Amidst the fever pitch of Eclipse fever, I’ve found myself deep in microfiche archives of 1950s Photoplay. During the post-war period, the gossip industry was attempting to reconcile itself to a rapidly changing Hollywood.  The studio system was slowly collapsing; there was a brand-new, brash legion of television personalities; existing stars increasingly refused to play by the rules that governed appropriate behavior (including submission to the fan magazines) during the studio era.  Many, including Rock Hudson, Doris Day, Janet Leigh, and Tony Curtis, continued to cooperate fully with the fan magazines, “writing” articles and granting full access to their personal lives.  Yet other newly minted stars refused to play the star-making game.

These stars – Marlon Brando and Montgomery Clift in particular – forced the fan magazines to alter their approach.  In classic Hollywood, these stars would have been fodder for cheesecake profiles: “What Marlon Looks for in a Girl,” for example.  But Photoplay and other mags had to negotiate the fact that Brando had no taste for “glamour girls,” hated Hollywood, laughed at criticism of his “dungarees” and “moccasins without socks,” and even pleasured in stymieing the best efforts at turning him into a heartthrob.  When approached to appear on the cover of Life, he laughed “Now why would I want to do that?”  Louella Parsons, Elsa Maxwell, and Hedda Hopper were forced to devote their columns to explaining why, exactly, a young, handsome, talented man wouldn’t want fame, a beautiful young wife, and a Cary Grant wardrobe.

I can’t help but see the same tension at work in efforts to promote this summer’s most viable leading man – Robert Pattinson, star of Twilight: Eclipse and (industry fingers-crossed) a newly bankable star.

Pattinson, like Brando, is allergic to publicity.  He may resemble a 19th century romantic poet, but he’s clumsy, has an awkward sense of humor, and goes off on esoteric tangents in interviews. He publicly admitted to rarely washing his hair.  He makes fun of his pasty, unchiseled physique.  When Seventeen asks him the last thing he bought at the store, he replied, “toilet paper.” When Details put him on its cover this Spring, declaring the British actor the face of the “Remasculation of America,” he explained that he was “allergic to vaginas,” voiced his “delight” in lymphatic filariasis, and, concerning the near-violence that breaks out when he appears in public, declared “I find it really funny—if I got shot, I would literally be in hysterics. I would be like, ‘Are you serious? Jesus Christ, get Zac Efron!  He’s got more social relevance than I do.’ ”

One might argue that Pattinson’s refusal to publicly confirm a relationship with co-star Kristen Stewart in fact ups his heartthrob quality: he keeps his fans just this side of fulfilled, hoping for the fantasy of their romance or the bliss of having Pattinson/Edward Cullen for themselves.  But a skilled heartthrob would know how to milk KStew/RPatz, tipping off paparazzi during their romantic beach getaways and “just happening” to get caught walking out of a engagement ring store.

Pattinson’s lack of heartthrob ‘skillz’ are especially obvious when contrasted with his smooth, six-packed co-star, Taylor Lautner.  In Twilight, Lautner’s werewolf  alter-ego, Jacob, is positioned as Edward Cullen’s polar opposite; in the star universe, Lautner is Pattinson’s inverse as well.  Where Pattinson is reticent, awkward, and British, Lautner is confident, cool, and so very American.  His every appearance and word is carefully choreographed to elicit maximum girl squee-age; he has a mega-watt and super white smile and takes himself very seriously.  He truly is “The Teen Tom Cruise,” which is just another way of saying he’s the latest in a long line of stars, from Rock Hudson to Cruise himself during his heyday, who knew how to let Hollywood do its star-making work.

Pattinson plays the role of teen heartthrob poorly, but that certainly doesn’t mean that he won’t be a star.  Rather, the media – whether in the form of fan mags, gossip blogs, glossies, or academic blogs like this one – will be forced to grapple with why, exactly, someone who seems to do such a shoddy job at being handsome, princely, or even normal has nevertheless attracted the unadulterated devotion of millions of fans.

The answer, in part, is that some teen heartthrobs are products of what people think girls and women should like.  The Jonas Brothers, Zac Efron, Taylor Lautner.  And others, including Pattinson, like Brando and Dean before him, touch on something that we didn’t even realize that we necessarily liked.  Something odd and unexpected, something nostalgic or novel, something charismatic or comforting, or, as Hedda Hopper described Brando, “pure man,” whatever that may mean in a particular cultural moment.  So instead of thinking of what a weird heartthrob Pattinson seems to be, perhaps we should reconsider what many thought true of the tastes and desires of today’s heartthrob-hungry girls.

It’s a teen show, it’s vampire-based, you might think it’s derivative Twilight crap.

But Vampire Diaries is doing something particularly skillful with a scenario that could as flat as the rest of the product that passes for programming on The CW.  And here’s why.  

1.) The Set-Up:

Vampire Diaries tells the tale of a beautiful teenage (orphan) girl who attracts the affections of two century-old vampire babe brothers. They love this girl, Elena, because — GET THIS — she is a dead ringer for the ancient vampire, Katherine, who turned them into vampires — but that they both loved!

Elena’s doppleganger, Katherine, circa Civil War

2.) It’s pure genre.

