I don't imagine that I was alone when I was young in wishing there was something magical about me - or in reading Talking to Dragons until it became dog-eared or keeping The Mists of Avalon perpetually on renewal at the library. What girl doesn't wish she could discover some special attribute about herself that would smooth her way through the demons of junior high school and beyond--particularly if that something would get her noticed for the first time by a boy or girl with special attributes of their own? But earlier this week, when I stumbled over the Twilight finish line, reaching the final page of Breaking Dawn, the series' last book, it seemed clear to me that even in my younger days, Bella Swann would never have captured my imagination in the same way Cimorene, or Juniper, or Wise Child, or Morgaine had, and still do. Those heroines understand the joy of being loved by someone else. But their stories make the case that being a witch, or a warrior, or a queen--even without a king--might be better than an eternity as a metaphorical princess in a metaphorical tower, no matter how much the vampire company sparkles.
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I don't really have anything intelligent to say about Twilight. But as always, Alyssa does. Read the whole thing:
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Part of me says, "Meh, who cares? Let the ladies have their mindless blockbuster." But then I read intelligent criticism from female writers such as Alyssa or Manhola Dargis (her NYT review is great), I wonder whether something like Twilight, which inspires intense, almost evangelical devotion, is really not good for people.
It just seems to me, and I may regret going here, that Twilight is the Sarah Palin of pop cultural phenomena. It inspires blind, reactionary devotion, and its critics are often derided as sexists (I see this on movie site comments and in conversation with friends and associates). It espouses a chaste, fundamentalist morality while indulging in things that fundamentalism usually is against (vampirism in the books; premarital sex in the Palin household). Its heroine is a needy cipher that people, particularly women, can project themselves onto. Am I just being a prig?
And its prose is poorly-written, hackneyed drivel that means nothing.
I don't think you're off-base at all, Mike. I get really incensed, in fact, by folks who complain that the series get slighted because its fans are female. Star Wars fandom isn't acceptable because the fans are male. It's because the movies are actually quite good! (The prequels don't exist, either for the purpose of that statement, or in my canon.) It's insulting to women to argue that they should be excused from ignoring the massive flaws in a piece of art just because it makes their hearts go pitter-patter, or whatever.
Not to mention the fact that women make up a big part of the Star Wars fan base, not to mention Lord of the Rings'. At least in my experience.
Thanks for pointing this out. I remember Kevin Smith essentially saying the same thing on Twitter when he was chastising folks for not being more accepting of the Twilighters. I thought he was joking. He wasn't.
I wanted to like Twilight. I really did. But between the 0-60 codependent romance, Bella's complete lack of agency (and personality), and dialogue that made me want to stab myself in the ears? The Buffy fan in me could take no more. Bella isn't a heroine, she's a victim. And a really uninteresting one, at that.
For my own personal enjoyment I had to dig up this Buffy/Twilight mashup from June, b/c it's effin' brilliant:
http://popwatch.ew.com/2009/06/22/twilight-buffy/
Star Wars fandom isn't OK either. Star Wars is cliche-ridden, brain-numbing trash.
(If you're going to argue that it's just a matter of taste and to each their own, well, wouldn't that apply to Twilight as well? Or is anti-elitism only a one-way street?)
Of course, the flip side of this is Dana Stevens at Slate, who while admitting it's crap, still enjoyed it: http://www.slate.com/id/2236144/
I eat ding dongs from time to time. They aren't good for me, they aren't, in an objective gourmet sense, particularly good, but the occasional pack (or two!) is fun to eat.
I can see not liking the books--I have no desire to read them--but I can't see getting all upset that girls like this and Titanic. If they were reading 200 different regency romances the content would likely be as slight but everyone would probably calm down about it. Read the same author and a crisis is on our hands.
It's funny you mention Titanic because I remember in my 5th grade class, the girls all loved Titanic which lead to the guys hating it. Of course, what did the guys like? Tomorrow Never Dies, possibly the worst Bond movie ever, and well, a Bond movie.
And also, there's a level of reality that can set in that 1) Any guy that actually acted like Edward would probably have his ass kicked and 2)a guy whose always sad and has no sense of humor, even if really good looking, is probably not going to be fun for any given girl that long.
I really don't care that girls like Titanic. I don't care that girls went crazy for the New Kids on the Block or the Backstreet Boys. Whatever. There's just something creepy about Twilight. Maybe I'm just becoming a grumpy old man.
