Title: Fanpire: The Twilight Saga and the Women Who Love It
Author: Tanya Erzen (Professor)
Published: Beacon Press October 2012
Synopsis: Twilight, Stephenie Meyer’s young-adult vampire romance series, has captivated women of all ages, from teenagers who swoon over the film adaptations to college-educated women who devour the novels as a guilty pleasure. All told, over 110 million copies of the books have been sold worldwide, with translations into 37 languages, and the movies are some of the highest-grossing of all time. Twilight is a bona fide cultural phenomenon that has inspired a vast and unimaginably fertile fan subculture—the “fanpire,” as the members describe it. Just what is it about Twilight that has enchanted so many women? Tanya Erzen—herself no stranger to the allure of the series—sets out to explore the irresistible pull of Twilight by immersing herself in the vibrant and diverse world of “Twi-hards,” from Edward-addition groups and “Twi-rock” music to Cullenism, a religion based on the values of Edward’s family of vegetarian vampires. Erzen interviews hundreds of fans online and in person, attends thousand-strong conventions, and watches the film premiere of New Moon with Twilight moms in Utah. Along the way, she joins a tour bus on a pilgrimage to Twilight-inspired sites, struggles through a Bella self-defense class, and surveys the sub-universe of Twilight fan-fiction (including E. L. James’s enormously popular “Master of the Universe” story, the basis for her erotic novel Fifty Shades of Grey). Erzen also takes a deeper look at the appeal of traditional gender roles in a postfeminist era saturated with narratives of girl power. If Twilight’s fantasies of romance and power reflect the fears, insecurities, and longings of the women who love it, the fanpire itself, Erzen shows, offers a space for meaningful bonding, mutual understanding, and friendship. Part journalistic investigation and part cultural analysis, Fanpire will appeal to obsessed fans, Twilight haters, and bemused onlookers alike.
Status: Read from October 23 to 24, 2012 — I own a copy {Courtesy Beacon Press/ Edelweiss}
My Thoughts:
I first bought Twilight for my then thirteen year old daughter, after reading a news article about it’s phenomenal popularity in the US, in the hopes that it would spur her to read something other than her Facebook status feed. She glanced at the blurb then tossed it back at me, complaining it was too thick and she wasn’t interested. Deflated, I figured I would read it and see what all the fuss was about. Three hours later I looked up and cursed, its was Sunday 7pm, the shops were already shut and I would have to wait until the next day to go and buy New Moon. On Monday morning I dropped my children off at school, bought the rest of the series and spent the next two days immersed in Forks.
In my late thirties, a married mother of four children with a university degree, I was hardly Meyer’s target audience but I read the books breathlessly, one after another, resenting interruptions and finished the last page of Breaking Dawn with a sigh of regret. Intellectually I recognised the flaws in the series but I just couldn’t bring myself to care. I have no idea why I fell in love with the saga, but I was wholly enamoured.
Fanpire is the result of ethnographic research amongst the diverse fans of the series by Professor Tanya Erzen, who was interested in exploring the books appeal. An analysis of online surveys promoted at Twilight fan sites and first person interviews with Twihards of all ages, yields surprising contradictions and fascinating theories. Erzen also explores the accusations leveled at series fans by Twilight haters and its critics.
For the most part, Fanpire is a very readable cultural study, with discussion from Twilight identities such as the site hosts of bellaandedward.com, twilightmoms.com and twilightguy.com and quotes from the fans themselves. It is a little repetitive at times and occasionally drifts off into tangents (such as Meyers’ and Summits lack of support for the town of Forks).
Interestingly, though Fanpire was written before the ‘discovery’ and publication of Fifty Shades of Grey, Erzen devotes an entire chapter to Twilight fanfiction and specifically to the source of Fifty Shades, known then as The Master of the Universe, and shares an interesting comment that reveals the genesis of the erotica series name.
Fanpire is an interesting read, and I think the author’s hypothesis’s have some validity though I am not sure it adequately explains my own infatuation with the series. Some phenomena simply can’t be explained or defined by either a qualitative or quantitative study and the popularity of Twilight is one of them.
Available To Purchase
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Filed under: ★★★, Non-Fiction, Provided by Publisher
