On the nature of Literary Hype: Part 1 – Vampires, Billionaires and the Rise of Dystopia
Every once in
a while I ponder why some books go viral and what it takes for a temporary
obsession of a literary hype to take over even the most resistant and skeptic of
us.
Until of late
I was one of those hype-resistant types.
I was a
university freshman back in the early 2000s Russia, a country rising from the ‘91
socio-political fiasco followed by the ‘94 default, when nearly everyone around
me was going nuts about Harry Potter. Some people I knew were even learning
English just so they could read Harry Potter in original (by contrast, in the
1970s Soviet times the main reason for learning English was John Lennon as an obscure Russian song suggests).
Magically immune
to the Harry Potter-induced insanity, I remained lukewarm to the hype: I still watched
the movies though, but wasn’t impressed (mostly due to atrocious Russian dubbing
which made the stories incomprehensible). Besides, I was going through a
Castaneda phase back then, so maybe it protected me from the Harry Potter
craze.
On a side note
and for the purposes of full disclose: I’ve finally read the HP books not long
ago and re-watched all the movies (un-dubbed). I mostly found them
aesthetically pleasing. I’m now a proud owner of a pen-wand. Yes.
Now, more than
a decade after my freshman year, I feel I’ve become a lot more susceptible to
literary hypes. Maybe it’s because I live in Australia where, just like in the
rest of the 'Western' world, things like the latest book-provoked mass
hysterias spread like bush fires, making big waves over the mass psyche. Or maybe
it’s just because I write fiction and therefore am innately curious (as anyone who
aspires to go writing pro one day should be) about what’s going on in the
book world.
Literary agent Kristen Nelson blogged about
what she called a type of cultural zeitgeist – surprising common themes arising from the agency's slush pile of manuscript
submissions. And Nelson is not just talking about the ‘next big
thing’ provoking a new wave of imitators (like Twilight re-igniting the
vamp-love or the success of the Hunger Games generating many a literary ‘tribute’
to the YA dystopian). No, she’s taking about “storylines that suddenly start
popping up that are potentially outside of these trends but for some reason,
the stories all hit our submission inboxes around the same time.” Think, fairy
tale retellings (that I personally LOATHE) or ‘man vs machine a la Terminator
style’ scenarios.
Could this be that we are all connected
psychically on some level and hence collectively fall prey to these trends from
time to time, and go on reading sprees that only end when our cultural
zeitgeist-affected brains are released?
I’ve been
observing the latest book hypes, and here I present some ideas on what
makes a hype happen. In the first part of this hype/zeitgeist quasi-analysis
post, I will discuss the obvious examples of hyped-up books-turned-franchises –
Twilight, Fifty Shades of Grey and The Hunger Games – before moving on to
slightly more obscure examples of The Trylle Trilogy (and the phenomenon of
‘online sensation’ hype), Crewel, and the most recent to date – The Dark Heroine.
Twilight
I have blogged about Twilight before. Besides, there are countless articles out there, in their
contents ranging from the interpretations of Stephenie Meyer’s novels as ‘allegory for Mormon marriage’ to applying feminist critique to the storyline in parallel to the author's public stances on matters of love, marriage and relationships.
What is really
at the heart of the Twilight franchise, as I see it, is the story of a girl
who obsessively builds her life around a boy, a controlling and
possessive stalkerish boy, at that.
While some disagree,
stylistically, and all the purpose prose tendencies aside, the four Twilight books are not that bad, especially considering
Twilight doesn’t pretend to be a literary fiction masterpiece but appears as it is – a genre YA book. The Twilight cover art is intriguing and enticing, proving again an old
mantra true – less is more.
I confess, Twilight was my gateway read into the new YA paranormal genre craze. I mean, I've read a lot of horror and paranormal before, but then after I finished high school and went onto the 'New Adult' phase of my life, my reading tastes changed. I've read a lot of literary as opposed to genre books along with philosophical and historical volumes. As a result, by the time I, through Twilight, reintroduced myself to the paranormal genre, all my pop-culture knowledge about vampires was derived from Dracula,
Subspecies and The Interview with a Vampire (movies, not books).
