I think you’re ignoring some obvious explanations.

1.  It’s super fun to be into something other people are into and you can squee about together.  Lots of people like books but few books are popular enough to squee publicly with others who love it.  Think about the popularity of Dickens or Harry Potter - once a book gets popular enough it is catapulted into crazy popularity by the ready made audience of people who’ll interact with you about a book you like.  Something most readers don’t get.

2.  Bela is so nondescript in order for you to read yourself into her - and she is special special special.  Everyone wants to be special. 

3.  Vampires are fun!  Lots of sexy fun.  Fantasy is super fun as a genre but considered ‘genre’ and so rarely shows up on most people’s viewscreen when if/when it somehow does make it to popularity all these people who’ve never been exposed to fantasy realize Wow, fantasy is fun!

I read L.J. Smith when I was a tween - and if I had others to squee about it with I would have been a lot more obsessive/loud about it.  Special, super powers! people love you - pretty nice.

For the record, yeah the anti feminist messages annoy me as does the stalking and bad writing and etc.  But… eh.  I don’t think it’s really a negative when 12 year girls get excited and happy and bond over a book/fantasy they like - I’m extremely uninterested in shaming them for it.  Chances are every other one of them is reading something entirely different into the text - the nature of books.

Another summation of the appeal of Twilight is here (scroll down to ‘Philosophical ramblings’): http://cleolinda.livejournal.com/823267.html#cutid2

If I were a kid I think it’s totally possible I would have gotten into Twilight. I liked Poppy Z. Brite and Ann Rice, and also Marilyn Manson and lots of other stuff that I find thoroughly shitty today. So I’m pretty unconcerned about the message the kids are getting. The smart ones will figure it out, I’m thinking. I somehow grew into a progressive feminist and I was raised on Steven Segall movies, Merle Haggard, and Andrew Dice Clay.

And you can’t tell the kids, this is dumb, this is not progressive, this sucks, because if you do they’ll just dig in their heels defending it and will probably pretend to like it for years after they’ve stopped giving a shit in order to prove to you the deep specialness of their very special thing. So ignore it and it’ll go away, I guess, is what I’m saying? Yeah, that.

Twilight is thinly-disguised softcore porn for teen girls who are “good girls” and not supposed to like that stuff, and their mothers who are really not supposed to like that stuff.  All the crappy plots and characters are just a veil for sexy teen boys who can’t wear shirts.  All this analysis is just ridiculous.  Yes, the plots are stupid and the characters are terrible role models for relationships.  And yes, sparkly vampires are stupid.  But any analysis of Twilight is about as ridiculous as seriously critiquing a porno.  If someone said “It’s just so unrealistic that a pizza delivery boy would be invited into an orgy”, we’d all laugh at that person for missing the point.  It’s the same with Twilight.  It sucks, but that’s not the point.  It’s porn; stop taking it seriously.

Victoria, all those things I’m less ignoring than assuming, correctly, I think that they those things come after the initial infatuation that allows the books to take off.  Anything could be the fascination object that fills the roles you lay out.  Why this and not something else?

And at the end you get to be the special special special strong vampire that saves everyone else.

Never read the books nor watched the movies.  The whole turning mythical characters (witches, wizards, werewolves, vampires, etc) into teenagers has been overdone.

Why this and not something else?

Could be worse—they all could have read Atlas Shrugged

(And really, the attraction of 14 year old nerdboys to Rand’s writings is not all that dissimals to the “Twilight Thing)

I think there are two phenomena:

The teen kids like it because they don’t know the difference between deep desire and dysfunction.  The idea of a boy who likes them but doesn’t have their pants as the first, last, and only thing on their minds is positive.

The Twilight Moms like it for the exact reason you specify—that the fantasy of at least having a family that is a nicer version of the Patriarchy is attainable.

I’ll state upfront that I haven’t read the books or seen the movies, but someone recently gave me a rundown of what happens in the books and I was struck by how profoundly anti-Christian Twilight seems to be on the most basic level.  If I understand right, the main character, who we’re all supposed to cheer for and want to be, commits suicide, gives up her soul, and is rewarded with a life of great sex and immortality. 

I thought the whole point of Christianity was that yes, being human sucks, yes, you grow old and die, suffer sickness and ill health, but that if you believe in Jesus, in the end, all your suffering is rewarded in heaven.  Twilight says screw that, here’s a better way to do things.  Maybe on some level, people are responding to that?

Or I could be totally wrong….

