Your Eternal Star Boyfriend
The other day, I posted something to the Celebrity Gossip, Academic Style Facebook account (which you should follow, if you don’t already) concerning Mark Ruffalo and his forthcoming projects. I prefaced the link with something along the lines of “Sometimes I refer to Ryan Gosling as my boyfriend, but he’s really my second boyfriend. Mark Ruffalo is my first boyfriend.” But then I had to add a little caveat: “And Paul Newman is my eternal boyfriend.”
“Eternal boyfriend” sounds like something out of Seventeen magazine, but I think the phrase — and the concepts — gets at something essential about our relationships to stars, and why we think about them the way that we do, especially stars from the past.
The “eternal boyfriend” relationship is somewhat similar to the “girlcrush,” a phenomenon I considered in a post from last year. Why are we attracted, whether sexually, emotionally, or intellectually, to certain stars, male and female? But the eternal boyfriend is different than the girlcrush or even the first and second boyfriend. The eternal boyfriend is frozen in amber — he is almost always dead, or at least done with Hollywood — and he will be the object of your affection when you’re 20 and when you’re 80. The first and second boyfriends may be Mr. Right, but they also might not endure. They haven’t borne the test of time. Who knows if they’ll pull a Joaquin Phoenix and become abject sometime in the next year. They cannot be trusted, at least not yet. They may seem like Mr. Right, but they might turn out to be Mr. Right Now.
There’s also a third class — what Lainey Gossip calls “The Freebie Five.” These are men with whom you could have sex with a free pass from your significant other. You want to make out with them, but you don’t want them to necessarily speak — these men inspire a visceral response, but you know that it wouldn’t work out, or know that you’ll kinda hate yourself in the morning. They could stay the night, but you wouldn’t want to make small talk over brunch. Chuck Bass is totally in this crew. Channing Tatum might also be in this crew — I’d like to see him dance for me, but then I’d be so embarrassed.
I feel the same way about Eternal Boyfriends as I do the color blue: it will always be my favorite color. I feel the same way about the First and Second boyfriends as I do this dress with the ruffles and bric-a-brac from Anthropologie: in 20 years, I might think it’s hideous, but right now, I think it’s the best. The Freebie Boyfriend, then, is the blue tunic from Forever 21 that was fashionable for the two weeks after I bought it and I threw it in the trash.
For me, at least, there are many stars that are good looking, whose beauty I can appreciate — young Gary Cooper, for example, or Rock Hudson. Those men are classically handsome (and have made many a woman swoon), but they don’t do it for me. I can also appreciate the beauty of any dozen female stars, including Audrey Hepburn — that doesn’t mean that I love her (I know, controversial!) or want to put her photo on my wall (that’s reserved for Barbara Stanwyck, Katharine Hepburn, and Clara Bow).
I do think this works for men and women alike, even for hetero and homosexual desire: The Eternal Boyfriend/Girlfriend is the person that you wouldn’t mind actually being with — that you could bring home to your parents, that your friends would like, that wouldn’t bore you, that you wouldn’t have to get drunk just to endure conversation. This person (at least in your imagination) is everything that a perfect boy or girl friend should be — and the very best star boyfriends are adaptable to millions of fans’ different versions of what that might be. (For me, Paul Newman is really into reading Alice Munro’s short stories. For you, he might just like to go play Ultimate Frisbee barefoot in the park).
Me and Paul's favorite collection
Maybe we can think of star boyfriends and girlfriends as those who merit a place on your wall: to get on the wall, a star, male or female, can’t be merely eye candy, but needs to speak to you and promise to fulfill your particular desires. They need to represent your values — or what you desire — so thoroughly that you’re willing to
a.) Look at them everyday, essentially sharing your room with them
and
b.) Allow all others who enter your personal space to see your connection to them.
In truth, a star gets to be your boyfriend or girlfriend through a combination of visceral attraction, an image that seems to represent something that’s important to you (Marlon Brando: emotional physicality) and a je ne sais quoi that just gets you. (You might also really identify with a character with whom the star falls in love in a particular film — I identify with Katharine Hepburn in Holiday; therefore, I identify with wanting Cary Grant to love me).
I wish I had a better explanation for why we’re attracted to certain stars and barely moved by others, but I also lack an explanation for why people fall in love with the people they do. Desire is complicated, knotty, and oftentimes impenetrable to anyone but the desirer him/herself.
BUT BACK TO MY BOYFRIENDS:
If Paul Newman is the king of my eternal boyfriends, then Gregory Peck (circa Roman Holiday) the prince, Cary Grant is the jester, and Marlon Brando (circa On the Waterfront) the duke. [I’m mixing rankings all over the place -- 1st, 2nd, king, eternal, whatevs.]
For me, Paul Newman seems to represent the platonic ideal of a man — those cheek bones, those eyes! — mixed with intellectualism, devotion, compassion. The first time I really saw him, the first time I watched Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, I found him beautiful and jovial; as I saw more, saw him in the blue prisoner’s outfit from Cool Hand Luke, saw him self-destruct in black and white in Hud and The Hustler, and learned more about this extra-textual life, I found him exquisite.
