Twilight was a huge sensation most of my high school career. The books series seemed to connect with all age groups and truly started a vampire and werewolf craze that can still be seen in films and all major television networks, eight years after its original publication date. This book series paved the way for T.V. shows like Vampire Diaries and Teen Wolf to be the success they are today. From the functionalist perspective, the classical love triangle resignated with readers and ultimately created a subculture of "twihards". Twihards much like Harry Potter fans were and still are the mega-fans. These are the fans that attended midnight books releases and then again stood in line for hours to see the films released at midnight as well. The books series was able to create such a strong group togetherness because the content of the book, though insinuated sexual prowess, was PG at nature and did emphasize strong morals such as saving yourself for marriage. There was just enough sex to keep the older readers attention and just enough innocence to be appropriate for the tween crowd.
Twilight became huge in brand marketing and very much fed into conspicuous consumption. Not only did the main characters in the books continuously talk about their wealth but also the expensive things the owned. Edwards collected exotic cars. Alice had only the best brands in her closet and constantly pressured Bella to dress more high class. Even the patriarch of the family, who is supposedly the most humble and
modest of the family, bought his wife an island. Outside of the characters and focusing on the film series, that followed the books, made millions of dollars for various companies such as Hot Topic and Walmart. Companies would paste pictures of the characters on tee shirts, posters, cell phone covers, and binders and label them at ridiculous prices and fans would buy them. Twilight was a cultural phenomenon that I know most girls my age will be telling their grandchildren about one day.
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| A notebook meant to look like Edwards Journal |
Twilight was a huge sensation most of my high school career. The books series seemed to connect with all age groups and truly started a vampire and werewolf craze that can still be seen in films and all major television networks, eight years after its original publication date. This book series paved the way for T.V. shows like Vampire Diaries and Teen Wolf to be the success they are today. From the functionalist perspective, the classical love triangle resignated with readers and ultimately created a subculture of "twihards". Twihards much like Harry Potter fans were and still are the mega-fans. These are the fans that attended midnight books releases and then again stood in line for hours to see the films released at midnight as well. The books series was able to create such a strong group togetherness because the content of the book, though insinuated sexual prowess, was PG at nature and did emphasize strong morals such as saving yourself for marriage. There was just enough sex to keep the older readers attention and just enough innocence to be appropriate for the tween crowd.
I think it is kind of interesting to look at the parallels between twilight and 50 shades of grey. 50 Shades was actually written as twilight fan fiction and was actually widely published. It is almost kind of sickening when you think about it, I can't ever look at Twilight the same way again lol.
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ReplyDeleteTwilight has also influenced Disney channel who had a television series called "My Babysitter is a Vampire." It is crazy how one movie can really open the door for the popularity of vampires and werewolves. I admit after watching this movie I set in my mind I was going to marry a vampire lol. It is crazy how persuasive this movie this is.
ReplyDelete---Jessica Jenkins