#bcm 110

After a slow death since the 2012 release of The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn—Part 2, Twilight as a franchise has managed to make a resurgence in the public eye. Though the series began to see nostalgic success from 2018 onwards, thanks to a Netflix streaming deal, the release of Midnight Sun, and a global pandemic, 2020 appeared to be the year of the ‘Twilight Renaissance.’

Another large factor contributing to this resurgence in popularity is the dissemination of memes and other online content, particularly on platforms such as Tumblr and TikTok. Nowadays, though it is still largely female-dominated, the Twilight fandom is composed of a diverse range of individuals, from the middle-aged women and now-adult fans which long made up the original fandom, to more men, current young adults, and queer teens. 

One of the main staying powers within the fandom however, is a love of criticism for the franchise. As Sydney Dawson states in an article for Wired, “I don't think there's anyone more critical of Twilight than die-hard Twilight fans… I’m seeing elements in the books that maybe went over my head as a kid, like the ‘life begins at conception’ idea and the way Indigenous people are handled in the books,” (2023). Dawson, who wishes to conduct an ethnographic study of the series’ fandom, represents a new wave of fans who are critical of the series in a way which reflects but can still be differentiated from criticisms of the past. Just as both the series’ quality and themes have been examined in the past (Eate 2015), they continue to be examined in the modern day. 

However, the main point of difference is that it appears that many of these critiques are derived from a place of nostalgia and legitimate enjoyment. Other perspectives from the Wired article (Eakin 2023) clarify this. As Amy Taylor states, “It's things that were always there, but it took a while for some of the younger generation to catch up.” Natalie Wilson said that “We can read the books and enjoy the films and still question some of their messages.” Other articles such as Haley Johnson’s ‘I'll bite: Giving into the ‘Twilight’ renaissance’ (2022) and Jamie Khan’s ‘The Twilight Renaissance of 2020, the year it stopped being called lame’ (2020) reflect similar personal experiences.

As it stands today, the Twilight fandom is able to challenge many of the gendered-biases against it as a female-dominated fandom space. It is clear that though the franchise and it’s fans have been disproportionately criticised in comparison to their actual realities, that this fandom has since developed a much healthier culture of criticism.

Although semiotic productivity is often associated with fandoms and fan culture, notably through means of textual production such as fanfiction and fanart, it is also true that all audiences of popular media will engage in some degree of semiotic activity (Fiske 1992). 

As such, it comes as no surprise that individuals who are less kind towards a particular piece of media or franchise will draw their own conclusions and respond in their own way to any given work. The ‘anti-fan’ can be described as somebody who is not necessarily against the idea of fandom, but someone who strongly dislikes a given text or genre (Gray 2003). This is an important distinction, as anti-fans can often be just as active as participatory members of fandom spaces, as those who identify themselves as fans. As Gray states, “hate or dislike of a text can be just as powerful… and [anti-fans] can produce just as much activity, identification, meaning, and ‘effects’ or serve just as powerfully to unite and sustain a community or subculture” (2005, p.841).

In her 2011 article, Jacqueline M. Pinkowitz discusses the concept of ‘excess’ in relation to the Twilight anti-fandom, specifically in relation to the late 2000s online community, the Anti-Twilight Movement (ATM), and how its representations of Twilight fans interact with the dominant cultural hierarchy. Through the group’s anti-fan behaviours, ATM perpetuated cultural notions regarding ‘high-culture’, ‘academic’ media, stating specifically that they were “protecting the name of literature” (2008). In doing so, the website highlighted the supposed inferiority of “the popular, the emotional, and the feminine” (Pinkowitz 2011). 

However, because the behaviour and media engagement of fans and anti-fans are similar, anti-fans such as those who comprised ATM can also be associated with the connotations of excess associated with fandom. 

