John Seavey makes it look easy

Bastard.

Authenticity

Authenticity is a tough nut to crack, particularly when approached from the perspective of a 21st-century internet-obsessed whitestraightmale more likely to associate it with a Portland hipster describing his latest vinyl finds than a sincere attempt to root out personal identity. But there it is: In the case of both the Hipster Scum and the individual looking for an authentic experience, the essentiality of authenticity appears to be bound up with a conceptual superiority. "Listen to this," it says, "give this more importance, not because it's actually better or more convincing or more real, but because it has some virtual quality, non-transferable and unique, which makes it better than it would be without it." The privileging of the origins of a message over the message itself seems baffling and unreasonable, a small-scale version of the inarguable Word of God.

Of course, as I implied earlier saying this makes me feel like I'm quoting a Facebook libertarian or privilege denying guy meme; always a good sign that you're being an ass. As a white male aged 18 to 49, I'm used to having my suggestions listened to. Perhaps authenticity of this sort is necessary in the sense of a sort of ideological affirmative action, to give additional weight to those ideas which might be easily dismissed as not fitting with the norm. It's all well and good to say that an idea should be judged on entirely its merits, but we fallible mortals can't seperate the message from the messenger.

But then what is to be made of the idea that authenticity can be revoked? Again we fall back on the analogy of the hipster sneering and dismissing a work based not on its failings as a work, but its makers later "selling out", retroactively tarnishing their entire catalogie. The devolution of the debate on value into a game of "authentickier than thou" is an obvious and cheap joke in the context of the bearded wunderkinds, in which authenticity and quality are considered necessary in some conditionality or other. This is good because it's authentic, or this can be good because it's authentic. This is bad because it's inauthentic, or vice versa.

The association of inauthenticity and a lack of quality seems to have had its origins in exploitation and mass-production; a work created by an inauthentic source was almost certain to misrepresent or abuse its subjects in some way, be those subjects rock music and its devotees or native americans or what-all. In the creation of popular culture, it is in the nature of the beast to give up the male persona recreate the trappings of a successful formula without any awareness to what made the original effective. There's a claim to be made that the difference between a rip-off and an homage is down to this awareness. The point again comes down to what's enough respect, enough tolerance, enough research to legitimately represent a group to which one doensn't belong. Perhaps there is no such point, and thus no circumstance under which once can write with another's voice without illegitimately appropriating. On the other hand, once can't give carte blanche to appropriate, nor am I claiming that there is nothing wrong in claiming authentic membership in a group to which you have no connection; merely that the flaw is in the lie or the abuse, not the inauthenticity.

The recent "lesbian blogger" scandals provide an excellent example. By portraying members of a group to which they do not belong, these bloggers have managed to trivialize what they set out to draw attention to, making themselves the story rather than their subject matter. Inauthentic or not, shouldn't we be outraged that Tom MacMaster made up a story about a woman being kidnapped to cover for his vacation? If he actually was a lesbian in Damascus and needed to take a break, presumably she would have realized that the false-vanishing story was heinously inappropriate. If she had been who and what she said she was, and still put up the same (false) story, it would have still been unacceptable, and damaged her authenticity to speak for the gay population of the Middle East.

And, my presentation partner reminds me, all this is fundamentally based on a point of privilege in which the honky overlord is essentially telling other people what they should and shouldn't be mad about. I think this is why I've written so many posts about Twilight: There are no uncomfortable undertones to ripping on a socially conservative Mormon housewife's vampire fantasies. Of course, merely saying this makes me wonder if I'm just swanning right past them...

Reasoning with Vampires and erudite antifandom of distinctly un-erudite writing

Reasoning with Vampires is a tumblr dedicated to tearing apart Twilight. While I generally approve of such enterprises, I am personally stunned by the level of effort demonstrated - every page of every book is lovingly examined for choice nuggets and then turned into an image-macro-esque jpg. The level of detail demands comparison to Slacktivist's equally involved review of the the Left Behind series, which began in 2003 and is still not finished with the second book in the seven-volume series. So what does this mean, these writers putting far more effort into something which they ostensibly despise than most fans put into what they love, and arguably more effort than the writers put into producing the material to begin with?

