Ten Simple Reasons to Go See Bridesmaids
10.) KRISTEN WIIG KRISTEN WIIG KRISTEN WIIG. I cannot overstate how good she is, how good the writing is, how crucial her unique sense of timing and deadpan is to the narrative. She is this movie, and I hope it makes her an enormous star. I would totally not mind seeing pictures of who she’s dating and what she looks like when she goes to the grocery store. I want her haircut, I want her to be my best friend, I want to go on a plane ride with her.
9.) If you have ever been a bridesmaid, this film is like post-traumatic therapy, manifesting all that is obnoxious, tiresome, difficult, and bank-breakingly opulent about the bridesmaids process. It also speaks to the undergirding reason bridesmaids exists — because women love and need each other — and emphasizes how more important that is than the bridal shower invitations.
8.5) Jon Hamm with his shirt off.
8.) An adorable love interest with a Irish accent. But obtaining said love interest is NOT the sole focus of the narrative. This is so. Incredibly. Refreshing.
7.) If you are a boy, or if you are trying convince a boy to go see this film, rest assured, they will like it. Several boys in my life with distinctly boy-centric media tastes have already declared it “REALLY REALLY FUNNY,” “so good,” and “the best film of the year.”
6.) Demonstrating her increasing irrelevancy, Nikki Finke made a bet that if the film grossed over $15 million its opening weekend, she’d “leave Hollywood reporting forever.” She was wrong — the film is going to make at least $20 million, second only to Thor — and while I doubt she’ll actually leave Hollywood reporting, I like to see her stubbornness (and wrongheaded reading of the film: it’s not about women burping and farting; it’s about women being funny, and there’s a total of one scene with burps and farts) laid bare.
5.) “Bridesmaids doesn’t treat Annie’s single status as a dire character flaw worthy of triage: she’s simply going through a rough patch and has to figure things out, as in real life.” - Manohla Dargis, NYT.
4.) Women are funny, and as obnoxious as this may seem, we — men and women alike — need to place our vote at the box office that we like seeing women being funny. Otherwise, I’m telling you, we are doomed to decades of Kate Hudson and Katherine Heigl rom-coms. This is our future. Change it.
3.) The film has been broadly sold as a “The Hangover for women.” I hope this gets people to see it, but I also think it’s a misnomer. There are Judd Apatow aspects to this film — especially evident in the scene supposedly inserted by Apatow himself involving scatological humor — but don’t be fooled. The humor is rooted in Wiig’s sensibility, which, to my mind, is much more interesting and hilarious than the Apatow/Hangover brand of humor.
2.) Lab puppies and Wilson Phillips.
1.) See it because it’s fucking hilarious.” - Dana Stevens, Slate.com
Tweeting = The New Hollywood PR?
I’ve been thinking a lot about Twitter’s function in Hollywood of late. In part because I just finished reading P. David Marshall’s fascinating essay ‘The Promotion and Presentation of the Self: Celebrity as Marker of Presentational Media‘ in the inaugural issue of Celebrity Studies, which you can access in full (and for free!) (Imagine my tremendous surprise and delight when I reached the end of the essay and realized he had cited my earlier work on celebrity Twitter and the generation of authenticity . While I don’t always agree with Marshall (his understanding of the way that celebrity works is far more deterministic than my own — in his major work on the subject, Celebrity and Power, he theorizes celebrity as a means of generating self-surveillance and complacency in capitalist democracies) I admire his work tremendously . Along with Graeme Turner, Su Holmes, Chris Rojek, and Joshua Gamson, he was amongst the first to rigorously theorize the way that celebrity functions within society. In other words, his work helped make celebrity studies (and not just ‘star’ studies) legitimate, and it is an honor to think that I contributed to his thought process.
Tangent over — and back to Twitter. My thoughts on the ways in which celebrities generate clouds of authenticity around themselves and their disclosures remain static. While Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore may have tempered their Tweeting, the number of celebrities who have taken to Twitter over the past year has increased exponentially. Whether Conan or Tom Hanks, Elizabeth Taylor or Coach from Survivor, Twitter has firmly established itself as a means of extending one’s celebrity persona/image.