Titanic was awesome. What? But it doesn't actually seem comparable to Twilight at all. Kate Winslet's character kicked ass in Titanic; she also got to get her sex on & it was the *guy* who died afterwards. Bella is both insufferable and insufferably passive (at least in the 1st movie, which is the extent of my exposure to the franchise). I don't think any kind of panic is necessary, and Twilight more likely reflects than is causing lame attitudes, but unless we're going to say that culture means nothing, this is worth talking about.
Plus, no vampires in regency romances. You know it's serious when there's vampires.
I've only seen bits and pieces of Titanic, but in the bits I did see none of the actors were ever aware that the water they were plunging into was freezing cold. I kept saying "but they have hypothermia now" while my daughter rolled her eyes.
I'm not sure if "good for people" (or not) would be the right way to put it. I mean, can we blame a book for the reactions people have to it?
Sometimes it works both ways. Can we blame a Glenn Beck book for the reactions people have to it? A Michael Moore book? The Bible? The Koran?
Maybe Stephanie Meyer is Sutter Cane. ; )
Love the "In the Mouth of Madness" reference, Colonel Mike. (I just hope that I'm not a figment of a hack writer's imagination.)
Bella is definitely a cipher. She's deliberately a cipher. She's even aware that she's a cipher, constantly reflecting on her own bland mediocrity. She's no physical wunderkind (that would be Rosalie), she's not especially gifted at smarts (that would be Alice). She's aware that she is modest at best, outside of being an obsessive reader (way to bond with those reading the book, Ms. Meyer!).
So when obsessive love of a fairytale prince comes up, she's all in. She knows she's just a dull brown peahen, and that the resplendent shimmer of her peacock prince is the only thing of significance in her life. Until that shifts to the life growing inside her, threatening to kill her. All of this is terrifying. All of it is joyous.
At the risk of disagreeing with Ms. Rosenberg, I found Bella much more interesting than the average forgettable fantasy heroine. She is the anti-Buffy, which is to say that she is completely believable. She is always in over her head. She is not able (and never will be able) to take down any Big Bad by herself, although she might be able to help enable her family, the Cullens, continue the long slow work of civilizing a barbaric society.
She is a girl who found love, then motherhood, then endless responsibility, and all the while she is in over her head, worried half to death about everyone she cares about, and joyous. Unlike the girl who gets superpowers, Bella only speaks to the reality of most every girl in the history of ever.
That millions of young ladies fantasize about being overwhelmed yet joyous helpmeets to dashing, controlled princes is a frequently reiterated fact. In the Mad Men threads, Betty Draper née Hofstadt is regularly reviled for it. Yet Ms. Meyer's Bella has almost certainly accumulated more readers than Cimorene, Juniper, Morgaine. and Wise Child combined.
Many like fantasizing about being saved, about finding worth in being desired, about distilling joy from simple pleasures amidst adversity. Condescending to them for it doesn't accomplish much.
I'm sad and surprised this comment didn't get more attention. It's kind of beautiful.
I saw a lot of the same things in Bella-she's a competent, normal girl with low self-worth, crippling shyness, and a powerful devotion to caring for her family. I think a lot of women can see something to relate to in that.
However, it's really frustrating to see, over and over, characters like Bella who are so passive and powerless-not just because of their circumstances, but because it never occurs to act to affect their circumstances.
I understand women who behave like that in real life, and I feel sad for them, and hope they recieve understanding.
In my fiction though? To steal from Neil Gaiman, fairy tales are important because they teach you that dragons can be slain. The Heroine should be DOING something, not mooning under a table. Grr...
Perhaps unsurprisingly, I prefer Buffy to conventional chick targeted things because Buffy has melodrama and romance (yay!) AND asskicking, powerful females (also yay!) The two don't have to be mutually exclusive.
(Thank you for the compliment, Jess. Since I read and posted close to midnight, I wasn't expecting lots of response.)
I'm with you on the Buffy love (and Xena love, and Leia love, and Eowyn love, and River Tam love, and Zoe love, and Morgaine love, and any Pern heroine or Darkover heroine you care to name). I also love me my male superheroes in whatever power fantasy genre you care to name. At a certain point, though, I like some diversity, and the best counterpoint to fantasies of superpower is fantasies of powerlessness. AKA true, non-subverted horror.
