Dear Readers,


I now consider this blog to be my Juvenelia. Have fun perusing the archives, and find me at my new haunt, here.

Sunday, November 16, 2008

'Twilight'-Mania, redux, has officially begun

I'll try to keep up with some of the insanity this week... my feelings about the series are on the record...

The LA Times goes to Forks, Washington, (a town Meyer never visited but picked because it's the rainiest place in the continental US) to discover the world of Twi-tourism cash-ins:


Many locals have played along with the themes in the Twilight books -- and business has boomed.

"It's not that hard to put [Twilighters] over the edge," said Julie Hjelmeset, the inn's manager. She transformed the double-queen bedroom in the otherwise run-of-the-mill hotel by swapping the white linens and towels for racier black-and-red versions and resting imitation long-stemmed roses on the beds. Bella's Suite fetches double the rate of a regular room -- $149 a night versus $74.

The driving force behind the town's resurgence is the Forks Chamber of Commerce.

It was the head of the Chamber who reached out to the owners of a house to see if they'd be willing to place a "Home of the Swans" sign in their lushly landscaped yard. According to homeowner Kim McIrvin, thousands of visitors have since stopped by the two-story blue bungalow to snap pictures and to imagine Edward sneaking in through the upstairs window.

Following McIrvin's lead, another Chamber member offered to transform her bed-and-breakfast into "the Cullen house." The door to the large mailbox now reads "Cullen," along with the Miller Tree Inn wording that's been there for years, and a sign on the front porch is updated with daily messages from the fictional family's matriarch, Esme.


And Salon sits down with film director Catherine Hardwicke, who totally sidesteps the feminist questions. Personally, I would remove the F-word when asking Meyer/Hardwicke/others about the books, and talk instead about the absolute pathetic weakness of the main character.

But that's me. Here's the most interesting thing Hardwicke said:



From a teenage point of view, there's also the metaphor that the vampire has all these hormonal feelings and desires to want to kill their victims. It's in your body. It's pulsing through your veins. You become a teenager and you suddenly have this surge of new feelings that you're not supposed to act on. You're really not supposed to attack every girl you see and try to have sex with her -- or with every guy. Edward is fighting his natural animal impulses, as a lot of teenagers are.

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