The Blue Tint In Twilight
originally published in The Drunken Canal October Issue (original photos added after)
We have always wanted fame and fortune- this is not a new phenomenon. However, it is now exacerbated by our proximity to and accessibility of fame. It feels like anyone can become famous online for seemingly nothing; save for, perhaps, consistency. It’s becoming more apparent that this is not a fulfilling path- this chase towards notoriety and, to a somewhat lesser extent, wealth. We are noticing that creativity and talent are not entirely needed for content to become popular; and even if there is effort and creativity put into the content; the viewership remains the same level of engagement. (1)
Because of this, creators on platforms like TikTok have less of a focus on skill and put more of their attempts into branding. People are becoming more like brands and vice versa for the sake of audience engagement. (2) It seems as though almost everyone considers themselves a content creator of some kind, but there is a palpable awareness that not everyone will show the same amount of skill or popularity. This ability to constantly self publish leads to a catalog of a generational ennui. (3)
We are currently in the era of the “Great Acceleration.” (4) Not only are we advancing industrially and technologically, we are culturally accelerated by the world of the digital. Our bodies are not equipped to handle this speed of evolution (unless we somehow merge with tech, which may or may not have dire consequences.) (5) We must either evolve to our surroundings or die both a physical and symbolic death. For many, this leaves a question; what will be my legacy? What shall I create before I die?
This phenomenon relates to two pieces of currently popular media, American Horror Story Season 10, Red Tide, and The Twilight Saga. Both are color graded in a dismal blue tint, focussing on the ethical drama of vampirism. Young people are struggling to feed, to feel full, to feel alive. Both franchises have gripped a primary audience of teenagers, who have demographically been the most powerful in media as well as the most belittled. The dichotomy of killing to create, and of self sacrifice for another person is well considered for young people, but does not elude everyone else. Amongst global tragedy, acceleration, disease, death, fires and floods, the younger generations are seeing in blue.
According to a thesis study by Audrey Everett, the popularity of the teal and orange color grading scheme can be explained by an audience’s emotional response. Everett graded the same scene from a film in three different schemes of complimentary colors; with teal and orange showing the highest emotional response. In the case of the Twilight films in particular, this scheme is heavily saturated, adding to the melodrama of the plot. (6)
Twilight author Stephanie Meyer was a young Mormon housewife whose dull life she reimagined in the form of a supernatural novel. Despite her lack of formal writing instruction, the Twilight Saga became a major mainstream success spanning from the years 2005-2010, with films of each book. What made the Twilight Saga attractive back then is also spurring its comeback; romanticization of depression and dependence. The protagonist and narrator of the main five books of the series (not including its companions, or newest edition, Midnight Sun) is Bella Swan, a meek and brooding teenage girl with no particular goals or interests- a blank character easily projected upon by readers.
Bella drifts through life, allowing her group of friends to come to her, never doing anything more than necessary or making any effort to connect with her guardian and single father, Charlie. Her only desire in the series is to spend the rest of her life in a romantic relationship with her classmate, Edward Cullen, who happens to be a 104 year old vampire. The main tension in the series comes from Edward’s, along with the rest of his vampire family, restraint from killing humans for food. The family moves around the US enough to appear a “normal” human family, and try to avoid being found out. Bella is appealing to Edward because her blood is particularly desirable, testing his ability to abstain.
In a world of constant competition and global disaster, there is a desire to disconnect from one’s own life, and give all of one’s energy to a single focus. There is also a hope that one’s own essence (or blood) is enough to make them special enough to be obsessed over. Many times, this focus can be another person, as in Bella’s case, but it can also be a desire for popularity; an elusive vision of success. We are placing ourselves in Bella’s shoes, imagining that if we sit around and wait for months on end (and occasionally indulge in self-destructive behavior) our beloved will return to us. This side is conducive to the generational onset of depression.