You guys, he loved Joanne Woodward LIKE CRAZY! He directed a beautiful film that basically played up all of her attributes and earned her an Academy Award nomination! HE STARTED NEWMAN’S OWN AND GAVE SO MUCH MONEY TO CHARITY! He also aged with grace, which is apparently something I’m pretty into. (See Grant and Peck, but forget Brando; he aged with anti-grace).
There are all these pictures of him at home with Joanne Woodward, doing things like cooking eggs in his boxers with loafers. This is my type of guy like whoa. I’m certain he’ll make me those eggs and then we can go read The New Yorker in hammocks in the backyard.
I’m also apparently into stars from the ‘50s (although I like Grant most in his ‘30s screwballs, not his ‘50s color Hitchcocks). Grant can’t make it to the king of Eternal Boyfriends status because I just don’t know if he’d ever be able to go hiking with me. Can you go hiking in a three-piece suit and an ascot?
Where are your hiking clothes, Cary? Do we need to swing by REI?
There’s also something performative about his love-making — something perfect for screwballs and Code-era pictures when real making out or bed sharing was prohibited — that makes me think that we’d probably have lively and witty conversations, but when the screen fades to black he’d put on his full-length pajamas and we’d retire in twin beds.
We'd always be caught on the edge of almost-kissing
Gregory Peck is a wonderful flirt in Roman Holiday. He wears pants with a waist that’s about at his nipples; his suit seems to be adorable brown tweed; he’s a newspaper man and he and I could both work on deadline. There’s a bit of rascal in him, something indelible I love. But then he grows up to be such a DAD and lawyer in To Kill a Mockingbird (I REALIZE HE’S A GOOD DAD) but you guys, I’m just not in the market for dad boyfriends right now.
Pants! SO HIGH!
And Marlon Brando, you are pure tumultuous desire. You are the guy that I wrote poems in free verse for in the 11th grade. You have hooded eyes that just beg for me to take care of you and your checked jacket in On the Waterfront.
I could switch places with Eva Marie Saint; she was a member of my sorority and we both have blonde hair, no big deal, right?
We’d have a long talk about your fighting career, Brando would do a lot of nodding and almost-crying-brooding, then we’d have a crushing embrace and have an incredible make-out session. No words, just emotions. Our three week relationship would be so hot. But then I’d telegraph forward and realize that he ended up fat, balding, and alone on his island, and the pity would just be too much. Always a Duke of Eternal Boyfriendom, never a King. He’d be a Mr. Right now if he wasn’t such a recurring and longstanding object of my affection.
Those are my personal (and admittedly crazy) narratives; you all have your own. Some of them have already been aired in the Celebrity Proust Questionnaires over the last few months, some are hanging out rather sheepishly in the recesses of your mind. If you can’t figure out why a star is your boyfriend/girlfriend, I’d be happy to help tease out some nuances of his or her star image, seeing which ones resonate with you.
But here’s the beauty of the star image: because it’s constructed, because it’s contradictory, because it’s polysemic — holding many meanings — it can be multiple things to millions of people. My boyfriend may be your nemesis; your girlfriend may be my frenemy. We take what we want from star images, selecting what we want to believe and dismissing what we don’t. Lainey Gossip always says that gossip is a buffet: we all pick and choose what we want to consume.
Eternal Star Boyfriends are the same: Paul Newman divorced his first wife, after all, but I don’t think about that when I’m busy concentrating on which Alice Munro story will be his favorite, and whether we’ll send our someday kids to Kenyon (his liberal arts alma mater) or Whitman (mine). That’s the beauty of stardom — each star’s meaning is an alchemy of what we read into it and what it actually is — and why we have, and will continue to, cultivate psychically complex, wholly unrequited, yet somehow emotionally gratifying relationships with the photos on our walls.
James Franco on General Hospital?!: Thinking about Stars and/in Soap Operas
Confession: It’s the week before finals. Not only am I still enrolled in two classes (the last two classes of my LIFE) but I’m also conferencing with 60 students concerning final papers. And giving a final. And packing up my entire life to move to Walla Walla, WA for the semester. So we’re going to have a few guest posts to tide us over — including the following, from the uber-talented Racquel Gonzales, a graduate student in the RTF Department and soap opera (and soap fandom) expert extraordinaire.
