I'd say the latter. I have yet to read a Buffy fanfic that advocated abstinence
Why Does It Bother Us That Twilight is So Popular?
- Thread starter Andonagio
- Start date
I'd say the latter. I have yet to read a Buffy fanfic that advocated abstinence
Yet despite bloggers raising the issue (or moaning, if that's how you want to term it) women in comics will still be there mostly to be fridged or for cheesecake (of the ouch-her-poor-spine variety) in the same culture that churns out narratives about how men only think with their dicks.
It's not a zero-sum game with one gender on each end of the see-saw, Hermiod. The people who create misogynistic narratives that see women as a selection of nagging orifices are, by and large, the same ones doling out neanderthal-manchild crap. Because when you see gender as an either/or binary, and a fight where you have to take sides, every character ends up screwed over. The female ones aren't allowed to be active, the male ones can't be 'pussies'.
You seem to be under the impression that some mighty feminist inquisition is always on hand, ready to destroy your toys while insisting you aren't allowed to speak out against ugly misrepresentations of men. And yet here you are, using exactly the same medium that those speaking out against ugly misrepresentations of women use, and you've not been struck down or had your internet confiscated yet. (Comics and games are men's last refuge? Seriously? So there were no movies marketed at blokes this year?)
On the topic at hand, I disagree with your assessment of Twilight as straight-up pornography. It's definitely gratuitous wish-fulfilment, but part of the built in appeal of Edward's character is that he won't sleep with Bella. So he's protective and broody and swoonsome and sexy while still being entirely sexually non-threatening.
ETA:
There are LJ comms. And I'm betting also Deviant Art pr0n, but I'm so not going looking.
Blog posts by women complaining about how the comic has broken the fourth wall to lecture women about how her costume is actually empowering?
That sort of suggests they're still taking the stance comics are to be read by people of both genders, and why would that be the case if the comic is pornography for men?
While Twilight, to the best of my knowledge, is rather exclusively aimed at women.
I got Star Trek, Inglorious Basterds, District 9 and coming up soon - Avatar - this year. I did pretty fucking good! I had a great time seeing some truly awesome movies at the theater this year.
...but I'll bet you a lot of the people going to see New Moon couldn't give a fuck about the movies I was excited to see this year.
And you know what? That's okay. They're entitled to their forms of entertainment just as much as I am.
...but I'll bet you a lot of the people going to see New Moon couldn't give a fuck about the movies I was excited to see this year.
And you know what? That's okay. They're entitled to their forms of entertainment just as much as I am.
It's moaning. That's all there is to it now. They've got some sort of article quota to fill. Seriously, just talk about the story for a change, not what the female characters wear.
And what is wrong with cheesecake exactly ? Guess what, men like to look at pictures of hot women, even if they aren't realistic. Do I need to post the Xander Quote again ? It remains the one thing ever said in a Joss Whedon show about men that was actually true.
There are very few male characters who aren't "pussies" these days. Men on TV today are either weak and pathetic or they're the villains.
On the other hand, every action orientated TV show is infested with Hollywood's very poor definition of a "strong woman" - in other words, they have no feelings and they can beat up guys twice their size. Do women feel so badly about themselves that every woman they see on TV has to be a Mary Sue ?
You're doing it right now. Attacking the poster instead of the post.
There are movies and TV shows targeted towards women and movies targeted towards "everyone". The last movie genuinely targeted towards men (one that had a message that women just aren't supposed to understand) specifically was Fight Club and that just got a 10 year anniversary DVD release.
Everything since has had the butt-kicking girl character, who some guys might like, sure, but they're put in there to pander to the female audience to make them feel "empowered" in an age when it's the generation of abandoned teenage boys who lack strong male role models that need that more than anyone.
All boys have are boozy professional footballers and misogynistic rappers to look up to.
They can't even make a show about Superman without turning it in to a romantic comedy and writing the lead character as a conflicted emo kid. (On the other hand, Smallville did have TV's last strong father character - Jonathan Kent, shame they killed him off.)
Gratuitous wish-fulfilment porn. It's presenting the kind of a ridiculously artificial male that the teenage girl audience thinks is "dreamy", exactly who they want to have sex with, creating a ridiculous ideal that a generation of teenage girls who think teenage boys, who have a hard enough time as it is, should measure up to.
Comics aren't pornography for men, it's just that more than a few female comic book fans can't see that and keep trying to change comics to make them more like the thing they want to read.
Okay, name one entertainment product on a similar scale to Twilight exclusively aimed at men. Even pornography doesn't qualify!
Sort of like the vapid and mindless teenage boys at movies with carnage and space aliens?
Be that as it may, if comics still want to be read by both genders, then they already have a different agenda than Twilight does, which is to just please heterosexual members of one gender.
So I can see where these criticisms come from - and having a character in the comic then protest the criticisms with a clarion cry of 'empowerment' does seem a trifle silly.