On the other hand, there is the manic drive for success (or love or fame etc.) which manifests in the desire to be prolific. This obsession takes its form in constantly churning out content, in the hopes the quantity will be enough to launch oneself into celebrity. This is the focus in American Horror Story: Red Tide. A struggling screenwriter, Harry Gardner, relocates with his family from New York City to a bleak and dismal Provincetown, Massachusetts for the winter. There he meets fellow writers who introduce him to a pill that unlocks unrestrained capabilities of the creative parts of his brain; the drawback being he needs to feed on human blood to survive.
The pill itself only works on already talented people, turning anyone else who takes it to mindless vampiric zombies. It is said in the show, though seemingly a throwaway line, the prevalence of these zombies (known as Pale People) has to do with streamers and influencers looking for success through the pill. Harry’s choice to take the pill; and continue taking it along with his nine year old daughter, Alma, a prodigy violin player, sets up the ethical dilemma that drives the season. It begs the question, would you kill to be great? Is great art worth killing for? Alma also adds to the question by constantly suggesting to her father that those without talent are not worth living, “There’s people who are great at something, and there’s everyone else, and everyone else could just disappear.”
In the Tik Tok/Instagram age, aspiring influencers abandon real life connections and experiences for pictures that make it look like they are on elaborate vacations or in happy romantic relationships, or have tons of close friends etc. Viewers of this season may easily decide they have the talent to become successful off the pills, and find that it’s worth the damage done to other people. Left unanswered, though, is how there can be guaranteed mainstream success when great art is often left ignored. How can one decide if a creative work is objectively great? How does being prolific translate into being talented? (7)
Not only does the manic-depressive desire for obsession, love and success feed into the popularity of these two franchises; nostalgia is a driving force, especially in the case of Twilight’s resurgence. American Horror Story’s first season, Murder House aired a decade ago. In the years 2011-2014, AHS spurred a continuation of young people’s hunger for dramatic horror content where Twilight left off.
Nostalgia used to be categorized as a clinical ailment that tortured soldiers missing home, now nostalgia is more of a symbolic longing, a desire for how things “used to be” despite the possibility there may have been no difference from the romantic past and the present. The absence of the past allows for a romanticization of an unreality. As philosopher Jean Baudriallard puts it in his book Simulacra and Simulation, in terms of a shift in political power, “When the real is no longer what it was, nostalgia assumes its full meaning.” (8) In other words, the past is not an existing reality, there is only its interpretation in the present.
Philosopher Friedrich Nietzche also explores this temporal understanding of nostalgia in his story, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, (9) where there is a ritual longing for an invisible God, a sentiment that keeps repeating itself. Nietzsche suggests there is no material grasp on the past or future, and there is a possibility of time repeating itself. The resurgence of 10 to 15 year old media shows this worship for an intangible time gone by, with a hope that the revisiting of such media can add upon the impact of the original consumption.
Even more apt is the longing for the past taking place in fictional mediums, representations of a reality that does not exist. People create and consume the worlds that keep them interested and alive, like Stephanie Meyer writing Twilight as a reimagining of her own reality. This yearning to repeat the past, and to make the repetition richer with each reimagining, accelerates the drive in content creators.
In Red Tide nine year old Alma suggests the creative drive in talented people to be, “beyond a moral code.” In Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Nietzsche posits the drive for greatness as humanity’s ultimate goal, one to strive towards beyond the Christian ideals of an otherworldly moral code; “But when Zarathustra was alone he spoke thus to his heart: "Could it be possible? This old saint in the forest has not yet heard anything of this, that God is dead!"” and with it, the pure desire to create for creation’s sake.
https://medium.com/your-brand/are-people-brands-too-92f371cc4537
https://www.slideshare.net/IGBPSecretariat/great-acceleration-2015/10-Steffen_et_al_The_trajectory
https://neuralink.com
Everett, A 2018 ‘Color Grading In film: How Complementary Colors Affect An Audience’s Perception of Mood’
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/02/02/hbo-fake-famous-how-instagram-influencers-.html
Baudrillard, Jean. Simulacra and Simulation. Translated by Sheila Glaser, University of Michigan Press, 1994.
Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm, 1844-1900. Thus Spoke Zarathustra : a Book for All and None. Cambridge :Cambridge University Press, 2006.