James Franco on GH (credit: ABC/Medianet)
In case you haven’t heard, James Franco of Freaks and Geeks, Spiderman, and Pineapple Express fame officially started his guest star stint November 20th on General Hospital, the long-running ABC soap. If you are scratching your heads, you are in great company with news outlets, gossip columnists, and arguably many Franco fans who just saw him in the Oscar-winning film Milk with a guest star appearance for 30 Rock. I’m not going to focus on James Franco’s reasons for temporarily showing off his acting chops in Port Charles because it has been exhaustively scrutinized, investigated, and rumored by almost everyone covering the story (including soap sites and fans in comment sections): Why is Franco acting on GH, a [insert dismissive, snarky comment regarding low budget/bad acting/cardboard sets]? Was it a bet gone wrong with Seth Rogen and Judd Apatow? Is he on drugs? Is it a school project? Why Franco why? Everybody wants justification as to why Franco, a movie star, would want to be on a soap opera, a supposed vast, vapid, bottom-of-the-barrel wasteland of entertainment and acting talent. I’d like to point out Franco has received ridiculously massive attention and publicity over this decision, possibly even more than garnered with previous projects. Ask not what Franco can do for GH, but what is GH doing for Franco?
I’d like to shed a little light on the other side: How did/do GH fans react to James Franco coming onto their soap? People not engaged in soap opera discussion or fandom may assume that viewers were verklempt and moon-eyed that a famous movie star came down from the heavens of Hollywood to guest star on their lil’ daytime show. While some were, I found other reactions a bit more complicated. As a media scholar, one of my research concerns is the negotiations between the contemporary daytime industry and fan communities online. I am still grappling with the potential differences between online and offline soap viewers, so I am speaking specifically about those fans that engage online. There were and continue to be varied reactions to the news. Understandably, there was a lot of confusion and dismissal of the news as a hoax because the story spread on soap message boards days before there were official blog entries confirming it on entertainment sites. How? A little tweet by Jillian Michaels about Franco coming on for two months. Who is Michaels to the soap world? Besides being a trainer on The Biggest Loser, she is also best friends with Vanessa Marcil. Some of you may know her from Beverly Hills 90210 or Las Vegas. If you’re a gossip follower, she is Brian Austin Green’s ex and mom to the little boy frequently accompanying Megan Fox in paparazzi pictures. However, GH viewers know her as Brenda Barrett, half of arguably the biggest supercouple of the 90’s and a third of the most popular soap triangle. A GH fan tweeted Michaels about Marcil coming back to GH, Michaels responded, and then the investigation started across several soap boards and on Twitter (including several tweets to a clueless Bob Harper, one of the other trainers of The Biggest Loser). Officially confirmation occurred after Steve Burton, aka GH‘s Jason Morgan, spilled the beans on Twitter. The contemporary gossip industry is always in a fight over breaking the news first. And in this case, online soap communities spread the story with each other even before soap gossip sites picked it up. I find this particularly interesting because calculated or not, it was a very successful way to get online fans invested in the news by way of a scavenger hunt.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5CUa81VXVZw]
Franco’s first day on General Hospital
Understandably, there was wide spread excitement and anticipation because there are Franco fans who are GH fans and vice versa. The lines between soap viewing, primetime show viewing, and film-going aren’t as strongly demarcated as they may appear though barriers are placed there. Based on some comments, Franco’s presence actually hooked lapsed GH fans into watching again—undoubtedly one of the goals of the ABC Daytime executives (Did I mention his character is named “Franco”? Just so there is no doubt about Franco and GH’s mutual exploitation of each other). However for others, there is annoyance and dismay, because Franco follows many recent guest star appearances on GH (see Bruce Weitz and Vincent Pastore) that typically result in stalled storylines across the canvas, a centralized focus on violence, and little to no long-term effects because these casting stunts are quick attempts to boost the ratings. Franco’s star power is more widely known than Weitz or Pastore, which prompted apprehensive considerations about how his character would affect other characters’ airtimes. Surprisingly, indifference seems to pervade fan debates about whether or not Franco is really that big of a star to merit such attention. He may be a good actor, but is he a star? On various forums, early shorthand for Franco was “that Spiderman guy” or “the dude from Freaks and Geeks,” which raises questions about how stars are defined in particular communities and points to a potential hierarchy in fan star-making.
