The “The Twilight Saga” Saga

February 25, 2009 at 7:31pm | In literature, pop culture, sexuality, year in review | 2 Comments
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While Michael Tom was regaling you throughout the month of January with posts about Chris Crocker, Joe the Plumber, and breakdancers kicking babies in the face, I have to admit I felt like a bit of a fraud. 2008 was the year when I finally lost touch with popular culture to a point where I barely know what any of that stuff even IS. I also recently discovered that several of my friends didn’t realize that Michael Tom even wrote for this blog and were under the impression it was all me, all the time. They were pretty confused about why I was writing all that stuff, when my bro is the true pop culture junkie of the fam (if he has his way, I think Lady Gaga will become the largest item in our “tag cloud,” oh shit is she already??).

We believe in new year’s resolutions around here at Tiny Gems; one of mine for 2009 was to get back in touch with popular culture, because I have a feeling it might be kind of ridiculous/awesome right now and I’m missing out. But for now – instead of pretending that I gave a shit about stuff I didn’t even know existed – I’m going to tell you about the two pieces of 2008 popular culture that I completely, unabashedly, truly and deeply GET:

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Except that maybe I don’t really get it.

Part One: On the Really Weird Sexual Politics of Twilight

(Spoiler alert, y’all: I read all four of the Twilight books in, like, a week while bored out of my mind at my parents’ house. I’m going to talk about all four here. If you want plot summaries or whatever, check wikipedia… loser.)

I know that – at least according to the many repetitive reviews I’ve read by this point – I’m supposed to think Twilight is this giant metaphor for abstinence or somebody’s half-baked idea of Puritanism or whatever. And it seems, as a “feminist,” I’m supposed to be afraid of its subliminal mental poison and what it’s doing to the selves of today’s teenage girls. The (possibly sad?) truth, however, is that the sexual politics and dynamics that permeate Stephenie Meyer’s supremely weird/fascinating – and yet fucking horribly written – Twilight “Saga” are actually, umm, a lot more complicated than that. OK, OK, I know, they get married. Which is totally lame. But which doesn’t begin to explain away the towering weirdness of everything else that’s going on here.

OK, so I understand the common ‘abstinence’ reading of the first book; before I continued to the others I thought I got it, too. But after that, what sex is both representing and being represented by begins to shift in directions no one is really addressing (maybe because no one except me — as both a voracious reader of children’s and young adult fiction and someone with a degree in “sexuality studies” — would actually bother…..), and that maybe no one – not even the author herself – actually understands.

Continue reading The “The Twilight Saga” Saga…

Everything’s fine in 2009

January 7, 2009 at 4:27pm | In pop culture, year in review | 1 Comment
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Here are Paris and Nicky Hilton on New Year’s Eve (photo care of The Superficial) to confirm that, yes, 2009 will be exactly like 2008 – only moreso.

This year, we at Tiny Gems resolve to give you a close analysis of the fascinating, absurd pop-culture landscape of the early 2000s before it inevitably recycles. And just in case you were wondering what evidence we have for this brand pop-culture millenialism, I give you – of course – “Poker Face” by Lady Gaga.

Look forward to more music, TV, film, art, design and trash-talk all the time in 2009.

RIP TRL (or, Has Internet killed the video star?)

November 17, 2008 at 5:44pm | In culture, internet, music, new media, television, video | 1 Comment
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This Sunday, the 10-year run of “TRL” (how long has it been since the show was actually called “Total Request Live”?) on MTV came to an end with the show’s 2247th episode. A New York Times article on the final episode details the performances (Beyoncé, P. Diddy, Snoop Dogg, Justin Timberlake) and the Times Square spectacle (sign-waving, screaming teens corralled behind police barriers) that characterized the final episode, echoing the height of the show’s popularity – the late 1990s and early 2000s, when boy bands dominated the charts and drew herds of shrieking fans outside of MTV studios every afternoon.

Does the end of “TRL” – as Ben Sisario’s Times article hints – mean the end of the reign of the music video, the end of MTV’s hegemony over teen culture? Despite attempts to keep clips under control through DRM and take down notices, music videos and other proprietary content still vanish into the dark corners of the Internet, never to return safely to DMCA-controlled territory – opening up new channels and modes of viewing not available under the auspices of MTV producers. Watching “TRL” constrains the viewer’s access to content; sites like YouTube, however, offer a plethora of related videos, playlists, ads and fan-created content to be browsed at will, a wealth of media and information for the avid pop music fan. The linearity of “TRL” – a slow progression of video clips, guest appearances, performances, contests, news and commercials – pales in comparison.

In other words, in an age of web 2.0 media bombardment – with music videos posted to YouTube and imitated by fans or mashed with the pop-culture-phenomenon-of-the-week, with celebrity gaffes blogged about, discussed in Us Weekly and “The Soup” and then blogged again – the “TRL” format seems quaint, even endearing in its outdatedness. What need is there for new “TRL” appearances when fans have nearly the whole 2247-episode show catalog available at the click of a mouse, to be downloaded, remixed, parodied at will? While this increase in content access allows the target audience of “TRL” (teenage pop fans) greater agency in the production and consumption of culture, it may also decrease the ability of current music/video producers to create truly singular, original or interesting content. As the pop star is subsumed more and more into a field of public property, the music video and the pop single lose their capacity for innovation bit by bit; defining moments in these media risk being drowned out in the general babble.

Then again, with music videos like this one, who can say the age of the music video is over?

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