Monster fairytales (and Twilight is full of dark monsters) are originally cautionary tales. In the original, the brave hero might triumph while everyone round dies. More likely, evil triumphs over unwise and rash foolishness, children get cursed or eaten, and only incredible wit/virtue/prowess enables one to manage to survive.
Bella stars in a horror tale. Unlike Buffy, she'll never be powerful enough to subvert that horror tale on her own. To her grace, she gets a metric buttload of goodguy monsters as friends and family, and a personal superpower best described as 'immunity to targetted attacks'. That's enough for her to survive, maybe. Or not.
Since death and defeat are everpresent options, every moment is precious. Every friend and loved one is irreplaceable. If you're going to convey a pro-life viewpoint, that's the way to do it.
The popularity is not really driven by the "ladies," the series is mostly popular with teen girls.
The women who do read it are probably the same ones who read other kids' fiction like Harry Potter. That's a whole other post, IMO.
No. Our entire family up through the grandparents read Harry Potter. Twilight has been left solely to the Middle School girls.
I think the Harry Potter appeal is summed up quite readily: plot. Ymmv, but I read mystery and sci fi because those require stuff to happen. Some mystery series (Linsday Davis's ancient Rome, Margaret Maron's North Carolina) I'm in now for the ongoing saga of the characters, but I was first drawn in by the promise of actual plot.
I agree Deb. Harry Potter was simply story telling at its very best. Carefully constructed characters, twists and turns that were wonderfully fluid and shocking (but never lazily done). You cared about the story.
And you could read any of the books on a weekend at the beach.
I haven't read Twilight. Never will. But if they're anything like the movie they're a far far cry from Potter. Though I laughed pretty hard through the whole first film. Caught it on a bootleg in Asia. mmmm
The thing that gets me is the whole immature female sexuality theme that is celebrated, and never matures. The fact that so many older women love the series says something about our ability to develop adults in our culture. The same thing holds true with the prevalence of porn in the male section of our culture. Where are the adults?
I thought the whole problem was the repression the maturing of female sexuality, not the immaturity of the sexuality of the female character. It's not that she's immature and therefore the sexual aspects of the story follow from that, it's that the sexual aspects of the story are a matter of the author's choice and the immaturity follows from that?
I'm not sure, I can't possibly bring myself to read these books. I can soldier through the worst pulp imaginable, but I draw the line at Mary Sue fanfic, no matter how well veiled.
The secret superpower attached to girlyness is the ability to attract men, to be a desirable, and specifically, an object of desire.
This is what I was referring to as immature female sexuality. "I am a desired object" rather than" I love my lover"
Yeah, but isn't it possible to have a loving relationship that doesn't involve sex? Love and sex are entwined but one is obviously not a prerequisite for the other. I guess what I'm getting at is that it's entirely possible to be desired as a sexual object while being respected and loved by the one doing the desiring, and it's the fundie puritanism of the author who can't comprehend a situation where that might be true.
I mean, you are never not literally an object, and psychical desire necessarily requires some degree of objectification. If Meyer can't write characters like that it's probably because she either doesn't understand it or more simply has never experienced it by virtue of her lifestyle, I guess.
It's creepy because the novels consist mainly of poor writing stretched over the worst impulses of semi-fundamentalist Mormonism and the bitter dreams of a woman profoundly unhappy about her lot in life. Everything I've read about these novels makes me want to run far, far away from them because they seem to encouraging the opposite of what we would like to see in society's young women.
Eh, I've read the Potter books, and enjoyed them, they were a lark.
Twilight, on the other hand....It's not, I think, that the books introduce bad ideas...instead they tap into existing bad tendencies, deep rooted ones. The secret superpower attached to girlyness is the ability to attract men, to be a desirable, and specifically, an object of desire. That's what's under ever inch of glittered pink tulle ever spun. To be good at being a girl is to be desirable. And the books wrap that fantasy --- becoming the singular object of an unquenchable and eternal desire --- with a hero that can never fulfill that desire. It's all gooey eyes and no action, and has to be, otherwise he'd kill her, that's how powerful his love is, etc. So you get to be the object, without having to deal with any of the sticky real world complications of desire's fulfillment. I am irresistible, yet I need not fear your taking me. That's a match to black powder, the ultimate titilation...
