Night; its Edges & Accessories (Twilight, New Moon, Eclipse and Breaking Dawn)

   This blog post is a riff off of a Forbes article, of all things, on the phenomena that is the Twilight series. To Forbes’ credit the article does not gush, but reports forthrightly about all the money this franchise is raking in.
   What is phenomenal to me is that (what I call) female porn (the entire genre “romance novel”) has ripened this kind of storyline dynamic to a fair-thee-well … and yet, all of a sudden this?

   Let’s review: A never before published author, Stephenie Meyer, produces yet another narrative; aligned as hundreds of thousands have gone before (remind: the romance novel). Yet somehow the magic prosperity fairy bestows opportunity where it never had, for decades, before. Three unknown actors star. The films are all low budget.
   If one of my digital film students asked me what happened, candidly, I’d be at a loss for words. The business model is to take any of those disposable storylines, any wannabe actors and that anyone with a fledgling budget and some essential grounding in film could repeat? This is not to minimize any real writing, acting or cinematography skill on the part of the principals. I am simply questioning the larger picture: how did what happen all of a sudden become palatable and does that mean we can now create an assembly line for the backlog of written material and become mega-wealthy?
   I am happy at the halfway point the first two films alone produced $1.1 billion at the box office based on next to nothing. Happy prosperity to those who lucked out; being associated with all this. My point, beside questioning writing, acting and filming choices, is where is the investigative reporting on how this happened? Is this a trend or an aberration? And if it is a trend, what are the long term consequences for culture?
   If this is just teen/tween pabulum I confess my friends and I had Rocky Horror 35 years ago. But at least that was honest – even then everyone knew it wasn’t art; it was fun, disposable crap. If that’s all this is, I wonder if people know it.

Inside The 'Twilight' Empire

Dorothy Pomerantz, 06.28.10, 06:00 PM EDT

http://www.forbes.com/2010/06/22/twilight-kristen-stewart-robert-pattinson-business-entertainment-celeb-100-10-twilight.html?boxes=Homepagetopspecialreports

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