Dark Shadows: What WAS it about Barnabas, anyway?

"My name is Victoria Winters. My journey is beginning. A journey that I hope will open the doors of life to me, and link my past with my future. A journey that will bring me to a strange and dark place ... to the edge of the sea high atop Widow's Hill. A house called ... Collinwood. A world I've never known ... with people I've never met. People, who tonight are still only shadows in my mind. But who will soon fill the days and nights of my tomorrows..."

And so it began.

Long before Twilight and Edward Cullen, indeed long before she who would become Mrs Meyer summoned up the courage to favor Mr Meyer with that first shy smile that would set the world hurtling along the irreversible course of events set in motion by their decision to reproduce, a decision that resulted, as we all know, in the birth of their little daughter Stephenie, even long before Anne Rice, surrounded as she was by all kinds of spirits in the antedeluvian days of that modern-day Atlantis, the City That Was New Orleans, smiled a secret smile to its venerable old ghosts, and picked up a pen and a clean spiral notebook, long before any of that, there was Dark Shadows.

It is said to have begun with a dream about a young girl on a train, one of those little New England towns that at first glance, look like nothing, but upon closer examination seem shrouded in mystery, a veritable rookery of secrets and ghosts.

"My name is Victoria Winters," began the voiceover of every episode. Innocent young ingenue, "raised in a foundling home," new governess, spooky old mansion, and all those secrets..

The first 200 episodes or so were painfully slow-moving, yet strangely compelling, kind of like a dark and brooding Hills shot in black and white.

As may be imagined, it was not doing well in the ratings. The atmosphere, the cast, the script, were there, but neither the original storyline, nor the first year or so of episodes contained any "supernatural" content at all!

It was all tease and no payoff!

Nevertheless, as I am reminded as I watch those first chapters again after forty years, it is fascinating to see how so many episodes containing so little plot advancement can form such gripping storytelling!

Most viewers, however, were nowhere near gripped, and with the wolves of cancellation at the door, the team went into action, "went supernatural" as producer Dan Curtis would later put it, first a ghost, then a flaming Phoenix, and then, I think it was episode 211 or thereabouts - a simple-minded handyman opened a dusty old coffin, and Barnabas Collins rose up out of it, and nothing would ever be the same - not for a fortyish, virtually unknown Canadian stage actor named Jonathan Frid, and not for the millions of tween n' teen girls who suddenly began to literally run home from school every day, to catch ABC's 3:30 PM airing of the first ever - and to date still the only - gothic soap opera.

After-school "extracurricular activities" were kicked to the curb by such a large number of kids, especially girls, that some schools were obliged to re-arrange everything and have them at night, while others, especially in smaller communities, simply let them fall by the wayside, and stopped having a school paper, a girls' softball team, a glee club, drama club or squad of baton twirlers.

Like all soap operas, Dark Shadows featured some pretty, pretty people. And like many, it teamed them up with seasoned and accomplished actors. Just about every Dark Shadows character had their share of loyal fans, but to the surprise of many, especially Jonathan Frid himself, the real superstar who would that emerged from those Dark Shadows, and who would become one of the great iconic characters of that age and this - the Baby Boom's Edward Cullen - was Barnabas Collins - the reluctant vampire!

Recently, I received a present of a sort of Dark Shadows "center slice," the episodes comprising what many consider the "best part."

In the course of its 5-6 year run, Dark Shadows featured not only vampires, but werewolves, ghosts, time travel (both ways), & a parallel universe, so, as is the case with The Hills, not everyone agrees on what the "best part" is, and frankly, while I thought of the "center slice" I received as my idea of the best part, I had not even gotten halfway through it before realizing that I was as firmly "hooked" now as I had been as a young girl, and the "best part" is the part I am currently watching! :D

In reality, Jonathan Frid was so not a hottie - by the standards of that time or this. He had not been chosen by focus groups of young girls asked to rate his relative hunkiness against that of a series of other shirtless and manscaped candidates.

Yet he became, almost instantly, the object of adolescent crushes every bit as intense as those today enjoyed by Robert Pattinson! And if you think you like Edward Cullen, just wait till you meet Barnabas Collins!