Well, that is the difference. I read the first Potter book ten years or however long ago it came out and thought it was pretty much crap at the time, and back then I was smack dab in the target (teen) market. Never got why it blew up but I could at least understand, it had all the elements necessary for a good story and served up a serviceable narrative; at least it was better than say (god forbid) Piers Anthony, and I'd felt the same way about Ender's Game when I read that around the same time. Not a badly done story, but I saw the ending coming a mile off and nothing about it made me want to read a sequel.
Twilight, on the other hand, is just nothing but the worst aspects of American fundie sexual puritanism wrapped up in a weird little package that either comes off as a wonderful and beautiful story or has you reaching for your copy of the DSM-IV and wondering what in the hell could have broken someone enough to create such dreck. Potter's popularity bored me, Twilight's terrifies me.
I think Ender's Game was supposed to be made into a movie a while back, and just never happened. The person they were considering for Ender? Jake Lloyd. I know it's bad to pick on child actors, but that partially explains why it didnt get made.
If that's true then I'd blame the original Dune movie. Book was the same way and the movie was so bad and cost so much that sequels couldn't save it. Kinda marked the end of the big budget scifi boom too if I remember. Then again, was Blade Runner a commercial success in theaters? Star Wars inspired so many bad decisions in the film industry.
Anyway, off topic. I just wish the same would happen to this crap fantasy boom now that the potter movies are over or just about.
I think they should make Ender's Game animated. I think it could potentially be brilliant. serious-anime style.
Meh, I'd quibble with that; the Potter books go from G to PG-13 as they go on, introducing more adult themes and complications. The first is very clearly a kid's book; the latter ones aimed more at say, 11 to 13 year olds.
Two Saturdays ago, I watched a bunch of college football, ate some sliders, got drunk and started to watch Twilight with my girlfriend. Thank god for $2 pints of Labatt Blue, because I had enough of them to knock me out half an hour into this movie. What I saw I did not like.
My daughter is semi-obsessed with this series. I feel like a shitty father in a way for letting her see the midnight viewing of it last night with her friends and her one friend's mom. But it was big thing to her. I don't get this stuff and I don't like much of her music either, but at least she isn't smitten with someone like Corey Haim or Corey Feldman, as far as I know.
No worries Doug letting her go made you the hero no? It really is one of those small things to a giant. My middle school aged daughter is going with my wife and a minivan full of her girlfriends to see it tonight. I was happy to fund the entire operation.
I tried but couldn't stand to read them, neither could my son but I can think of many worse things she could be doing besides reading.
It was a big deal to her and she is well behaved most of the time (though staying up late has made her a bit more cranky today).
Hope your daughter enjoys it, mine was glad she went
Even more disturbing to me is the deranged way that people seem to care about the lives of the actors in the film, as if they still represent the characters. I know that's to the credit of some demonic PR group, but when you see the two leads on the covers of gossip magazines and the like (like on my Google News page for some reason), as if they're living out the story in reality, it's disturbing. Because some people really aren't making the distinction between the character and real people.
This is exhausting, and I see it almost every site i visit(much worse elsewhere). When I read yet another line of contempt by strangers for strangers, I'm not annoyed,I'm exhausted. If you collected all the tongue clucking on the internet, and transcribed it into a single noise, it would somehow pierce the airless void, and rattle worlds beyond possibilty.
The idea that people are reduceable to aspects of their artistic taste, or lack thereof, is a plague.
P.S. Yes. Somewhat ironic.
P.P.S. Ta-nehisi,as always, you should watch The Venture Brothers season one.
I kinda dislike the "she likes Twilight, there is something wrong with her" thingy floating around.
Don't we need more information about a person's life before we judge them?
Yeah, this. I might think it's dreck, but so what? I have my own brain candy books that I love, and I had my own crazy-level pop-culture obsessions as a teen, even if they were kind of unusual ones. I don't see an inherent problem with it. People read and watch movies to be entertained, most of the time.
I'm not a big Potter fan (saw two of the movies, they were watchable) and I dislike Twilight (sat through the movie with the girlfriend at the time), but I have a hard time criticizing either because as someone who hopes to be making a living writing novels of the sci-fi/fantasy variety within the next 5 or so years, it feels wrong of me to hate on the popularity of these books. I'm happy for these two writers that they were able to find such success. The great thing is that I can be happy for their success and still keep their product at a healthy distance from my life.
