Tuesday, April 28, 2015
I'm 13 and in love and I don't care who knows it!
I'm sorry that the picture is blurry. So I just came across this and thought it was hilarious. But I think that it does a good job at showing something important about teen romance novels. The audience for books like Twilight, are typically high school maybe middle school girls. At this point in their lives, they might be having their first crush, boyfriend, love, or whatever they want to call it. At least for myself, I think that the first time that you ever experience a first crush when you're that young, you tend to hopelessly rush into it and go too far too fast. It's easy to think you've fallen in love with someone in a day. And something that these books tend to do is to feed off of this passion. Some posts have commented about how fast Bella fell in love with Edward even though they don't know much about each other. And when we were reading this book when we were 13, we just kind of went with it. Because at 13, you think that you're in love and that it's going to be the greatest love story in history and it's going to last forever.
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In addition to being a fun read of what a 7th graders' dreams of love as, I think what makes Twilight so appealing is that it is so easy to make fun of. It's mixture of stereotypical teen love and ridiculous sparkling vampires makes it an easy target. When you read it, you make fun of your own perceptions of love when you were younger.
ReplyDeleteI have to admit that I have never seen The Office, I know I’m crazy, so the meme kind of went over my head, but one of my friends found it hilarious! Even though I do not understand the meme, I still agree with your thoughts on why books like Twilight are so popular with middle and high school girls. There is no doubt in my mind that these books play off of their passions and their unrealistic ideals about love. However, I also agree with Katie. It seems like there are two groups of people with this book, the ones that love it, or the ones that like to make fun of it. I can’t speak for myself since I never read the book when I was younger, but it seems like a lot of you that did, found it more problematic and more funny now than you ever did back in the day.
ReplyDeleteI'm so happy you found something that actually compares Twilght to Percy Jackson! I didn't know sometihng like that existed. I'm a fan of both books and I have to say the difference between the two lead characters is extreme. Percy has loads of personality, and he's written in such a way that we see his point of view but don't feel coerced into accepting it. I always felt like because Bella is such a blank slate, and because she's written to encourage self-insertion, readers are kind of manipulated into automatically taking her side. But is that manipulative or just good writing strategy?
ReplyDeleteHaley, I am leaning more towards good writing strategy. As boring as you find it that Bella is just a blank slate, it is a pretty smart concept to have your main character as an empty figure. The fact that much of the readership can insert themselves into Bella's character, I think, is what makes this book so popular. When I was in middle school, I would read a ton of gushy silly romance books. But the minute that the main character said something or did something that I would never do in a million years, I was instantly turned off. She wasn't like me anymore and I didn't care enough to know what happened to her (obviously I've changed since then). So I think that it is just good marketing skills. Allowing others to find themselves in your character ensures some sort of readership.
ReplyDeleteHaley, I am leaning more towards good writing strategy. As boring as you find it that Bella is just a blank slate, it is a pretty smart concept to have your main character as an empty figure. The fact that much of the readership can insert themselves into Bella's character, I think, is what makes this book so popular. When I was in middle school, I would read a ton of gushy silly romance books. But the minute that the main character said something or did something that I would never do in a million years, I was instantly turned off. She wasn't like me anymore and I didn't care enough to know what happened to her (obviously I've changed since then). So I think that it is just good marketing skills. Allowing others to find themselves in your character ensures some sort of readership.
ReplyDeleteSo Stephen King thinks Stephanie Meyer is a terrible writer and is very outspoken in his dislike of Twilight. I think he really captured why Twilight was so popular among young teen girls. In an article on MTV news, "Attempting to explain the enormous success of Meyer’s novels, King speculated that Twilighters simply aren’t yet ready for a depiction of real, adult romance: “It’s exciting and it’s thrilling and it’s not particularly threatening, because they’re not overtly sexual. A lot of the physical side of it is conveyed in things like the vampire will touch her forearm or run a hand over skin, and she just flushes all hot and cold. And for girls, that’s a shorthand for all the feelings that they’re not ready to deal with yet.'"
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