Twilight and Indonesian Young Adult Novels
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Parafrase Vol. 17 No.01 Mei 2017 Halaman 53 – 62 https://doi.org/10.30996/parafrase.v17i1.1360 BELLA’S INFLUENCE: TWILIGHT AND INDONESIAN YOUNG ADULT NOVELS Tri Pramesti Prodi Sastra Inggris Fakultas Sastra Universitas 17 Agustus 1945 Surabaya Abstract. This paper discusses the influence of Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight in Indonesian young adult novels. Tuilet and E’pliss are full of references to Meyer’s Twilight , both direct and indirect, in names of characters such as Edward Cullen and Bella and theme which take the inspiration from Twilight. By using Roland Barthes’s theory of intertextuality and Reference Code and Bloom’s literary influence, this paper is expected to provide a critical analysis of how Twilight influences Indonesian young adult fictions. Through cultural texts written for young readers, it will also be seen how cultural background of the author influence the writing. By applying heuristic and hermeneutics methods in literary reading this study identifythe moral message of the author and how the process of understanding of the author worked. As stated by Roland Barthes that there is no original text for each text is affected by various writings, place and time, it will be seen how far the influence of the novel Twilight on Indonesian contemporary young adult fictions. Keywords: Cultural Code, intertextuality, Indonesia young adult fiction, Literary Influence INTRODUCTION THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK The vampire phenomenon began Roland Barthes’s Intertextuality with the publication of Stephanie Meyer’s Roland Barthes is a literary book Twilight (2005). Since that time, the philosopher whose achievements have world has seen three more books published helped in establishing the concept of about the vampire names Edward Cullen, intertextuality. He elaborates that “[A] text Bella Swan, as well as a movie on the first is not a line of words releasing a single book, with more books and movies to ‘theological meaning’ ( the ‘message’ of the follow. In addition, there are many Author-God) but a multi dimensional space authorized and unauthorized books, in which a variety of writings , none of posters, newspaper and magazine articles, them original,blend and clash. (1977:146). toys, candy, televised news shows, and Contrasting the traditional author-based Internet sites about the characters in notion of the work with the text, Barthes Twilight series. The Twilight mania has states that while a work can be held in the covered the globe from US to Indonesia. In hand and seen on the shelves of libraries Indonesia Meyer’s Twilight series are well and bookshops, the text only exists when it known. These series become popular is produced by the new reader: ‘the Text is among young adult readers after Harry experienced only in an activity, in a Potter. Since the publication of Twilight production’ (RL: 58). Text is an ancient series, there are some novels in Indonesia word, involving notions of spinning and that have the same character, vampire. The weaving: it is the word from which we three novels influenced by Meyer’s Twilight derive our word for manufactured cloth or are Tuilet and E’pliss by Oben Cedric. textiles. The text is a woven or spun phenomenon in that it is made up of ‘quotations,references, echoes’ (RL: 60) ISSN 0854-6126 (Cetak); 2580-5886 (Online) 53 Tri Pramesti Parafrase Vol. 17 No.01 Mei 2017 Barthes asserts that there is no Intertextuality for Barthes means meaning without intertextuality. In effect that nothing exists outside the text. Barthes’ this means that every text is an intertext. In intertextual theory destroys the idea that his foundational article, “The Death of the meaning comes from, and is the property Author” (1968), Barthes reduces the role of of, the individual author. Allen synthesizes the author merely to a user of an already this view by saying that “the modern existing linguistic system which s/he did scriptor, when s/he writes, is always not invent, but had inherited as others did. already in a process of reading and re- The author is no longer seen as the writing. Meaning comes not from the originator and the creator of his own text, author but from language viewed “instead the conscious ‘self’ is declared to intertextually” (2000: 74). be a construct that is itself the product of In one of his important works on the workings of the linguistic system, and textuality, “The Theory of the Text,” the mind of an author is described as an Barthes says: imputed ‘space’ within which the impersonal, ‘always-already’ existing [A]ny text is an intertext; other system of literary language, conventions, texts are present in it, at varying codes, and rules of combination gets levels, inmore or less recognizable forms: the texts of the previous precipitated into a particular text” ( Roland