Epilogue: in the Post-Twilight Afterglow

EPILOGUE: IN THE POST-TWILIGHT AFTERGLOW GIRLS, EXCESS, AND DEFENSES A mode of excess, melodrama is often judged harshly for its over-the-top tendencies, especially when these exaggerations relate to girl characters and audiences. Once catalogued, Bella’s and Jane’s ongoing persecution and presentations of feelings might seem over-the-top. The expressive discourse uttered by Rochester and Edward might be deemed excessive. The couples’ happy endings might be disregarded as clichéd happily ever afters. Yet through their unrealistic realism, melodramatic impulses validate emo- tion, promote intimacy between girls, and shine a critical light on restric- tive social constructions of girlhood. Melodramatic conventions, such as a plot driven by villainy in order to delineate good and evil, and conven- tional impulses such as music, expression, moral feelings, dreams, female villains, suffering, crying, and closure are perhaps predictable. At the same time, they are comforting, especially for many girl readers. These impulses, inherited from the nineteenth century, work together, bleeding into each other and collectively feeding the melodramatic mode in girl culture. Girls’ preferences for melodramatic texts need defense in a culture that marginalizes girls’ emotions and questions their choices. Importantly, however, girls themselves defend their cultural preferences, as one girl’s confl ict with a school librarian illustrates: :o Okay … So me & my friends read twilight end of last year … and like all the rest of you guys … fell in love with it, and it wasnt soon before long that we were edward cullen obsessing …. After having fi nished reading Eclipse © The Author(s) 2016 191 K. Kapurch, Victorian Melodrama in the Twenty-First Century, DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-58169-3 192 EPILOGUE: IN THE POST-TWILIGHT AFTERGLOW for the 7th time a couple of weeks ago … I thought “HEY maybe I should read Twilight again …” So I asked my friend to borrow it and she said sorry I don’t have it, I went to the school library and *gasp,schock,horror* They didn’t have it … So I walked straight up to the librarian and asked to request it … this was her reply “TWILIGHT?!?!” (basically screaming) “You are the tenth person today asking for this god-damned book … I WILL NOT HAVE IT in my library … no I will not, this is a catholic school and I will not tolerate a story on vampires and romance and nonsense, I will never ever get that book for this library … no siree … it is BANNED by the principal” Is this the most ridicolous thing you have ever heard?!?! Do you think that this is fair?! :(Or do you think that it is understandable … considering it’s a catholic school? Personally I think that it is ridicolous!! Me and my friend were soo angry that we wrote twilight-stephenie meyer 100 times on a blank sheet of paper, cut them out and put them in the request box … (“WHAT?! Twilight banned from library! :-0”) e.c_obsession_syndrome’s passionate recollection documents the resistance that one girl and her friend encountered—as well as the resistance issued back by the girls themselves. Whether or not the librarian actually used this exact language, the account offers a girl’s perception of how melodramatic texts are derided as “nonsense,” an attitude available in so many of the clichés adults use to belittle a young person’s feelings, such as “You’re just being melodramatic.” Even if e.c_obsession_syndrome is exaggerating the librarian’s word choice, this is yet another example of how girls themselves use melodramatic discourse to negotiate feelings of powerlessness. The sexist and ageist dismissals of the melodramatic saga and its girl readers do not exist in a vacuum; they are part of a public discourse that seeks to control girls. The assault on girls’ popular culture preferences echoes the broader attack on girls’ and women’s abilities to make choices, especially about the pleasure and health of their bodies. The 2012 US presidential contest illustrated this clearly. During the years leading up to the election (which occurred during the same month as the fi nal Twilight fi lm’s November premiere), the USA was embroiled in disputes about contraception access connected to government mandates for health care providers to cover female birth control. This controversy continues as the Affordable Health Care Act has gone into effect and debates about EPILOGUE: IN THE POST-TWILIGHT AFTERGLOW 193 defunding Planned Parenthood persist, creating a climate in which the female body remains a heated and public site of contest. Perhaps one of the reasons Twilight is so troublesome to some adult critics is that this coming-of-age narrative is about a girl who is consumed with decisions about her own mortal body. (These decisions include whether or not to have sex with a vampire, whether or not to be bit- ten by a vampire, whether or not to jump off a cliff in order to feel close to the vampire, etc.). Admittedly, this obsession with the body is often directed toward