Both Slacktivist (Fred Clark) and the webmistress of RwV are pursuing their antifandom in the interest of a public good. Clark, a liberal evangelical Christian, frequently describes the series as "the Worst Books Ever Written", referring both to the sluggish pacing, the failure of the characters to behave like human beings, the obvious lack of research and any number of other authorial sins, and the distinctly warped understanding of Christianity they are meant to impart. RwV's Dana (ah, found her name, albeit only a first one) likewise abuses both the numerous and egregious flaws of the writing and the underlying assumptions that drive it, frequently goggling at the, quote, "psychological fuckery" implicit in the text. Both of these sources, then, are decrying bad art in the service of bad ideas. Their focus is markedly different. Clark uses the springboard of discussing Left Behind to discuss the problems which the pre-millenial dispensationalist version of evangelicalism (summarized as "We're ready, you're not, nyah nyah") has wrought and continues to wreak on the American political landscape, the broader world, and even its own adherents. Dana began by limiting herself to "merely" eviscerating the text itself as being badly written, with the rather straightforward goal of teaching good writing through the use of a negative example. As the process of reading and snarking has continued, she has come to insult the underlying ideas of the text as much or more than the writing style, but these are generally limited to broad, snarky joke tags or quick quips, in comparison to the voluminous meditations on evangelism, heroism and the nature of God which Slacktivist derives from Left Behind.

The critical (or antiantifan) response is interesting in its split based on the platforms used. As a "traditional" blogger, Slacktivist is using a medium traditionally frequented by the literate and progressive; his problem lies less in arguing with fans than with preaching to the choir. Reading the comments on these posts, the general angle is not attempting to defend the Left Behind series, but rather trying to use Clark's arguments against the books' versions of Real True Christianity to disabuse him (and other readers) of their own religious beliefs. In comparison, by establishing a presence on Tumblr, a new-media Web2.0 site whose user base leans towards the young and female end of the scale, Reasoning with Vampires is very much in the lion's den. Further, by attacking the books from the angle of quality of writing, Dana establishes herself as a schoolteacher in a back alley, establishing superiority to the fans and criticizing them in turn for their attacks written in the simple argot of the internet. This antagonism is well-exemplified by the trophy room of "favourite" responses provoked from fandom.

Thus, through critical response to these works, there is an attempt to promote either one's own agenda or simply oneself, the rhetoric of superiority as described in the Sheffield & Merlo reading. The dismissal of fans of Left Behind as boorish or simple is one which Clark argues strongly against, but which nevertheless seems inevitable as more and more of the books are thoroughly dissected and found to be badly written. Reasoning with Vampires, meanwhile, makes no bones about how readers of Twilight, and especially writers hoping to base their works on Twilight,  are bad and should feel bad. By establishing their superiority to readers and authors alike, these blogs argue that they hope to improve the quality of written work in future, but can enjoy the feeling of privilege here and now.

A brief sidebar on society's squirrelly relationship with "mere" words

Recalling my in-class excoriation of the practice of radio edits, I may as well address a personal bugaboo regarding Battlestar Galactica: The use of "frak" to replace outright swearing despite all other dialogue being 'translated' from Colonial. This practice, using various other words and placeholders, is by no means limited to BSG, and its use in that show is a particularly good example of type (doubtless helped by "frak"'s homonymity with its Earthly equivalent, and by the actors' ability to (generally) use it without breaking stride), but even so it remains a jarring intrusion into the universe. It's proof of the existence of a censor who has more influence on the writing process than the needs of logic or a good story. And of course, the same argument applies as in the case of radio edits: The word is used in the same contexts, has the same meaning and is meant to have the same emotional impact; the audience replaces it at the cost of a moment's attention and a slight lapse of immersion, and the emotional impact is badly mangled. And all so that a kiddiewink will go perhaps another six or seven minutes before a less scrupulously self-censoring media, or even a fallible human being, says the unthinkable near them. Of course, all this may be merely my fan self-hatred rearing its head against the notion that we need yet another cute identifier to wear on t-shirts and bumper stickers.

Joe Don Baker and Basquiat: MST3K, riff culture and the internet

Mystery Science Theatre 3000 was, and is, a show whose success (even as a cult hit) was curious. Essentially, the entire show consisted of three dorks watching a terrible movie and making fun of it ("riffing") - That two of the dorks in question were puppet robots, and that the show itself was set on a space station were mere set dressing. It recreated a common scene in reality, one which was similarly recreated by Beavis and Butthead: People willingly submitting themselves to "bad", disposable popular culture for the opportunities it offered for comedy. But while Beavis and Butthead used caricatures of the lowest common denominator, characters that the viewing audience could feel superior to even as they laughed with them, MST3K's writers went out of their way to seek out the obscure and the erudite. The Wikiquote page for the show is studded with references to other wikipedia pages.
 
There's a point in the MST3K episode "Blood Waters of Doctor Z"¹ when a chunky white sheriff and a skinny black scientist are referred to as "Joe Don Baker and Basquiat, just hangin' out". To get the joke requires both a knowledge of high art and the lowest culture (the latter being helped by previous MST3K episodes starring Baker). The comedy inherent in making highbrow literary references to mock utterly disposable bargain-basement movies was a frequent go-to: When a scene in a swamp is overdubbed with frog noises, the riff "Brekekekex, ko-ax, ko-ax!" is hilarious if you know the play to which it refers, otherwise it's baffling nonsense. This was fine by the audience, composed of those who would either get a joke or be willing to accept it as funny given context (Annoyance at not getting the joke may have been softened by the riff density - as pointed out by the creators, the show involved something along the lines of eight jokes a minute in its latter seasons. If you don't get one, there's another to fall back on). Compare that with other media which avoided - and which, in many cases, still avoid - making any reference the audience can't be expected to understand. And, as in the case of David Mitchell² in the last link, a typical viewer faced with a joke they didn't understand would seek out the context and learn.

