{"id":3000,"date":"2009-07-28T11:28:48","date_gmt":"2009-07-28T11:28:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/idolchatter\/2009\/07\/is-merchandise-ruining-twiligh.html"},"modified":"2009-07-28T11:28:48","modified_gmt":"2009-07-28T11:28:48","slug":"is-merchandise-ruining-twiligh","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2009\/07\/is-merchandise-ruining-twiligh.html","title":{"rendered":"Is Merchandising Ruining &#8216;Twilight&#8217;?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span class=\"mt-enclosure mt-enclosure-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"twilightprom.jpg\" src=\"https:\/\/wp-media.beliefnet.com\/sites\/87\/import\/imgs\/twilightprom.jpg\" width=\"350\" height=\"234\" class=\"mt-image-right\" style=\"float: right;margin: 0 0 20px 20px\" \/><\/span>Are the stars of &#8220;Twilight&#8221; overexposed&#8211;or at least ridiculing Stephenie Meyer&#8217;s smash hit beyond the tolerable? I&#8217;m starting to think so.<br \/>\nWhat makes the &#8220;Twilight Saga&#8221; so much fun, so utterly appealing, is the over-the-top star-crossed love between Edward Cullen and Bella Swan, and the subsequent love triangle Meyer creates when Jacob enters the picture in &#8220;New Moon.&#8221; If you can let yourself go to that place where you can set aside the need for too much greater meaning, the series is one of the best reads around. And I know that any phenomenon that grows as big as &#8220;Twilight&#8221; has&#8211;&#8220;Harry Potter&#8221; would be another case in point&#8211;eventually gets merchandised to death by anyone and everyone who wants to make a buck. But is it possible for merchandise to ruin something altogether? Or at least make it so ridiculous that you can&#8217;t enjoy it anymore?<br \/>\nI&#8217;m one of those people who enjoys conjuring my own images of the heroes and heroines of favorite stories&#8211;something that is typically ruined once a movie is made. Though, I suppose, as far as looks go (though not demeanor), Robert Pattinson is about as Edward-like as I can hope for (I also have to admit: I am getting tired of seeing his face everywhere I go on just about everything I can imagine).<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><br \/>\nBut Jacob Black is another story. Taylor Lautner is about as far from my own idea of Jacob as can be&#8211;and then there is the problem (or what I consider a problem!) that Lautner certainly does not have long hair, and Stephenie Meyer&#8217;s Jacob does. It&#8217;s one of his most distinguishing features in &#8220;New Moon.&#8221; Which brings me back to the merchandise issue: just the other day, I was in a Barnes &amp; Noble, and I saw that they were selling Twilight puzzles (puzzles!!!) of all the stars&#8211;including one of Taylor Lautner with long, flowing hair photoshopped to the ends of his spiky hairdo. Gag! The puzzle bit is the first thing that made me sneer: I mean, come on&#8211;a puzzle? How unromantic can you get? But Taylor Lautner with photoshopped long, flowing hair? He may as well be Fabio. It&#8217;s one of the most hilarious things I&#8217;ve ever seen and I don&#8217;t know that I can get the image out of my head.<br \/>\nI think the stars of &#8220;Twilight&#8221; might be overexposed&#8211;especially Lautner since there has been so much controversy around whether or not he makes a good Jacob. People are trying too hard now, to make him into the Jacob Black Meyer first imagined. Do you agree?<br \/>\n<A href=\"http:\/\/www.locatetv.com\/person\/robert-pattinson\/48690\" target=\"_top\"><IMG alt=\"Robert Pattinson\" src=\"https:\/\/www.locatetv.com\/person\/robert-pattinson\/48690\/584x85_belief.gif\" border=\"0\"><\/A><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Is it possible for merchandise to ruin something altogether? Are the stars of &#8220;Twilight&#8221; overexposed&#8211;or at least ridiculing Stephenie Meyer&#8217;s smash hit beyond the tolerable? I&#8217;m starting to think so.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":105,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fbia_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[13,6,7,3,2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3000","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-celebrities","category-entertainment","category-movies","category-trends"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Is Merchandising Ruining &#039;Twilight&#039;?<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2009\/07\/is-merchandise-ruining-twiligh.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Is Merchandising Ruining &#039;Twilight&#039;?\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Is it possible for merchandise to ruin something altogether? Are the stars of &quot;Twilight&quot; overexposed--or at least ridiculing Stephenie Meyer&#039;s smash hit beyond the tolerable? I&#039;m starting to think so.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2009\/07\/is-merchandise-ruining-twiligh.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Idol Chatter\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2009-07-28T11:28:48+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/idolchatter\/files\/import\/imgs\/twilightprom.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Donna Freitas\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Is Merchandising Ruining 'Twilight'?","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2009\/07\/is-merchandise-ruining-twiligh.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Is Merchandising Ruining 'Twilight'?","og_description":"Is it possible for merchandise to ruin something altogether? Are the stars of \"Twilight\" overexposed--or at least ridiculing Stephenie Meyer's smash hit beyond the tolerable? I'm starting to think so.","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2009\/07\/is-merchandise-ruining-twiligh.html","og_site_name":"Idol Chatter","article_published_time":"2009-07-28T11:28:48+00:00","og_image":[{"url":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/idolchatter\/files\/import\/imgs\/twilightprom.jpg"}],"author":"Donna Freitas","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2009\/07\/is-merchandise-ruining-twiligh.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2009\/07\/is-merchandise-ruining-twiligh.html","name":"Is Merchandising Ruining 'Twilight'?","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2009\/07\/is-merchandise-ruining-twiligh.html#primaryimage"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2009\/07\/is-merchandise-ruining-twiligh.html#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/idolchatter\/files\/import\/imgs\/twilightprom.jpg","datePublished":"2009-07-28T11:28:48+00:00","dateModified":"2009-07-28T11:28:48+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/#\/schema\/person\/59a2667b18839bc220bd4c3c2d2ed70a"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2009\/07\/is-merchandise-ruining-twiligh.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2009\/07\/is-merchandise-ruining-twiligh.html"]}]},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2009\/07\/is-merchandise-ruining-twiligh.html#primaryimage","url":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/idolchatter\/files\/import\/imgs\/twilightprom.jpg","contentUrl":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/idolchatter\/files\/import\/imgs\/twilightprom.jpg"},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2009\/07\/is-merchandise-ruining-twiligh.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Is Merchandising Ruining &#8216;Twilight&#8217;?"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/","name":"Idol Chatter","description":"Beliefnet Entertainment blog, TV blog, Movie blog, Religion in entertainment blog","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/#\/schema\/person\/59a2667b18839bc220bd4c3c2d2ed70a","name":"Donna Freitas","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/3bb\/3bbee96f022df7191e7ff477ca6c7f09x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/3bb\/3bbee96f022df7191e7ff477ca6c7f09x96.jpg","caption":"Donna Freitas"},"url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/author\/dfreitas"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3000","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/105"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3000"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3000\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3000"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3000"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3000"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}