Transmedia and properties for young people

As I learn more about Twilight during the release of New Moon as my wife reads them for some market research so that she can learn what all the fuss is about, I have come to a question that I find to be interesting.

Twilight is essentially the story of a nihilistic young girl who wants nothing more than to die. She has an abusive vampire boyfriend who keeps her alive and tortures her throughout the course of the story. But he does it 'all for love' so it's ok.

A lot of Twihards are over 30 and lonely. Apparently the desire to have someone make all of your decisions and treat you like shit is sexy for a much larger segment of the population than may have been apparent to most of us.

The girl I lost my virginity to left me for someone who treated her like shit, whereas I was generally pretty nice to her. She wanted me back later, and wanted me more when I was cool, diffident and kind of a jerk to her, but I'd moved on and had an older woman I was dating by that time. Though, I think I internalized a lesson, "Girls wants to be treated like shit.", and so I treated some girls like shit before I learned that it's not really the right thing to do, and more importantly that I didn't need to act like that to get women. So I hope that today my wife agrees that I am doing a much better job at treating women properly. Having a daughter has definitely opened my mind to this.

What I have discovered in reading discussions of the inherent misogyny underlying the Twilight Saga is that this is actually common for adolescent girls. This says a lot about the thirty-something women who still want this in their lives. First it says I am glad I am not with that kind of woman, second it tells me something I always kind of knew about the vampire genre, but had difficulty articulating.

Twilight has both more literary merit than people give it credit for, and less literary merit than its fans give it credit for. In a way it's a very good portrayal of the poisonous nature of a vampiric relationship. It seems to show the essential nature of the separation between the ages of a vampire and a human. Essentially, Edward is a pedophile who has kidnapped and isolated a young child who is powerless to stop him. She embraces it, but who knows how much she actually wants it? Is it vampire Glamer? I don't know, I haven't read any of it, I am going from pure commentary. I will not spend my time reading something so universally reviled as one of the worst pieces of shit ever written just to make a pedantic point. So may the Twihards forgive me.

This may explain why young girls are so enamoured of older men. It may explain why they are enamoured of abusive men. It doesn't explain why older women are so enamoured.

Which brings me at long last to my question: To what degree is it essential that your property grow with your audience?

I ask this question as I have been reading (anecdotally of course) reports of kids who loved the first movie coming back with stark derision for the second movie. Of course it grossed a ridiculous amount of money on opening night and over the weekend, but what will it's staying power be? Are there enough women with stunted sexual and emotional development to continue to propel this franchise in the coming weeks? Are the adolescent girls who were 13 before and 15 now and growing out of their Twilight phase easily replaceable by girls who are 13 now?

I would argue that for a successful franchise to properly assert itself, it should grow with its audience. This is rarely done. Right now Gossip Girl and Heroes are the two shows that come to mind immediately where the shows are growing up with their audience. But the question as it regards Twilight is: Is it essential?

Does it even matter if a franchise matures? If it does mature, what are the benefits and drawbacks? If it doesn't mature, what are the benefits and drawbacks?

I would like to think it's important, but that could just be my aesthetic sensibilities asserting themselves. It seems to me that Twilight is a good case-study, because in the coming years we'll see how well it continues to do.

Futures of Entertainment

Hey,

I'm thinking about trying to do FOE4 on the cheap. Anyone in Boston have a sofa?

Thanks,

Erek

I was mentioned on Canarytrap.net's weekly round-up.

It's nice that something I had to say was meaningful to someone who herself has some interesting stuff to share.

I just discovered her when Jeff posted her to his blog.

http://canarytrap.net/2009/09/weekly-round-up-92509-wharton-on-the-long-tail-transmedia-and-the-future-of-tv-mittel-on-lostpedia/

Here is the discussion she refers to.

http://canarytrap.net/2009/09/transmedia-as-intertext-and-multiplicity-why-some-types-of-stories-lend-themselves-to-transmedia/comment-page-1/#comment-611

New study shows the narrow concentration of financial power

http://www.insidescience.org/research/study_says_world_s_stocks_controlled_by_select_few

Recently an article in Rolling Stone compared Goldman Sachs to a vampire draining the world. This article explicates how the world's financial power coalesces around a few key organizations.

WASHINGTON -- A recent analysis of the 2007 financial markets of 48 countries has revealed that the world's finances are in the hands of just a few mutual funds, banks, and corporations. This is the first clear picture of the global concentration of financial power, and point out the worldwide financial system's vulnerability as it stood on the brink of the current economic crisis.

A pair of physicists at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich did a physics-based analysis of the world economy as it looked in early 2007. Stefano Battiston and James Glattfelder extracted the information from the tangled yarn that links 24,877 stocks and 106,141 shareholding entities in 48 countries, revealing what they called the "backbone" of each country's financial market. These backbones represented the owners of 80 percent of a country's market capital, yet consisted of remarkably few shareholders.

New Avatar trailer is out

http://www.apple.com/trailers/fox/avatar/hd/

This movie is being sold as a lot of things. One of the main things I have heard about it is how it will bridge the uncanny valley. It resoundingly fails to do that. It looks like World of Warcraft.

Don't get me wrong, it's pretty, but District 9 bridges the uncanny valley, this one does not.

It's all in the eyes and the corner of the lips. Basically, in high concept computer animation such as this facial movement looks very stiff and stilted like everyone has had their eyelids stretched and injects botox into their eyebrows and lips, in otherwords, they have sacrificed expressiveness for fullness. Meaning that the stills will look great, in terms of the animation it will be lacking.

