MemeWatch: The Twilight Backlash

Ah yes, the backlash. The movement-ized rejection of something that has already achieved great cultural popularity. The backlash as a phenomenon predates the internet... I'm sure there were plenty of people who thought that "Gone With the Wind" wasn't, y'know, that great, but the instantaneous, interactive nature of it has allowed backlashes to gain a much higher level of notoriety. If a huge cultural phenomenon isn't quite up to snuff these days, a backlash is all but inevitable. (the wikipedia article on "backlash" can be found here)

The new film "Twilight" had a better first day on Friday than either "Quantum of Solace" or the most recent Indiana Jones film. It's less than all but one of the Harry Potter movies, and not even close to what "The Dark Knight" did earlier this year, but it's still far and away the most successful opening for a movie directed by a woman (Catherine Hardwicke). For those who have been either living under a rock or in a completely teenage girl-free evironment, "Twilight" is the first in an incredibly popular series of books by Stephenie Meyer that center around the passionate-but-chaste romance of a high school everygirl, Bella Swan, and a particularly hunky vampire, Edward Cullen, mostly set in a small town in Washington state. The thing about "Twilight" that has struck me the most is that the backlash was in full swing before the "frontlash" was even really up to speed. This backlash has the most lash I've ever seen. Okay, I'll stop that now.

I'll be honest here. I haven't read any of the Twilight books, and I almost certainly won't see the movie until it shows up the discount theater, if at all. I know more than one person whose opinion I trust who absolutely loves them. But the critical consensus seems to be one of understanding-at-best (There seem to be two types of reviews, ones that talk about how it might appeal to teen girls and ignore the actual quality and those that are critical of the actual quality), and the internet... well, the internet does not seem to be willing to tolerate it.

A big part of this, I think, is that the Twilight fandom (my favorite term I've seen so far is "Twi-hards") is almost entirely female. It consists of teen girls, from tweens to college age, along with a decent sampling of their moms, the sort who like romance novels. I like to fancy myself a bit of a geek anthropologist, so to speak. I enjoy the inner workings of various fandoms, even for works I myself am not that into. And this is perhaps the most monolithic major geek fandom I've ever seen. Even "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" and "Xena: Warrior Princess", probably the two most female skewing of the major geek fandoms I've previously looked at, had fairly large male bases, as well. This shows it's not just the female protagonist that's at issue, it's the content. "Xena" was an action show at heart, and "Buffy" was at such a high level of quality that it attracted connoisseurs of all types... plus there was karate and stuff. "Twilight" is a romance, through and through.

Also at issue is how good it really is. Twilight is often compared to the Harry Potter novels, another fandom based on a YA book series that seems to have at least slightly more girls than guys. But general consensus seems to be that the Twilight series isn't even in the same league ("USA Today" was roundly mocked for making the suggestion this week). I've never been afraid to criticize JK Rowling's prose, and "Deathly Hollows" drags way too much for what it is, but Rowling does have an intuitive grasp of how to build excitement and when things are happening in the Potter novels, there's nothing like it. As the backlashers are quick to point out, Meyer's prose has at least as many issues, her content has a strong potential to be laughable, and the plot of "Twilight" doesn't really get going until at least 300 pages into the book (It apparently takes over 200 for Bella just to realize that Edward is a vampire). The Harry Potter books and films have, for the most part, manages to avoid a full-fledged backlash despite their gargatuan popularity because most people who read them are hooked.

Let's take a look at other recent phenomena:
-"Star Wars" eventually created its own backlash with the terrible "prequel" movies. I had a friend who at one point was a hardcore Star Wars guy, but mostly dropped it circa "Attack of the Clones" when he "found out that Jar-Jar Binks created the Empire." Many universes grow richer with continued exploration... Star Wars, not so much. The Spider-Man film series probably also fits this model, as it was riding high after the first two films and nearly completely destroyed its own fandom with the failure of the climactic third film.
-"Star Trek" did get richer with continued exploration, but eventually seemed to run its course. The times, it seemed, had passed the mostly-utopian future it depicted by. Plus there was a lot of mismanagement by Paramount... "Enterprise" would sputter on for a few more strange seasons, but the "Trek" franchise as we knew it seemed to end when "Nemesis" opened opposite a Harry Potter film and tanked. People didn't hate "Trek", they just weren't huge fans. But now the new trailer for the JJ Abrams "Star Trek" film has gotten startling buzz, and it's like the franchise never went away.
-"Lord of the Rings" has its detractors, but the books, and especially the films are so seminal and high-quality that there doesn't seem to have been much of a backlash, at least not within the fandom community.
-"Buffy" and "Battlestar Galactica" are probably representative a group of works that were never quite popular enough to create a backlash, but attracted a strong, loyal following due to their high quality. Both have large numbers of online fans who insist that they should be considered for the best TV series of all time... period, and are very influential within the current "geek" community. But they remain relatively lesser known in the world-at-large, and that seems to have helped.
-"Firefly"'s hardcore fans created their own backlash, not the work itself. It would probably be in the above group, except for the fact that an early cancellation created a strong evangelical streak in the fandom. This got them "Serenity", as well as several comic book miniseries, but it also resulted in everyone else on the internet getting really annoyed.
-"The Dark Knight" is probably the biggest geek phenomenon of this year so far, even more so than "Twilight". At first it appeared it might be among that elite that is so good it's just impossible to hate. But as people thought about it more, and it became even more widely seen, it began to be criticized for its relentless gloom. It's a great movie, but the staying power is in question. It recently showed up at our local discount theater, and I haven't gone to see it again yet, and I'm not sure I will until it shows up on DVD.
-"Pirates of the Caribbean" was totally unexpected, and was driven, yes, by young women. Guys liked pirates in the same way they like ninjas and zombies and all those things, but it was hard for them to participate in a fandom where the main debate was immediately whether Depp or Bloom was cuter. Then the second two movies had interesting bits but were overlong and all over the place, and the fandom did not appear to withstand the backlash. Comparable might be "Transformers", which came out of nowhere with a movie (by Michael Bay!) that was really hard not to like. And, Megan Fox and all, it seems to be more male-skewing. But it has the strong potential to have that luster taken off by subsequent sequels, we'll see.

These, of course, are only some of the geek-related examples recently ("Doctor Who" may have so far miraculously managed to be the most backlash-free of all). There have of course been many other kinds of backlashes, but this is where I like to think my "area of expertise" lies. ;) So "Twilight" has the disadvantage of being a female-oriented fandom based on material that already seems to be showing cracks. io9 has been nice enough to round-up some of the most blatant and hilarious examples of recent online "Twilight"-bashing here. Whatever side you're on, this should be good for a laugh. It certainly cracked me up.