Posted on 11/23/2009 5:35:21 AM PST by Dr. Scarpetta
"The Twilight Saga: New Moon" features long, steamy, smoldering gazes by handsome, shirtless young men who are vampires or werewolves.
Despite those lingering, lustful looks the film includes only four kisses and not a single sex scene.
Women and girls, who made up 80 percent of the opening weekend audience, said that is one reason "The Twilight Saga" appeals to them.
"I actually like that, the fact that they don't have bedroom scenes or anything," Gabrielle Rivera, 15, said.
Clearly the storyline is working. In the first three days, the box office raked in $140.7 million, according to studio estimates.
That places "New Moon" third behind "The Dark Knight" and "Spider-Man 3" on the highest-earning films for an opening weekend on the domestic charts.
The movies are based on the "Twilight" books, written by Stephanie Meyer.
Meyer, a Mormon, wrote her lead character, Edward, to be a chaste and noble protector of his love interest, Bella.
This may explain why the movie is a hit among so-called "Twilight Moms" who have described Edward as "the perfect man."
(Excerpt) Read more at abcnews.go.com ...
A shared culture? what do you mean? Do you propose minimum standards imposed on books/movies and those not meeting the standards, what then? whose standards? are we permitted individual taste? I honestly don’t understand what your concern is.
I’m saying that ‘it’s just people’s opinions so who cares’ doesn’t get very far. What’s the point of discussing anything then? Henry James is a better writer than Stephen King no matter how many people prefer the latter to the former. An uninformed opinion is exactly that. Bad taste is bad taste.
And in America, last i checked we were permitted to have bad taste. Again, literature vs. entertainment. If one wants to feel smug that he/she won’t stoop to reading anything less than literature, he/she can go ahead and feel superior and most people won’t be bothered by it. It says more about the one feeling the need to feel superior than anyone else, IMO. I am saying that there is room for dreck, always has been and always will be. if this book/movie series had pretensions claiming to be literature or cinema, i’d say it was open to criticism. It doesn’t. it is what it is, and IT IS, if nothing else, financially SUCCESSFUL.
Except of course if nobody is reading Henry James then it’s not really part of the shared culture. By the very nature of the beast the shared culture tends towards the lowest common denominator. So the more approachable authors like King are going to be more of a part of our shared culture than the “artistically superior” authors like Henry James. Now 90 odd years after his death King will probably be completely forgotten, and James will probably still have the same level of following then as he does now (ie the literati), but there will be a new shared culture then, and it will be ruled by a new version of King not a new version of James.
What is the upshot of your lament? you are wishing everyone had better taste? that these type of movies weren’t successful, weren’t MADE, because you don’t consider them up to your standards? how does this square up with freedom? yeah i know, NO ONE’s talking about censorship, that’s been said here repeatedly, so what ARE you talking about then? just a general moaning about the degradation of the popular culture?
Who said we weren’t? I’m not claiming ‘there oughta be a law’ I’m claiming that educated people should know better than to espouse the ‘everyone’s opinion is equal’ canard. And actually, the Twlight films do have pretensions to seriousness. That’s certainly how their audience takes them.
I guess that guy’s not the werewolf.
There has always been junk made for the mass market. There always will be. But that doesn’t mean that people who know better shouldn’t call it as such. I’m making an argument against Aesthetic Relativsm.
It seeps into the mass culture via influence on other writers. The masses may not be reading Jane Austen but her influence on pop culture in the last 15 years is abundant.
We have SO many problems confronting us in the area of moral relativism, I can’t possibly worry about aesthetic relativism at this point! in a perfect world, maybe! The Twilight series, as some have pointed out, arguably has a prolife message and certainly does not involve premarital sex. So pap though you may consider it, aesthetically— it is arguably moral.
It’s books and movies designed to entertain people and make money. I doubt the agenda goes much further than that.
That is probably the dumbest post in the history of Free Republic.
I am saying that everyone is entitled to their own TASTE in entertainment. The smug pretentious types are free to look down on the masses, and their BAD TASTE, but I say everyone is free to read, write, produce whatever their heart desires in our free country/
Aesthetics are a moral question! :-) Stendahl said that bad taste leads to crime.
Never said they weren’t.
I’m a lawyer not a lit major, and prefer the criminally low-brow to the criminally SMUG ; )
The novels of Robbe-Grillet made me want to kill.
Only because there’s a handful of movie producers that keep making movies from her books. Mostly bad movies, and still not nearly as many as have been made from King’s books over the same time period (oddly enough also mostly bad movies). But for good or ill King is a much bigger part of modern culture than Austen, because he’s more read, and movies made from his stuff are more watched. He might not be as good a writer as Austen (although frankly I couldn’t even finish the cliff notes of Pride and Prejudice, quite simply the most painfully boring book I’ve ever put in front of my face), but he is more a part of our shared culture.
Well good grief, no wonder you are Jorge Luis! I was a latin american studies major undergrad. You make sense to me now, in all of your literary smugness! j.k!
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