Also, both the Potter author and the Twilight author are, whatever else they might be, gifted storytellers. Maybe they're not great or even good writers but they have an enviable talent for keeping a large amount of people (of varying age) turning pages.
About what the Twilight heroine's passivity says to girls. I don't know that its a big deal. Aside from the fact that Twilight isn't the only girl-centric story from which examples can be lifted, I think the devotees of the series are ignoring what makes their hero problematic and focusing on the romance and the eternal love stuff. The vampire stuff, and their hero's actually personality is just window dressing.
I feel like hammering Twilight as celebrating female passivity is like knocking girls for dreaming of their wedding day. Those dreams don't prevent girls from becoming world-beaters. They just make them world-beaters who want a particular party to be perfect.
/ramble
There have been some fairly interesting reviews, and yes I read Alyssa's this morning.
http://www.aintitcool.com/node/43130 has one of the funnier reviews I've read in a long time.
Ebert: http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20091118/REVIEWS/911199998
Dargis: http://movies.nytimes.com/2009/11/20/movies/20twilightnewmoon.html
It seems like Twilight is a pre-teen/teen version of Harlequin romances. It falls into the same realm as Hannah Montana, boy bands, and other teen pop idols and generally fades as people age. Really, there's no harm and no foul as far as I'm concerned.
My co-worker's wife subscribes and reads Harlequin romances and is quite an intelligent woman. Harmless escapism. I seriously doubt that teenage girls believe that Bella Swan is an ideal woman, in much the way that I doubt people truly believe in Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Snow White and other fairy tales.
That older fairy tales tend to have passive women and still remain popular with children tends to be overlooked, while any new stories get trashed for doing the same due to modernity. Children fell in love with the original stories and rightly or wrongly, they still have an attachment to the structure.
Funniest comment in a review....
"It's impossible not to laugh when Jacob tells Bella he can no longer see her - just as he darts into the woods to hang with his fellow shirtless pals in cutoff jean shorts."
-Matt Pais, Metromix Chicago.
Now THAT'S comedy.
I like porn. I know that may people think it is inherently degrading to women and I will admit to a danger that does lurk in porn (for both consumers and producers) and that worries me sometimes. But the part of my brain that really likes it doesn't give a crap about all that stuff.
I'm a devoted father and husband, and those parts of my brain can't tell the porn-liking part of my brain to shut up -- it just doesn't work that way. If I were a better person, maybe I wouldn't watch porn, but that I would probably be an unhappier person and I can honestly say that the net effect on me and the world of Not watching porn would be negative.
I see twilight the same way for woman, and not just for young girls. My wife (and many middle aged woman I've talked to) loves the books. (As evidence of me being a decent husband, we have seen the first movie and I will see the rest with her as well despite the fact that it's pretty boring for me, the same way that watching porn would be boring for my wife).
Twilight is a kind of porn for a lot of woman, and the woman/girls who love this shit are not all idiots who are going to affected by the passivity of Bella, in the same way that I am not going to go out and start being mean to woman because I watch porn.
What's the appeal? The vampire dude is hugely powerful, gorgeous, sullen, seductive, etc.. and totally mad for Bella, that alone is simply more than enough to get a lot of women swooning. You can argue that it is somehow denigrating to a modern view of what a woman should be, but the feelings generated by coupling with such a male are obviously very real. Moreover, irresistable attraction to such a lover is incredibly consistent with the evolutionary constraints on attraction - for millions of years, woman did very well by falling for the most bad-ass and handsome dude around that could both protect her AND give her beautiful healthy children. Hey, you can even get immortal children if you pair up with vampires.
So woman can eat this stuff up in the same way we eat up ice cream -- a sizable part of their cortex is pre-wired for it. But that doesn't mean it's taking them over. In the case of my wife, she is a great model of an empowered woman -- she came from a lower-middle-class family in chicago and worked her ass off to become a very successful therapist who has helped a lot of people get over their anxiety disorders. Passive is not a word I would use to describe her when it comes to our relationship.
For people who are relatively healthy, liking a thing sometimes can just be liking it without a bunch of psychological ramifications. Sure, some people who are a bit more unhealthier may be adversely affected by the message, that's going to be true with almost anything. If you've got a good sense of self, you can get comfortable with your animal side, and sometimes if you deny that dimension of yourself too much, you end up with bigger problems.
What's the appeal? The vampire dude is hugely powerful, gorgeous, sullen, seductive, etc..