MST3K is remembered fondly (and maintained in "digital archive" form) because it described a certain culture which would later find full fruition on the internet, one in which it was not merely accepted but expected that terrible pop culture ephemera should be mocked to its face. Call it riff culture or comment culture, for good or ill it expanded into a general idea that all media deserved to be talked back to. The show itself later underwent a Superman-esque multiple rebirth as The Film Crew, Cinematic Titanic and most successfully Rifftrax³, but now that very Youtube comment page serves a similar function⁴, there seems to be little point.

1. If the internet is to be believed, BWoDZ was created when the director found some footage for a scrapped opening to "The Incredible Mister Limpet" and decided to build an entire film around it. 
2. The David Mitchell's Soapbox ads are an ideal example of post-modern advertising, being essentially comic monologues with no obvious connection to the product. Bulldog even demonstrates its own down-with-the-kids authenticity by having Mitchell decry the very notion of male grooming.
3. Rifftrax's success is arguably down to the "understanding" it has with its fans and DVD distributors. The audio tracks of Rifftrax commentaries are sold to be "synced up" with the DVD of the film, thus sparing the creators the cost of paying for the necessary rights which MST3K and the other successor projects had. In actual practice, the audio commentary is more or less immediately synced to a pirated version of the film's video and the combined version offered on a P2P site - The site itself accepts donations no questions asked, allowing them to, through a bizarre version of the honour system, profit from piracy.
4. Or would, if Youtube comments weren't nigh-universally terrible. Here we see the defnite advantage of having a team of capable writers covering the task of riffing.

Virginity, Vampirism and Mister A: Nothing, nothing, nothing in between

Subtle.

That the politics of the Twilight saga are reactionary is not exactly shocking, but I feel there's a connection to be made here between Meyer's decision to use vampires (who, as previously mentioned, are irrevocably changed - dead, in fact) in her addressing of burgeoning pubescent sexuality. Meyers' view of sex as tempting predation which must be constantly struggled against reminds me of Steve Ditko's Mister A comics, which were intended as a sort of primer in that writer's objectivism. The basic plotline runs thus: Some hapless citizen is tempted into a life of crime/sin because it seems so easy. Before they know it, they're in over their heads, realize they've made a mess of things, and try to escape from their sordid circumstances. It is at this point that the super-heroic(?) Mister A shows up, dispatches the bad guys who tempted the hapless sod into sin, and more often then not lets the latter die as well. A's calling card is a literal card, divided into black and white, reflecting his (and his author's) belief that there is only good or evil, and if you're not good, you're worthless. This kind of moral reductionism so bothered Alan Moore that he and his band did a song about it. No, seriously.

And of course Moore parodied Mr. A (and Mr. A's slightly watered-down alternate version, the Question) with the character of Rorschach in Watchmen, which Ditko dismissed as "insane". For all that Rorschach was more or less an unchanged version of A.

So what does all this have to do with Stephanie Meyer? The moral duality of Mister A is echoed in Meyer's sexual and mythological politics. Virgin or whore, human or vampire, you're one or the other and if you're the latter, you're really just a walking corpse who hasn't realized it. Of course, I have to admit that the analogy breaks down when Bella both becomes a vampire and has sex, although both are treated as absolutely the last straw and permissible just this one time (and for procreation, of course). Such excuses (or any excuse) would never suffice for Mr. A's morality.

Alas Poor Bloodsucker

The vampirism-as-minority trope sees a lot of use, a particularly egregious example of what those keeners over at TVTropes like to call "Fantastic racism". The problem with treating the vampire as a minority, of course, is that they pose a legitimate threat to the society in which they exist, unlike actual persecuted minorities. I reject the notion that a story can be told on the basis that it's from the point of view of the bigots and yet disproves their bigotry by embracing the very logic of said bigotry. If homosexuals actually did prolong their lives by hunting down our citizens and draining their very life force, we would be completely justified in hating them and denying them rights. Johnny Nexus pretty much nailed it in this old article (caution: copious filth surrounding salient point) in which he talks about the difference between race and species. Hating blacks because you believe they're violent and unreliable is absurd; Hating orcs because they're genetically proven to be violent and unreliable, not so much. And vampires are all the moreso: Not merely another species (which would be enough of a wrench away from our normal understanding of thought) but another order of existence entirely, something which in our understanding of the world simply should not exist. An undead creature isn't even in our taxonomic classifications - A frigging archaea is closer to us than a vampire. This, to my mind, fundamentally undermines the relatability of the bloodsucker and its role as a stand-in for the persecuted minority.

