new moon was unintentionally funny, and twilight is probably not gateway literature

            So last night I saw New Moon, the second movie in the Twilight series, and it was hilarious. My sides are bruised from my friends hitting me in irritation, which is fair enough because I’m pretty sure I sounded like an intellectual prick laughing in self-satisfaction the whole time. I plead innocence, at least to the charge of intellectual vanity: had any of said predisposed-to-violent-solutions friends torn their gazes and attentions from Edward’s brow or Jacob’s body they would have realized my laughs were genuine enough. My laughter wasn’t even directed towards any of New Moon’s blatant and amazing array of problematic (read: hegemonic verging on oppressive depending on who you ask) discourses of race, class and gender picked apart by any armchair liberal. No, the funniest parts of the movie were (not necessarily in this order): Edward’s face of extreme tortured brooding/Robert Pattinson’s acting, Bella’s pterodactyl screams during her nightmares/Kristen Stewart’s acting, and lastly, this hilarious Youtube slash video of Edward and Jacob as lovers that I found after the movie while trying to find clips of the other two:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7p89INP7OVs&feature=related. 

Needless to say, I had an unexpectedly grand time.

 

            The problem is of course that this grand time was predicated on a temporary shut-off of my brain/critical thinking and reasoning skills, which is something I commonly hear reiterated when I ask Twilight fans about its appeal. I understand the general criticisms of the Twilight saga (let’s define this as the books and movies): the writing quality of the books is generally lamented as terrible, the movies are even worse than the books, Bella is kind of a pathetic female role model for the young girls who make up author Meyer’s target audience, and the whole story tends to reify archaic gender roles we’d like to tell ourselves we’ve moved beyond in a supposedly postfeminist, neoliberal and happily capitalist society. My point here isn’t really to support or deny any of these criticisms, though you can likely guess what my inclination would be, because I’m far more interested in the significance of what actual Twilight fans make of them. Try to engage most Twilight fans in a critical conversation regarding, well, anything to do with the books or movies and the general response is somewhere in between “You’re probably right but I don’t think about that” and “I know they’re stupid, but I like them”. Basically, it seems like most Twilight readers want to turn off their brains in much the same way I did to watch New Moon.

            So what’s wrong with having a frivolous pleasure? Or enjoying cultural texts without agreeing with or even thinking about their social or political messages? It would be hypocritical of me to say anything but "nothing, so long as it is in moderation". However, in the case of a hugely successful series like Twilight, this willful ignorance requires more interrogation. For one, it means that a readership numbering in the millions potentially carries a significant percentage who are oblivious to these criticisms, and enjoy the books without implicating themselves in the processes of power which occur within them. Now almost any popular culture theorist or communication studies layman will tell you that our relation to cultural artifacts is not one of bland absorption: we take what we like from cultural texts, reject what we don't like, and re-invent them to make them our own. Mediating culture involves a negotiation with, rather than an overwhelming oppression of, the individual; we are not sponges who blithely accept everything we see, hear or read and expel them into society in the same form. I tend to agree with this by and large, however the case of Twilight seems to present a particular challenge. In my experience, Twilight readers seem to exemplify an active resistance to any kind of critical interpretation and negotiation of culture. Is it possible to avoid any such judgment, and have a completely sterile reading of a text? Probably not, as all culture is mediated by our subjectivity regardless of whether or not we are conscious of it, but I am left with the question of the significance of so many people wanting it. What does it mean that perhaps millions of people so actively wish to avoid thinking critically about cultural texts, and "just enjoy" them?

            Maybe the answer lies in contextualising Twilight as a cultural artifact among others. Arguably, most of our current mainstream cultural production encourages us to think less. In a Huxley-esque fashion (think Brave New World), it seems that postmodern, capitalist North America is predicated on our disengagement from politics and philosophy coupled with our love of distraction and pleasure. This leads me to group Twilight among the frivolous distractions which act as impediments to the processes of rational criticism and cultural re-invention, rather than as a piece of literature to be examined on its own merits. Of course, this is a bit disingenuous: I haven't read the books and have only seen one of the movies, and thus cannot make an informed argument that Twilight is a wholly superficial cultural text of no depth. I can only make the suggestion, based on the aforementioned and self-proclaimed willful ignorance of many Twilight readers, that it does not provoke considerable critical or inventive thought or challenge our inclination against such things. I therefore continue to ask the question: "What does it do?" rather than the more essentialist "What is it?"

            Many Twilight fans and even neutral parties would argue that, despite its dubious literary merit, the Twilight books encourage young adults to become readers. This implies, of course, that these budding readers come to appreciate the act of reading in and of itself and thus go on to read more complex books. Certainly aspects of this are true; trashy fantasy novels taught me that reading was non-intimidating and rewarding. However, I would ask the question again of context. In the context of a million relatively frivolous distractions and easy cultural digestibles what does Twilight become? Is it a stepping stone to great literature, or simply another way to avoid reading it?

hipster cred and IM'ing

[14:30:16] <<[shari.w]>> 해녀 says: 
lmao man i totally fell down the stairs today and
[14:30:26] <<[shari.w]>> 해녀 says: 
my pantss fell completley down in front of like 10 ppl
[14:33:28] Say Goodnight and Go says: 
This is why I hate pants. Idle pants are the Devil's tools.


