BELLA ’ S INFLUENCE : TWILIGHT AND INDONESIAN YOUNG ADULT NOVELS Tri

This paper discusses the influence of Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight in Indonesian young adult novels. Tuilet and E’pliss are full of references to Meyer’s Twilight , both direct and indirect, in names of characters such as Edward Cullen and Bella and theme which take the inspiration from Twilight. By using Roland Barthes’s theory of intertextuality and Reference Code and Bloom’s literary influence, this paper is expected to provide a critical analysis of how Twilight influences Indonesian young adult fictions. Through cultural texts written for young readers, it will also be seen how cultural background of the author influence the writing. By applying heuristic and hermeneutics methods in literary reading this study identifythe moral message of the author and how the process of understanding of the author worked. As stated by Roland Barthes that there is no original text for each text is affected by various writings, place and time, it will be seen how far the influence of the novel Twilight on Indonesian contemporary young adult fictions.


INTRODUCTION
The vampire phenomenon began with the publication of Stephanie Meyer's book Twilight (2005).Since that time, the world has seen three more books published about the vampire names Edward Cullen, Bella Swan, as well as a movie on the first book, with more books and movies to follow.In addition, there are many authorized and unauthorized books, posters, newspaper and magazine articles, toys, candy, televised news shows, and Internet sites about the characters in Twilight series.The Twilight mania has covered the globe from US to Indonesia.In Indonesia Meyer's Twilight series are well known.These series become popular among young adult readers after Harry Potter.Since the publication of Twilight series, there are some novels in Indonesia that have the same character, vampire.The three novels influenced by Meyer's Twilight are Tuilet and E'pliss by Oben Cedric.

THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK Roland Barthes's Intertextuality
Roland Barthes is a literary philosopher whose achievements have helped in establishing the concept of intertextuality.He elaborates that "[A] text is not a line of words releasing a single 'theological meaning' ( the 'message' of the Author-God) but a multi dimensional space in which a variety of writings , none of them original,blend and clash. (1977:146).Contrasting the traditional author-based notion of the work with the text, Barthes states that while a work can be held in the hand and seen on the shelves of libraries and bookshops, the text only exists when it is produced by the new reader: 'the Text is experienced only in an activity, in a production' (RL: 58).Text is an ancient word, involving notions of spinning and weaving: it is the word from which we derive our word for manufactured cloth or textiles.The text is a woven or spun phenomenon in that it is made up of 'quotations,references, echoes' (RL: 60) Barthes asserts that there is no meaning without intertextuality.In effect this means that every text is an intertext.In his foundational article, "The Death of the Author" (1968), Barthes reduces the role of the author merely to a user of an already existing linguistic system which s/he did not invent, but had inherited as others did.The author is no longer seen as the originator and the creator of his own text, "instead the conscious 'self' is declared to be a construct that is itself the product of the workings of the linguistic system, and the mind of an author is described as an imputed 'space' within which the impersonal, 'always-already' existing system of literary language, conventions, codes, and rules of combination gets precipitated into a particular text" ( Roland Barthes' s The Rustle of Language "Death of the Author" engl.transp. [49][50][51][52][53][54][55] For Roland Barthes, the author functions as a scribe, an agent who relies on a huge body of inherited knowledge, citations and indications.the writer can only imitate an ever anterior, never original gesture; his sole power is to mingle writings, to counter some by others, so as never to rely on just one; if he seeks to express himself, at least he knows that the interior 'thing' he claims to 'translate' is itself no more than a ready-made lexicon, whose words can be explained only through other words, and this add infinitum . ..(RL: 53) Thus, the text becomes the space where multiple voices meet and different writings interact with each other.The text is seen by Barthes as a disordered dictionary whose words are arranged in a sequence of signs and indications that the author is forced to respect.Barthes expresses that meaning does not originate from the author's self, but from a larger linguistic and cultural system.Denied the privilege of being the source of the text, the author is reduced to a collector and organiser of already-existing forms within a particular linguistic system.
Intertextuality for Barthes means that nothing exists outside the text.Barthes' intertextual theory destroys the idea that meaning comes from, and is the property of, the individual author.Allen synthesizes this view by saying that "the modern scriptor, when s/he writes, is always already in a process of reading and rewriting.Meaning comes not from the author but from language viewed intertextually" (2000: 74).
In one of his important works on textuality, "The Theory of the Text," Barthes says: [A]ny text is an intertext; other texts are present in it, at varying levels, inmore or less recognizable forms: the texts of the previous and surrounding culture.Any text is a new tissue of past citations.Bits of codes, formulae,rhythmic models, fragments of social languages, etc. pass into the text and are redistributed within it.[…] Epistemologically, the concept of intertext is what brings to the theory of the text the volume of sociality.(39) From this statement two insights can be identified.First, for Barthes, signifiers are like caverns through which other signifiers pass.Barthes's notion of intertext is that a text is seen as a space through which other texts pass, and the text's meaning derives from this process of text that pass through text.More importantly, Barthes sees the writing and reading of a text as an interrelated act of production.The text isn't finished until the reader intertextually incorporates a new set of texts into the original.The second insight that needs to be addressed from Barthes' statement is that a "volume of sociality" is brought to the text by means of intertextuality ( Young: 1981:31-47)