Dark Shadows was, for its time, a very different kind of show, redolent of several genres, yet not fitting into any of them. Like the inexplicable but undeniable appeal of Barnabas, it was unique and unprecedented.

For the past several months, the internets have been abuzz with rumors, some confirmed and some not, that no less than Johnny Depp is interested in a revival of Dark Shadows - because HE wants to be Barnabas!

Jonathan Frid is in his eighties now, still very active, and frequently appears at the annual Dark Shadows Convention - yes, after 40 years, there is still an annual convention - and attendance, and interest, the Convention itself - have all steadily grown as the years have passed.

"Good luck to him (Depp)," Jonathan has blogged, and we may make of that what we will, but if anybody can pull it off - well, it's hard to think who else besides Johnny Depp would even have the balls to attempt it!

Even at its purplest, the narration, even the dialogue in some cases, was still evocative and poetic, with a beauty of language seldom associated with either soap operas or teen TV favorites.

Angelique's "yours is the hand I will use when mine is too small" actually makes a sweet wedding vow, if one can manage to remove it from its original context, which was - no, I don't think I will tell you. That would be a spoiler!

Low budget production goofs notwithstanding, there was an attention to detail in production values that belied the occasionally shaky door, and the costumes of the 1795 storyline have not been surpassed today, even by multimillion dollar productions with actual research departments.

The original Dark Shadows tapes have been remastered, ready to enchant a whole new generation of impressionable tweens n' teens - and delight their mothers and grandmothers and aunties - and a most respectable chunk of fathers and uncles et al - with a deliciously nostalgic voyage back to another time - most appropriate for a show that incorporated time travel into so many of its story arcs!

But a word of warning to younger viewers who are intrigued enough by the challenge implicit in my "if you think you like Edward Cullen" hmmphing to lay in the appropriate supply of snacks and pillows, and settle in for some serious Dark Shadows Center Slice viewing - television was very different back then.

In the Olden Days, all TV shows were in black and white - and this includes almost the first 300 episodes of Dark Shadows.

Around #295 or so, they made the Great Transition - complete with proud voiceover announcement appended to the famous intro of Robert Cobert's eerie theme and the waves breaking against the black cliffs. ( Those cliffs and waves were actually shot in Kennebunkport, Maine, for you trivia buffs).

Although the quality of the remastered product for the bulk of the series is excellent - in fact, it actually looks better today than it did then, but that could be because I am watching it on a much better screen than was available to me (or anybody) in 1967, the masters for a handful of episodes have been lost, and all that is left is the black and white Kinescope version, even of episodes that aired in color.

Dark Shadows is not only unquestionably Great Art, but a fascinating repository of 1960s fashions and hair - but not the tie-dye and waist-length "natural" styles associated with the outward aspects of movements for social change celebrated in the famous broadway musical, but the look rocked by the more traditional "silent majority" sector, as they struggled to emerge from the bright red lipstick, pincurls and crinoline skirts of the 1950s and embrace what was called back then "the natural look."

That name takes on new meaning for modern viewers of old movies and TV shows, and for younger folks, it can be a little disconcerting to see actors with natural noses, natural lips, natural teeth, even natural bustlines!

Even older actors, (Grayson Hall's admitted age was about 45 and Joan Bennett's was 57 or so when the series began) both male and female, have full use of facial muscles (there was no botox then which gives them the ability to be wonderfully expressive with their faces!

Each actor had his or her own unique look, and so each character will be distinguishable one from the other even on first viewing. This will actually be an advantage, as even someone who had never even heard of Dark Shadows will be able to instantly differentiate one character from another without that initial fumbling period of getting straight on which blonde is which that accompanies most modern day shows.

But at the time, "natural look," depending on one's hair DNA, meant trying to sleep on hair wound around soft drink cans, enduring long, painful sessions with heated metal combs and grease (it's not fried, it's Shake n' Bake!)even longer salon sessions where hair never intended to be anything but stick-straight was painstakingly sculpted and pinned into sausage curl-festooned updos for prom.

On Dark Shadows, even the hairstyles of the younger generation actresses are different from each other - and in the "modern times" scenes, it is even their own hair!

And Oh, what hair it was!

