tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34993991.post2111013215723927942..comments2023-10-05T07:46:44.392-04:00Comments on And Now the Screaming Starts: Books: "Policing gender and punishing girliness."CRwMhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07896615209770501945noreply@blogger.comBlogger9125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34993991.post-26792532815270285942009-12-14T17:53:57.866-05:002009-12-14T17:53:57.866-05:00Is it me or is journalism ever getting more hollow...Is it me or is journalism ever getting more hollow? Terrible article.<br /><br />The media is ridiculing "shrieking" teens since The Beatles, so what? The idea that Twilight fans are getting another treatment than Trek fans,Comics fans whatever fans as a group is laughable. There is no "Backlash", there is of course a lot that can be criticised about the content of the books or the movies.<br /><br />And what Tom Clancy fans? I mean, come on; to cite this as a relevant male escapist fantasy which mirrors the female Twilight crowd is also a flawed argument.AndyDeckerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12806906746754478064noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34993991.post-6707240528174706662009-12-14T17:15:40.981-05:002009-12-14T17:15:40.981-05:00Wow, I never thought about the backlash being sexi...Wow, I never thought about the backlash being sexist. But it completely makes sense that Twilight is being ridiculed because the fan base is largely female. Gosh, now I'm kinda pissed off. Thanks for sharing the article!Erinhttp://initforthekills.typepad.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34993991.post-3779399986679850842009-12-10T15:14:48.071-05:002009-12-10T15:14:48.071-05:00Anything that creates fanpersons (yeah) is going t...Anything that creates fanpersons (yeah) is going to create just as many anti-fanpersons. So on the one hand you're dealing with your typical nerd culture in-fighting exacerbated by the influx of new (read: mainstream) people.<br /><br />Also consider that Tom Clancy fans aren't as visible/vocal as Twi-Hards so they don't inspire much in the way of opposition. I can shrug about spy novels because I don't have them shoved in my face at ever retail establishment I visit. They don't apportion entire sections of my local Borders dedicated to Jack Ryan (or, for that matter, Star Trek, Star Wars, LoTR, etc) tchochkes.<br /><br />That said, it bothers me when folks dismiss any discussion of the phenomenon because it's "crap" art/culture. Which is not to say anyone here (so far) is doing that. The point is, I like Buffy, maybe you don't, but you can't dismiss it's relevance to popular culture just because you don't dig it.boyhowdyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15159311417822137524noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34993991.post-2797547709889513842009-12-10T12:40:19.388-05:002009-12-10T12:40:19.388-05:00crap as crap as crap.
How much of a shitstorm did...crap as crap as crap.<br /><br />How much of a shitstorm did it kick up when Stephen King was given the national book award ?<br /><br />It's the old pop culture/masses/hoi polloi versus the artistic (aristocratic?) elite that think they are the gatekeepers high culture and are who decide what is dreck. Only now dressed in some fancy pants feminist wraps.Sasquatchannoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34993991.post-53630572163891062442009-12-09T23:00:12.396-05:002009-12-09T23:00:12.396-05:00Just as a "down in the dirty real life of it&...Just as a "down in the dirty real life of it" aside, I have two "tween" (hate. that. term.) girls, both with a passle of friends. None of them have a shred of interest in the Twilight books or films. What they are geeked about is Percy Jackson and the Olympians, a YA novel series that offers not only subversive religion (the Classic Greek Gods are real - and still makin' bacon with humans) and truly frightening monsters, but kick ass girls like Annabeth, daughter of Athena. My point? The media demographic isn't always the front line reality and the "next thing" is sometimes ignored by the very powers that make such a big deal out of Twilight and friends.Paulinehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11730716060906158244noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34993991.post-31227907471442294232009-12-09T15:57:34.069-05:002009-12-09T15:57:34.069-05:00i'm not sure how on-topic this is, but in refe...i'm not sure how on-topic this is, but in reference to what twilight might be speaking to in its audience: i am recalling the non-assigned fiction available to teen and pre-teen girls (school book-fairs) always circling around the protag discovering she had a terminal illness, and through that last 6 months of her short life developing some really important relationship with someone else who was dying. i can imagine that finding a "super-intense" relationship with someone else (who miraculously isn't glued to his wii but also hasn't had anything to drink or smoke in a whole hour) as a result of something other than terminal illness might be kind of exciting. just a thought.zoehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16526746200112764467noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34993991.post-69241569769275161762009-12-09T15:37:47.290-05:002009-12-09T15:37:47.290-05:00Ed,
I think the last bit of her argument was that...Ed,<br /><br />I think the last bit of her argument was that there's a chicken/egg problem with the crap market nexus you're talking about.<br /><br />Part of her argument is that this stuff is lame - but that we're going to get more and worse crap so long as we recognize a market need, but produce material with the preconceived notion that, because the market's desires are always already illegit, it needs must be lowest common denominator garbage.<br /><br />Specifically, with Twilight, her argument at the end is that the phenomenon touched some massively underfed vibe among a traditionally marginalized (within terms of the genre, specifically) group. But so long as we simply assume anything pitched to those needs in inherently dubious, then all will get is more crap. Crap made by crap artists to be crap because they don't see anything but crap being eaten.<br /><br />But, what if we said, "Okay, maybe Twilight was a sketch project, but what does it do? What does say to people? What are its roots? Can it evolve? What's next and could we make it better?" That just seems more useful to me. More interesting at least.<br /><br />I guess it speaks to me because questions of "quality" have been so debased at this point that all we're doing is stamping "AW3SOM3!!!" or "teh ghey" on stuff. Seems like we're not getting anywhere. We're not finding new ideas.<br /><br />Eh. Maybe that's not the point.CRwMhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07896615209770501945noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34993991.post-73010570785547994552009-12-09T15:06:04.014-05:002009-12-09T15:06:04.014-05:00i'm going to basically grunt in agreement with...i'm going to basically grunt in agreement with the above comment (Ed). well-said. yes, exactly.zoehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16526746200112764467noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34993991.post-43246889959962361562009-12-09T14:47:32.999-05:002009-12-09T14:47:32.999-05:00Doesn't everyone know that teen girls have the...Doesn't everyone know that teen girls have the power to shape the marketplace? That's hardly a radical idea. It's just disappointing that they choose to shape the market towards utter nonsense like <i>Twilight</i>. In the same way, it's disappointing that the equally lucrative guy market tends to lap up crap like <i>Transformers</i>. Is constantly referring to <i>Twilight</i> fangirls as "squealing" anti-feminist? Sure. Doesn't mean <i>Twilight</i> should instead be looked at as some promising indicator of women's increasing prominence in American culture or anything, any more than <i>Sex and the City</i>, which sucked equally hard and yet elicited the same feminist protests about how low-level wish fulfillment targeted at women gets more hate than the same type of material marketed to men. The fact is, different varieties of crap are marketed to both men and women, and by and large both genders eat it up.Ed Howardhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18014222247676090467noreply@blogger.com