Personally, I feel like there's more to blame here than her as an author. Every author makes mistakes, but they're usually caught in editing, which is usually provided by the publisher. If indeed she got published through nepotism, that might explain the lack of quality in the text in terms of grammar and whatnot.
Then, you have to factor in that no one is forced to consume art. There has to be some willingness to approach it in order for it to be this successful. I think this means there is something rather wrong with our culture. You need to have Kitsch art, because sometimes one simply needs to indulge in... well... social circlejerk. The Michael Bay films are the best example I have, movies made for the sake of being movies, with no underlying purpose (maybe some of them do, I mean, the reason why I got so interested in the Pacific Front of WWII was because of the Pearl Harbor movie (the guys at Extra Credits would best explain it as tangential learning)) other than stimulating our pleasure buttons, so to speak. Meyer could very well be part of this Kitsch culture, but it doesn't feel like that to me. It feels so much more... wrong? I can't really explain it, but as we as a collective begin to accept women and men as equal these pieces of art seem to send the wrong message, at least in my point of view. But then I read a post here that said that maybe it's a rebellion against the modern feminist movement that demands women be independent and non-complacent (great from my Marxist point of view, not so great when these are the people that yell at you for opening a door for them), which I think might be true. All these books with submissive women like 50 Shades and the Twilight series might very well be the response to the modern feminist, which I think is good. It's good to be critiqued, and if any movement needs it, in my opinion it is the feminist movement, because it's become a "hate on males" movement rather than an egalitarian movement. In a sense, they've failed to see the forest for the trees, and are so bent on achieving what they view as right that they forget not everyone is the same.
I only wish this type of critique wasn't led by texts which have the quality of Deviant Art fan-fiction.
ccdohl said:
Evilpigeon said:
Popularity and quality are not linked. The film/ book/ game with the widest appeal is simply the one that's most innoffensive.
I disagree. If people enjoy something, and enjoy it immensely, as they do Twilight, on a large scale, then it is quality.
Maybe it is not sound by certain literary standards, but it's not low quality to the people who love it.
I'm saying that, at the very least, the burden of proof is on those who claim that it is low quality to overcome the masses of people who love it.
In addition, I'm not sure that you can say that Twilight is meaningless or pointless. It certainly has its messages, and they certainly resonate with some people.
Edit: In addition, how can the most inoffensive bit of media have so much hate from almost every direction?
1. Yes, there has to be an element of quality there, and I think it's the critique I mentioned above, but I think what people hate is that it had to come from such an unrefined source. If Twilight were written much better and if the movies weren't a Hollywood cash-in, they'd be taken more seriously, and I think what Bob is asking is to try and see if we haven't failed to forget about something due to the hate bandwagon everyone is so eager to catch onto. Many girls who read the novels found the romance interesting, there is clearly something we've missed by dismissing it as garbage.
2. I think it's that no media is inoffensive in its entirety. If all art were suddenly Kitsch art, it'd be accepting a rather simplistic and pleasure driven culture as magnanimous; essentially, it would be Ancient Rome all over again, and no one would give a damn about anything, falling asleep on our laurels. I had this discussion on VG too, arguing that it was important to call out EA, Activision, Ubisoft, etc. when I as a consumer am affected due to the fact that there's a real danger of everyone adopting these tactics that negatively impact consumers. Many people simply think that because there is currently a market (to put it one way; I think interest group, as in people interested in something, is more appropriate) there will always be a market. That isn't so, especially if it starts to become acceptable to consume lesser-quality entertainment. My point here is, I don't mind Meyer or her message, necessarily. It's the fact that I can't hope to understand the message nor infer on it that is frustrating, and it's mostly from the fact that it's very unpolished.
HOLY WALL OF TEXT, BATMAN!