How many young prom-goers modeled gown & hairstyle on Josette Collins! "Fashions Courtesy of Ohrbachs" said the credits.

And Oh what fashions!

From Carolyn's near-platinum, low-light-free weapons-grade "flip" to Dr Hoffman's immovable cartoon puppydog ears, to the elaborate curlwursted confections adorning the defenseless heads of Vicky and Maggie, and the more matronly architecture sported by Liz Stoddard, the Dark Shadows hair story ran the gamut from classic simplicity to rococo to comical.

If the sixties fashion of the "modern times" episodes are enjoyed today as high camp, in the 1795 era costumes we are treated to are some of the most breathtaking clothing ever seen on stage or screen.

Even compared to the most lavish costume design, then, before or since, the "1795" wardrobe in which the cast was arrayed at the very least rivals Barry Lyndon, and surpasses, in sheer beauty, any and everything ever done by Merchant Ivory and certainly anything ever acted in by Emma Thompson.

Whether, as the years passed, we were aware of it or not, Dark Shadows did a lot more for the fashion philosophy and sense of Baby Boom TweenznTeenz than any fashion magazine - those 1795 costumes were and are a veritable university of knowledge there for the osmotic absorption for even the most clueless on the subject of what colors go with which human color palette, even given that most of the world's people will have to do a smoosh of extrapolating - the population of Collinwood was very ethnically homogeneous.

It will not always be possible to readily apply these lessons as one wanders through the racks of today's ready-to-wear, however.

Though those with peach and cream skin and chestnut to auburn hair may readily understand from that wonderful dress of Josette's that they can stop looking for "their color," because it has been found, its name is it is butternut (and it should be accented with true cream and deep purple, deeper than royal purple, but well short of aubergine) may not have much luck locating their color. It is not "popular" at the moment, but it should be perennially so, and those who are familiar with the costume I am referring to know why.

I would go so far as to say that anyone whose human color palette is even in the same family as Kathryn Lee Scott should consider it, along with that true cream, as "their" neutral!

Kathryn is one of the great beauties of the age, (though today her hair is blonde) :) and I have no idea what her "natural" color is, but the auburn-kissed chestnut one-color head she had in 1967 is the one that suits her best.

Lara Parker, another great beauty, may remind some younger viewers a little of AnnaLynne McCord, and if AnnaLynne is lucky enough to grow up to look like Lara Parker she will officially pass from schoolgirl kawaiihood into serious, grown-up, weapons-grade Beauty.

The wardrobe designer wisely put Lara in a lot of neutrals and muted colors, even her most elaborate gowns served as a backdrop for her face, the color of a blush rose, a huge pair of those eyes that go from green to oceany and back again and shades of blonde that I don't think they make anymore but they should! The remarkable edifice of sausage curls that was fastened to the crown was about 4 shades lighter than the smooth wings of "front hair," and appeared slightly less uni-colored than most sixties hair.

The lessons for brunettes may be more subtle in some ways, but we tend to know almost instinctively which colors set off our monochromatic color scheme to best advantage.

For us it is always about the undertones, and colors either make us look fabulous or flu-stricken. The main color lesson I remember getting from Dark Shadows is that a bright royal blue bow in dark hair looks great.

Alexandra Moltke and Joan Bennet both had brown hair, sometimes lit to appear amost black, and their costumes were usually centered around the rule of blue and brown, the same principle that dictates blue eyeliner and mascara for true brunettes!

And the most fashion-forward brunette (Xtreme or otherwise) brunette viewer of today will need no more than a glance at Joan Bennet's aqua print lavender print dress with the perky little scarf of bright lavender at the neck - Just one look. You will know what to do!

If the eighteenth century rainment worn by the characters in the drawing room was elaborate, in the show's the "modern day" phases, the sartorial star of the show was sleepwear, which took center stage in all those scenes that required the actors to get out of bed to investigate ominous knocks on doors and strange noises!

This was a time when ladies in all walks of life slept in long, flowing, ribbon-and-lace-trimmed night-dresses usually involving several filmy layers. These were sold - and used - with matching peignoirs, and sometimes slippers. ** The most common material used was nylon, though the closets of wealthy people, especially outside of the US, and people with close relatives who sewed usually included at least a few "sets" made of silk, (or in the case of sensible people in warm lands, cotton batiste).