But Twitter and production information is another matter entirely. Hollywood observer Anne Thompson (an avid Tweeter herself) recently wrote a series of posts dealing with the ways in which Twitter is changing the way that publicity for films in pre-production, production, and post-production has been disseminated. Historically, such information was the provenance of the trades (Variety and Hollywood Reporter). When Entertainment Weekly debuted in the early ’90s, selling itself as a ‘trade for the mainstream,’ it began to trade similar information — but rarely were they exclusives or breaking news, in part due to the EW‘s weekly publication schedule. (Side note: if you ever meet me and get a glass of wine in me, make sure and ask me about my hilarious childhood devotion to EW.)
But with the trades in free fall for myriad reasons, most of the breaking trade news has migrated online — most prominently to Nikki Finke’s Deadline Hollywood Daily, but Anne Thompson’s ‘Thompson on Hollywood’, The Wrap, and even non-insider blogs like Cinematical are all now breaking trade news. Granted, Finke’s blog is probably the only one providing the sort of ‘inside baseball’ info traditionally organic to the trades, but the popularity of all of the aforementioned speaks to the growing fascination with production details outside of Hollywood. Put differently, ‘laymen’ — whether academics or just those independently interested in the industry — have become conversant in the trade language of Hollywood, and hunger for specifics concerning signing details, actor salaries, mergers, and weekend grosses.
Why are people more interested? Can we attribute it to increased levels of cinephilia? (Or DVD culture?) Not necessarily, no. When I was researching Entertainment Tonight and its start in the very early ’80s, I found dozens of articles trumpeted ET’s innovation and brilliance in their move to provide such information to the general public. Up to that point, no one was reporting how much stars were making, how much films were grossing, or how different television shows were faring in the ratings. But once that information was provided, the public came to view it as crucial in determining whether a show as successful — or whether they could call themselves an expert on a show, a movie, a star, or Hollywood more generally. If you provide stats, even if they’re ultimately somewhat meaningless, as reported weekend box office takes can be, people will begin to think of those stats as essential. Today, the general public is so versed in the parlance of weekend box office — and so assured that opening weekends determine the popularity of a film — that such stats turn into self-fulfilling prophesies. A #1 weekend ensures that the film will continue to draw consumers, not because the film was good, but because it’s so obviously marked as ‘popular.’ (Unless, of course, that film is G.I. Joe). (See also my summer piece on how box office speculations — and the discourse of ‘box office disappointment’ — unfairly doom pictures like Public Enemies).
So how does Twitter fit into this? As Thompson explains, more and more, stars, producers, and directors are taking to Twitter to break their own news, essentially obviating the need for trades altogether. Jon Favreau just Tweeted the (theretofore unannounced) news that Harrison Ford would be starring in his new picture; Tom Hanks posted a Twitpic of his casting session for his new film; Jerry Bruckheimer reports from screening of Prince of Persia at Wondercom. Jon Favreau posted a ton at the beginning of Iron Man 2, apparently got in trouble, but is now back at it, as evidenced by his Ford announcement.
To my mind, there are two forces precipitating this move. First, as described above, the lay men (e.g. the vast majority of those following the likes of Favreau, Bruckheimer, etc.) is hungry for ‘insider’ information. And, even more importantly, he/she will feel more ‘a part’ of a product with which they’ve been intimate for a long time. In this way, providing ‘inside’ information from pre-production is basically a way of hooking ticket buyers early: if they get in at the ground floor, they’re be more likely to show up to see the top put on the skyscraper. Second, Hollywood is, without a doubt, in financial crisis. No matter how many hundreds of millions of dollars made by the huge blockbusters, it still takes a tremendous amount of money to get a film made — and part of that ever-escalating budget is P.R. Thus, if you can publicize your film for NOTHING to an audience of millions of self-selected fans via Twitter…..why not? The same logic holds for the celebrity using Twitter to promote their general image: why keep a P.R. agent and stylist on retainer when you can publicize yourself with little more than an internet connection and a free Twitter account?
So it’s a smart business move. But it’s inciting all sorts of anxiety, in part because it, like the dissolution of the trades, threatens to fundamentally change the way that Hollywood does business. Because Hollywood, as an industry, is much more than simply the people who actually ‘make’ the movies — it’s also composed of vast armies of agents, assistants, managers, and P.R. agents. And if you take away those middlemen, replacing it with Twitter, a tremendous amount of people will be out of work. In some ways, I think the seismic effects of the internet (and digital technology more broadly) can only be compared to the demise of the studio system in terms of wide-spread ramifications in the way that Hollywood does business.