...I guess. I admit that I couldn't get past the first chapter of the first book, but I did see the movie, and Edward struck me as a whiny, pretentious, emo, creepy stalker. Also, Robert Pattinson really needs to wash his hair.
woman did very well by falling for the most bad-ass and handsome dude around that could both protect her AND give her beautiful healthy children.
Given that Bella's eventual child almost kills her in utero, I'm not seeing the "beautiful healthy children" part here.
The story line departs from the evolutionary argument -- but it doesn't change the logic of why the story appeals so strongly to women/girls.
In the first movie, Edward does save her from some unsavory types about to do her some serious harm -- this physical protection is what woman have needed from men for 99.99% of our history. You argue that kind of emotional reaction to strong handsome men is a relic, but that won't change the parts of woman's brains that want men like that.
I agree with this almost wholeheartedly. Good thoughts.
I agree with you completely. More than a few people have told me that fanfiction for Twilight is almost overwhelmingly X-rated, and that doesn't surprise me, seeing as how it would be a generic romance novel if the sci-fi elements were removed and the protagonist aged up a bit. Porn for women is exactly what it is.
And the worries that girls' romantic preferences will be warped by the books don't move me in the least. Any portrayal of an unhealthy or overly-idealized romantic relationship has the potential to make an impression on young minds, and let's face it, most popular media is guilty of one or both. Kids do stupid things, for a variety of reasons. They learn from those stupid things. If they don't, then they stay stupid. Can't stop parents from worrying, I know.
I read the first three books of the Twilight series. I've yet to finish Breaking Dawn, because every time I've tried to read it I've found better things to do. Meyer, in my humble opinion, isn't as gifted as Rowling; I think Meyer was less willing to hurt or push the limit with her characters. Rowling, in contrast, was a master of whimsy, and the details she used to create an entire world of eccentric yet believable characters was wonderful to experience as a reader.
I have put Twilight in my category of things I really shouldn't be doing--it's up there with eating a large order of Five Guys fries with a bacon cheeseburger. I know (I know!) I shouldn't, but I will still head out to order one on a Sunday afternoon, probably with a Twilight book in my hands. Or maybe I'm too old now to be an elitist about all things pop culture.
A lot of people here have touched on what they don't appreciate about the Twilight Series--repressed sexuality, the celebration of female passivity, just plain bad writing--and to a certain extent I agree. But to me that wasn't the most disturbing thing about the series.
Even while reading (and enjoying) Twilight,New Moon and Eclipse(but less so) the thing I found most disquieting was the notion that love has to be obsessive in nature for it to be considered meaningful. There are a lot of girls out there, in the throes of puberty, thinking that real love has to be this manic push-pull of emotions and circumstances, when the reality is a different animal entirely. That shouldn't take away from the magic of love, of developing a relationship with someone; it's just that it's different. If the stories were told with more a nod to how love, or how a real relationship develops, Bella would end up with Jacob, in a relationship that has an element of friendship instead of dependence and obsession. And so my biggest concern is that these young Twilight fans think that love is only real when it's obsessive.
I'll probably go see it in the theatre. Though I'll be walking over to the multiplex with my hands over my face, hoping no one will recognize me.
I agree-- mostly. But obsessive love is a real thing and one of the most powerful experiences one is lucky enough to have. Sure it can be destructive, but the power of those chemicals is not something that you forget or regret. Not everybody experiences this stuff, so it is hard to understand unless you've lived it.
What we would call "real love" is not obsessive love, just as good nutrition that sustains you for a life is not the same as the high you get from a large order of Five Guys fries. Real love can develop from obsessive love, so they are not entirely unrelated.
let's not pretend most "love" at 15 is deep passionate love. it's obsessive infatuation. this book feeds on what girls are feeling for better or worse. they wouldn't like/understand the other. this is the majority of things aimed at tweens and teens. this has just become popular enough to get discussed on a blog of smart, older people.
the legitimate gripe is the lack of bella as an agent. from the previews it looks like she tries to kill herself a few times to get edward to come back. now that's funked up.
"love' at 15 isn't deep, but it is one of the most passionate experiences you'll have in life -- if you're lucky. Of course, it most often is followed by one of the most painful experiences when your "love" falls apart over something trivial and stupid.
I can't believe I am going to admit this but I liked the series. My husband hates it. I have asked him why he can't be more like Edward. Thank Gawd no one knows who I am.