It's easy to argue that this is setting the standard too high, that having elves or vampires behave more or less like humans in costumes is the inevitable result of the limits of our cognition. They all act more or less like us because, outside of perhaps a few sci-fi authors with more degrees than devoted fans, nobody has any idea of how not to act like a human. Vampires in particular may no longer be human, but they're trying to act human, trying to regain their lost humanity. This is actually a key element of vampire horror (and zombie horror, and indeed the horror of any of the monsters that lead the hapless victim's friends shouting "That's not Rodney any more!") but the crux is the irreversibility of the condition. The vampire may look like us, appeal to us, but it is not and can never be us. As far as ways to depict another human group (or indeed, even one's own) go, that's pretty fucked up.

VINOs

I admit that I'm a man who takes my monsters seriously. I'm not so far gone as to decry, say, fast zombies, but there are certain set elements which I feel are integral to the inhabitants of horror's menagerie. And the inviolate rule of vampirism is that they're creatures of the fucking night. Given the sheer number of rules, limitations and powers ascribed to bloodsuckers in various incarnations, you invariably have to break a few - I love the internet argument that their inability to cross running water would render them comically useless the moment someone invented indoor plumbing. But darkness is the point on which I will not budge. If it can go out in daylight without going up like a roman candle, it's not a fucking vampire. And this applies double if sunlight only serves to make it prettier. I don't know what you have there, but it's definitely not a vampire.

And Meyer's heroic vampires don't just fail this simple rubric. They fall at virtually every hurdle which makes vampirism interesting, which makes a vampire story worth telling. Their bloodlust is manageable and directed at non-humans. Their unlives are happy and well-adjusted, certainly in comparison to their miserable pasts and the merely human lives that surround them. If they are an affront to God, they've been cursed with strength, speed, beauty and immortality - We should all be so cruelly afflicted. The vampire's appealing characteristics should be a shell, a charming facade and aristocratic air which conceals a soul dead and rotting. They're the nobles who charm the peasantry as they devour them, feudalism or capitalism or Maoist communism* embodied and evil. The Cullens, in comparison, are what it says on the tin. They are exactly as wonderful as they seem.

This isn't just dull, it's baffling. The vampire is a timeworn trope, actually any number of tropes: The Thing Which Should Not Be, the apex predator, the friendly rapist, the dead thing that mourns its own lost humanity**. Ignoring all of these, or playing them down, and still calling the result a vampire is just dirty pool. Nor am I particularly enamored of Meyer's excuse that she didn't do any research on vampires before she wrote the book: In-depth research is not required to get an idea of the cultural circumference of the bloodsucker. The most damnable part, though, is that any number of writers and creators have avoided the 'vampire' label when their vampires are much closer to the traditional monstrous model than Meyer's. The British TV series Ultraviolet refers to them as "Code Fives"*** or "leeches", while the Swedish tabletop RPG Kult uses other culture's terms for vampiric monsters to avoid the connotations that mainstream readers have for "vampires" and to impart a more refined idea of what kind of monster is being discussed (The Nosferatu and Lorelei being quite different beasts). Meyer's use of vampire thus irks me, probably far more than it should.

Next: Why vampires are not a persecuted minority

* Has there been a vampire book set during the Great Leap Forward? Deceit, terror, despair and an unthinkable body count: It seems a natural fit. Of course, the Chinese vampire is almost universally depicted as completely silly, but as I've said mythology is a flexible thing.
** Must... not... make... White Wolf... joke...
*** 5 = V, geddit?

What We're Trying To Do Here

"I cannot believe these kids today."  says J.D. " 'Hawaii Five-O' is not political? We're talking about the same show? The show that ran from '65 to '73? That had helicopter imagery in every episode? Helicopters full of wooden-faced, purposeful white guys in the kind of business suits capitalism's all about? White guys flying around in helicopters restoring order to this oriental island that can't seem to govern itself, that's overrun with violent and bad and indigenous Orientals? The cop show where all the head guys are white and all their lieutenants are good Orientals in suits, and they all cooperate and co-prosper shooting the bad Orientals out of helicopters? With this constant reference all the time to a 'Mainland' that seems close to the island and in peril from the island's disorder and in need of what's the word immunization, but which calls Jack Lord's every shot, and justifies all the shooting of natives out of helicopters?"
"Are you trying to draw a Vietnam parallel?" Mark asks.

- David Foster Wallace, "Westward the Course of Empire Takes Its Way"
in Girl with Curious Hair