James Franco as "Franco" the avant-garde artist (Credit: ABC/Medianet)
Believe it or not, the most talked about soap appearance within the last few months for GH was actually not James Franco, but the return of Jonathan Jackson as Lucky Spencer. This news was released days before Franco’s yet dominated conversation for several weeks. Why would this news rival the appearance of Franco? First, Lucky is the son of Luke and Laura, the soap supercouple whose 1981 wedding still holds the Nielsen daytime ratings record. They were not just a soap phenomenon, but a significant part of American popular culture. If you think Franco is a big deal for the soap world, keep in mind that Luke and Laura’s wedding featured Elizabeth Taylor as the guest star. Therefore, there are strong historical connections between GH fans and Jackson, who played Lucky from childhood to a young adult, allowing the audience to see him grow up on screen from 1993-1999. Some have been hoping for his return to soaps though he has moved on to larger projects like playing Kyle Reese in the now cancelled Terminator: Sarah Conner Chronicles. While Franco is a huge star, he and his character have no ties to the GH canvas like Jackson and the character of Lucky Spencer. The daytime soap industry has traditionally used viewing memory and nostalgia to reward (and exploit) fan loyalty and tap into their textual investment. The “return” has always been an important narrative choice in the serial medium because of its emotional resonance with fans who have long viewing histories with a show. You’ll find really memorable soap episodes often feature guest returns by former actors and utilize flashbacks like One Life to Live’s 9,999th and 10,000th episode celebration in 2007. Nathan Fillion endeared himself to the entire soap community by reprising his role as Joey Buchanan for these episodes as a way of honoring his show business start, rather than trying to hide it. For many viewers, watching Fillion’s Joey reunite with old cougar flame Dorian in the 2007 episodes during his grandfather’s funeral conjures up their viewing memories of a relationship that began in 1994 (do check out Fillion’s adorable early 90′s ‘do)
I bring up Fillion’s case because it highlights the complicated negotiation between soap operas and its stars like having multiple actors in a single role. Though a fan favorite, Fillion was one of six different actors to play Joey Buchanan on OLTL. His tenure was from 1994-1997 and the aforementioned 2007 return episodes, however he was the fourth Joey and not even the actor to have played the role the longest. But he is seen as the quintessential “Joey” and soap fans followed him to his subsequent TV and film projects. However, other roles occupied by multiple actors can end up being a site of contention among soap audiences. This division of fan loyalty is often referred to online as being a character fan first (characterFF), an actor fan first (actorFF), and even a couple and show fan first, delineating where your loyalities lie. Due to the long, serialized nature of soap operas, recasting is a necessity since characters can exist for decades on the canvas and sometimes outlive their portrayers. Fans often have hierarchies in their loyalties towards particular actors or to soap characters regardless who is currently in the role, though preferences are made known. Quite common, fans follow their favorite soap stars when/if the actors migrate to another soap or even primetime. Soap stars may make daytime their permanent home like Susan Lucci (Erica Kane on All My Children) or move from soap star to primetime TV or film stardom like Josh Duhamel (ex-Leo on AMC). There is cultural caché that circulates around soap message boards about “discovering” a star first or being a fan before an actor makes it big since soaps comprise the early careers of many actors.
Jonathan Jackson back as Lucky (Credit: ABC/Medianet)
This division is the core issue over Jackson’s return as Lucky and a central reason why the news overshadowed Franco’s appearance. Plain and simple, it was old fashion drama behind the scenes. Jackson’s return was announced while Greg Vaughan, the third actor to play the character, was still in the role and starring in episodes. Likewise, Jackson made his premiere while Vaughan’s face was still in the opening credits of the show. This is not the first time ABC has switched between the recast and original portrayer. For example, AMC’s “The Real Greenlee” ad campaign celebrated the return of Rebecca Budig, the role’s orginator, while the recast Greenlee was still occupying the role. While that campaign garnered a lot of online fan criticism, the Jackson casting news was particularly angering to some GH fans because Vaughan had played Lucky the longest (from 2003-2009). Soap loyalty is cultivated with an actor-character’s constant presence on a show. But on the flipside, there are fan loyalties for the actors who originated the roles. And of course, many fans were caught between their love of both Jackson and Vaughan’s Luckys due to viewing memories with both.
Adding fuel to the fire, Vaughan tweeted shortly after the news broke that GH had decided to go in a different direction, thus letting him go to hire Jackson. In contrast, GH and ABC’s official stance was Vaughan asked to be let out of his contract. Soap forums erupted in various heated conversations: which actor was the true/real/only/most soulful Lucky? Are you a LuckyFF or a GVFF or a JJFF? Is ABC telling the truth or Vaughan? And possibly the most curious, was Jackson told Vaughan was leaving or getting fired so Jackson could return? Twitter remained part of these discussions as current GH actors tweeted their personal reactions to Vaughan’s departure. In regards to Vaughan’s truthfulness, countless posters defended him by pointing to his steadfast performance of Lucky during what many fans claim to be the worst period in GH writing history. During Jackson’s years, Lucky was a core character and written in a completely different light than under the current tenure, where Vaughan’s Lucky was written as a low-level antagonist to the mobster heroes currently central. If what partly makes a star is the role or roles he/she plays, how do we deal with multiple actors in a single role? These debates about the true Lucky brought out comparisons of fans’ viewing histories and their personal attachment to Jackson, Vaughan, and occasionally Jacob Young, who played Lucky #2 from 2000-2003. While recasting upsets are prevalent in the entertainment industry, comparison is difficult due to the shifting in-and-out of actors in a constantly moving, decades-long story. I would be curious to see the online reactions if the next Bond film had an accompanying “Sean Connery: The REAL James Bond” ad campaign while Daniel Craig got booted. Though I wouldn’t be surprised if a “Who is the true James Bond?” discussion hasn’t already taken place for many fans of the franchise.