That's like feeling bad because you like breathing air -- nor under your control so enjoy it. And guys who don't understand the appeal of Edward need to open their eyes.
My wife has said the same thing, but it's a pretty unfair comparison. My analogy would be for me to point towards a porn star and ask her to be more like that. The biggest reason is that Edward has unlimited money with no need to eat/sleep/work. He sure has a hell of a lot more time and money on his hands to be romantic than I do.
There's no accounting for taste, so who are we or Alyssa or anyone else to judge what others love. I didn't get the appeal until it occurred to me that the Vampire in Twilight is a pretty boy with all the power of a vampire. A pretty boy and a bad boy all wrapped up in one fairy tale. That has to have mass appeal.
cuz it's impossible at that age level :)
the majority of boys at the middle school and high school level with strong personalities are the "bad boys". this is why they get girls. twilight is the classic tale of "if i love him enough i can change him".
I'll give Meyer more credit than that. The reality of her narrative isn't that Bella changed Edward. In Meyer's narrative, the (literally) hot-blooded, increasingly powerful, and angrily-emotional badboi-who-used-to-be sweet is Jacob. By contrast, the (literally) cold, iron-willed, spent decades becoming composed-at-all-costs Darcy-equivalent is Edward. I was constantly prepared for Jacob to hurt Bella in a fit of emotion. I never worried for her safety with the Most Moral Vampire in the Universe.
Bella didn't change Edward, and she (wisely) didn't even try to change Anger Issues Jacob. Jacob was just the overdemonstrative teen alpha getting outbid by the suave and composed successful man.
We can ask if that sets up creepy Japanese-culture riffs of middle aged guys sincerely wooing high school girls, but Bella wasn't ever deluding herself. She got crushes on a couple boys but went with the one who turned out to be rich and restrained.
If I hadn't been reading the first book electronically, I'd have thrown it across the room around the beginning of the second chapter. I loathed Bella, who makes Anita Blake not look like quite so much of a Mary Sue, and worse, I couldn't get out of her head because of the first person POV. I thought she was a pretentious, stuck-up drama queen who was frankly rude to nearly everyone around her.
As for Edward, I thought he was a whiny, overly emo, pretentious stalker creep. I do think he and Bella were meant for each other, in that, "they deserve each other" sense.
As a writer, Stephanie Meyer makes J. K. Rowling look like Shakespeare. Her worldbuilding is nonsensical and inconsistent and the cultural appropriation is awful. Her prose is clunky and pedestrian at best.
Er...I may have strong opinions about Twilight and how much I dislike it. And in conclusion: Buffy staked Edward. The End.
Is Kristen Stewart the next Sandra Bullock/Meg Ryan/Doris Day?
Ugh, ugh, ugh, gross! K Stew is closer to Jodie Foster than any of those actresses. Stewart is hardly the perky type, she just happens to be in a huge blockbuster. Sort of like Leo or Kate Winslet in Titanic.
I have no more interest in reading the Twilight books than Sex In The City. But its more because the themes don't interest me than out of judgement. Yep, the main character is almost barnacle-like in her passivity. So what? What bugs me is the Time Traveler's Wife gets praised to the sky for a character who is JUST AS PASSIVE. Has anybody stopped by Lifetime Movie Network recently? More of the same. Women writers often write in a passive voice, with characters who are reactive to their environments. And their readers identify with them.
As far as the quality of the prose.
Meh. To me thats just people griping their disbelief that McDonald's sells so many hamburgers or Pop Star #871 keeps selling albums. People like things that suck. Observe Full House and whatever that show with Urkel was. Or don't. Just accept that you've got your dumb vices and other people have theirs.
I posted this previously in an open thread but wanted to enter it here again. I actually think I've grown to hate the whole twilight thing even more after the hype for the new movie.
im sorry but this whole twilight thing is really ridiculous, seems to me the biggest piece of crap written (and I use that term loosely) in a long time. I remmember picking up the book and scanning through it, in two diferent sections 50 to 60 pages apart theres graphic detail about how the "vampire" shines in the sunlight and how hypnotic he is. I know its a good thing kids are reading books but it seems to be a dumbing now of american literature. THis is not even going into the absurdity of the whole premise. I understand artistic freedom but making vampire shine and not burst into flames in the sunlight is the equivalent to me of writing a book about santa claus the pedophile. There will always be evolving changes in myths over the years, but the heart of a myth has to stay somewhat grounded. Talking about how beautiful a "vampire" shines in the sunlight makes absolutely no sense to me. Allright im done ranting, just have this deep hatred of all things twilight. When my kid gets older im shoving the thickest fiction book i can find in front of him to read before he even tries to read the tripe of the day.