On TV, the peignoir was removed only at the last second before actually getting under the covers, upon which she would lay the peignoir carefully on the foot of the bed, to be put on, along with her bedroom slippers, if she got out of bed for any reason, whether to get a drink or escape a fire.

In real life, especially in the warmer climates, the peignoirs were more likely to show up at breakfast, or pre-bedtime TV time (when only family was present for either event) and only very old ladies actually put on either peignoir or slippers, or "house shoes," as they were called, if they got up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom.

Because they were made of sheer material (although with all those layers the concept was rendered somewhat academic) and frequently featured wider, lower-cut necklines, the peignoir would not be worn in the presence of guests, even to the limited extent that had been permissible with its ancestor, the "dressing gown," and should by no means be confused with the "hostess" or "patio" gown, which was designed especially to be worn for casual entertaining. Hostess gowns were long and flowy, but neither sheer nor layered.

** The slippers that came with a night-dress and peignoir set were typically sort of flimsy, more ornamental than useful. In the west, the actual "house shoes" people wore were made of light colored or pastel leather, comfortably padded inside, usually made by Daniel Green and ugly as sin. In the east, whether leather or fabric, they were (and still are) works of art, but with little or no padding, and in some places, there is little if any distinction made between house shoes and regular shoes.

Oh, dear, have I digressed?

I will try to make up for it next time.

BREAKING NEWS! The Suspected Vampirehood of Chuck Bass Confirmed!

O frabjous day! Calloo! Callay!

At long last, the fanfic I had only dreamed of has appeared!

The Dazzling Destiny of Bass The Younger

Twilight meets Gossip Girl, Chuck by Twilight, Midnight Bass.


That which was foretold by me on Twitter has come to pass!

I shall be positively awash in a jumble of literary allusion metaphors as I eagerly await the continuation of this most promising addition to the world of Belles Letres!

(And thanks and a virtual cupcake to sketchyleah for the tip!)

Twilight Empowers Women to Suffer in Silence

An interesting aspect of the series, that has sparked quite a lot of commentary and "lively" debate, both offline and on, weaves speculation about the author's faith tradition and cultural context as factors in the Gender Issues Question.

If Edward's somewhat proprietary attitude can be chalked up to his vampirehood, being stuck in his own c 1918 cultural context, an attempt, conscious or un, on the part of the author to insert or feed into that whole thing of women being relieved of responsibility for being sexual beings ("forced kissing," etc)

yeah, it’spretty much textual fanservice for teenage fangirls.
Durandal (forum.starmen.net)

or just being a Teenager in Love, once Bella goes against Edward and aligns with Rosalie to save her unborn baby, because the root of Rosalie's angst is that she can never have one, we have clearly crossed over into another dimension, where the one thing all women desire even more than they desire a man who will love them forever and all eternity is to be a mother, and not just to be a mother, but to become one through the process of reproduction, with adoption being relegated to an OK but unsatisfying substitute, kind of like animal blood or tofurkey.

does that mean women like to be held down and feasted upon as they slowly die? That seems kinda creepy to me if that’s the case
grimp (forum.starmen.net)

The goal is not only to suffer, but to hide that suffering from those who love them.

Hiding the dual-whammy pain of both giving birth to a super-sized, super-human Renesmee and the notoriously excruciating human-to-vampire transformation, an agony so major that Meyer devotes about twenty pages to describing it, Bella exhibits a superhuman self-control, presumably born of her love for Edward, her new family and her desire to shield them from her suffering, she "slips up" only once, unable to suppress a scream when the emerging baby breaks her spine.

Ooohh - and guess what! Bella's xtra-special vampire power turns out to be shielding people.

My xtra-special non-vampire powers tell me that I will have more to say on this subject.

Twilight: Prelude to a Rant Redux: All Hail Cleolinda!

