After all, reading is personal, and the personal is political. For women who grow up reading and reflecting on these popular books, it could have a strong influence on who they are and who they become. When you realize that plain Bella Swan is deliberately plain Bella Swan, Bella Swan stops being a character and becomes a mirror. The presence of a story outside its pages-in Saturday Night Live skits, psychological studies, and newspaper op-eds-can’t help but influence the way we read or remember characters. Further into the social-media age, when the opinions of fans could be a force, Fifty Shades of Grey readers started a campaign that received 100,000 signatures just to oust movie-cast members that did not fit their vision of Christian Grey and Anastasia Steele. The dissonant vision I had of Ron Weasley-gangly limbs, fanned-out ears, narrow face-did not hesitate to become Rupert Grint. Then again, some books are so popular that Hollywood executives can change that vision for you. In What We See When We Read, Peter Mendelsund says that when you picture a character in your head, she stays deliberately out of focus, but the more you concentrate, the more she appears to look like a co-worker or distant cousin, someone from your life whom you know for sure is not that character. Courtesy the artist and photo-eye Gallery, Santa Fe.
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