I too can see where the criticisms come from, but that's my overall point - to appeal to everybody you have to remove the things that appeal to teenage boys. The two things can't co-exist.
Angel is a self-loathing, near-100 year old Irish vampire with spikey brown hair and giant brow who dresses like Johnny Cash. As one of the few vamps that aren't brutal killers, he goes out of his way to try and be a better person for the one human girl who understands him. But he can never have sex with her for fear of turning into the monster that his hidden deep down inside him, and will try and kill her. Their relationship is very angsty because of his immortality and her beiing completely self-absorbed. Eventually he leaves her for her own good.
Edward is a self-loathing, near-100 year old Irish vampire with spikey brown hair and giant brow who dresses like Johnny Cash. As one of the few vamps that aren't brutal killers, he goes out of his way to try and be a better person for the one human girl who understands him. But he can never have sex with her for fear of turning into the monster that his hidden deep down inside him, and will try and kill her. Their relationship is very angsty because of his immortality and her being completely self-absorbed. Eventually he leaves her for her own good.
Also apparently there were several scenes in the book that were directly ripped off from Buffy. I can't tell you what they were because I've never read it. But the lack of originality of the author is pretty much there for all to see.
Reminds a bit of the whole deal with Eargon and it, more or less, being a Star Wars fanfic. Link 2
Discussion about Buffy/Twilight
Discussion about Buffy/Twilight
The vampire myth is all about sexuality...going back to Stoker's Dracula...written in the Victorian Age, when sexuality was repressed. The blood exchange being a metaphor for the sexual fluids exchanged...the changing of an innnocent into a sexual being...etc.
So with Twilight, we have a Morman author writing anti-sexuality and abstinence messages using the same vampire myth. Edward wants Bella's blood...he's never been so tempted as to drink her blood (or to pass sexual fluids) but he resists. She pushes him to complete the 'transaction' if you will, and to turn her (or deflower her) but he resists.
It isn't until they are married that they have sex, and she gets turned (after an anti-abortion theme is introduced with the vampire/human baby)
Is it a well written literary work? Nope. Is the Charlaine Harris Sookie Stackhouse books well written (upon which True Blood is based, which I love)? Nope. Do I care? Nope...it's trashy vampire fun and I enjoy it as such.
So with Twilight, we have a Morman author writing anti-sexuality and abstinence messages using the same vampire myth. Edward wants Bella's blood...he's never been so tempted as to drink her blood (or to pass sexual fluids) but he resists. She pushes him to complete the 'transaction' if you will, and to turn her (or deflower her) but he resists.
It isn't until they are married that they have sex, and she gets turned (after an anti-abortion theme is introduced with the vampire/human baby)
Is it a well written literary work? Nope. Is the Charlaine Harris Sookie Stackhouse books well written (upon which True Blood is based, which I love)? Nope. Do I care? Nope...it's trashy vampire fun and I enjoy it as such.
Just to chime in real quick...
My problem with Twilight is how it makes that whole niche of vampirism acceptable... the "lifestyle" and "habits" of vampirism is now cool, and accepted. It's suddenly cool to be pale, an wear black, and pretend to drink blood. What. The. Hell.
One time for Halloween in elementary school I wore a uniform from Star Trek The Next Generation. I made myself look like I was dead. I was a "red shirt." To me, this made great sense, and was extremely funny.
For the next 5 years I was the "star trek faggot." No joke. That is a quote. I just find it funny that now it's cool to dress up like a pale, spiky-haired metro-sexual and suddenly 13-25 year old girls suddenly just want to sleep with you.
Sorry, but Twlight isn't Sci-Fi, it's pure capitalistic niche-porn. There is no substance, there is no reality. It's absolute indulgence and I can not stand it. I'm glad it's bringing money into the film industry, but as far as I'm concerned the whole thing go go sit and spin.
/rant
My problem with Twilight is how it makes that whole niche of vampirism acceptable... the "lifestyle" and "habits" of vampirism is now cool, and accepted. It's suddenly cool to be pale, an wear black, and pretend to drink blood. What. The. Hell.
One time for Halloween in elementary school I wore a uniform from Star Trek The Next Generation. I made myself look like I was dead. I was a "red shirt." To me, this made great sense, and was extremely funny.
For the next 5 years I was the "star trek faggot." No joke. That is a quote. I just find it funny that now it's cool to dress up like a pale, spiky-haired metro-sexual and suddenly 13-25 year old girls suddenly just want to sleep with you.
Sorry, but Twlight isn't Sci-Fi, it's pure capitalistic niche-porn. There is no substance, there is no reality. It's absolute indulgence and I can not stand it. I'm glad it's bringing money into the film industry, but as far as I'm concerned the whole thing go go sit and spin.