I am not Cleolinda, the undisputed Empress of All Twilightology. If there is any true literary genius to be found in the whole remarkable culturuption, my moments of Alician clairvoyance were of the available at Walmart beyond obvious variety, like the inevitable Cathy and Heathcliff sighings and sightings, even Meyer herself will have found it impossible not to reflect on the sheltered, isolated and innocent damsel telling a story at once "organic" and diametrically opposed to the standard platitude hurled at writers to "write what they know."

In an interview with the dude who plays a vampire in the movies, Rob2daP makes some comments that suggest that either Meyer's fantasy did have an element that might have been a little too far down a road he so didn't wanna go, or this was simply the story she had in her, she was simply where this story had been plopped, and it is hard to imagine any other way that a nice devout Mormon mom would be able to get away with writing some of the saga's more "graphic" scenes, even when coached in the safe and OK context of Holy Maternity.

It is interesting to imagine what she might have written, what this very story might have been, had she herself been a product of a different culture, had had a different set of life experiences.

For example, we know she has some familiarity with the Bronte sisters, but under different circumstances, might one of the characters been named Lena?

Such unanswered questions aside, parents and grandparents of the more serious and "conservative" fans must find themselves shaking their heads at just how far we've come since the days when that nice Charles Ingalls was a cute Teenage Werewolf, though if they were a little older they would not be as horrified as Cleolinda that Edward the Frosted orders his little fool to lie still. Or does that thought smack of age-ism? Whoever did Pattinson's makeup was no stranger to Valentino's breakout role.

Now that I have read all 4 Cantos of Meyer's swan song, and am thus up-to-date on the State of Pop Culture, it is unlikely that I will be able to resist the temptation to continue holding forth on the subject, despite having freely acknowledged that nothing that I could possibly say would be anywhere near as entertaining or genius as Jones the storysucker, who once she got her teeth into Meyer's tale, began to feed hard, and we are all the richer for it. We are fortunate that she has not yet been able to stop.

Twilight: Are Edward and Bella Really Enough for Forever?

The mere mention of Twilight in an average group of over 25s will elicit eye-rolls and groans. "Oh please."

These Old Schoolers, moms and dads jaded by years of mortgages and soul-numbing cubicle life, exhausted late-night Huggies runs, rising car insurance premiums, sophisticated professionals whose literary "downtime" is claimed by the likes of Grisham and Chopra, reality-based pragmatists who read the Economist while reclining on high-thread-count bedding, soft jazz barely audible in the background, just don't get it.

Nor do their parents, aging Baby Boomers confronting the inevitable, in mirrors and doctor's offices; they, too have Forgotten.

All are victims of the tragi-comic phenomenon of Adult-Onset Amnesia, that near-universal syndrome that causes parents of adolescents to parrot to their teens the same absurdities about sex and drugs to which they themselves once nodded politely and snickered about once the 'rents backs were turned.

That same syndrome from which springs their unshakable faith that their kids do not have MySpace pages, because they have told them not to make one.

Twilight, to much of the Old School, is nothing more than the successor to High School Musical and Hannah Montana, what the kids are into these days, just as they were once into SpongeBob Square Pants, and (may all deities help us all) Barney the Dinosaur.

The last time, in my own memory, that 13-year old girls were this utterly and obsessed about something with such intensity and thoroughness, I was among them, and the thing that they - we - were obsessed with was four young men from England, who, in many ways, was every bit as inconceivable and far-fetched as any vampire, and who, against the cultural backdrop of that time, evoked the same exasperated groaning and dismissive eye-rolling as Bella and Edward do today.

Nearly a half-century later, libraries boast shelves of venerable tomes, thousands of pages ponderously penned by distinguished ologists on the fundamental and seismic change wrought upon everything from music to nearly the entire roster of the planet's cultures themselves, by those "mop top lads," as they were then called.

It was ridiculous, and egotistical, to think that I could affect anyone that strongly. It was impossible. And yet I couldn’t stop worrying that it was true.

Few parents of 13 year-old girls, and even fewer of their graying Boomer grannies would question the throne upon which history - and those 13-year old girls - have enshrined the Beatles, but it is with a mixture of amusement and something resembling mild alarm with which I observe my contemporaries who look into the eyes of these girls and fail to see the same Something with which their own eyes once gleamed.

