Tomorrow is my daughter's seventeenth birthday, and as one of her gifts, she asked me to take her to see "I Am Number 4," just the two of us. I knew going into this that the movie would likely not be one I would greatly enjoy, and I was not at all looking forward to it. It was, however, what my daughter really wanted to do, and she wanted to do it with solo time with her Dad, so the thought of not taking her never entered my mind, (I've sat through dozens of Jennifer Lopez romantic comedies in the name of marital harmony, so I was excited that this one was at least thematically in my preferred oeuvre.) Once the film began, it was essentially what I thought it would be, and I began formulating a review of the movie to post on this site afterwards. And then I received an epiphany: it didn't matter what I thought of the movie because it WASN'T MADE FOR ME.
Let me clarify: I hear fans of genre movies complain all the time about how they hate what they consider to be lightweight, fluffy "Emo" fantasy, Sci-Fi and horror, with the lion's share of the vituperation directed at, you guessed it, "The Twilight Saga." Now, I'm no fan of the series myself, and I prefer my vampires evil and arrogant (like most of my former girlfriends.) A vampire who is immortal, dresses like Eddie Vedder, and mopes about it for two and a half hours is simply not going to capture my imagination in the same way that an evil, undead Magyar prince who has come to town to despoil our women will. But the bulk of the audience for the "Twilight" books and movies is not the crusty 35-50 year old male demographic to which I belong. The people making Stephanie Meyer a very wealthy woman are the 14-26 year old females.
This is not really a big surprise to most of us. We already know that these properties and those like them are directed at teenage girls. What is surprising, however, is how resentful some of us can be at their success. When I was growing up, most, if not all sci-fi, fantasy and horror was considered, by general consensus of my peer group as well as the adult authority figures in my life, to be sub-standard literature or entertainment. Watching re-runs of "Star Trek" after school was not thought of as enjoying what I liked, but as some sort of borderline deviant behavior. And comic books? Anyone who read those past the age of 11 was clearly incapable of dealing with the "real world." Today, attitudes about genre material have changed as the fringe has become more mainstream. Nerds are "in." But the television shows, movies and comics which are much more respected now are still largely sold to a male audience.
For years, the creators of speculative fiction in all it's forms and media have asked the question "How do we attract the female audience?" Many well-meaning but ill-conceived initiatives have been brought to bear on this question, and most have died ignominious and embarrassing deaths. But now, someone has figured out the mystery of the female audience Rubik's Cube: release content that girls and women want to see. Sound's simple doesn't it? We are painting with a broad brush here, and your mileage may vary, but, by and large, BOYS AND GIRLS ARE DIFFERENT! We're not supposed to articulate that sentiment. Gender differences are a function of societal imposition, we are told; the only differences are the physical ones. This is, of course, absurd, as anyone who has ever been in a romantic relationship will attest. Males and females are wired differently. There have always been female fans of genre fiction and film, but they've always represented the tiniest fraction of the fan base. Until now.
You see, a 14 year old girl who reads or watches "Twilight" is being exposed to the world we all love: A world where nightmares walk and the impossible is commonplace. A world where the only limits to the stories is the imagination of the creator. So, let these ladies have their sparkly vampires and moody alien Messiahs. The world of fantasy has a big tent, and all are welcome here.