Genre television works within a (relatively) established paradigm, draping its narrative on the fact that it is pre-established as a “procedural,” “a sitcom,” etc.  Which isn’t to say that genre television is bad; but that there are expectations that show challenges or confirms to various extents.  Vampire Diaries is teen television and follows many of those codes, but it is also melodrama.

Let’s not consider melodrama a genre, but, as per Linda Williams, a “mode.”  Thus it’s a way of expressing a certain genre, and Vampires Diaries is a teen television expressed in the melodramatic mode — which means that it employs a high level of seriality coupled with intense, skyrocketing emotions.

There is a lot of mooning and looking into the distance and a complex web of exboyfriends, secret hook-ups, and frenemies.  There’s ample use of an earnest indie soundtrack, manifesting the melos that accentuates the moments when speech simply fails.

Yet the show manages to pull off this who-loves-who, who’s-a-witch and who’s-a-vampire, who-are-our-heroine’s-real-parents business with a straight face.  Therein lies the key to Vampire Diaries‘ genre success: it revels in its very genre-ness.  Vampire Diaries takes the melodrama to 11.

But it’s also not camp, which is crucial.  We like to think that teenagers only want snarky or satirical texts, but sometimes we all want emotions to be worthy and legitimated.  Which highlights another crucial function of the melodrama: it makes the world seem, even for one moment, morally legible.  In the end, our vampire hero loves and cherishes our human heroine, and all is right with the world.

3.) Intertextuality.

Vampire Diaries is the child of no less a teen auteur than Kevin Williamson (Dawson’s Creek). Even as the text oscillates between flashbacks of the antebellum South and an absurdly quaint contemporary Carolinian town, it also manages to acknowledge and play upon its antecedents.

In one of my favorite moments of this show, the “bad” vampire brother leafs through Twilight, exclaiming “What is up with this Bella girl? Edward is so whipped!”  What’s more, the good and bad brothers are clear ‘descendants’ of Buffy’s Angel and Spike, and the text regularly highlights its knowledge of the vampire genre, explicitly manifesting and debunking aspects of vampire lore.  Vampire Diaries is earnest and straight-faced, but it’s also smart, like that cute nerd in high school.

4.) Innovation.

As a pre-sold, Alloy Entertainment Product, it could rest on the laurels, riding the cultural wave of Twilight and True Blood.

But Vampire Diaries regularly employs intricate flashbacks to another century.  Costumes!  Teen vampires meets narrative complexity! It’s also crafted a heroine who is no Bella — she’s smart, has her own volition, and speaks her mind.  She has sexual desire, and isn’t meant to be some cipher for the return to the cult of true womanhood, as is made so disturbingly transparent in Twilight. The show refuses to be abstinence porn (Twilight) or soft-core erotica (True Blood).  There’s a coven of vampires locked in a vault beneath a seemingly peaceful Southern hamlet.  Can you get more obviously, beautifully allegoric?

I realize I may have made the show sound like a blood and thunder soap opera  — The Perils of Pauline meets My So-Called Life.  Good.  That’s exactly what I was hoping for.  Both of those ‘programs’ demonstrate, in very different ways, the pinnacle of melodramatic plotting.  And Vampires Diaries deserves its place amongst them – not to mention your viewership.  So why aren’t you watching?

In reading about/watching the coverage of the New Moon premiere, I find myself increasingly conflicted. On the one hand, it’s encouraging to see young girls and women recognized as an audience and a significant economic force. Advance ticket sales are breaking records at sites like Fandango, and reports of these sales are quick to point out that New Moon tops sales figures for The Dark Knight and movies from both the Harry Potter and Star Wars franchises.

But on the other hand, I struggle with the fact that so much coverage depicts Twilight fans as swarming, screaming, unruly mobs of girls that are othered in some way.  Matt Lauer warned Meredith to “keep the smelling salts on hand for this pandemonium” as Robert Pattinson made an appearance on this morning’s Today Show. Variety‘s coverage of the Hollywood premiere ends with Kevin Smith claiming his daughter’s love for the franchise is totally foreign:  “I was watching it with my 10-year-old daughter, and it made no sense to me whatsoever. It was as inscrutable as an Israeli film. I just don’t understand the politics of the region.”

It’s an image that persists over the last 50 years, since the days of Beatlemania – screaming girls possessed, crazy, and constructed as a complete misfit engaging in behavior no one understands. From New Kids on the Block concerts, Hannah Montana/Miley Cyrus events, Jonas Brothers appearances, and even new-comer Justin Bieber’s recent performances, the young female fan is continually constructed as a psychotic, mysterious other. In decades of increasing awareness of the complexities of girlhood, have we really come very far from the “threat” of Beatlemania?

To be sure, some coverage has increasingly given a nod to Twilight fans including more than just teen girls, but also middle-aged women. Many of my friends are fans of the franchise looking forward to New Moon. But even their Facebook statuses or tweets reveal qualifications like “is that wierd?” or “hanging my head in shame” along with their announcements to attend the premiere. While some of my feminist friends pin their embarrassment on the franchise’s arguably anti-feminist characteristics, I can’t help but think how some of my other friends’ shame in liking or seeing New Moon emphasizes just how much young female fandom is devalued in American culture. It’s a devaluation that just continues through these images and coverage of screaming, ‘swarming’  Twilight fans.