ATM was aware of the fact that although it was rejecting Twilight's rabidly devoted fans, it had at the same time created an entire website dedicated to the Twilight books, inviting comparisons to the same rabid behaviour they intended to criticise. As such, ATM made attempts to convince site visitors of its lack of interest or investment—that ATM rejected the ‘excess’ displayed by Twilight fans and other anti-fans alike, aiming to position their critiques as inherently rational. On their FAQ page, in response to the manufactured question "Why do you put 90% of your energy into something you hate?", ATM wrote, "Ahahaha, 90% of my what? You obviously don't understand how fast (and easy) it is to make a website. We barely put any 'energy' into this." 

Pinkowitz also argues that the Ragemail page on their website would often be used to showcase Twilight fans at their worst, characterising critics of their community as petty and unsophisticated, traits typically associated with teenage girls. This allowed them to reject these “femininely gendered rabid fans” for their emotional volatility, youth, and perceived lack of education or intelligence (Pinkowitz 2011). 

ATM never reaches the levels of anti-fandom as demonstrated in Catherine Strong’s 2009 study of the Cracked forums, which observed that users saw Twilight, as “basically as close to worthless” due to its female target demographic (2009, p. 9). These anti-fans claimed that Twilight “sucks because it was written for teenage girls” (Strong 2009, p.9), a position not held by ATM, however they still perpetuated the placing of the feminine at the bottom of the dominant cultural hierarchy (Pinkowitz 2011). Similarly to phenomena such as Beatlemania, which was defined in part because it challenged the “then-prevailing ethos of teenage purity” (Pinkowitz 2011). The assertion of labels such as “rabid” or “manic” and the moral panics surrounding these majority-female displays of fan expression reveal societal anxieties about the mass-articulation of female desire, with the eroticized fan typically being depicted as female (Pinkowitz 2011). 

As a widely popular romance franchise, Twilight posed a threat because of its potential for the expression of female desire by its fans, and thus deserved to face similar descriptions of its fans as inherently irrational, in an attempt to police and restrict such expressions.

Fandom is the term used to describe a subculture of fans who are characterised by their shared common interest in a particular interest or activity. Whilst the subject of fan interest can encompass entire hobbies or media genres, it is often more narrowly defined, focusing on single celebrities or media franchises.

Typically, this media is associated with ‘low culture’ due to its association with disempowered members of the community. As such, it is often assumed by the broader culture that fandoms surrounding ‘low-culture’ media are inherently uncritical of the media they consume. In the case of fandoms which are comprised mainly of women, especially young girls, these assumptions are frequently intertwined with and influenced by patriarchal notions of gender, and the denigration of femininity. 

Female fans of media such as Twilight are often dismissed as a whole on the basis of their supposed ‘rabid’ nature, denoting a lack of rationality or ability to respond critically to the media being consumed. This reductively stigmatises female-dominated fandoms and female fans more broadly, in a manner reminiscent of historical, gender-based moral panics, such as late 18th century attitudes towards novel reading (IS 1798), or the ‘Beatlemania’ of the 1960s. In her 2009 article, Click references the media descriptions of Twilight fans from around the release of the movies, pulling from examples where media outlets utilised ‘Victorian era gendered words’. The New York Times described fans as “on the rabid side” (Rafferty 2008), USA Today portrayed fans as “in a frenzy” (Memmott 2009), and The Boston Globe suggested an “enthusiasm bordering on hysteria” (Gorov 2009).

However, the ability for fandom spaces to turn their semiotic productivity into textual production through the creation of fanfiction, fanart, and analytical media, disputes this notion. As Fiske (1992) argues, the circulation of such fan-generated content is what helps to define fan communities, and as Eate suggests, this is especially true for female fandom spaces, who frequently utilise the transformative nature of mediums such as fanfic to engage critically with the original texts (2015). As such, the typical image surrounding Twilight fans is both indicative of a cultural tendency to deride female pleasure and consumer power, and an inaccurate assessment (Eate 2015). Fanfic authorship provides evidence of how Twilight fans have resisted arguably anti-feminist sentiments present within the original works (Hendershot-Parkin 2010).