Cultural Code
In accordance with the death of the author, in his book S/Z Barthes defines five codes that define a network (or a topos) that form a space of meaning that the text runs through.The term codes can be misleading.Rather than a set of rules for how a text should be interpreted, Barthes's codes are a perspective from which reader can view a text.Reading a text with the five codes in mind is like looking at an image through a series of coloured lenses.The image remains the same but your impression of it changes.Another way to think of the five codes is as a set of voices speaking at the same time.Barthes advises us to ". . .listen to the text as an iridescent exchange carried on by multiple voices, on different wavelengths" (S/Z 41-42).
One of the five codes that refers to meanings that are external to the text is the cultural code.The cultural code or reference (REF) is the references to science or wisdom.The referential code is constituted by the points at which the text refers to common bodies of knowledge.This code designates any element in a narrative that refers "to a science or a body of knowledge" (20).In other words, the cultural codes tend to point to our shared knowledge about the way the world works, including properties that we can designate as "physical, physiological, medical, psychological, literary, historical, etc." (20).The "gnomic" code is one of the cultural codes and refers to those cultural codes that are tied to clichés, proverbs, or popular sayings of various sorts.It also refers to anything that is founded on some kind of canonical works that cannot be challenged and is assumed to be a foundation for truth.Typically this involves either science or religion, although other canons such as magical truths may be used in fantasy stories.

Bloom's Literary of Influence
In his book The Anxiety of Influence: A Theory of Poetry ( 1997 2nd edition ) Harold Bloom states that poets are hindered in their creative process by the ambiguous relationship they necessarily maintained with precursor poets.According to him the poets/ authors are influenced by the extra literary experience.His term "the poet in a poet" means that every author is inspired to write by reading another poet's poetry and will tend to produce work.So the influence of precursor poets inspires a sense of anxiety in living poets.His idea of the influence precursor poets is supported by Plett saying that whenever a new text comes into being it relates to previous texts and in its turn becomes the precursor of subsequent texts (1991:17).While Keesey states that "poem do not imitate life; they imitate other poems" ( p.257) which means that any poem is inescapably linked to other poem whether by open or covert citations and allusions, or by the " assimilation of the feature of an earlier text by a later text, or simply by participation in a common stock of literary codes and conventions" (Scolnicov :1975: 215).This notion of literary influence offers a perspective of both reading and writing texts as a way of looking at a text's interactions with prior texts, writers, readers, and conventions.