At best, they are likely to offer props to Ms. Meyer for having been the cause of the first time their daughters exhibited such a passion for reading since they outgrew Harry Potter on about the 4th or 5th book.

At worst, of course, are those who, Adult-Onset Amnesia is enhanced by the fires of religious zeal, forbid their daughters to read the books, see the movie, or even think about such an evil thing as vampires, piety having expunged any memories of having ignored similar edicts of their own parents, as they hid their Beatles albums at the homes of friends, and kept their copies of Tiger Beat, with articles like "Ten Ways to Paul's Heart" under the mattress, to be taken out and read by flashlight, as they huddled in a tent of pink-ruffled coverlet, and spent reams of blue-ruled loose-leaf paper unlearning the Palmer method in order to make their Ps like Paul and their Gs like George.

The parade of various and opposing opinions notwithstanding, only history will decide the question of the "literary value" of Meyer's work. As was the case with the Beatles, it is Time who will render the final verdict on whether what she has written is Great Literature or merely a splash of pop fiction, but it is not too soon to acknowledge that in either case, what has proceeded from her work is a classic illustration of the principle of the sum being greater than its parts.

The movie may be a better example of this than the books. If one has not read the books, or at the very least, the Wikipedia article on the subject, the movie comes across as a story not fully told, more like a series of trailers for what one hopes might one day be a movie.

When viewed as a standalone cinematic work, the movie does not, in my opinion, deserve even a fraction of the analysis and attention it has received, and if it were not for the cultural tsunami born of the books, it would almost certainly have "gone straight to DVD," nor been considered worthy of so much as a keystroke by some of the very critics who have subjected it to the most minute dissections.

Probably the best thing about the movie involves the casting of Bella. Someone was shrewd enough to choose a relatively unknown actress, one styleable as "plain-looking," at least by Hollywood standards, which are already thoroughly enough embedded in hearts and minds of all generations so that one key element at least, is preserved.

Had Meyers painted her Bella as a beauty, or in modern parlance, a "hottie," it is unlikely that the story would have had the same effect. Obviously, Bella's ordinary appearance has importance in establishing the contrast with the unearthly beauty of Edward, thus gliding seamlessly into the fantasy of the unbeautiful girl, that she will win the heart of the hearthrob, and since most teen girls believe themselves to be unbeautiful whether they are or not, this touches the story itself with the magic wand of near-universality.

The "average" girl can identify with Bella as intimately, maybe even more so, than girls who are undeniably exceptional in one way or another. The Bella of the books is just intelligent enough to tell her story well while retaining accessibility, she is no genius, nor is she a box of rocks.

Though not presented to us as breath-taking either in physical beauty nor possessed of irresistible charm, she is nevertheless pursued by several boys, another common dream of the teenaged girl, who all too often finds herself in an environment populated by teenaged boys who in real life lack the social skills to express their interest with the same facility that they somehow find when they are characters in books.

Bella's appeal is a sort of mini-mystery itself, a sort of appetizer motif that foreshadows the main course, we never quite understand why all these boys are immediately smitten with this more or less unremarkable girl, though it is natural to the plot that they would be, so that we can see that Bella does not choose Edward either by default or out of desperation. She has plenty of interaction with other boys, plenty of options, but she and Edward are the proverbial star-crossed lovers, obliged to try and obliged to fail to argue themselves out of their love at first sight, their Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon-grade Love Before Time destiny.

Whether as an unavoidable result of her own background and faith tradition, or a conscious effort to widen her market and perhaps appease the conservative devout sector with a nod to the small but vocal and highly media-visible segment of teens who at leat claim to abstain from physical intimacy, Meyer's young couple do not consumate their love.

In fact, when compared to either other movies or real life, there is scant physical contact of any kind between them. In the movie, the major "love scene" consists of an aerial shot of the two lying side by side in a field, not touching each other at all.

Though probably intended to symbolize the trans-human, supra-biological nature of the relationship, necessitated by Edward's vampire status, the less chaste of imagination, are free, of course, to imagine that this is a post-coital moment, they have simply fallen temporarily away from each other, spent, to catch their breaths before going again. Edward is, after all, seventeen.