I’m probably totally wrong…

Jenny, I’m not suggesting telling kids this or that.  I’m just wondering.  It’s kind of sad—-some of the folks at Tiger Beatdown said Bella is a fantasy because she’s so incredibly dull but gets the guy anyway.  That’s so sad to me, because it’s basically a fantasy of being basically just a conduit for a dude.  I get the idea that there’s something intimidating about fantasy heroines that are badasses, but it’s also interesting to me that young men feel perfectly free to imagine being a hero that kicks ass, but some young women are intimidated by that.  And apparently prefer to imagine being a passive receptacle instead.

My wife read the first two books and thought they were decent beach trash, plus vampires! I read the first three chapters of the first one and it was so utterly train-wreck bad I couldn’t make myself go any further. The story itself was banal and dull, but I was willing to give it a chance: it was only three chapters and the girl was just settling in to her new school or whatever.

But the prose. Oh. My. Nonexistent god. Punctuation errors, comma splices, diction errors, misplaced parallelism… you name it, it was there. It was like reading a really bad undergraduate paper that had only been edited by Spellcheck. I could see why the series might appeal to thirteen-year-old girls, but what editor allowed this shite to be published, without rewriting nearly every paragraph. I was enraged, and I admit it, I threw the book in the trash instead of recycling it.

If someone said “It’s just so unrealistic that a pizza delivery boy would be invited into an orgy”, we’d all laugh at that person for missing the point.  It’s the same with Twilight.  It sucks, but that’s not the point.  It’s porn; stop taking it seriously.

I don’t think porn is below analysis, especially when it pointedly eroticizes the debasement of women and equates sex with a competition where the woman loses as soon as she gives it up.  I don’t think pop culture is below analysis at all, especially not when Twilight romanticizes—-to vulnerable young women—-the idea that abusive men just love you a whole lot, which is why they stalk you and occasionally get out of control and physically assault you.

“If I understand right, the main character, who we’re all supposed to cheer for and want to be, commits suicide, gives up her soul, and is rewarded with a life of great sex and immortality.”

The author is, from what I understand, a fairly devout Mormon.  I think the “suicide” is meant to be read as self-sacrifice, and the immortality, great sex, etc., are meant to be her reward for that extreme devotion.

I’ll state upfront that I haven’t read the books or seen the movies, but someone recently gave me a rundown of what happens in the books and I was struck by how profoundly anti-Christian Twilight seems to be on the most basic level.  If I understand right, the main character, who we’re all supposed to cheer for and want to be, commits suicide, gives up her soul, and is rewarded with a life of great sex and immortality.

It’s actually all very Mormon (from my understanding at least). And I don’t think Bella gives up her soul.

Amanda, btw - in the book after Jacob kisses Bella against her explicit wishes and she hits him for it, her father congratulates Jacob. Oh the extreme creepery. They took that bit out of the movie.

Foxling, that’s because the books aren’t traditionally Christian, they’re Mormon.  In that, they’re profoundly Mormon, because Mormons believe that if you’re a good woman who submits and attracts a good husband, you spend eternity in perfect harmony with your family.  Which is apparently how the vampires—-who are dead—-live.

On my most basic fundamental level, I have no fucking idea what “Twilight” is, and I fully intend to keep it that way. Now DEVO, on the other hand!

I don’t think porn is below analysis, especially when it pointedly eroticizes the debasement of women and equates sex with a competition where the woman loses as soon as she gives it up.

But how is Twilight any different than nearly all other mainstream porn in this area?  Is the problem that teen girls are watching it instead of older men?  I have news for you; teen girls watch “real” porn too because it’s the only thing that’s available.  The problem isn’t with Twilight specifically, but with porn and social attitudes towards sex in general.  And the outrage over Twilight is a perfect example of this because it seems more outrageous to us when teen girls are visually stimulated than when men are.

that’s because the books aren’t traditionally Christian, they’re Mormon.

Mormonism is a denomination of Christianity.

“Mormonism is a denomination of Christianity.”

...it has a new prophet, a whole new set of books added onto the old ones, and so forth.  You might as well say Christianity is a denomination of Judaism.  They’re very similar in a lot of ways, but they’re also very dissimilar in a lot of ways that play out in the philosophy and culture and make them pretty distinct from mainstream brands of Christianity.

I still think Ms. Meyer pulled a fast one on a whole bunch of Christians.

My understanding of sacrifice is that there’s some downside to it, that’s why it’s a sacrifice.  Bella killing herself so she can become immortal and have some sex isn’t really a sacrifice, it’s incredibly selfish and fueled by vanity and lust. 

Thanks Amanda, that makes some sense, except that vampires are horrible monsters who feast on the blood of the living… I remember being told about a scene where Bella gets a paper cut and one of the ‘good’ vampires tries to eat her, sooo Ms. Meyer is actually saying that if you’re a good, submissive woman, you get to live an immortal life with a bunch of creatures who pretend they’re one big happy family but who are secretly only one paper cut away from murder? 