Eate’s essay in particular discusses how Twilight fanfic challenges the heteronormative conservatism of the original franchise. As the essay states, “throughout the Twilight Saga, sexual desire is strenuously policed via tropes of monogamy and compulsory heterosexuality” (Eate 2015, p. 47).

Despite vampire literature being used historically as a vessel to explore taboos regarding sexual deviance and fluidity, notably in texts such as Dracula and Carmilla, Twilight’s vampires instead function to allegorically elevate paternalistic, conservative messaging about sexual propriety and domesticity (Eate 2015). Feminist critics of the series have read the Twilight Saga’s themes as being indicative of cultural anxieties regarding the threat of women’s improved social standing and the normalisation of premarital sex.

Similarly, Twilight fanfic writers have responded to these gendered aspects of the franchise through the reconceptualisation of the relationship between Bella and Edward’s relationship. This tendency was uncovered within the mainstream when E.L. James’s Fifty Shades series was revealed to have originally been posted online as a Twilight fanfiction entitled ‘Master of the Universe.’ Another example outlined by Eate is that of the fanfic ‘More Than a One Night Stand’ by flutetenorsaxplayer, which although primarily being a vehicle for smut, devotes a large amount of its narrative to recounting the “drudgery of domestic life and motherhood” (Eate 2015, p. 49). The fanfic’s emphasis on the monotony of married life, however implicitly, criticises the tyrannical nature of patriarchal societal expectation which is so frequently pushed in Myers's original work.

Though these works may not be deemed of the highest quality, they still serve as important examples of how fandoms recontextualise the original works through semiotic means, and how this audience behaviour challenges the often gendered stereotypes concerning critical consumption in female fandom spaces.

Exploring visual messages through the lens of the Dove Real Beauty Campaign. 

The Dove Campaign for Real Beauty was, and still is, a marketing campaign launched by Unilever in 2004. Its supposed aim was to help build up the self-confidence of women and young children through its body-positive messaging. The campaign has become well-known through its viral videos such as Evolution, Onslaught, and Dove Real Beauty Sketches. 

Evolution

Real Beauty Sketches

Over the campaign’s 20 year lifespan, Dove has managed to amass a large number of still-image advertisements. These images echo the themes of body positivity within their video campaigns, presenting Dove as a brand which is focused on inclusivity and feminist activism. Yet they still draw derision. Why is this?

To explore this question, we will examine the following image through the lens of Semiotics.

Semiotics refers to the study of communication through the interpretation of signs and symbols (Oxford, 2023). As individuals view an image such as the example shown above, they draw on both their own past experiences and the visual cues within the image, to interpret and draw out meaning from it. Ferdinand de Saussure’s semiotic theories lay the groundwork for this process. Visual imagery is able to be dissected through two components – the signifier and the signified – which combined, produce the sign itself.

The signifier and signified may also refer to denotation and connotation, respectively.

The signifier is the literal representation. This may include sounds, words, or images. In the Dove example, this would include the models, their clothing, the text, the logos, and the bottles. Even the blank white background. On their own, these images say little, but when you introduce the mental concept, or the signified, the sign is now able to produce meaning.

“'Denotation' tends to be described as the definitional, 'literal'... meaning of a sign… The term 'connotation' is used to refer to the socio-cultural and 'personal' associations (ideological, emotional etc.) of the sign."

(Chandler, 2021).

The Real Beauty campaign has been criticised for a number of reasons despite its outwardly positive messaging. Heiss (2011) criticises how the campaign simultaneously challenges and reinforces traditional understandings of beauty through its omission of women with disabilities within its advertising. Dye (2009) critiques the way in which Dove markets itself as an esteem-building brand centred on natural beauty, whilst selling beauty-enhancing products.

“Signs are more 'polysemic' - more open to interpretation - in their connotations than their denotations.” 

(Chandler, 2021).