Twilight
The Twilight saga, written by Stephenie Meyer and consist of four chronological volumes entitled Twilight, New Moon, Eclipse and Breaking Dawn published between 2005 and 2008.The story is told by 17-year-old Bella (Isabella) Swan who moves to Forks, Washington to live with her father because of her mother's remarriage.Clumsy, quiet and love reading Victorian novels than contemporary teenagers, here she enrolls a new school, and is quickly befriended by several students.Several boys compete for shy Bella's attention.She is resistant to the male attention until she becomes fixated on an equally resistant group of students, the Cullens, and their youngest member, Edward, in particular.When Bella sits next to Edward Cullen in class on her first day of school, Edward seems utterly repulsed by her.He even attempts to change his schedule to avoid her, leaving Bella completely puzzled about his attitude towards her.By searching through google about local tribal legends, Bella finds out that Edward and his family are vampires.As Bella is introduced to the world of the supernatural through the vampire Edward, they fall in love.Though Edward is seventeen in body, but he is a centenarian in spirit.Bella then immerses herself in his family of animal blood drinking-only vampires who sparkle in the sun, never sleep and have supernatural strength, supreme talents, and supermodel looks.The seemingly perfect state of their relationship is thrown into chaos when another vampire coven sweeps into Forks, and James, a tracker vampire, decides that he wants to hunt Bella for sport.Bella gets a trick phone call from James saying that he has her mother, and that Bella must come to an old dance studio to save her.She goes, and James attacks her.Edward arrives before James can kill her.Once he realizes that James has bitten Bella's hand, Edward sucks the venom out of her before it can change her into a vampire.Later, Bella and Edward attend their prom and Bella expresses her desire to become a vampire, which Edward refuses but then he agrees that Bella becomes a vampire.Bella and Edward face danger and drama.Through Bella character, the readers are invited to enter the supernatural world with werewolves and magic and make fairy tale and horror become reality.

Tuilet and E'Pliss
Tuilet and E'plis, a serial written by Oben Cedric, are narrated by Eddie Wardiman, a high school student in Jakarta Indonesia.Eddie Wardiman is the youngest son of a middle class family, who is fondly called Edward Culun (Edward is the abbreviated name of Edi Wardiman and Culun means geek in Indonesian language).Edward considers himself as a loser, as not an important person and an outcast.Even his good friend Joko tries to use him, In order to be close to Irfan, the most famous student in school.But everything changes when Bella, a new student in school, suddenly rescued him from the accident at the school gate.Intrigued by Bella's power, Edward forces Bella to confess her strength.Edward even threatens Bella, as he calls her sailormoon, by saying that he would commit suicide by jumping out of his bedroom window if Bella does not mention the origin of its power.Bella admits that she is a vampire and she also admits that she falls in love with Edward because of Edward's big size nostrils.Edward is contaminated to be a vampire not because of Bella's bite since she claims to have ulcer pain.He is not bitten in the neck like in the movies, Edward becomes a vampire because he is exposed Bella droplet saliva.At first, Edward enjoys his new period as the Vampire.
Physically, Edward is transformed into a super cool guy who can make the girls in his school admire and idolize him.He also manages to avenge his hurt to Joko and his friends.He and Bella become lovers.Being a vampire does not mean Edward'slife go smooth.Edward cannot eat, cannot sleep, pursued by a werewolf and pursued by Van Pesing, the vampire hunter.Many new things that make Edward finally decides to go back to being human.Only the condition is rather difficult, he has to bathe in many rivers and some other conditions, as the last condition, he should kiss a transgender.