Greg Vaughan as Lucky (Credit: ABC/Medianet)
Throughout, Vaughan and Jackson’s personal lives and personalities were central to conversations. Fans shared personal anecdotes from meeting the actors and from reading about each from soap magazines and soap gossip websites. Soap stars are produced and consumed for and by soap fans in very similar ways to those of film stars. At the grocery store checkout, the soap magazines are right next to In Touch, US Weekly, and People. There are soap gossip sites (and some “hidden”) that deliver rumors, casting decisions, behind-the-scenes antics, and industry practices for fans to devour or refute. Historically, the boundary between soap fans and soap stars has been purposefully collapsed in many ways to foster personal relationships (or feelings of one) to ensure viewers. Fan investment is the key to a soap opera’s success and this is one way to achieve closeness to the text—through its stars. Soap magazines typically talk about an actor in contrast or comparison to their on-screen counterpart, blurring the lines between character and actor. Furthermore, news about former soap stars (like Duhamel getting married to Fergie) always make the soap gossip circuit as do blind items. With the exception of The Young and the Restless, opening sequences that feature character montages don’t display actors’ names so that character identification is priority.
The daytime industry, ABC especially, promotes fan interaction with soap stars at events like Super Soap Weekend. Every year, the official GH Fan Club holds Fan Club Weekend in Southern California where fans can meet their favorite GH stars and other fans for a healthy piece of change. These events allow fans to take pictures, get autographs, and talk with soap stars as well as enter auctions to visit and tour the GH set. Most uniquely, the Fan Club Weekend event and smaller meet-and-greets throughout the year allow fans to Q&A with their soap favorites about future storylines, their personal likes and dislikes, and voice their frustration or admiration about the direction of the show. In fact, myriad online defenses for Vaughan became personal fan accounts about his cordial nature at these events and his honesty about Lucky’s unfortunate story direction. Thus, it’s important to note that relationships cultivated with soap stars are both an emotional investment of time and viewing loyalty, but also an economical one as these fan events are not cheap when factoring in travel arrangements and club dues. All these situations work primarily to keep fans invested in the soap opera text regardless of whether or not they are currently happy with the show.
Looking at soap fandom can provide another layer to the question “how are stars made and disseminated amongst fans?” As an on-again/off-again soap viewer and soap scholar, I find that the internet has made the negotiations among soap fan, soap star, and soap industry quite muddled and dynamic especially with star identification. If you are curious for extra reading, I highly recommend C. Lee Harrington and Denise D. Bielby’s Soap Fans: Pursuing Pleasure and Making Meaning in Everyday Life and Nancy K. Baym’s Tune In, Log On: Soaps, Fandom, and Online Community. Both are great pieces discussing soap fans as well as core texts used in academic conversations about the fan-star relationships in general. Also, check out the upcoming The Survival of the Soap Opera: Strategies for a New Media Era (University of Mississippi Press, 2010), a collection of various scholarship on contemporary soap issues in the digital age, including a personal article about GH nostalgia, industry-fan negotiations, and critical discourse surrounding General Hospital: Night Shift.
Much appreciation and thanks to Annie for providing me the space and opportunity to talk about James Franco, Lucky Spencers, and General Hospital.
What $258.8 Million Could Mean
What a $258.8 million dollar audience looks like
$258.8 million. That’s the worldwide 5-day gross for New Moon.
That’s $140.7 million domestic. The film also broke the All-Time Single Day and Friday Opening records, not to mention the Biggest 2-Day total.
It’s now the third biggest opening of all time — following only Spiderman 3 and The Dark Knight.
And it did all of this in NOVEMBER, when kids still have to go to school and the masses aren’t seeking the theater for heat relief. Crucially, the budget for New Moon = Just under $50 million. Add in $25 million for promotion, and you’ve already got a film (and franchise) firmly in the black.
The rhetoric flooding the film blogosphere is filled with words like “jaw-dropping,” “huge surprise,” and “phenomenal.” Nikki Finke and Variety both point out that not even the film’s distributor, Summit Entertainment, thought the film would open this big — estimates were for between $100-$110 million domestic, no small number itself. Why? Because it’s what is known as a “two quadrant” film (the four audience ‘quadrants’ = men under 25, men over 25, women under 25, women over 25. Most blockbusters are films that appeal to all four quadrants — see Spiderman, Pirates of the Caribbean, The Dark Knight, Titanic, Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, etc.).
The audience is not only ‘two quadrant’ (apparently 80% female) but young. 50% of attendees were under 21. Variety sums it up best: “the female-fueled New Moon explodes the myth that you need an all-audience film to do that level of biz, or that fanboys hold all the power.”
So does that answer my question? Is that what $258.8 million could mean? That girls can power movies — especially when there’s a romance (and abstinence porn) involved?
Sorta. Because it could also mean much, much more.
*It could legitimize the female market.