And should the witch, warrior or queen need a kidney transplant? Well, the little warlord gets one first because he's a boy.
It's true -- even today -- even in real life, not fantasy. The supposedly fair and trusted UNOS kidney transplant list puts boys and old men before girls and old women -- for no real medical reason. Wake up and read about it at:
http://www.ethicsoup.com/2009/04/life-death-sexism-fewer-girls-women-on-kidney-transplant-list.html
Because women are less likely to get CKD5, especially from a transplantable pathology. A higher ratio of Female CKD5 patients present with Poorly controlled Type 2 diabetes, which is strongly correlated with cardiac issues circulatory problems and very high BMI, all of which are exclusionary conditions. A higher ratio of men present younger, with hypertension as primary renal pathology, which is the most transplantable pathology. Also, Polycystic kidney disease (PKD) patients present CKD5 at a 3.3:1 Male:female ratio. These two pathologies can occur while the rest of the body remains fairly healthy.
Thank you for highlighting the issue of CKD5, and renal transplantation. However, what it has to do with Twilight......
Correcting- PKD patients present 1.17:1 Male female, and Men present 1.3 years earlier.
http://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S0272638600700424
Correcting- PKD patients present 1.17:1 Male female, and Men present 1.3 years earlier.
http://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S0272638600700424
This article also states that the differences in PKD, while pronounced are actually smaller than other diseases. So, men are presenting younger, with more of them in readily transplantable states.
Not sexism, natural selection against males in terms of renal health.
Edgepark - we tried that w/our 13-year-old daughter. We wanted Tolkien, she wanted Stephanie Meyers. Guess who won?
This is a pick-your-battles issue in our household. We thoroughly reviewed the first book on line to make sure there was nothing obviously inappropriate in it. Then we pretty much ceded the futility of keeping her away from it. You can't control what your kids are gonna read at the school library or a friend's house, and the teenage girl obsession with this stuff is ubiquitous, so she was bound to read it with or without our approval. I'll probably end up reading at least enough of the first book to have an informed conversation w/her about the problems w/the characters identified by many commenters here.
Nor should you try. I wouldn't have wanted anyone trying to take me off comic books because they weren't "literature." You're doing the right thing. Gotta take kids where they are. I doubt she'll stop with Stephanie Meyers.
TheRaven is amazed that out of 60 comments 'Victorian' doesn't appear once.
What do you think vampires are but the plainest sexual metaphors from the high-collar age? The nocturnal activity, faces grotesquely contorted, supernaturally beautiful, victims moaning, c'mon!
So with New Moon we have the irony of Victorian era chastity grafted onto a sexual trope born while Queen Vic still ruled. TheRaven appreciates irony like a vampire sucks blood and wonders where the hell you people went to school. Hope it wasn't expensive.
Dracula was published in 1897. The whole blood fetishism thing almost didn't happen. Bram Stoker's working title was 'The Undead'. That would have recast vampires as zombies out of the gate. Has anyone ever seen a sexy zombie?
TR
Ps - Ta-Nehisi - might have missed it but any post on Sandra Bullock's secret plan to take over the world? Did you ever think any man would ever say "I want to see a Sandra Bullock movie?" TheRaven's vast network reports men saying this in Cleveland, Cincinnati and in the land of those-who-wave-rags. Simply unbelievable!
Read the first Twilight book and nearly died of boredom. Will not be going back for more.
But I do understand why teenage girls might go in for passivity. In most places in this country, there really isn't all that much for teenage girls to do. If you're smart enough to find public school unchallenging, and if your family is prosperous enough that your housework burden is small, there may not be much to keep you busy besides hanging with friends and reading great big bricks of boring books.
It's not as though you have the resources to take a flight to Paris and visit the museums, or even change your major to something that really pushes your limits. The most adventerous thing you're likely to do before you get a driver's license is have a crush on the wrong boy. That doesn't mean you're going to be passive when your life opens up and you have other options. It just reflects the limitations of the teen years in much of suburban and small-town America.