Using the example image, it is easy to see where this conflict emerges. If we look at the signifier (the group of women), the viewer may pick up that the women are smiling, embracing one another in a friendly manner. They each have what could be considered an ‘average’ or ‘real’ body for a woman. As a group, they display diversity in hair and skin colour. This signifies that they are comfortable with their bodies, and take pride in their appearance. It signals to audiences that they too, should feel this way about themselves.

If you take into consideration the logo, images of the bottles, and content of the text, we see that this is an advertisement for a product. It can signify to viewers that though these women are confident and beautiful, it is ultimately because they use Dove firming products on their skin. This is a more cynical reading, but arguably still an important one. It relies on an understanding of social context on behalf of the viewer (Chandler, 2019). A person in contemporary society is usually able to discern when an advertisement is being shown to them, due to years of lifelong exposure to advertising.

Of course, there are more ways to interpret the image, and the campaign as a whole. This is the crux of the concept. As Stuart Hall said;

“The codes of encoding and decoding may not be perfectly symmetrical.” 

(Hall, 1973, p. 4)

That is to say, different messages may arise or be lost when an individual decodes/signifies a message.

What constitutes active audience behaviour at a concert?

After a six-year hiatus, New Jersey rock band, My Chemical Romance (MCR), announced a one-off reunion show to be held in Los Angeles, in late-December 2019. Tickets for the show sold out within minutes, and soon it was determined that further reunion shows in Europe and North America would be scheduled worldwide for 2020. These shows had to be delayed.

At a certain point in early 2022 I began to feel a particularly strong desire to engage with music in a way I hadn't done before. I really wanted to go to a concert. Aside from the Foo Fighters concert I went to when I was about nine-months old, I hadn't ever gotten to experience live music for myself. It was a true shock to my core when one day, as I was scrolling the MCR tags on Tumblr, I was confronted by (minimal) discussion of the new Sydney tour dates. Lo and behold, I managed over the course of a few months to both save up for the cost of the tickets, and to beg on hands and knees for two of my friends to come with me. In early 2023, we had made it.

Now, approximately a year later, I am challenged by the discussions around active vs. passive audiences. What behaviours really contribute to an active audience? How would these apply to my own audience experiences?

How do we define an active audience?

There has long been an assumption that audiences are made up merely of passive consumers of media, spurred on by ideas such the Hypodermic Needle Model, which relies on the basis that audiences are vulnerable to the influence of mass media, reacting to stimuli in a passive manner, as though it has been ‘injected’ into them. Passive audiences can be contrasted with Active audiences, who are understood to be more critical of the media they consume. Active Audience theory (Oxford, n.d.) is one aspect of the Encoding and Decoding Model (Hall, 1973), and argues that audiences do not just receive information passively, but are actively (and subconsciously) involved cognitively and emotionally in responding to media. 

What about live music?

Reflecting upon my experiences at the concert, I have come to realise a certain reality. Music is inherently participatory (Baym, 2018). Audiences will listen to music not just to pass time, but will often engage critically on an active level; through analysing song structure, lyrical meaning, and using it as a tool to process their emotions. They might create music themselves, or other forms of art. All of this prompts discussion. This process of engagement can be scholarly, or it can be personal and creative (Baym, 2018). For me, music has been a valuable tool for informing my own visual, or written works of art.

This aspect of collective experience equally applies to the undercurrents of the concert experience, which I have noticed when reflecting on my own experiences. When my friends and I went to see MCR, there was constant conversation and engagement, all surrounding the central experience of live music.

“the audience can play multiple roles… the content user, the content participant, the content spreader/endorser/annotator, and the content producer.”

(Ha, 2021 p. 28)

“Some feel the rain, others just get wet.” Bob Marley

Banksy, a masked street artist, has painted two signifiers in this piece; the man with the umbrella and the child. By painting the man with black and the child with bright colors, it makes us feel as if the man is lacking joy or life. This makes us relate to the child, who’s taking in the rain with arms up and mouth open, yearning for even a…