As I contemplate my experience reading Twilight and observing how it played (and still plays) a major role in changing the very core of contemporary YA literature, I have to say that whether you love it or hate it, Twilight turned on its head the way we perceive vampires (and paranormal, more generally) in YA fiction and in literature and pop-culture more generally. Whether this was a disservice to the genre or not is debatable, but the fact remains: Twilight is a literary phenomenon and there shall be many doctoral theses written about it in the decades to come.
As I contemplate my experience reading Twilight and observing how it played (and still plays) a major role in changing the very core of contemporary YA literature, I have to say that whether you love it or hate it, Twilight turned on its head the way we perceive vampires (and paranormal, more generally) in YA fiction and in literature and pop-culture more generally. Whether this was a disservice to the genre or not is debatable, but the fact remains: Twilight is a literary phenomenon and there shall be many doctoral theses written about it in the decades to come.
Does Twilight
send the wrong message to the young women readers out there? Yes, I believe, it does. But
having said that, I did have a chance to talk to many girls who read YA paranormal as a genre at Richelle Mead’s book
signing a few years back, and I have to say – there’s hope for us after all. Those
girls are smart, well-read and are capable of seeing through the angst and melodrama of
Twilight and the likes. They read these books for fun and then they grow out of
them and sell them on Ebay and they move on to something else.
Fifty Shades of Grey
While I
approached the Twilight novels with an open mind (before reading the books, I
only watched the first movie in the franchise. I was enticed by the broody
imagery of the woods and the dark wintry beaches – I’m a sucker for gloomy
rainy days), I did read a number of reviews of the Fifty Shades before I succumbed to
the hype… I usually stir clear of reviews, but with Fifty Shades, it was a hard
task not to at least glance at some. I’ve seen the Fifty Shades books (there are three of them,
but I could only manage to read one) called ‘mommy porn’ and christened the next incarnation of The Raunchy Novel.
Perhaps
the rise of the ebook is to blame in the Shades’ sky-high sales numbers (apparently,
the Shades originally sold many e-copies hence provoking its physical publication)
because “women who wouldn't be seen dead reading smut on the tube could read iton their Kindle, and this launched a whole world of sales.”
Whatever
the true reasons behind of Fifty Shades-provoked hysteria, fortunately it seems
to be easing off now. I guess, until the movie comes out.
The Hunger Games
This YA dystopian trilogy which has
sold more than 36.5 million in 2011 has reinvented the genre, and spawned
an army of clones – YA novels with strong female leads who are forced to
survive in a regime-controlled society plagued with fear and injustice. The
reality of this ‘Rise of Dystopia’ however is that once you’ve read The Hunger Games,
everything else labeled as ‘The next Hunger Games’ or ‘The Hunger Games meets…such
and such’ seems like a talentless rip-off (it usually is).
As Moira Young analyses writes in an attempt to demystify the renewed popularity for dystopian fiction “books for young people
set in a post-apocalyptic or dystopian worlds are not new. Three notable
early examples are Madeleine L'Engle's science fantasy A Wrinkle in Time
(1962), William Sleator's suspense novel House of Stairs (1974) and the
politically intriguing The Giver (1993) by Lois Lowry. Some of the big names of
the new wave, along with Collins, are British-based American author Patrick
Ness, Mortal Engines writer Philip Reeve, and young adult science-fiction
novelist Scott Westerfeld.”
I myself adored dystopian genre when
I was a pre-teen/teen – I have devoured Orwell’s 1984 and Animal Farm and wanted more. Recently, I finally had a chance to read Brave New World, and my reaction to it was similar to when I was a teen – dystopian novel when well-executed can be rather
fascinating.
The Hunger Games’ overwhelming success is yet to be replicated. I can’t think of a single recent YA dystopian that came even close to the strength of a narrative and plot of the Games. Now that the dystopian genre appears to be over-saturated (many literary agents now make a point of requesting ‘no more dystopian’ in their submission sections), we are all ‘holding our breath’ in anticipation of the next big thing.
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