Transnational Twilighters: A Twilight fan community in Norway’

A number of empirical studies have examined how national audiences respond to imported media texts (e.g., Ang, 1982; Gripsrud, 1995; Juluri, 2003; Liebes and Katz, 1990) and how world audiences respond to global media products (eg., Barker and Mathijs, 2007; Wasko, Phillips, and Meehan, 2001). Within fan studies, English-language publications have considered how transnational fans engage with U.S. media products (e.g., Gray, 2007) and how Western fans engage with non-Western texts (e.g., Birr, 2009; Chin, 2007; Hills, 2005), while others have shifted the focus away from the West altogether (e.g., Hayashi and Lee, 2007). However, despite such recent efforts, transnational fandom remains an under-researched field, and our study aims to further these emerging debates. This paper considers how transnational texts are interpreted through a local lens (e.g., Biltereyst, 1991; Liebes and Katz, 1990) though a case study of the transnational appeal of the Twilight phenomenon. Focusing on a Norwegian language Twilight fan board, it examines one of the communities within the online fandom that surrounds the movies in the saga. The first part of our analysis looks at Norwegian fan board discussions around cultural and geographical proximity, and considers how posters negotiated constraints associated with their transnational fandom. The second part of the study examines how these Norwegian fans talked about the Twilight texts. Comparing their online debates with those on two different Anglophone fan boards, we consider the extent to which Twilight readings and fan practices may vary across different national contexts. This comparative approach facilitates a discussion of how a fan community on the periphery of the Twilight phenomenon engaged with wider Twilight fandom. Thus, the paper seeks to make a contribution to the emerging study of Twilight as a cultural phenomenon, and to our understandings of transnational film audiences more broadly.