boy-girl romance, a heteronormative privileging that fem- inist scholars should question—but not at the cost of denying the com- plex appeal of romance and melodrama for girls. A story about struggling to gain bodily sovereignty in light of physical constraints may resonate with girls, whose bodies are sites of discursive contest. According to Ruth Saxton, “The body of the young girl—whether athlete or potential Miss America—is the site of heated battles, not only among parents, teachers, coaches, but also those who would exploit her sexuality, lure her to inter- nalize their fantasies and purchase their products” (xxi). Following this line of thought, perhaps one of the reasons Twilight fans, who cried and screamed in public, are so alarming to some adults is that these girls’ bodily reactions seem to be outside of adults’ control—just as those screaming Beatlemaniacs were in the 1960s. Recognizing melodrama’s critical capac- ity and empowering functions advances an appreciation for the progressive potential of this pervasive mode of discourse in girl culture. FUTURE RESEARCH ON MELODRAMA, GIRLS, AND YOUTH This book is about Twilight —but it’s not really about Twilight . By exploring novels, fi lms, and girl readers’ responses together, this book begins a conversation about melodrama and girls. How does melodrama func- tion in works representing, consumed by, and created by girls (and youth) in the nineteenth century, throughout the twentieth century, and in the new millennium? This book only scratches the surface of that question. For scholars of children’s and adolescent literature, exploring this historical trajectory could have important consequences for understanding the development of literary genres for young people. Historically, both melodrama and children’s and adolescent literature have suffered from low expectations from classist, ageist, and sexist critics, who belie the texts for the audiences to whom they appeal. Contemporary YA literature, however, is rife with melodramatic impulses. The “problem novel,” which has 194 EPILOGUE: IN THE POST-TWILIGHT AFTERGLOW been a standard in adolescent literature since the twentieth century, gen- erally follows melodramatic form; it fi nds contemporary expression in the John Green’s YA repertoire. Understanding and naming works as “melodrama” is not a diminishment of those novels and young people’s prob- lems. Rather, melodrama’s inclinations to side with the powerless remains one of the reasons these novels appeal to both young people and adults. Following my comparative treatment of Jane Eyre and the Twilight Saga , a more comprehensive treatment of melodramatic impulses in literature for young people is a logical next step. Not only would this kind of study expose the cultural biases that have diminished melodrama and children’s literature alike, but it would also recover an important historical legacy in the development of literature for young people. The nineteenth century is considered the “Golden Age” of children’s literature, and the Victorian era also gave rise to melodrama, which informed the development of drama, the novel, fi lm, and television. Recognizing how these roots grew out of the same soil would be a fascinating project. In addition to the study of children’s and adolescent literature, this book’s fi ndings have implications for the study of Victorian literature and girlhood. Given my focus on the nineteenth century’s legacy in contemporary novels and fi lm, this conversation is particularly relevant to scholars of neo-Victorian literature and other arts. Furthermore, the prevalence of the Brontës novels in contemporary popular culture, especially literary texts consumed by girls, is another area on which future scholarship can expand. Do continual references to Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights in young adult literature say something signifi cant about the representa- tion of twenty-fi rst-century girlhood and girl readers? I suggest scholars invested in the study of girlhood, the nineteenth century, and the Brontës might expand on my fi ndings to explore further the legacy of nineteenth- century texts in girl culture. Finally, throughout this book, I highlight melodrama’s sensational potential, supported by theories that associate tears with a kind of erotic release or agency in a broader aspect. This reinforces the bodily properties inherent in the melodramatic experience. We could continue following the trajectory from Jane Eyre to Twilight to the most popular and mainstream erotic trilogy, Fifty Shades of Grey , which began as Twilight fan fi ction and has received its own Hollywood adaptation. An analysis of E.L. James’s novel’s inheritance of Twilight ’s melodramatic impulses may continue to affi rm the fl uidity between tears and other ecstatic responses. Realizing melodrama’s validation of coming-of-age female sexual desire through the melodramatic mode, then, has powerful implications to the study of popular culture.

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