Which isn’t at all to suggest that the P.R. agent and agency is dead, or that the trades (print or online) will be rendered obsolete. The number of actors, producers, and directors using Twitter to break news straight to the consumer is still proportionally minuscule. But the possibility is there — and it’s going to continue to cause anxiety. What interests me most, then, is that it took a platform as widely ridiculed as Twitter to make both the movement itself and anxiety over it visible.
Brangelina: Only Over When They Say So.
See this PR machine? It'll only break when it's good and ready.
Maybe you didn’t hear the news on Saturday night. Maybe you weren’t like me, at home, preparing a journal article at 7 pm, and were thus out of reach of all internet gossip. But if you were online or in any way attached to social media, chances are you heard or saw the tsunami-like progress of the Brangelina Break-Up through the internet. Of course, it was false. But for a few hours, for many, it felt very true.
Lainey Gossip does a superb job of laying out the very specific reasons why this rumor could not have been true. As she underlines,
These two are manipulative and obsessively controlling. Especially HIM. And they’re not lazy. They’re not Tiger Woods. They are experienced. They lock their sh-t down tight. And for something like this, if they really are prepared to call it off, it would have been engineered and masterminded months ago. They would have had a game plan in mind to run the message the way they want to run the message. Just like Pitt made the announcement of his split from Jennifer Aniston strategically on a Friday afternoon, after everyone had gone home, while he was away on holiday, as the least opportune time for the media.
In other words, they’re the best. I’m not saying this because I like them or I’m fascinated by them; I’m saying this because they have a tested and true record of brilliant and immaculate publicity manipulation. Please recall: Angelina Jolie, whose image had theretofore been characterized by brother-kissing, amulet-wearing, and associations with the likes of Billy Bob Thorton, “steals” Brad Pitt from all-American Jennifer Aniston. They don’t get married. They adopt many, many non-white children; they have three children out of wedlock. And they got away with it! Not only that, they are beloved. Indeed, they are, without a doubt, the biggest stars in America. Their auras are the largest; they may not be able to open a film like, say, oh, John Travolta in Wild Hogs, but trust me, their brands are much, much more valuable.
This wasn’t some magic trick or intrinsic quality; it was the product of impeccable and incredibly savvy P.R. Just see Nikki Finke on Jolie’s manager, Guyer Kosinski, who was recently hired by Nicole Kidman to revamp her struggling career. He may be referred to as “Guyer the Liar” and have a general reputation in Hollywood for sleaziness, but the guy is so effective that Jolie does not even have an agent. Many of you already know this about Pitt and Jolie. But for those of you who don’t, the lesson is: when, and if, they ever separate, it will be a masterpiece of P.R. manipulation.
And it will most certainly not come from the likes of The News of the World, whose story, published on Saturday afternoon, was the source of the rumor. Now, as Lainey again points out, U.S. tabloids have been trumpeting the demise of Brange for the last four years. Life and Style is especially keen on declaring the various reasons for their tragic break-up: Angelina cheats on Brad with tutor, Brad’s secret rendezvous with Jen, etc. etc. But when you read it in Life and Style in the supermarket aisle, the vast majority of us, even those who love gossip, put absolutely zero stock in such a claim. Why? We’ve been trained. We’ve seen so many false claims on the tabs — and I’m not necessarily talking about The National Enquirer, which, as the John Edwards and Tiger Woods cases prove, are actually oftentimes ahead of the curve — but the truly unresearched, sensational, and derivative tabs like L&S, The Sun, and The Star.
Why, then, did so many believe it? Let’s be a bit more specific. Why did so many Americans believe it? The answer is pretty simple: lack of international media literacy. In other words, they didn’t realize that News of the World was a British tabloid. Doesn’t it kind of sound like, oh, I dunno, The Globe and Mail? Or something else super official? It’s promising to offer the News of the World! Not Life and Style!
