presentation girls get. As if they won't absorb that message without those books.

I wonder sometimes if the Twilight presentation of that sort of relationship--which is so very, very obvious, without any attempt to pretend it's something else, where the boy is literally a monster and the danger is literally that she'll be killed, and she believes that is the whole purpose of her being, to succumb to that--is why some groups of people are so freaked out. Not because they *disagree* with the motif, but because they are made uncomfortable by its not having been dressed up as something else. Because they don't like being made to confront the fact that this IS the dominant narrative. So they'll pretend it's scary, and new, and dangerous, and evil, because they want to deny the parallels between that and their own cultural narrative about het-normative relationships.

[leahbobet.livejournal.com]

This is, yes, why it surprises me so much that people are so up in arms about this particular thing. Because I don't think I remember the experience of teenage sexuality more keenly than anyone else really, and...that. That's what it was like; that's what the concept was.

And where did we get that from? Oh, just...the air. The world.