General Similarities in the Twilight, Tuilet and E'pliss
The Twilight series, Tuilet and E'pliss explore the unorthodox romance between human and vampire.These novels are considered as fantasy because the story explains these fantasies elements as real occurrences, presented in a straight forward manner that places the "real" and the "fantastic" in the same stream of thought (Faris,Wendy B. and Lois Parkinson Zamora.pp.5)The next similarities in these novels are title, theme, characters and their names.Although the language is different these novels have similarities in the pronunciation twilight \ 'twi-"Lit \ and tuilet.These novels explore the same theme that people are never perfect and they waste time looking for the perfect one to be adored.The names of the characters are also similar.Bella swan in twilight also has the same name in Tuilet and E'pliss Edward Cullen in the twilight is similar to Edi Wardiman in Tuilet which shortened to Edward.
Isabella "Bella" Swan is the protagonist of the Twilightseries, a female teenager with dark brown hair and brown eyes, introvert and clumsy at the same time.She is often described as having low self-esteem and unable to comprehend Edward's love for her.She has an immunity to supernatural abilities involving the mind, such as Edward's mind-reading ability.After her transformation into a vampire in the saga's fourth installment, Bella acquires the ability to shield both herself and others from "mental harm" of other vampires.
Edward Cullen is a vampire who lives with a coven of like-minded vampires known as the Cullen family, who feed on animals rather than humans.Over the course of the Twilight series, Edward falls in love with, marries, and then has a child with Bella.At first, Edward feels a mutual hatred toward Jacob Black because of his love for Bella, but in Breaking Dawn, he comes to see Jacob as a brother and friend.Like some vampires, Edward has a supernatural ability: mind reading.It allows him to read anyone's thought within a few miles' radius.Bella is immune to his power as a human, but learns how to lower this "shield" after her transformation to a vampire.
Edi Wardiman, a high-school student, is the main character in Tuilet.Raised by single parent, a mother, his friends at school call him Edward ( the abbreviation of Edi wardiman ) Culun which means geek and nerd.Edward is portrayed as having low self-confidence, does not have many friends, always a bit of a misfit and does not expect that his life will change.He even considers himself as a loser, an outcast and not an important person.His only friend at school, Joko, tries exploit him because he wants to be close to Irfan, the most famous student in school.Like Bella, he is the product of parental divorce.
The impact of the divorced parents makes Bella and Edi Wardiman uneasy to get along with their school mates.They prefer to be alone than with her friends because as Edi Wardiman said "sometimes I feel more alone when I'm surrounded by my classmates than I do when I'm actually by myself".Edi builds himself as a smart student and at the same time clumsy, unpopular, and, to top it off, a geek.He is more comfortable spouting random mathematical or scientific facts than talking to the rest of his school mates.

The Differences
Although there are some similarities but this novel can be said to be different from the original.For example, the original novel is told from the point of view of Bella Swan, while Tuilet and E'pliss use Edward's point of view.In Twilight, Edward is a vampire and Bella is human, whereas Tuilet and E'pliss are the opposite.The main differences of these two novels are the language and the setting.If Twilight series are written in English, Tuilet and E'pliss are written in Indonesian language, so it is expected that Tuilet and E'pliss are read by Indonesians or Indonesian speakers .Furthermore, the names of the characters in Tuilet and E'pliss such as Edi wardiman and Joko are Javanese names.As Roland Barthes suggests that the meaning of the author's words does not originate from the author's own unique consciousness, but from the place of those words within linguistic and cultural systems.The author has the role of a compiler, or arranger, of pre-existent possibilities within the language system ( 1977: 55) .Thus in Tuilet and E'pliss though the plot and themes are similar, but each word, sentence, paragraph or whole text that the author produces, takes its origins from the language system out of which it has been produced.
The next difference is the setting.In Twilight the story is set primarily in the town of Forks, Washington, where Bella and her father, Charlie Swan, live.Other cities in Washington briefly appear in the series are mentioned, such as Port Angeles, Olympia, Seattle and La Push.Some events in Twilight take place in Phoenix, Arizona, where Bella was raised.Jacksonville, Florida, is mentioned first in Twilight and second in Eclipse, when Edward and Bella visit Bella's mother, who has moved there with her new husband.Seattle, Washington, is featured in Breaking Dawn when Jacob tries to escape his love for Bella, and when Bella tries to locate a man named J.Jenks.It is also the location of a series of murders committed by newborn vampires in Eclipse.In Breaking Dawn, Bella and Edward spend their honeymoon on a fictional "Isle Esme", purportedly off the coast of Brazil.While Tuilet and E'pliss set in Jakarta and the language used is Indonesian Language with Jakarta dialect.