And many people believed this story — including reputable people — which only facilitated the spread of the rumor. Even Roger Ebert, who’s developed quite the devoted Twitter following, retweeted the news. When it first broke, I was in Twitter “conversation” (oh god, supernerdtastic) with fellow media scholars Christine Becker and Alisa Perren, and all of us were looking for TMZ to break the news. And if you ever hear news of such a split again — or of any major celebrity news — that’s where I’d absolutely advise going to confirm. As I argue in my recent article on TMZ, which just came out in print in Television & New Media, TMZ has a rock-solid network of informants, inside-men/women in the legal system, and immaculate fact checking. They’re basically lawsuit proof, in part because they don’t publish rumor. They publish confirmed facts. When they broke news of Michael Jackson’s death hours before anyone else, it wasn’t because they were jumping the gun. He was dead on arrival, and they had the sources within the ambulance/EMT network to confirm it. But they’re more than just libel-proof — they’re also right. No matter your feelings about their garish and intrusive style, they get the dirt, and they publish it first, and if it’s not there, it’s not true.
Of course, when Pitt and Jolie (and their publicists) realized they needed to counter this unexpected rumor, they didn’t call TMZ. TMZ rarely trucks in publicists. Instead, they called People, which relayed an official statement as to the continuing integrity of their relationship. And while official statements are often bunk, this one rings true. Again, if they were going to break up, it most certainly would not be leaked, scooped, or scandalous. It would be handled with kid-gloves, it would sustain the auras of both Pitt and Jolie, and it would make all involved parties look saintly.
So let this be our lesson: don’t trust British tabloids, don’t trust sources just because they have “news” in the title, and don’t believe a Brangelina break-up tale until it involves an official statement, TMZ confirmation, and a dramatic surge of damage control pictures featuring beautiful children.
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.
The Politics of Twilight Web Traffic
Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart Caught in the Act — And now they’ll give me web traffic!
(Image from Pop Sugar; originally nabbed by X17)
FACT: Talk about Twilight, and you will get web traffic.
FACT: Passionate, angry, and upset fans may attack you based on your post, but you will still have web traffic.
FACT: Simply by posting the image above — the first “irrefutable” evidence of a romance between the two stars of Twilight — I will up my daily web traffic by as much as 1000 visitors a day. Some arrive simply to view the image, but many stay and read the article that surrounds it. I know because their comments continue to accumulate.
FACT: Academic blogs (like this one) may not be fueled by numbers of visitors, but for-profit ones most certainly are.
FINAL FACT: Twilight posts, sneak peeks, trailers, gossip, and speculation have turned into a self-perpetuating phenomenon: even if people don’t necessarily care about them, and even if there’s not really news, if you post it, the fans will come. And the fans will continue to come as more information is promised — as my friend Nick recently posited in our co-authored forthcoming article on celebrity twittering, “there can never be enough information on a star; therefore, more information is always needed.” The fan hopes for one crucial piece of info — a picture, a quip, a video snippet — that promises provide access to the authentic kernel of the star. In the case of Twilight, the revelation of the apparent Pattinson/Stewart relationship only further expands the desire for more information: now that we’ve seen them touching, can’t we see them kissing? Won’t that tell us everything we need to know? About them, our own hopes invested in their romance, and love in general?
Of course not. But the promise of fulfillment continues to guide the currents of web traffic. In many ways, the phenomenon isn’t that different from the dilemma facing magazine publishers every week: if a magazine puts Pattinson on the cover, as Vanity Fair did this month, they will come.
But with so much celebrity discourse and photo/video evidence available for free online, they may not buy. Which is exactly why Vanity Fair pulled the brilliant (if obvious) move of not only putting its Pattinson story behind a pay wall, but also leaking excerpts early and promising additional photos to further encourage ‘hard copy’ purchase.
But there’s something slightly different at stake when it comes to internet traffic. Print journalists — especially those associated with long established magazines such as People, US Weekly, or Vanity Fair — love a high sell-through number, but they aren’t individually tasked with cultivating a sustained readership for a particular internet site. In the fickle world of internet traffic, readers are sometimes loyal, but rarely. If they are loyal, it’s often to a syndicater — a home blog that links regularly to sites of interest, such as Perez Hilton, Huffington Post, Jezebel, etc. Thus the impetus is both on the syndicater (to find links) and the satellite blogs (to get linked).
The ultimate goal: go viral. And while very few stories or pictures go as ‘singularly’ viral as, say, The JK Wedding Video or “Dick in a Box,” you still want your particular story to be widely linked. Some sites, including the Gawker Media Family, have historically based their pay scale on the amount of hits garnered, thus encouraging authors to post the most salacious, scandalous, or outrageous material possible in hopes of going viral. (Gawker has supposedly since ceased such practices).
