Friday, January 15, 2010

BLOGGING TWILIGHT, pt. 7: The Volvo Paradox

I’ve been reading Twilight by Stephanie Meyer. And how long have I been reading it? A long time. Previous installments can be found in the archives.

Chapter 7: Nightmare

Bella goes home and blares some death metal into her headphones to try and turn her brain off—she listens to the CD over and over again until she falls asleep, her clothes and shoes still on. This is where I first started to pick up on the curious avoidance of brand names in this book.

I’m not against the notion of product placement in most forms of media—there has been a pop-culture discussion as of late, mostly because of shows like 30 Rock and The Office, which both prominently feature actual (presumably paid) product placement and winking, over-obvious (presumably un-paid) jokes about-and-involving product placement. This inevitably triggered a discussion—it seems like it was designed to (Either that or it reflects the misgivings of the showrunners who get for paid-product placement and then feel guilty for some reason). Someone, maybe Greg Daniels actually, mentioned that he thought it would be awkward to have someone drinking some generic or invented soda when they could easily be having a Coke. There’s no use pretending the ubiquity of advertising does not exist, especially if you are depicting an honest portrait of American life. So why avoid brand names? And this is coming from someone who read No Logo! Those of us sensitive to advertising aren’t going to be brainwashed, and those who already have been brainwashed (people who think adherence to specific brands imparts something essential about their class and/or identity, that sort of thing) aren’t going to be saved anyway. Plus, every form of media, these days, is looking for new sources of revenue. And so, if the money is there, and you could get paid for featuring the brand names that you might as well feature anyway given that they are an inexorable part of American culture, why not take it? If these companies are going to offer it, what do you really lose?

Product placement and other forms of brand-sponsorship seem crass in theory, but in practice it is usually instituted in a way that doesn’t compromise artistic integrity anyway. Gawker getting sponsored for a day by a vodka company isn’t out of step with that website’s ethos. A sponsored post about a relevant book on Talking Points Memo wouldn’t freak me out, if it ever happened. If Tony Soprano is going to drink a soda or McNulty is going to drink a bottle of whisky—acts not out of step with their respective characters—why shouldn’t it be Coke or Jameson? And if David Chase or David Simon can make extra money and keep working because of that, so much the better, right? The sort of show or website that would misuse product placement is the kind I wouldn’t watch or read anyway. Artistic Integrity will survive this economy.

So where do books fall into all of this? We tend to think of books as aspiring toward higher art, but isn’t that also true of The Sopranos or The Wire? Wouldn’t most people consider those shows higher forms of art than Twilight? But wouldn’t those same people consider product placement on television as possibly valid or maybe unavoidable but nonetheless object vehemently to product placement in books, probably in rather absolute terms? What I’m saying is, this is a more complicated issue than many people acknowledge, and I personally am not necessarily against product placement, maybe even in books.

All of that said, there is something weird and terrifying going on with the brands in this book. If you’re not getting paid (and let’s assume for a moment that Stephanie Meyer is not) then anytime you can reasonably (read: not awkwardly) avoid mentioning a brand name you probably should; this being a text-based medium in which Bella drinking “a soda” is less bizarre than Joey from Friends drinking Red Brand Cola. Which is why it is a little strange when the next morning Bella says she types “vampire” into “my favorite search engine” (pg. 133). This is an inarguably awkward and jarring phrase. I don’t know anyone who has a favorite search engine. This is a situation distinctly different from the cola example. It certainly could have been phrased differently, but the way it is phrased now it only draws attention to the absence of a specific brand name. It’s a gaping hole in the page. She also keeps referring to the CD by the band she is listening to as the CD by the band she is listening to. It’s like how you would talk to your grandmother about music, avoiding proper nouns so as to not confuse her.

There’s an argument to be made that these sort of precautions could be made to make the work timeless, but the notion that Bella uses a dial-up modem and listens to a CD player was already becoming antiquated in 2005.