I still look forward to it as I look forward to every sci fi epic, even though the last three major sci fi epic trilogies have pretty much straight up sucked: Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, The Matrix. I find the overwrought environmentalist paganism to be a little sketchy, but I'm willing to watch Fern Gully meets Halo. ;)

The Voice of the Revolution

Neda Agha-Soltan was shot and killed with videos from multiple angles by the Basij in Iran. I am told that her name Neda means 'voice'. The high profile death of a beautiful woman puts a romantic face on what is seeming to be a revolution.

At this point I cannot see that things can go back to the way they were in Iran. People who don't know anything about the way Iranian politics works, which admittedly is most of us, think of Iran as being run by an invincible bloc of ruling Mullahs. I have for many years thought this not to be the case.

Books like 'Lipstick Jihad' by Azadeh Moaveni and 'Reading Lolita in Tehran' by Azar Nafisi tell the story of a soft women's revolution in Iran. You can see by Neda's makeup and her colorful headscarf and the way you can see her bangs peaking out from beneath it that this revolution has had more and more impact.

It was only a matter of time before this culture permeated the youth and a groundswell would occur. It seems like now is that time. I am very hopeful for Iran. I see Iran as a possible key to a more peaceful middle-east. Iran could be a highly successful nation. It has a very intelligent populace, with a highly skilled and educated class of people with a great diaspora flung around the world. It could easily become one of the top tier nations in this world, which is should. The great empires of the past have left levels of development that its peoples have never truly forgotten. Where there have been great and progressive empires there are smart and industrious peoples. The characters of those empires are very important to the character of the culture left behind.

In Persia there has been a great meeting point of many great cultures, and hopefully Persia can take join that nations of the world like India and China and become a stabilizing force in its region of the world. Iran has great oil reserves but poor refining technology. A more liberal Iran could see advanced technology flood into its borders so that it can get the most out of its oil fields. With that wealth they can build a more advanced technological civilization so that they need not worry about sliding backward when the oil has been sucked dry.

With the video of the death of their beautiful martyr (which I have been unable to bring myself to watch) maybe we will see something beautiful grow from the land where her blood was spilled.

The Iranian Elections and their attempt to stifle viral communication

Here are examples of how seriously governments are taking the ability for the populace to communicate with one another. What is at stake is the very ability for people to communicate with each other as they see fit. I do not see the Ayatollahs winning this one. I think that this is the catalyst for real change in Iran.

Iran Moves to end Facebook Revolution

We've had a few readers send in updates on the chaotic post-election situation in Iran. Twitter is providing better coverage than CNN at the moment. There are both tech and humanitarian angles to the story, as the two samples below illustrate. First, Hugh Pickens writes with a report from The Times (UK) that"the Iranian government is mounting a campaign to disrupt independent media organizations and Web sites that air doubts about the validity of the re-election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as the nation's president. Reports from Tehran say that social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter were taken down after Mr Ahmadinejad claimed victory. SMS text messaging, a preferred medium of communication for young Iranians, has also been disabled. 'The blocking of access to foreign news media has been stepped up, according to Reporters Without Borders. 'The Internet is now very slow, like the mobile phone network. YouTube and Facebook are hard to access and pro-reform sites... are completely inaccessible.'"And reader momen abdullah sends in one of the more disturbing Ask Slashdots you are likely to see."People, we need your urgent help in Iran. We are under attack by the government. They stole the election. And now are arresting everybody. They also filtered every sensitive Web page. But our problem is that they also block the SMS network and are scrambling satellite TVs. Please, can you help us to set up some sort of network using our home wireless access points? Can anybody show us a link on how to install small TV/radio stations? Any suggestion for setting up a network? Please tell us what to do or we are going to die in the a nuclear war between Iran and US."Update: 06/14 18:32 GMT by KD : Jim Cowie contributes a blog post from Renesys taking a closer look at thestate of Iranian Internet transit, as seen in the aggregated global routing tables, and concluding that the story may not be as clear-cut as has been reported.

The Computer is the Enemy

9:12 AM ET -- The computer is the enemy. We reported last night on accounts of major violence at Tehran University. The AP adds some more detail this morning:

Overnight, police and hard-line militia stormed the campus at the city's biggest university, ransacking dormitories and arresting dozens of students angry over what they say was mass election fraud.

The nighttime gathering of about 3,000 students at dormitories of Tehran University started with students chanting "Death to the dictator." But it quickly erupted into clashes as students threw rocks and Molotov cocktails at police, who fought back with tear gas and plastic bullets, a 25-year-old student who witnessed the fighting told The Associated Press. He would only give one name, Akbar, out of fears for his safety.

The students set a truck and other vehicles on fire and hurled stones and bricks at the police, he said. Hard-line militia volunteers loyal to the Revolutionary Guard stormed the dormitories, ransacking student rooms and smashing computers and furniture with axes and wooden sticks, Akbar said.

Before leaving around 4 a.m., the police took away memory cards and computer software material, Akbar said, adding that dozens of students were arrested.

He said many students suffered bruises, cuts and broken bones in the scuffling and that there was still smoldering garbage on the campus by midmorning but that the situation had calmed down.

"Many students are now leaving to go home to their families, they are scared," he said. "But others are staying. The police and militia say they will be back and arrest any students they see."

"I want to stay because they beat us and we won't retreat," he added.

Tehran University was the site of serious clashes against student-led protests in 1999 and is one of the nerve centers of the pro-reform movement.