I first became aware of Stephanie Meyers’ Twilight series a couple years ago. My knowledge was unspecific aside from the fact it was marketed towards teens in the manner that so many other series were upon the release of "Harry Potter and the Never-ending Royalty Checks". Only with the advent of the release of the film version did I dig a bit deeper into Twilight. I soon discovered Twilight is the tale of a teenager and her vampire boyfriend.
Yawn.
Twilight then dropped off my radar until my friend Kate outed herself as a “Twimom.” Needless to say, we have spirited discussions. Late last year during one particular debate, I railed against Twilight calling it sub-par garbage teenybopper emo romance nonsense that a surprisingly large number of adult women had a disturbing attachment to.
I stand by my comments.
Kate argued that I simply couldn’t understand it due to being of the male persuasion therefore lacking the necessary schema with which to appreciate this beautiful and tragic love story. She further postulated tampons, unicorns and the magical journey to womanhood, at which point I fell asleep.
The crux of her final argument ended up the only truly sound statement in the sound and fury of our debate: since I had not read the books I could not provide a true criticism and was speaking about things I didn’t know.
That stopped me.
She did have a point. Wasn’t I outraged when Catholic League president Bill Donohoe went on a tear damning Kevin Smith’s film “Dogma” when he had never even read the script let alone seen the movie?
Damn.
I wasn’t being that douchey was I?
No. Upon further reflection, I wasn’t.
My position was more akin to that of Jack McCoy in the second act of some ripped-from-the-headlines awesome episode of Law & Order. I had plenty of expert testimony, I had circumstantial evidence and the celebrity guest star suspect had no alibi. But it wasn’t enough to convict.
Shut up.
I really like Law & Order.
Fine. I agreed to read the damned book. Hell, If I can make it through Tami Hoag novels with my dignity still intact, I should be able to make it through a piece of Mary Sue fluff written by some creepy Mormon chick (who’s totally doable, by the way). To my surprise the county library system had 117 copies of the book. To my further surprise every single copy was either checked out, or missing. This is a book published five years ago! I mean I guess it’s good it gets kids reading but it’s kinda like discovering said kid smoking a cigarette and instead of chastising them you say to yourself “Well, at least it isn’t meth!” Thankfully, Kate loaned me her copy.
How was it?
Chapter 1
We meet our protagonist, Bella Swan. Isn’t that a cute name? Bella is, of course, Italian for “beautiful” and her last
name is evocative of the titular character from the story “The Ugly Duckling.” already Stephanie K. Meyers (hereafter noted as SKM) is beating us over the head with fact that while our heroine may not be much to look at now (a fact we’re constantly reminded of as Bella continually lists all of her negative attributes) but she will be beautiful one day!
I want to die.
We discover that Bella’s mom is a flighty whore who’s taken up banging some minor league ball player à la Bull Durham. Herdad is the emotionally distant sheriff of Forks, Washington, the town she’s run off to apparently because she had no friends at school. It’s stated quite clearly on page nine that she had over 700 kids in her junior class in Arizona. And not one of them was a friend.
Yikes.
I’m starting to think maybe Bella isn’t just being dramatic and that she really is a loser. Page nine also tells us that her
new high school has only 358 kids in it. That averages out to 89.5 kids per grade. Since underclassmen friendships are generally verboten in most academic cultures, Bella is screwed. Couldn’t find a buddy or two in your old school? Good luck doing it with a class a tenth the size! Except…she does make friends. Four of them! On her very first day! Nice work, Bella! Though I’m sure you’ll find something to bitch about. Bella’s kind of a “the glass is half empty because I broke it and I’m cutting myself with the shards,” kind of gal. First she meets Mike and Eric who are both instantly smitten with her and all but boner-joust each other for the right to claim her. To be fair though, a high school of only 358 kids means it’s a pretty small town. These poor bastards are probably just tired of making out with livestock, relatives and livestock they’re related to. She also meets Angela. However, Angela isn’t really covered so I have nothing funny to say about her except I heard this one time she totally gave Tommy Wilson a handjob under the bleachers! OMG! Back to Bella. She goes to lunch and spies a group of kids sitting alone. They’re all stone hotties and she learns these are the Cullen kids. One of the Cullens, Edward, looks at her. Then he doesn’t. What could it mean?!? Bella can’t imagine what she’s done to Edward to provoke this reaction. After all, as she puts it “He didn’t know me from Eve.” Ha! Get it? Because sin and forbidden fruit!
I’m taking SKM off my Christmas list.
Bella then goes to biology class. As she passes by Edward he is “rigid,” “hostile” and “furious.” As she sits next to him he
leans as far away as he can. He looks at her again in a manner she describes as “if looks could kill.” She almost cries. When she runs into Edward in the office he looks at her with “piercing, hate-filled eyes.” As a result, on her drive home she cries instead of, say, not giving a shit what some weirdo thinks of her. She cried twice and almost cried a third time in a single chapter. I don’t think I’m going out on a limb here when I say Bella is a giant pussy.
Chapter 2
Right off the bat Edward doesn’t show up for school the next day. Bella immediately takes this to mean that she’s somehow responsible because everything’s all about her. Then we find out that our duckling has a pop quiz on Wuthering Heights, another tale about a girl whose life is altered by a brooding asshole. Returning to school after a week’s absence, Edward is now friendly with Bella but he doesn’t want to touch her. He speaks to her in a “quiet, musical voice” with “flawless lips” and “careful” eyes. They chat and he finally irritates her by peppering her with questions. Finally, he smiles at her with his “perfect, ultrawhite teeth.”
Chapter 3
A kid named Tyler almost kills Bella with his van. She’s saved at the last second by Edward running really fast and stopping the vehicle with his bare hands. When she asks him about it later he becomes “unfriendly.” That’s it. Really. Nothing aside from this happens in chapter three.
I think you get the picture. The next 10 chapters read like baby’s-first-Harlequin: plenty of staring into each others eyes, deep thoughts about the mysterious Edward Cullen who continually emotionally abuses Bella who, in return, worships him. On the sidelines, every other female has been paired with a male because god forbid anyone suffer the indignities of being single. Not only did SKM create a teen sensation, she created a teen sensation in which girls are told to know their place, that change can only be affected by men (whom they slavishly adore) and that obsessive relationships with pedophiles are acceptable. See, we later find out that Edward is 104 years old. He just looks 18. So that makes it ok. I’m serious. Ask a Twilight fan. Interestingly enough, if we remove the vampire component from the tale and even go as far as halving Edward’s age, the entire fanbase would recoil in horror and disgust. Hell, if I tried to hook up with a 17-year old I’d be vilified, and rightly so. But the fans don’t see the disconnect. I so desperately want to paint with a broad brush and say that the teens reading these books are at best unfortunate but that the adult women who form discussion groups over them are broken piles of sad. But I can’t. I know several of these women. In every other aspect of their lives they are intelligent and emotionally stable women. However, something in this creepy tale of poorly written emotional neediness cries out and resonates within them.
What does that say about them?
What does that say about our society?
It’s easy to cry misogyny when Eminem graphically describes murdering his ex-wife. It’s easy to scream sexism when Murphy Brown is derided for being a single parent. The harder to detect and more insidious messages we need to be alert to in the Twilight series are those of anti-feminism dressed up as girl-power.
Am I taking a stupid book about a stupid girl and her stupid vampire boyfriend too seriously?
Maybe.
But the stakes are the self-confidence and independence of an entire generation of young women who will in turn pass their ideals onto their own children.
So maybe the question is: are you taking this seriously enough?