After big openings for Sex and the City, The Proposal, and Julie and Julia, risk-adverse studios may begin to invest more earnestly (and consistently) in properties that cater specifically (and unabashedly) to the female market. Of course, the studios have long counterprogrammed with ‘girly’ fare, but the key word is counterprogram — they try to pick up the ‘dregs’ who aren’t flocking to the supposedly four-quadrant blockbuster released the same weekend. This weekend is actually a fascinating example of counterprogramming, as The Blind Side, starring Sandra Bullock, did surprisingly well — presumably picking up the anti-Twilight female audience and scattered males who had been convinced by the football-time ad campaign that sold the film as a football-oriented triumph-of-the-will.
*It could (and already has) opened the female market to misogynist and ageist critique.
This is the ugly underbelly to what might otherwise be viewed as a ‘girl power’ triumph. For as anyone familiar with the franchise knows, the text is not immune to criticism. The original text has been criticized for its conservative, anti-feminist views; the second film in particular has been subject to scathing reviews from most popular critics. I’ve seen denigrating, clearly misogynist critiques of the film, from both men and women, on a diverse set of blogs and Twitter feeds — many of which interpret the success of the film as the failure of America, reason to hate themselves, their family, their loved ones, the end of the world, etc. I realize that some of this quips are in jest, but they also interpret a mass movement of females — seeking out a specific type of pleasure — as nigh-apocalyptic. As if the success of Twilight somehow ushers in the end of good taste.
Such a critique is misogynistic not only because it demonstrates a clear case of cultural amnesia — if any success indicated the end of good taste, it was that of horror porn and boy-oriented Transformers — but also because it explicitly and unabashedly constructs female consumers as rabid, mindless, brainwashed schmucks. Whatever one thinks of Twilight (and I’m not saying that the text should be exempt from critique), we still need to recognize the fact that the audience is not monolithic, nor is it mindless. By reproducing those beliefs, we (as scholars, as film critics, as film bloggers and cultural critics more generally) extend the general subjugation of women’s pleasures, tastes, desires, etc. Indeed, such beliefs contribute to the ghettoization of female-oriented art and artistry in a broad sense — whether female-directed film (if you need a reminder that it’s tough for women in Hollywood, just check out A.O. Scott’s recollection of the most important films of the last decade. Not a female director to be found.)
I heed the argument that the success of Twilight might contribute to the marginalization of less hegemonic products (with less traditional interpretations). But I also want to underline the fact that many women — and not just feminist women like the ones with whom I attended the premiere — are engaging in negotiated readings of this text. Some are reading it as satire, some are rewriting the ending using fanfic. But as is the case with almost any text, audiences make the text meet them where they are — a 13-year-old girl might love the romance, another might identify with the plainness of Bella, others might crave the family dynamic of the Cullens, older women may crave the thrill of first romance, and others may just relish the chance to escape — either in the books or the films — and become absorbed by a text.
In other words, the females who attended New Moon got to be ‘fan-girls.’ Is there something threatening and wrong with that?
*It will lower the bar for the sequels.
This is a crucial and disheartening point. New Moon very clearly had higher production values than Twilight — the stunts are far less cheesy, there are CGI wolves, and they hired Dakota Fanning and Michael Sheen to play the baddie vampires. They shot in Rome; they had all sorts of sweet helicopter and trick shots. The lighting was more even; the Native Americans’ wigs were less visible. Why, then, would the bar be lowered? Because Twilight is a superior film. There. I said it. I’m curious to know if I’m in the minority here, but I felt far less magic in the second film — no matter of CGI wolves could make up for the absence of Catherine Hardwicke, who helmed the first film. Hardwicke, who also directed the superb Thirteen, has a certain way with teen situations. The way she directed the scenes at the high school — and the deviations from the book, including the classic line “This dress makes my boobs look totally awesome” — absolutely made the film for me. I could gloss over the clunky vampire jumping from tree to tree — so long as I had the intimate moments between Bella and her dad, Bella and her awkward teenage friends.
Now that New Moon, with its streamlined narrative, has garnered such a substantially higher gross than the original, it’s only natural that the forthcoming films will heed its lessons. I’d love for the series to take a Harry Potter bent, exploring various color palettes, alterations in tone, and senses of burgeoning humor with each director. This seems unlikely. As Transformers 2, Spiderman 3, and Pirates of the Caribbean 3 have proven, a sequel, however bloated, however much it pales in comparison to the original, will do even better business. So why concern yourself with quality?
Stars in the making? I'm not so sure.
*It won’t necessarily make stars out of Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson, and Taylor Lautner.
This might seem counter-intuitive. They attract huge crowds! People put their faces on their t-shirts! But these actors have become so incredibly wed to their characters, it’ll take critical and financial success in non-Twilight roles to break away from their picture personalities as Bella, Edward, and Jacob, respectively.
My bet for non-Twilight success is firmly on K-Stew, whose forthcoming turn as Joan Jett in The Runaways seems poised to do at least moderately well. She’s already wrapped Welcome to the Rileys, a small production that should continue to bolster her cred as an actual actress. (She has to sigh and look scared a lot in the Twilight saga, but I do think the girl can act.)