Twilight In Indonesian Setting
Although Tuilet and E'plis imitate and are influenced by Twilight, but they are different culturally.The difference is not only in a setting because As Roland Barthes argues, "A text is . . .a multidimensional space in which a variety of writings, none of them original, blend and clash.The text is a tissue of quotations. . . .The writer can only imitate a gesture that is always anterior, never original.His only power is to mix writings,to counter the ones with the others, in such a way as never to rest on any one of them" ( 146).The difference is in how Oben Cedric plays his role as an implied reader ( Iser's term) of Twilight.Cedric transfers the message from Twilight and constructs the meaning by using ready-made shared codes and conventions.He activates the text in the present moment and place.As an active reader he tries to understand what is conveyed by Twilight.His understanding is influenced by his cultural background.
As an implied reader of Twilight, Cedric consciously examines the issue of supernatural power.The novel simultaneously appropriates and signifies on earlier text to create its own idea of order.Iser posits that readers draw upon different repertoires partly as a result of relatively enduring differences in background (e.g.experience and knowledge) and of relatively transitory differences in viewpoint (e.g.purposes).Twilight as a text needs to be read and re written since it cannot speak for itself: it needs a reader as well as a writer.Twilight is not a text without a reader and a context.Therefore, Twilight isdifferent fromCedric's Tuilet and E'Pliss.
The spatio-temporal contour of the narrative require changes to accommodate the transference from Fork Washington to Jakarta Indonesia.As a Javanese, Cedric cultural background colors his characters.In Javanese culture those who have a supernatural force are usually female.
Therefore he characterizes Bella as a vampire instead of Edi Wardiman ( Edward Culun) as Thacker describes: "The multiplicity and subjectivity of meaning suggested by the direction of much response theory implicate the reader as an active participant within the text, ascribing authority to any individual reader to engage creatively with any text" (2).
Tuilet and E'pliss are arguably trying to borrow some of the popularity and fan-base of Twilight.The primary purpose of Tuilet and E'pliss are to become popular by borrowing the popularity of Twilight and evoke a humorous response from the readers.Oben Cedric, the author, transforms the characters in Twilight fitted to Indonesian setting.In works of narrative (especially fictional), the setting includes the historical moment in time and geographic location in which a story takes place, and helps initiate the main backdrop and mood for a story.Setting has been referred to as story world 1 or milieu to include a context (especially society) beyond the immediate surroundings of the story.Elements of setting may include culture, historical period, geography, and hour.Along with the plot, character, theme, and style, setting is considered one of the fundamental components of fiction 2  Vampire character was popular in fiction when Bram Stoker's Dracula (1897) appeared.This fiction described vampirism as a disease of contagious demonic possession, with its undertones of sex, blood and death, struck a chord in Victorian Europe where tuberculosis and syphilis were common (Silver and Ursini, 1993:p.43).The vampiric traits described in Stoker's fiction merged with and dominated folkloric tradition, eventually evolving into the modern fictional vampire.From the description above, it can be said that the character of vampire, appearance ranging 1 Truby, 2007, p. 145  2 Obstfeld, 2002, p. 1, 65, 115, 171.from nearly human to bloated rotting corpses, is from Balkans and Eastern Europe.
The story of a vampire is not known in Indonesia folk beliefs, therefore Cedric describes Bella, the vampire, as someone who could turn Edi Wardiman into the famous celebrity respected by the rivals.This corresponds to the commonly believed by Indonesians especially Javanese.In order to gain fame and success some people come to shamans asking help.Shamans act as a mediator.Ki Joko Bodo, a famous shaman, admitted that in order to gain popularity some Indonesia celebrities implant pin, wear amulets, and perform mystical rituals.From the statements of some paranormal and psychic this phenomena is even recognized by Indonesian celebrities from Suzanna, was Indonesian horror actress, to Julia Perez.He acknowledges that many celebrities ask him to implant pin, open aura, do other irrational things. 3n Indonesian ghosts myths, vampire character is not included in Indonesian folklore.Though there are some characters with vampiric characteristic such as kuntilanak, a ghost of a stillborn female.Kuntilanak is depicted as an ugly woman with sharp nails and a white dress.Kuntilanak can also take the form of a beautiful young woman or a night-bird.When she is close to human, she gives off a strong smell of frangipani.It is usually encountered by the roadside or under a tree, and attack men and drink their blood4 Other character is Jenglot, a doll-like vampiric creature said to be found in the jungles.They are usually female.What are claimed to be dead jenglot are sometimes sold or exhibited, but they appear to be man-made5 .
Many ghost stories have long been the popular subject of stories on television, documentaries, film, and magazines.The 2010 Indonesian soft-porn horror movie Hantu Puncak Datang Bulan (The Menstruating Ghost of Puncak) caused considerable controversy at the time of its release.Telling the experiences of a group of young adults in a haunted house, it has much semi-nude sexuality, and has been condemned by conservative Muslim leaders 6 .
Some ghost concepts such as the female vampires pontianak and penanggal are shared throughout the region.While traditional belief doesn't consider all ghosts as necessarily evil.In some parts of Indonesia ghosts and shaman, with supernatural power as a mediator, can help someone to achieve worldly pleasure.Shamans (known as dukun or bomoh) are said to be able to make use of spirits and demons for either benign or evil purposes.In Western writings often compare this to the familiar spirits of English witchcraft.The spirits are hereditary and passed down through families.It is told that a shaman can change of a hunchback who through supernatural means becomes handsome, can make a loser becomes a winner.Achmad Dimyati ( former member of Indonesia parliament) in his interview with detikNews on Saturday, 23/03/2013 13:30 WIB states that even some public figures, officials, artists and businessmen come to shamans with different purposes.Some asking for help to make them popular, successful, while others want make his/her rivals experience failure, sickness, etc. Permadi, a paranormal, said that politicians also ask shaman to help them to win the election by using black magic.Not only in the political realm, Permadi added, the use of witchcraft is also often done in the world of sports 7 .Shamans and witches do exist and become part of the life of this nation.Many people, spread of high state officials to commoners, believe the 'unseen world'.
In the story of Tuilet, and E'pliss, Edi Wardiman uses Bella ability to transform him into a famous person, so that his rivals feel defeated.Edi believes that Bella can transform him to be a goodlooking guy because Bella act as shaman giving him extra energy to face the obstacle and thistles of life.Though the stories expose the relationship between human and vampire, Twilight employs the forbidden love affair between two different creatures, Tuilet and E'pliss focus on how supernatural power, symbolized by Bella, is needed by a loser to gain fame and social status.Bella is not just a vampire, she is also the shaman who can change someone's life .Twilight is like the supranatural power needed by Tuilet and E'pliss, like Bella whose power as vampire can change Edward Culun into the most popular guy at school.

