The Twilight Effect – Fangs and Figures

Twilight is a cultural phenomenon. The Twilight Effect has tweens, teens and adults (who should know better) swooning at the sight of sparkly fangs. I thought I’d have an in-depth look at the figures and facts that make the Twilight Effect worthy of its notorious title.

Books
There hasn’t been this much craze surrounding a book since Harry Potter and Meyers has definitely given Rowling some tough competition. Thankfully (a big Harry Potter fan myself!), Rowling has managed to hold her title as bestselling author having sold more books than Meyer - the Harry Potter series selling over 400 million copies worldwide compared to 100 million copies of the Twilight Saga. However, the vampire series by Stephenie Meyer sold one million copies in little over two and a half years and has been noted by book sellers as the fastest selling book ever seen.
Twilight didn’t just stimulate its own sales; it created a market for all vampire books. The Twilight Effect can be seen in every Waterstones where fantasy novels have become main stream. No longer hidden away with the sci-fi section, Waterstones includes paranormal fantasy’s such as Charlaine Harris, L.G Smith and P.C Cast in it’s 3 for 2 deals at the front of the store. A huge demand for vampire based novels has been established and new paranormal romances are published by the week.
Another remarkable profiteer of the Twilight effect is Wuthering Heights which after being mentioned in the saga quadrupled in sales. The publishers even reissued the novel with new ‘Twilight’ branding to appeal to a modern audience.


TV and Film
The big screen has been no different and the Twilight Saga’s first three movies have been top sellers of the year. The first screening of Eclipse, the third installment of Summit Entertainments films, generated sales over $30million just from the first midnight showing in US and Canada theatres, beating all previous records (the previous record held by New Moon). The film also received three million sales of the DVD the day it arrived in stores.
Twilight also instigated its vampire fanfare on the small screen with a sudden appearance of vampire shows such as HBO’s True Blood and The Vampire Diaries (wish they had brought Buffy back!).

Music
Not only has the book, film and TV industries experienced the Twilight affect; the success of the Twilight franchise also streams into music. Nielsen SoundScan, stated the soundtrack sold 2.2 million copies in 2009, a rare feet in the new music market. It topped the charts the first week of release on Nov 21st starting with 165,000 sales. Downloads of the album accounted for 29% (48,000) of its first week, making it the second-biggest digital week for a soundtrack. Sales for bands on the soundtrack also significantly increased. For example, Paramore’s single Decode went Platinum and was nominated for a Grammy. It also caused a spike in sales for their previous album RIOT! By late 2008, when the Twilight craze was peaking, “Decode” was selling over 100,000 copies a week, while RIOT! was selling over 17,000 copies a week.


Merchandising
Then we get into the merchandising. Movies with multiple installments always produce big sales in merchandising - particularly of the cult fantasy and sci-fi variety. Star Wars, The Lord of the Rings, and Harry Potter are Twilights predecessors and all made billions from retail revenue.
The Twilight Saga is already level with the Lord of The Rings’ figure sales with only three of the five saga movies already released. There is speculation that at this rate it will topple the highest ranking of merchandise revenue - Star Wars.


Names
You think that would be it? Surely!
Twilight is also topping the name charts. The Social Security Administration released its list of 2009's most popular baby names, and the leading choices were Isabella and Jacob. For anyone who is not a Twi-hard these are two of Twilights main characters. I was surprised Edward didn’t meet the cut? Is it really that bad a name?

Bites
The fact is when you have such a huge franchise fans are going to get obsessed. And obsession is never healthy. The most recent bad press regarding the Twilight Effect has been a biting craze sweeping American high school and panicking sensible parents and overzealous church goers. Apparently, the latest hickie is a real bite, drawing and even sucking blood.

In an interview with ABC, Michael Kaplor, 16, explained he has been biting his girlfriend on and off for about a year.

"For me, biting is the way to show affection toward the other person and to just get a crazy adrenaline rush and not so much to mark territory or to show I belong to something, but just to show the other person I care and there's a deeper sense of affection," he said.

Although he doesn’t draw blood a lot of kids are saying they do.

"I think a lot of people draw blood because they want to feel very powerful, when you bite the other person you get the huge adrenaline rush and it feels like you can't stop and some people just take it too far," he added.

Youtube and Facebook pages are devoted to this new symptom of the Twilight Effect, some teens filming themselves sucking each other’s blood. Considering up to 15 percent of bites from humans can become infected or spread hepatitis, syphilis and HIV, this is not a good effect of the Twilight madness.



Violence
Even the cast has admitted the overly enthusiastic fans have left them feeling threatened. Kellan Lutz recently admitted to buying a dog to protect himself from fans.
“I can run fast now! I also have a dog that doesn’t like females. She’s pretty protective!”

The slew of Twilight attacks against ‘Antis’ (Twilight Anti-Fans) has also been reported in several media outlets. Students have stabbed, beaten and choked fellow students for not liking twilight. The website Twilight Sucks has even dedicated a forum for people to discuss their own violent incidents.



Such extreme behavior has been seen many times over if you think about sports and music fans. I think the shock about The Twilight Effect is that it is happening in young teens and comes from a medium perceived as generally quite passive.

The huge question is why Twilight? What is it about the story that provokes such a strong reaction among readers? The Times describes it as capturing "perfectly the teenage feeling of sexual tension and alienation."
Emma Watson has described herself as a Twilight fan and said, "I love those books ... I literally felt depressed when I finished reading them".


It is undeniable that Twilight evokes a strong emotional reaction amongst its readers. I think the story of such a passionate love story leaves people feeling disappointed with real life and want to remain immerged in the saga in any way possible whether it’s branding themselves with the franchise or replicating the novel in the real world. They strive for the passion within Twilight. Reading about Bella and Edward who ‘belong together’ can make real relationships fall short. The relationship between Bella and Edward hits a chord amongst girls, especially young girls in the same way Romeo and Juliet became a classic. At the end of the day, I think it’s important that everyone remembers that Twilight is fiction and unfortunately not every love story is epic.