RPattz might be doomed to Edward-style brooding, as exemplified by his role in Remember Me.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k8Vg3fqIWGs&hl=en_US&fs=1&]
It stars Chris Cooper, Pierce Brosnen, and that girl from Lost, but is it a hit? Middling? Fueled by Twilight fans? (They tried to make that work with RPattz as Salvador Dali this summer in Little Ashes, but I couldn’t even watch the preview (complete with Pattinson in Dali moustache) without laughing. Pattinson is scheduled for two additional films, Unbound Captives and Bel Ami, in pre-production — both with big names, if not big directors, attached. His future outside of Twilight will depend wholly upon the success of such non-vampiric roles.
As for Taylor Lautner, he’s already filmed a small part in the Love Actually-esque Valentine’s Day (opposite his supposed love Taylor Swift, no less). But other than Eclipse, he’s got nothing. Not even in pre-production. He’s the most wooden of the three, and he’ll have to secure another romantic turn — presumably in a teen-geared comedy/drama of some sort — in order to sustain his fan base. He’ll also have to sustain gossip, either through authenticating his relationship with the other Taylor, re-dating Disney star Selena Gomez, or creating new teen hand-holding buzz. Odds of success = slim. He may have great shoulder muscles, but so does Matthew McConaughey.
So what does $258.8 million mean? It means we have an opportunity to reconsider the way the industry works. Everytime a movie hits big — and especially when it outperforms expectations — we reach a similar landmark. A chance for people like me to challenge the idea that the way that Hollywood works is ‘natural,’ inevitable, or necessary. As director Kevin Smith tweeted following the release of the Friday numbers, “Tween girls can get shit DONE, man.” Indeed they can — and so can 30 and 40 something moms with their daughters, and 20-something women prefunking with white wine and flasks. And it’s a lesson we — and Hollywood — is still learning.
Why Kristen Stewart Matters.
Kristen Stewart is Cooler Than You
Kristen Stewart doesn’t want to be your friend. She doesn’t want you to like her. Or rather, she doesn’t care if you like her or not. She wears ‘ugly’ clothes in public, doesn’t bother to take off last night’s eye makeup, looks hungover, and uses a marijuana pipe in public. She has a mullet. She wears skinny jeans. She offers no comment on her relationship (or lack thereof) with costar Robert Pattinson. She has one acting style — which mostly employs putting her hands through her hair, not saying much, and biting her lip. But none of that matters, because Kristen Stewart herself is no star. But Bella Swan — that’s another matter entirely.
But she’s an immense object of fascination — photos of her are at a premium, no matter the mullet or generally dismissiveness of fame, adulation, publicity, etc.
And what really fascinates me about Stewart — or rather, about the amount of attention directed towards her — is that it’s almost entirely rooted in a specific persona that has subsumed her identity.
And that specific identity — and why she could do anything, truly anything, save becoming a lesbian, and would still maintain her popularity — is that of Bella Swan. For those of you not in the know, that’s the heroine of Twilight, and the fount of her fame.
Of course, Twilight was not Stewart’s first role — she was best known for her work as Jodie Foster’s daughter in Panic Room and as a skinny, young, hopeful girl in love with the protagonist of Into the Wild.
Kristen Stewart and Emile Hirsch in Into the Wild
Before Twilight, she also filmed her role in Adventureland - a music obsessed 20-something with a penchant for older men, being angsty, and running her hands through her hair. (In other words: the same character she plays in Twilight, only she digs Lou Reed, et. al. See Alyx Vesey’s excellent post on her character as music geek here.)
But the role of Bella has truly defined her — and defined what her image means and will continue to mean to the general public. Even when she is photographed smoking pot on a doorstep, or holding hands with her boyfriend (who is NOT, or least WAS not, Robert Pattinson), or even appearing with non-Bella hair (as she’s currently filming the Joan Jett bio-pic), they cannot usurp the conflation of Stewart with her Bella persona. It’s as if Bella Swan is wearing a mullet wig — a total inverse of the actual situation, which has Stewart putting on a Bella wig to cover up her ‘real’ mullet haircut.
Ultimately, the Stewart star image emerges as a hybrid between the inaccessible — the hipster Stewart — and the wholly accessible — Bella as near-universal point of identification. For in the narrative of Twilight, Bella is crafted as an almost non-personality…besides the fact that she is clumsy and likes cooking dinner for her father, there are very few specifics as to her looks, her hobbies, etc. Indeed, Bella functions as a cipher into which any reader — mom, daughter, whatever — may insert themselves. Hence the widespread Edward fascination: when so many women can identify so closely with the female protagonist, it’s no wonder that her love interest becomes the newest heartthrob, inspiring, in several cases, truly fanatic and destructive behavior. Thus: Stewart may be too cool for you, but Bella is you.
To my mind, this is a somewhat unique phenomenon, as the extraordinary/ordinary paradox is usually embodied within the star’s public image and simply accentuated/underscored by various film roles. Here, one specific film role performs the majority of the labor.