CONCLUSION
The Twilight phenomenon has demonstrated that a work of literature can be a dialogue.In other words, it is an open intertextual creation that defies the closed structure of the "book-as-object,".Through Tuilet and E'pliss , Twilight has made literature an interactive, central part of the social experience of culture and identity for millions of individuals worldwide.The result of this intertextuality is an interactive relationship between "literariness," as the writing of fan fiction is a literary activity.
By taking Meyer's Twilight as his source text, Cedric's Tuilet and E'pliss have added another dimension to the intertextuality of such cross-over novel, creating a complex hybrid that does not fit neatly.It is worthwhile to explore the implications of yoking together an English text with Indonesian young adult novels.Cedric implicitly minimalizes the importance of Meyer's text, reducing it to just one among several intertextual invocations without any claim to primacy.It is, in fact, perfectly possible to view Tuilet and E'pliss without any knowledge of Meyer's; its characters are fully comprehensible within Meyer's tradition that is certainly more familiar to a larger number of Cedric than is Meyer.Young adult readers, thus, enjoys a home court advantage with this novel, not the least of which is the presence of Edi Wardiman, is undoubtedly the central focus of Cedric's fiction.
Tuilet and E'pliss also show that the influence of Twilight is internalized on individual basis.Cedric characterizes Edi Wardiman as a student bullied by his friends and no one come to help him.As a reader of Twilight series, Cedric performs analytic and creative acts with literary products on his own terms.Tuilet and E'pliss are parody of Twilight.Though they are pastiche of influences of Meyer's Twilight, the purpose of the writing is to criticize the Indonesian young adults who like to pursue instant fame.