And then of course there is the Volvo. Edward drives a Volvo. We know this, because the word “Volvo” appears in nearly every chapter. “Silver car” is a less awkward phrase than “my favorite search engine” so it’s not like it was an unavoidable detail. “Silver sedan” even has some nice alliteration to it! As many already know, the Volvo is now a rather integrated part of the Twilight Marketing Universe. Ladies and Gentlemen of the Jury:



PODCAST: "The Twilight Vampires Would Like To Sell You A Volvo"- Hatecast

I would at this point like to point out that I am reading a first paperback edition of Twilight, published 11 months after the first hardcover edition. The phrase “my favorite search engine” is awkward enough to suggest to me that it was a substitution from an earlier draft (“I finally made it to the Google homepage”). Or even, dare I suggest it, an earlier edition?

Of course, it doesn’t make sense that Volvo would have the foresight to know that Twilight would be a merchandising juggernaut three years after publication. Before a single book had been published? No way. Talk about long odds! How could a deal like that even be brokered? But how else do we explain the fact that the only brand that seems to appear throughout is Volvo? Does Stephanie Meyer’s father OWN Volvo? What the fuck is going on here?

Bella has a nightmare in which she is tormented on all-sides: Edward, all sharp-toothed and vampire-y, Jacob, who turns into a wolf (um, spoiler alert?), and Mike, who is such a pussy only his disembodied voice shows up in the dream. Dream-Bella is taken with a manic desire to find the sun, sort of like Oswald Alving at the end of Ghosts. She wakes up at 5:30 in the morning, angry at her own sub-conscious for forcing her to confront the information she’d worked so hard to ignore the night before. She buys some time by taking a long shower, but eventually she has to face her demons and do a web-search on the word “vampire” (at the aforementioned myfavoritesearchengine.com).

It seemed that most vampire myths centered around beautiful women as demons and children as victims; they also seemed like constructs created to explain away the high mortality rates for young children, and to give men an excuse for infidelity. (pg. 134)

Bella’s analysis of vampire-myths is entertaining, but I’ve come to dislike when non-fiction intrudes upon fiction. I recently read Beat The Reaper by Josh Bazell, which fashions itself after old detective novels but reminds me more of the sort of things I liked about Chuck Palahniuk (meaning it did not have the Chuck Palahniuk-ian urge to be as disgusting as possible as frequently as possible, at least until the last few chapters). The medical info dished by the narrator is interesting, but becomes increasingly ridiculous until I sort of felt misled. Not that I was going to put any of that information to practical use anyway, but I was mentally storing away some of the anecdotes about the medical profession for future social gatherings, essentially assuming that they were true and the narrative around them was the fiction, until I read the author’s disclaimer at the end of the novel, in which he essentially distances himself from everything written therein.

The point is I’m getting sick of trying to distinguish when the non-fiction intruding upon my fiction is fictitious and when it is not. So I assume it is always made up. Which makes this section especially boring, because Bella’s research leads to a series of dead-ends. She starts to realize just how ridiculous she looks, reading about vampires on the internet (an irony apparently lost on most of the denizens of the Twilight Fandom Online Community and, I guess, me). She decides that most of the blame belongs “on the doorstep of the town of Forks” a mixed-metaphor we’ll let her get away with for the time being. Bella turns her computer off manually in frustration, not shutting it down correctly on purpose. The part of me that is very protective of my computers and other devices winced in pain at this.

Bella wanders into the woods to contemplate whether or not Jacob’s story is possible. She does a mental checklist of Edward’s more unusual traits: the super-speed, the changing eye-color, the super-strength. He “sometimes spoke with unfamiliar cadences and phrases that better fit the style of a turn-of-the-century novel,” she says (pg. 138). When exactly? Maybe page 106: “Would she extend the same courtesy to you, do you think? No matter who your choice was?” is the closest unfamiliar cadence I could find at a glance. This is not something Bella has really noted before.

She decides that the Cullens are definitely something. “Something outside the possibility of rational justification was taking place in front of my incredulous eyes” (pg. 138). If I had to describe that sentence in one word, I think I’d go with “Palin-esque.” Or “clusterfuck.”

Bella argues with herself in a scene reminiscent on Gollum arguing with his own reflection in the Lord of the Rings. Her ego and id ultimately conclude that whether Edward is a vampire or not, they don’t care.