As a young pseudo-writer/artist/arts student/hack, living in an area largely populated by the same, I'm pretty well-versed in the ways in which hipster cred is pursued and achieved. A certain distance is good; don't laugh too loud, never act like you're really impressed. Trendy politics are big, particularly when it comes to sexual politics. Creativity is good, emo is bad, creativity with a slight emo edge is best. Drugs you can take or leave, though you're encouraged to choose one or the other and take it to the extreme. Individuality is ironic. Consumerism is good when it comes to (countercultural) fashion, just don't tell anybody. And that's what it comes down to: aesthetics. You can take any of the things on the admittedly non-extensive list above, say fuck that, and do the complete opposite and you'll still have hipster cred. You can play the individuality card, or the "defiantly mainstream" card to defend anything deviating from the hipster norm. Except for aesthetics. In short, clothes are more significant than politics in defining a hipster. The way a hipster talks is more important than what s/he says. 

In addition to my other illustrious titles, I'm also an unabashed kid of the cyber-generation. I have several instant messaging programs on my computer, I send and receive around 100 texts/day, I've experienced the evolution of social networking sites firsthand and yes, I have a facebook account. I'm completely surrounded by people mediating these modes of communication: changing thoughts into speech into text to send off or post. I've noticed, which should hardly come as a surprise, that no one's fashion of "talking" on (over?) MSN or AIM matches exactly their natural speech. Some people's speech survives the translation to page relatively unaffected, but even then there are always little anomalies present. Maybe the fact that the interaction is not face-to-face makes them bold, and they'll call you "babe" or "honey" unexpectedly. Maybe they'll use gangster slang they would never actually say aloud in any seriousness. Of course, some people's manner changes entirely online. People who use the Internet for  social networking tend to build online personas, which seem to be a blend of who they wish to be in face-to-face social settings and who they think they actually are. 

More than anyone, hipsters have made me aware of the artificiality that springs up somewhere between mind, mouth, and keyboard. For some reason, hipsters tend to use perfect punctuation and grammar. Whether it be in text messages or on MSN, hipsters construct beautiful, typo-free sentences that I would use in essays. Capitalization and correct punctuation along with aloof wit. Their tendencies to call you "kid" or "lady" or "my dear" or any other edgy quaintness intensify. When capitalization is not present it is presumed purposeful, à la e.e. cummings: cool, rebellious. They refuse to laugh at or acknowledge any hilarity with a genuine "haha" or even a meager, cold "lol" here or there, instead responding with some clever and unimpressed line (even when I'm really funny!!). Basically, they pump up the distance in formality and make it cool. They resist the tendency to lol-monger on MSN and thus prove their difference. 

I will be the first to admit that seeing correct grammar as a signifier of high artificiality in text-speech is a little fucked up. My lefty instincts initially saw this purely as the class struggle of the educated, upper/middle-class artisan with language (hence the high levels of artificiality) against the uneducated, lower-class everyman who speaks plainly to convey meaning (thus, low levels of artificiality). But there's got to be more going on. Why? Because the last thing most hipsters would ostensibly want to do (or admit to doing) is side with the bourgeois in any conflict. I'm left wondering: is it about aesthetics? The aesthetics of language and the physical aesthetics of the text as it appears on a page? I'm not even sure if there exists such a thing as a line that is more appealing on some level than another, purely on the basis of its physical appearance. 

To be fair, I may just be ruined for IM'ing and a healthy online life by years of having literary analytical techniques pummeled into my conscious and subconscious mind. My reaction to written language is definitely different than my reaction to oral communication... Reading tends to put me in an analytical mode, whereas my analysis of body language/speech tones in a face-to-face interaction is generally lamented as terrible. Basically, my reading of text is better than my reading of faces, which is some sad shit in and of itself. 

Obviously, the reading of text-speech is as subjective as any reading. I may therefore be reading and interpreting text-speech incorrectly. However, I don't think its "looking too much into things" to wonder about how our text-speech communication works and where it fails. As evidenced by hipsters (and almost everyone who uses text-based communication regularly), a certain amount of deliberation goes into word choice that is not as easily afforded by the instantaneous face-to-face conversation. In a sense, people expect that there is a kind of general, text-speech iterability (à la Derrida) which they can reference in their text-based communication with others to be understood. Otherwise why bother going to the trouble of "creating" yourself online? This iterability would be expected to encompass all the mechanical aspects of speech, as well as their tonal implications. I'm just not convinced we're there yet. A small example: in a discussion about the tonal differences of "haha" and "lol" with several friends, I discovered that I was in the minority who believed "haha" represented a more genuine laugh and "lol" represented a polite, insincere laugh. A few who disagreed with my interpretation stated that they took "lol" to literally represent the act of genuinely laughing out loud. It's not that people don't think about these things, it's that we're interpreting things differently. 

Are IM'ing and texting then more like fictional written genres like novels and poetry? That is, are they there for creative acts of interpretation? Or are they more often used as bald forms of communication? It probably depends on who you're asking, which only begs more questions.