Other stars have been subsumed and their futures controlled by a particular role. Yet this phenomenon is most often associated with television personalities — people who play the same character every week, oftentimes for years at a time, thus firmly conflating themselves with a very particular character. In the case of Stewart, however, the phenomenon is rooted in the avid Twilight fandom. In other words, even though only one film has been released — the second Twilight film will be released this Fall; they’re currently filming the third — her face is now mapped onto each and every reader’s journey through the books.
I read the books over a year ago, at the hilt of the Twilight frenzy in the weeks before the Breaking Dawn release. The film had yet to be released, but I had seen the preview; Stewart’s face (and Pattinson’s) were the ones I unconsciously inserted into my visualizations of the text. Every time a Twilight fan — and trust me, readers, there are many of us, of all ages, feminist and non-feminist, with various feelings of ambivalence, rapture, and disgust — thinks about the character of Bella, it is Stewart’s face that pops up. She is Bella. And Bella loves Edward. And they are meant to be together — no matter what. No matter that one is supposedly a vampire. As the tagline of their romance would read, they are fated.
Which likewise explains the truly fanatic and sometimes absurd attempts to link Stewart with Pattinson in real life. Fans love a ‘real-life’ romance that mirrors the one that seduced audiences on-screen: that’s why the studios made up false relationships during the studio system, as best hyperbolized and satirized in Singin’ in the Rain.
Sometimes real life ‘mirror romances’ do occur — most recently, see the engagement of the two leads of True Blood (Anna Paquin and Stephen Moyer), the off-set relationship between Gossip Girl‘s Serena and Dan (Blake Lively and Penn Badgely) and my personal favorite, the now-defunct romance between The Notebook‘s Rachel McAdams and Ryan Gosling.
In some cases, these romances occur outside of studio machinations — McAdams and Gosling supposedly became romantically involved months after they filmed The Notebook, when the re-enacted their famous kiss for The MTV Movie Awards and felt a spark. (Oh, what a great PR piece.) Sometimes they date because they spend a lot of time together on set. And sometimes, as in the case of Stewart and Pattinson, they might not date at all — but they do very little to shut down the illusion that they might be.
The producers of Twilight are keenly aware of how a spectre of real-life romance will appease fans who have long willed such a connection to exist. As such, they have legislated how Stewart can appear in public: when she was officially dating her (supposedly now ex-) boyfriend Michael Angarano, she was not permitted to be photographed holding his hand or being intimate. Why? Because it would serve as proof that she was not, in fact, involved in a backstage relationship with her one and only love, Edward Cullen Robert Pattinson.
In Character as Bella and Edward
And any number of official publicity shots and appearances do very little to dissuade those who would like to believe in such a romance, as evidenced by the pictures below.
Out of Character: Extratextual Twilight Porn
What’s crucial to note here is how non-Bella (and non-Edward) both appear in the above photos — not only does Bella/Stewart suddenly have a sense of style (Bella does not — and she especially does not in the books, in which she regularly sports ugly long jean skirts). As for Edward/Pattinson, in the books, he is a VAMPIRE. With pale skin. Here, however, he just looks sexy/dirty.
The last picture is particularly fascinating, as it works very arduously to conflate the pair with their onscreen roles. The shot was taken at this past year’s MTV Movie Awards — and, as was the case with McAdams and Gosling, they were asked to recreate their kiss (or lack thereof) as Bella/Edward for the audience. The two moved in, very hesitantly, just as they do in the film, and simply let the tension sizzle for several moments, never actually kissing. Yet they were ‘dressed’ as their ‘real’ selves — while engaging in their characters’ behavior. They were, in essence, confirming what all Twilight fans would most like to believe: that the sexual tension and passion of the film is not a construction or an act — but real. Essential and vital.
And if it exists in ‘real life,’ then a fan’s fantasy of that love is not simply a fantasy — it’s authenticated and substantiated. A Stewart/Pattinson romance is proof positive that Twilight is not a silly, derided, absurdist, vampire text. It’s possible: something on which to stake one’s hopes and dreams for what love can and should look like.
Stewart and Pattinson matter, then, because love — and our fantasies of what love looks like — matters. No matter how silly you think Twilight fans are, fantasies — whether they involve Star Trek, Megan Fox, or drafting individual players onto football teams and competing with friends across the country — matter. What we think about when we’re not living our lives — how we’d like our lives to be, the ways we project our perfect selves — say so much about what may be lacking in our lives, and how we manage to make up for that lack and still live fulfilling lives in our non-fantasy worlds.
That’s why I don’t get grossed out or frustrated when I see the mags attempting to construct a torrid secret romance between the two. As unrealistic as the Bella/Edward romance is — and not only because it’s supernatural, but because it has some truly unrealistic components of devotion, selflessness, sacrifice, etc. — it brings people pleasure. This pleasure may be different than the pleasure I experience in breaking down this romance for you in this very post, but it is a very real pleasure nonetheless, and cannot be discounted.