Well-paid bloggers have a particular impetus to garner massive amounts of hits. Take, for example, Nikki Finke. As Anne Thompson recently reported, Finke is frustrated by the pressure to regularly pull in large numbers at her new home with mail.com, regularly forefronts what she names “shameless plug for Twilight traffic,” as evidenced below:
Of course, Thompson herself courts Twilight traffic from her new home at Indiewire — she’s posted her one-on-one (and admittedly adorable) video with Pattinson twice in the last week alone (while also hyping the new V.F. cover, including a sneak-peak excerpt). And while Lainey Gossip declares a general dislike for the saga, she nevertheless has cornered the market on on-set filming updates from her home base of Vancouver, B.C.
But Twilight fuels more than just blogs like Deadline Hollywood Daily, Thompson on Hollywood, and Cinematical. It also drives traffic to social networking and corporate sites; indeed, following the premiere of the New Moon trailer on the MTV Movie Awards, Finke declared the traffic stats “astounding“:
Summit Entertainment has a count of 4.2 million views for the New Moon trailer from MySpace, and another 1.6 million from MTV.com, so that’s 5.8 million combined views in the first 24 hours from its two domestic online launch partners. By comparison, the 3rd (and last) trailer for Twilight received 3.2 million views in its first 48 hours on MySpace, piddling compared to viewership for the sequel’s trailer.
The hype — and monetary potential — is huge. In a tight market, Twilight content has emerged as one of the few sure bets.
Which is also why Twilight drives the content of small and middling blogs, including this one. While I honestly did not write my post “Why Kristen Stewart Matters” with the intent of garnering massive attention, part of me certainly did know that such a post was more likely to get picked up by the likes of MovieCityNews, which had previously linked to several of my star-based posts. And yet, as I’ve explained before, I had no idea that a small blog post could spread — or be valuable — to as many readers as it did. It was Tweeted and re-Tweeted, Facebooked, posted on a dozen Twilight blogs, discussion boards, and Livejournals. When Lainey Gossip linked to me, the traffic went through the roof — over 12,500 hits in a single 24-hour period. I’m still regularly receiving new links to the original post (and the meta-post on Twilight hate mail that followed).
And then there’s the photos. One of the photos I posted of Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson has already garnered 40,000 hits. It’s nested in the piece, of course, but people get there via some sort of image search — which means that such hits do and do not count. Some stay and read the piece; most are just looking for a picture of them touching each other in magic hour lighting (see below).
KStew and RPattz's Money Shot (at least as far as my blog goes)
Of course, since I’m a non-profit blogger, hits have very little financial value. But what happens when I attempt to use my blog as a proto-academic achievement? How do I emphasize the reach of my posts and the blog in general? Are hits an appropriate measure? If they are, shouldn’t I just switch the entire topic of this blog to Twilight? Alternately, if I want to use advertising to pay off the student loans accrued while attending an academic institution that insists on paying its Ph.D. students beneath the poverty line while requiring us to pay up to $1000 per semester in ‘fees’ (n.b., I have no qualms in outing our university, especially since state law prevents us from unionizing and thus challenging exploitative labor practices), hits certainly do matter.
Which is all to say that content — ‘professional,’ ‘journalistic,’ academic, gossip — is motivated by trends and results. It’s not necessarily rooted in what’s happening in the industry (although Twilight and its production company, Summit, are certainly indicative of currents in the industry as a whole) but in what audiences are most motivated. This is why some shows with small but vocal (and motivated) fan bases can compel certain shows to stay on the air: not because networks are necessarily sympathetic to pleas of ‘it’s quality TV,’ but because they recognize the potency of the show’s fans. And Twilight fans, like those of Gossip Girl and Vampire Diaries, are female, between the ages of 12 and 40, and ready to spend. On spin-offs, for info, for premiere tickets, to see sneak preview footage. They pay with actual dollars, but they also pay with their time: through internet searches, repeat trailer viewings, and gossip site searches.
Richard Corman’s famous “Peter Pan Theory” stated that you should always pitch a movie to a 19-year-old boy in order to get the broadest audience. The enormous summer gross of Transformers 2 certainly proves the thesis true. But Twilight, whose four books have dominated the New York Times best seller list for the last two years (and, with New Moon, is poised to become one of the top advance ticket sellers of all time) is proving that the cross-mediated text — and its enormous potential for exploitation — should cater to the girls.