The ologists will naturally have their say, and many have already been having large doses of it, in a vain attempt to explain just what it is about this particular story of teen love that has touched and awakened in so many young hearts the elusive butterfly of romantic ideal.

Throughout history, it has been women who have been the docents of culture, as well as the (sometimes hidden) authors of it. It is, after all, mothers who tend to be the ones who teach their children the songs, tell them the stories, show them the folkways, of the tribe.

Once in a great while, events occur which will shape and form and alter forever the hearts and minds, the attitudes, opinions and beliefs, of 13 year-old girls, events which will, consciously or unconsciously affect the way they see themselves, relationships, and the world they live in, as well as the spiritual realm, which includes romance, in which they would like to live.

Meyer's story of the Great Love shared by the benign teen vampire and his ordinary teen girlfriend manages to push every known button (and probably some unknown ones) in the developing heart of the adolescent human female, and this pushing will change the course of culture in ways that we cannot yet know, any more than we could know, in 1965, that elevators of the future would feature blurry thousand-and-one-strings versions of "I Want to Hold Your Hand" or that revered and ivied old institutions of higher learning would offer the same credit for courses on the musicology of Lennon and McCartney as those that explored the work of Mozart.

Should teen boys resignedly drop heads into hands of despair, sick with the realization that they will never be able to come near the Romance Bar set forever by Edward Cullen in the hearts of the girls who will one day become women they wish to marry?

Hasn’t anyone ever told you? Life isn’t fair.

Or will it be the girls themselves who are one day sadly obliged to settle for a dream deferred?


Or will it go the other way, and re-awaken the spirit of romance that has, in recent decades, become somewhat frayed, with both men and women alike, even in cultures where choosing one's own spouse has long been the norm, increasingly tending to view the decision as one to be made with head, not heart, with as more of an eye toward the fiscal than the visceral, the prime rate accorded a higher priority than the primordial?

That’s the beautiful thing about being human. Things change.

As they complete their various rites of passage and through the doors of adolescence into young adulthood, will the supernatural element of the story affect the attitudes, opinions and beliefs of today's young Twilight fans in the area of religious tolerance? Might we not engage in similar speculations on that particular topic with regard to the Harry Potter novels, certainly a cultural phenomenon in its own right? (We might, but here we are edging dangerously close to a Whole Nother Rant on a much broader topic, and which I will doubtless feel compelled to commit, but not today).

If so, when one considers the "interesting times" in which we live, the implications could be profound. Lives, it is tempting to speculate, could be saved.

That’s how it’s supposed to happen. How it should happen.

Or not. Many a former peace-loving Beatle fan is today as avid enthusiast of invasion and atrocity as key industries could hope for, even those who have a decided preference for foods whose labels contain the word "Organic."

These elemental cultural phenomena do change hearts, they do, in their own way, change the world, but there are limits. They do not, for example, completely negate every other cultural influence, at least not much past college.

Why, then, should I or anyone else suggest that "Twilight," as cultural event is of any more importance, particularly lasting importance, than "High School Musical" or "Hannah Montana?"

Especially when we are in such early days that we cannot even offer an accurate projection of revenues. Will Stephenie Meyer give J.K. Rowling a run for her money crown? Will the inevitable movie version of "New Moon" be the exception to the rule that movie sequels are never as good as their predecessors? That rule applied in this case is a prospect in this case especially dismal to contemplate.

If their underestimation of the books as the First Literary Love of a generation is cause for mocking those of my own afflicted with Adult Onset Amnesia (and clearly it is!) then it also behooves me to temper my jeers with proof that I am not a sufferer myself, of selective perception if not amnesia, once again recalling those snowy-haired Beatle-lovin' atrocity fans.

And I’m going to get old

I believe that we can say that Twilight will have a lasting effect on culture, on attitudes, opinions and beliefs of the generation that today variously enjoys and suffers through its tweens, but what effect and to what extent that will be is still a very large question mark.

Equally unanswerable is why I or anyone else who is not a 13 year-old girl finds the subject so fascinating as to accord it so much musing and pontificating.


I suppose that unlike vampires, as humans we are somehow compelled to attempt to explain the unexplainable, to draw back veils that reveal only more veils, to put our fingers on the pin upon which angels dance.