and surrounding culture. Any text Barthes’ s The Rustle of Language “Death of is a new tissue of past citations. the Author” engl.trans p.49-55) Bits of codes, formulae,rhythmic For Roland Barthes, the author models, fragments of social functions as a scribe, an agent who relies on languages, etc. pass into the text a huge body of inherited knowledge, and are redistributed within it. […] citations and indications. the writer can Epistemologically, the concept of intertext is what brings to the only imitate an ever anterior, never original theory of the text the volume of gesture; his sole power is to mingle sociality. (39) writings, to counter some by others, so as never to rely on just one; if he seeks to From this statement two insights can be express himself, at least he knows that the identified. First, for Barthes, signifiers are interior ‘thing’ he claims to ‘translate’ is like caverns through which other signifiers itself no more than a ready-made lexicon, pass. Barthes’s notion of intertext is that a whose words can be explained only text is seen as a space through which other through other words, and this add texts pass, and the text’s meaning derives infinitum . .(RL: 53) Thus, the text from this process of text that pass through becomes the space where multiple voices text. More importantly, Barthes sees the meet and different writings interact with writing and reading of a text as an each other. The text is seen by Barthes as a interrelated act of production. The text isn’t disordered dictionary whose words are finished until the reader intertextually arranged in a sequence of signs and incorporates a new set of texts into the indications that the author is forced to original. The second insight that needs to respect. Barthes expresses that meaning be addressed from Barthes’ statement is does not originate from the author’s self, that a “volume of sociality” is brought to but from a larger linguistic and cultural the text by means of intertextuality ( system. Denied the privilege of being the Young: 1981:31-47) source of the text, the author is reduced to a collector and organiser of already-existing forms within a particular linguistic system. 54 ISSN 0854-6126 (Cetak); 2580-5886 (Online) Parafrase Vol. 17 No.01 Mei 2017 Tri Pramesti Cultural Code Bloom’s Literary of Influence In accordance with the death of the In his book The Anxiety of Influence: author, in his book S/Z Barthes defines five A Theory of Poetry ( 1997 2nd edition ) codes that define a network (or a topos) Harold Bloom states that poets are that form a space of meaning that the text hindered in their creative process by the runs through. The term codes can be ambiguous relationship they necessarily misleading. Rather than a set of rules for maintained with precursor poets. how a text should be interpreted, Barthes’s According to him the poets/ authors are codes are a perspective from which reader influenced by the extra literary experience. can view a text. Reading a text with the five His term "the poet in a poet" means that codes in mind is like looking at an image every author is inspired to write by reading through a series of coloured lenses. The another poet's poetry and will tend to image remains the same but your produce work. So the influence of precursor impression of it changes. Another way to poets inspires a sense of anxiety in living think of the five codes is as a set of voices poets. His idea of the influence precursor speaking at the same time. Barthes advises poets is supported by Plett saying that us to “. listen to the text as an iridescent whenever a new text comes into being it exchange carried on by multiple voices, on relates to previous texts and in its turn different wavelengths” (S/Z 41-42). becomes the precursor of subsequent texts One of the five codes that refers to (1991:17). While Keesey states that “poem meanings that are external to the text is the do not imitate life; they imitate other cultural code. The cultural code or poems” ( p.257) which means that any reference (REF) is the references to science poem is inescapably linked to other poem or wisdom. The referential code is whether by open or covert citations and constituted by the points at which the text allusions, or by the “ assimilation of the refers to common bodies of knowledge. feature of an earlier text by a later text, or This code designates any element in a simply by participation in a common stock narrative that refers "to a science or a body of literary codes and conventions” of knowledge" (20). In other words, the (Scolnicov :1975: 215). This notion of cultural codes tend to point to our shared literary influence offers a perspective of knowledge about the way the world works, both reading and writing texts as a way of including properties that we can designate looking at a text’s interactions with prior as "physical, physiological, medical, texts, writers, readers, and conventions.