Verdens beste historie om det å bli Twilightfan, litt alvor, Team Buffys bekjennelser og lenge leve FENOMENET!

Jeg vet, jeg vet. Det beste noensinne kommer hele tiden. I tillegg er historien velkjent - den tilhører deg, meg og annenhver Twilightfan over 20 år der ute, skal vi tro bekjennelsesbrevene borte hos LTR. Men likevel. Den er litt trist også, fordi den handler om kvinner som skammer seg. Hvorfor må vi alltid unnskylde oss?

Artikkelen er skrevet av Monica Hesse fra Wahington Post, og jeg måtte melde meg inn (gratis) for å få lest den, men det var det verdt. Her er høydepunktene i følge moi, med mine kommentarer:

'Twilight', the love that dare not speak its shame

"We know. You hate "Twilight." You don't want to hear anything more about "Twilight." That's why this is not another story about the "Twilight" or "New Moon" mania, nor will it rhapsodize on the vampire craze, nor does it contain any interviews with Robert Pattinson.

This is a story about shame.

All across the country, there were women who managed to avoid Stephenie Meyer's series about a star-crossed human/vampire teen couple. (Vampire Edward lusts for mortal Bella, but also for her blood; the books are less plot than endless yearning). They resisted the first three books -- refused to read them, didn't know they existed -- and the lunacy that was "Breaking Dawn.""


Fra lionandlamb.org.

""Twilight" came for the tweens, then for the moms of tweens, then for the co-workers who started wearing those ridiculous Team Jacob shirts, and the resisters said nothing, because they thought "Twilight" could not come for them. They were too literary. They didn't do vampires. They were feminists.

Then something happened: the release of the "Twilight" movie, which last year introduced $384 million worth of audience members to Kristen Stewart as mortal Bella and Pattinson as lust incarnate."

Det er her det starter for meg, jeg visste ikke om Twilight før filmtraileren kom i fjor, og leste ikke boken før i januar - rett før jeg så filmen.


Fra lionandlamb.org.

""Prior to 'Twilight,' my favorite books were by Anthony Burgess" and Ayn Rand, says Jenny West, 32, who had never heard of the series until she saw ads for the movie last year. "I bought 'Twilight' [the book] with the full intention of ripping it apart." Then she read it. In one night. Bought "New Moon" the next day. "I was kind of horrified with myself, and I had to keep going." When she finished the last book, she reopened the first one and started again."

Jeg leste alle bøkene på rappen. Og så alle bøkene på rappen en gang til. Favorittbøker før Twilight: Mrs. Dalloway av Virginia Woolf og Reisen til nattens ende av Celine.

"She founded the blog Twitarded, to process what had happened to her. She and co-Twitard Debbie Connelly were last spotted soliciting donations to win a charity benefit date with Peter Facinelli, the actor who plays Edward's dad."

Ditto! Unntatt daten med Peter Facinelli. Men jeg startet en blogg...

Beware the dark side

"People, be warned. "New Moon," the "Twilight" movie sequel, opens on Friday. Everyone is vulnerable.

One minute you're a functioning member of society, the next you're succumbing to the dark side, wondering how deep you're willing to go -- and what that longing says about you."


Fra lionandlamb.org.

"In "Twilight," Edward Cullen waffled between wooing and eating new girl Bella Swan. He chose love. In "New Moon," the darkest installment of the series, Edward becomes convinced that his girlfriend would be safer without him, so he dumps her in order to protect her and then vanishes. Bella, catatonic from the pain, finds solace in Jacob Black, the devoted friend who has just learned he is a werewolf, and their relationship grows deeper, and this description is utterly, utterly useless because none of it gets at what the "Twilight" series is actually about, which is being 17."


Fra myparkmag.

"It's a time capsule to the breathless period when the world could literally end depending on whether your lab partner touched your hand, when every conversation was so agonizing and so thrilling (and the border between the two emotions was so thin), and your heart was bigger and more delicate than it is now, and everything was just so much more.

"I noticed in that first week of reading that I was feeling things I hadn't been able to feel in a long time," says Lauren Ashlock, 27. She'd avoided the "Twilight" series ever since the 2005 release of the first book, because when she saw the passion of so-called TwiHards, she thought, Wackos."

Jeg har forstått at det tok litt av i USA, og jeg har jo sett hylerne på amerikanske kjøpesentre, men her i landet har jeg bare sett kvinner i alle aldre - og en og annen mann, som har kost seg på filmene. Ingen hylende tenåringer. Ingen galskap.

Hvorfor er det slik at et fenomen for kvinner umiddelbart er teit, noe tenåringer driver med eller hysterisk? Hvorfor kan det ikke bare være flott, frigjørende og morsomt???


Fra New Moon Movie.

"The people who have not read "Twilight" do not get it...They're so smug, talking about how they once read a chapter of "Twilight" in a bookstore and the prose was just awful. Meyer never uses one adjective when she could use three, and most of the time that adjective is a hyphenate combining "dazzling" and "chiseled."