/rant
That's a modern misconception. Dracula was about a lot of things. Mostly he represented The Dark Ages and The Black Death. The sex aspect was there to an extent. But it wasn't as clear cut as most people think. The way Stoker presented it was more of a rape allegory.
I'm going to disagree with you here. Like all literature, it is open to interpretation. The repression of sexuality WAS a fact of Victorian England, and the transfer of blood is a metaphor for the sex act. The Dracula myth is used as an allegory for the times in which is was written (much like Frankenstien by Mary Shelley isn't really a horror story about a monster...it too is an allegory).
Look at vampire fiction as a whole, and you'll see this theme worked on and against, most notably now in the Twilight series (which is thematically about abstinence).
And yet the only time that ever happens in the novel is when Dracula breaks into The Harker's house, violently forces himself on Mina, holds her down, threatens to kill her husband - who's asleep in the next room - if she struggles or screams, and then forces her to drink his blood. Anyone who thinks that is sexy or romantic needs therapy.
Because weak women dig assholes. This is no big secret.
Bram Stoker had a dream, where three women wanted him but then a man pushed them aside and said 'No, he's mine.' This scene wound up in Dracula, rather aptly. Aside from that sexuality plays a pretty major role in the novel, and has been a key part of vampirism since at least The Vampyr (the first modern vampire story, where the titular vampire is Lord Byron - talk about a sex symbol.)
And let's not touch Carmilla. Lesbian vampires: Older than Dracula!
Sex has also been a major part of vampiric cinema since, well, forever. Nosferatu has an explicitly sexual tinge to its climax, even if the vampire is deliberatley and memorably repulsive and thus not much like Robert Pattinson.
There is a common misconception, though, that vampires aren't about sex, or worse still, shouldn't be about sex.
My problem with Twilight and to a lesser degree New Moon, is that the quality of the film isn't good. And while I am not always entertained by things that are well crafted, I would like to think that I can tell some degree of difference between something of quality and something that isn't.
I have never been lets hate on something just because its successful. That's highly irrational.
Twilight is acted poorly, it's production is below many tv shows in quality, it's dialogue is very unnatural.
Now at least with New Moon the production work is of higher quality (not great by any means, but it is better).
Nor do I have a problem with people who enjoy film, television, art, ect that they understand is crap. And most of us at times (sometimes lots of times) do this.
But to see and hear people state this is the best movie they have ever seen. AARRRGGGHHHH. Well I trust they haven't watch any movies before,otherwise their ability to have a rational conversation about the merit of film is forever gone.
Take for example, since this is a Trek board. How would you feel if "Spock's Brain" was considered TOS pinnacle of achievement? I would be utterly horrified. Or how would you feel if Final Frontier had went on to gross 250 million in the US? I would hang my head in shame.
Now I am sure there are a few people who do feel that episode is Trek's best or that movie is the best Trek has ever done. But I think you would be hard pressed to find, out of millions of viewers, more then a few who would share those opinions. In fact I think you would find most to find them near the worst.
Hell and people should rationally beable to look at something that doesn't personally speak to them and still be able to find quality levels to judge.
I don't like mafia based materials, I just don't find characters that I can find entertaining. But that doesn't mean that I can't recognize the quality of said work. I can look at Goodfellas, the Godfather, the Sorpanos and not like them, but I still see the quality of those works.
Probably the one that I have the hardest time judging is comedy. As I rarely find comedies funny.
I have never been lets hate on something just because its successful. That's highly irrational.
Twilight is acted poorly, it's production is below many tv shows in quality, it's dialogue is very unnatural.
Now at least with New Moon the production work is of higher quality (not great by any means, but it is better).
Nor do I have a problem with people who enjoy film, television, art, ect that they understand is crap. And most of us at times (sometimes lots of times) do this.
But to see and hear people state this is the best movie they have ever seen. AARRRGGGHHHH. Well I trust they haven't watch any movies before,otherwise their ability to have a rational conversation about the merit of film is forever gone.
Take for example, since this is a Trek board. How would you feel if "Spock's Brain" was considered TOS pinnacle of achievement? I would be utterly horrified. Or how would you feel if Final Frontier had went on to gross 250 million in the US? I would hang my head in shame.
Now I am sure there are a few people who do feel that episode is Trek's best or that movie is the best Trek has ever done. But I think you would be hard pressed to find, out of millions of viewers, more then a few who would share those opinions. In fact I think you would find most to find them near the worst.
Hell and people should rationally beable to look at something that doesn't personally speak to them and still be able to find quality levels to judge.
I don't like mafia based materials, I just don't find characters that I can find entertaining. But that doesn't mean that I can't recognize the quality of said work. I can look at Goodfellas, the Godfather, the Sorpanos and not like them, but I still see the quality of those works.
Probably the one that I have the hardest time judging is comedy. As I rarely find comedies funny.