On page 139 she analyzes her own dream but uses too many masculine pronouns, making it sort of difficult to determine whether or not she is saying she is afraid of vampire Edward or werewolf Jacob or either of them or both of them. It’s supposed to underscore her decision to not care about what Edward is, so the pronouns probably (mostly) refer to him.

She’s happy she made a decision, but uh, did she? She goes into the forest to decide whether or not Edward is a vampire and decides that it doesn’t matter. Kind of a cop-out, Bella.

Next day it’s sunny out, and Bella is in a good mood. She leaves for school. “By dint of much elbow grease, I was able to get both windows in the truck almost completely rolled down” (pg. 142). By dint of much elbow grease? Now who is using unfamiliar cadences better fitting a turn-of-the-century novel, eh?

Mike hits on Bella before class, noting that her hair has red in it, and taking the liberty of tucking a stray strand behind her ear. “I became just a little uncomfortable,” Bella says. I became a lot uncomfortable. Mike asks her out again, and she finally tells him (at least part of) the truth: Jessica really likes him (the other part of the truth being she thinks he is a fucking creep). He is “dazed” by the news (pg. 144). The scene is sort of amusing, especially Bella threatening to beat Mike to death if he should tell Jessica what she is telling him. Maybe I just find the image of Mike being beaten to death amusing. The problem is the whole notion of a guy-liking-a-girl and-then-suddenly-being-made-aware-of-the-pretty-girl-who-liked-him-all-along is a little too cliché to be all that interesting.

Bella gets invited to Port Angeles to shop with Jessica, Angela, and Lauren (a.k.a. Doesn’t Like Bella Because of Mike, Likes Bella Fine, and Doesn’t Like Bella for Reasons Unknown) for the upcoming dance. She agrees to go, but the trip gets pushed back a day because Mike asks Jessica out to dinner. Great! Does that mean we can stop hearing about this asshole for a while?

The bad news is that Edward doesn’t show up for school for the next two days. Bella starts to worry about their planned Seattle trip at the end of the week, which is the day of the dance. Haven’t these girls kind of waited until the last minute to find a dress, by the way?

4 comments:

Tyler Swagar said...

Looking back, I feel I should mention that the part about brand names and product placement and whatnot was one of the most thought-provoking things I'd read in quite a while. It eventually led to me extensively analyzing the flaws I find in laws regarding defamation, and thinking about this potential lack of freedom of speech angered me.

I guess what I'm saying is, this blog post angered me.. indirectly. It also reminded me that I have some catching up to do on these. I like that I'll be able to (exaggeratively) claim that I've read Twilight, without having to read Twilight. So thank you for suffering through that for me.

Unknown said...

I have a rebuttal for the brand names bit- There is at least one other very good reason to not use brand names, or use fake ones: Apart from legal issues (see Good Eats for examples of that).

Sometimes, you use false brand names on purpose to display the fact that this is not set here, on the Earth we know. It is set elsewhere, or in a different history, or an alternate world, etc. One of the fastest and easiest ways to display the difference is to make brand changes- Just look at The Stand and Dark Tower for literary examples.

Or, of course, you can go the opposite route: Showing how little historical change affects brands sometimes- In Code Geass, a show set in a VERY divergent Earth, there is still Pizza Hut... Despite there never having really been a United States.

So there are definitely good reasons, apart from the legal or pandering ones, to be weird about brands.

Magenta said...

http://www.vampiresaz.webs.com/
thought you might think this is interesting.
I'm assuming a twilight fan made this because the site was started in 2006

Anonymous said...

Hello, and thanks for providing a few good chuckles so far! Just wanted to add my two cents on this product placement thing. I recently graduated from a book publishing program and I'm young but I do have some experience in the industry. I can say with some confidence that product placement is not something that happens in books in the same way as TV and movies - meaning, it's not something companies would ever pay for. It's possible that it has happened at some point in the history of publishing, but I believe it would be EXTREMELY rare. Virtually impossible with a first-time author, which Meyer was at the time. This of course, doesn't help you figure out why Volvo is the only brand name that appears...perhaps it has something to do with Stephanie Meyer being mormon and disliking materialism? Maybe Volvos somehow transcend this code of ethics? Who knows! But an interesting observation nonetheless.