The people who have not read "Twilight" think they are astoundingly brilliant when they point out the misogynist strains of the series, like how Bella bypasses college in favor of love, like how Edward's "romantic" tendencies include creepily sneaking into Bella's house to watch her sleep, like how Bella's only "flaw" is that she is clumsy, thereby necessitating frequent rescues by the men in her life, who swoop in with dazzling chisleyness and throw her over their shoulders."


Fra lionandlamb.org.

"In response: We know. We know.

The women who have succumbed to "Twilight" have heard all of these arguments before. They wrote those arguments. This self-awareness is what makes the experience of loving "Twilight" a conflicting one, as if they had all been taught proper skin-care routines but chose instead to rub their faces with a big pizza every night."

A love most 'exquisite'

"Witness the downfall of Sarah Seltzer, a freelance literary critic who also writes for a reproductive rights Web site:

"I wanted to write about the abstinence subtext," Seltzer says, which is why she read the books to begin with. She planned on questioning the allegorical "abstinence only" theme that runs through the series. "But the books are kind of hypnotic, so it's very much that while you're reading them you're sucked in, and then you take a step back and you think, this is kind of troubling. She jumps off a cliff because she misses her boyfriend?" What?!

Is Bella regressing or progressive? The past or the future?

And Edward -- Edward might be imperfect, might be too possessive, but then why does he still seem so insanely dreamy?"

Jeg falt for Edward i Twilightboka (den mest interessante karakteren i serien), og Midnight Sun sementerte kjærlighetsforholdet. Stakkars vakre, plagede, drama-queen av en vampyr. *Smelt?

""I remember when the movie first came out," says Mindy Goodin, 36, a special needs teacher in Stafford. "I remember thinking," whoever that boy is, "he really needs to brush his hair.""


Fra lionandlamb.

Jeg la aldri merke til Robert Pattinson i Harry Potter. Jeg ble ikke besatt av Rob da jeg så Twilight første gang på kino heller. Men en dag så jeg et bad hair day-bilde på nett, tenkte "hvem i helvete er det her", gikk på youtube, og 72 timer og et hundretalls videoer senere var jeg fortapt.

"How things have changed...For mothers of tweenage girls, there are added complications. Is it sweet or twisted to share the same crush as your 14-year-old? (Taylor Lautner as Jacob. Ahhhhhhh. Only 17. Ewwwww.) How do you reconcile cooing over an on-screen relationship that, if your daughter had it in real life, might be worth a restraining order?"

What women want

"It's just a movie. It's just a movie. It's just a movie.

It's just a movie -- well, movie and books -- but it's a movie that's come to represent such big things, from the future of girls to what women really want (they want men who will shut up and come to watch "New Moon," and not ask how many points they're getting for the evening).

Men feel perfectly comfortable slathering their chests in greasepaint and screaming like half-naked ninnies at football games, but women too often over-explain their passions, apologizing for being too girly or liking something too trashy.

The grown women of "Twilight" will no longer apologize. They will go to those midnight "New Moon" screenings.

But as for telling them how silly they're being, how Edward is not real and neither is Jacob, how their brains are rotting and their sense of reality is being distorted and this obsession is crazy, just crazy? There's really no need.

They already know."

Ja, jeg innrømmer at jeg har vært både flau og skamfull over å være Twilightfan. At jeg har spøkt med å ha gått over til "the dark side". At jeg har hatt dårlig samvittighet. Hvordan kan jeg være feminist og Twilightfan, liksom?

Det er lett å lese Bella som sutrete, svak og avhengig. Men hun er også sterk, både i at hun som tenåring tør å være seg selv fullt og helt - her er det ikke mye gruppepress og jåleri og deilig.no, og at hun hele tiden følger sitt eget hjerte og vilje (dog dazzled og trolig kjemisk avhengig av denne fyren). Dessuten er det helt klart at Edward ikke bare er like avhengig av Bella, han er antakelig MER avhengig av Bella enn hun er av ham...

rob vf

Fra VF via Robsessed.

Der gjorde jeg det igjen. Trenger jeg egentlig å forklare meg eller rasjonalisere det? Folk leser Dan Brown og Stephen King. Jeg ble et fullverdig meneske selv og jeg leste Sagaen om Isfolket to ganger da jeg var fjorten år, og måtte ikke forsvare det for noen. Jeg liker Hong Kong action, katastrofefilmer og filmer der helten dør, også, uten at jeg er et dårlig menneske eller støtter vold og død og fordervelse - for ikke å snakke om all objektiviseringen av kvinner i sånne filmer.

Twilight eksisterer. Jeg falt pladask. Twilight er årtiets største popkulturelle fenomen. Jeg liker Twilightboka. Jeg digger fenomenet. Twilightfilmen er en kultfilm. Jeg koser meg med å undergrave SMeyers (påståtte) abstinensbudskap hver dag (jeg mener: Jeg koser meg med fan fiction, skjorteløse menn og Robporno daglig:-). Jeg ler masse.

Jeg er enig. Jeg vil aldri mer unnskylde meg. Håper jeg. Var det noe mer?