Contents:
- “STILL NOT AS GAY AS TWILIGHT”: POSTMORN AFFECT, NOSTALGIA & QUEER TWILIGHT RENAISSANCE DURG THE COVID-19 PANMIC
- TWILIGHT’S ASHLEY GREENE ON ALICE CULLEN BEG MANY FANS’ ‘GAY AWAKENG’
- HALSEY WANTS TO MAKE A GAY "TWILIGHT" SEQUEL WH KRISTEN STEWART
“STILL NOT AS GAY AS TWILIGHT”: POSTMORN AFFECT, NOSTALGIA & QUEER TWILIGHT RENAISSANCE DURG THE COVID-19 PANMIC
As the Twilight novels and rpective film adaptatns were released om 2005 to 2012, however, the public receptn of the saga faced a homophobic backlash. Although blatant heterosexualy is non Twilight, meang that heterosexual relatns are the official narrative the story, the saga generated a lossal moral panic and homophobic rhetoric.
Die-hard fans of Twilight—or, Twihards—were met wh an extreme gree of unpopulary that was herently characterized by homophobic unrton (Bernard 2017; McFarland 2013a). Acrdg to “Know Your Meme, ” a webse that talogu viral ter mem, one of the most proment anti-Twilight mem was the “Still Not as Gay as Twilight” meme (2011).
TWILIGHT’S ASHLEY GREENE ON ALICE CULLEN BEG MANY FANS’ ‘GAY AWAKENG’
Agast the backdrop of this mass homophobic shamg the early 2000s, there has been a rurgence of the Twilight fandom across social media spac, cludg Twter, Tumblr and Facebook. Not only do a signifint portn of the Twilight Renaissance fans intify as a part of the lbian, gay, bisexual, transgenr, queer or qutng, and others (LGBTQ+) muny, but many of the origal characters the seri have been d as queer by mass Twilight Renaissance members (Dishmon 2018; Silva 2019). Dpe Meyer’s (2005) aggrsive heteronormativy, there has been a rurgent tert ‘gayifyg’ Twilight as a re pillar of the onle Twilight Renaissance phenomenon.
HALSEY WANTS TO MAKE A GAY "TWILIGHT" SEQUEL WH KRISTEN STEWART
I then nceptualize the Twilight Renaissance as an exemplar of Butt and Millner-Larsen’s (2018) “queer mons, ” where queer Twihards nstct a space or this se, fandom, an attempt to revive and repair a historilly homophobic narrative. One of the most memorable anti-Twilight mem is the “Still Not as Gay as Twilight” (2011) meme seri, which dismissed homoerotic imagery and same-sex activy as pable of ever beg as gay as Twilight. Neverthels, agast the backdrop of homophobic anti-Twilight shamg durg the early 2000s, openly engagg the queer readgs of Twilight outsi of the fanbase was que embarrassg.
In extrapolatg Williams’ (1977) nceptn, the Twilight Renaissance n be read as a symptom of an emergent unterculture that dispts the prevly-domant misogynistic and homophobic stcture of feelg, of which the anti-Twilight hatred of the early 2000s is a symptom. As lbian YouTuber STRANGE ÆONS not, “if you’ve been havg fun wh the Twilight Renaissance lately, you’re probably a gay twenty-somethg” (2021, 30:40 mut). There is an apparent queer occupancy of the saga wh the Twilight Renaissance where queer fans brand Twilight as ‘a gays only event’, ‘gay property’, and ‘for the gays now’.
Earlier, I discsed the ways which both fans and haters alike were engagg queer readgs of Twilight—whether that be as a homophobic public backlash agast the seri the early 2000s or as the fandom’s queerifitn of the saga through the Twilight Renaissance of the early 2020s.