I guess I just don’t get it.

Mormonism is a denomination of Christianity.

A lot of older Christian denominations would disagree.  Mormons certainly consider themselves to be Christians, and their religion derives heavily from Christianity, but there are some really profound theological differences from traditional Christianity (Catholic, Orthodox, mainline Protestant, and evangelical alike).  Their Christology is totally different, and their soteriology is very strange as well.  I don’t think we should expect works heavily based on Mormon ideas to reflect “Christian values” which tend to be based on a mainstream protestant or Catholic model.

...it has a new prophet, a whole new set of books added onto the old ones, and so forth.  You might as well say Christianity is a denomination of Judaism.

I wasn’t trying to claim that Mormonism is similar to other denominations of Christianity, but Mormons self-identify as Christians.  It’s more accurate to say that Christianity is extremely diverse and Mormons are a subgroup within Christianity than to say that Mormonism simply isn’t Christianity.

A lot of older Christian denominations would disagree.

They can disagree all they want, but they’re wrong.  It’s really no different than when fundagelicals claim that liberal Christians aren’t True Christians.  One group of Christians doesn’t have the right to define all other groups of Christians.  If Mormons self-identify as Christians, then they’re Christians.

Part of the appeal of Twilight is that the world, in this story, REVOLVES around Bella.  There’s nothing special about her, but the hottest guy in school becomes obsessed with her.  Then she’s in terrible danger, and his whole family risks their lives to defend her.  Everyone is so concerned with her safety.  Edward, the Cullens, and the werewolf clan are completely focused on her and her safety.  She’s even the center of the bad vampires’ universe.  She’s just some chick, but she’s soooo important to all these special people in her world.

“If Mormons self-identify as Christians, then they’re Christians.”

Does this also apply to, say, Sarah Palin and feminism?

Amanda, btw - in the book after Jacob kisses Bella against her explicit wishes and she hits him for it, her father congratulates Jacob. Oh the extreme creepery. They took that bit out of the movie.

I was wondering how they were going to deal with that bit. Morbid curiosity makes me wonder how they deal with the ‘imprinting’ nonsense and the birth.

Not enough to actually watch it, mind, but just how a book-to-film translation goes. Like the dog in A Time to Kill.

She’s just some chick, but she’s soooo important to all these special people in her world.

That was the impression I had too—that the whole phenomenon is really catering to a fantasy that someone out there actually cares about you, and feels feelings for you.  The fantasy of being wanted rather than the fantasy of doing something. 

Why it’s vampires and werewolves and not, I dunno, mermen or space aliens… that I can’t explain.  But it seems to overlap fairly well with the whole “Disney princess” phenomenon, doesn’t it?

“...it has a new prophet, a whole new set of books added onto the old ones, and so forth.  You might as well say Christianity is a denomination of Judaism. ”

Except, unlike Judaism, that Mormons believe that Jesus is their messiah, the same way the rest of Christianity does. They worship the same Jesus as the rest of Christianity, and believe that the New Testament is scripture, if not fully complete or accurate. They also claim that the Protestant Reformation was a necessary step in preparing the world to be prepared for Christ’s true gospel, and regard themselves as nominally Protestant as well. Taxonomically, Joe’s Book of Mormon is Biblical fan-fic. Just because he went further in extruding the principles of his upbringing (Protestant Christian, arising from the largely Protestant religious revival in the Burnt-over District, doesn’t mean that Mormonism is a whole new beast.

(Was raised Mormon. Am atheist.)

The teen kids like it because they don’t know the difference between deep desire and dysfunction.

This is actually what bugs me the most about Twilight.

The central message of the books seems to be that the best way to know if someone really loves you is that they’re willing to hurt you. 

Which is, um, maybe not a great message for teenage girls.

Sad hypothesis:  Twilight is porn for the abstinent-only age.  We in the US have returned our teenagers to Victorian-level ignorance/ fear/ shame about sex—making them vulnerable to a fucked-up Mormon vampire fantasy.

Bright side:  Hey, I’m a Gen Exer, my generation was obsessed with Flowers in the Attic and we turned out fine.    Teenage girls are often drawn to dark/ non-good-role-model images of sexuality, most of them grow out of it and seek egalitarianism in their real relationships.  And there is actually a shortage of stalker-vampires in the world for teen girls to date—I’d be more worried about Flowers in the Attic, since brothers are a lot more common.  Again, though, very few of us Gen Exers were inspired by those books to actually sleep with our brothers.  Kids are less literal then adults think.

... I thought the first movie was hilarious.  And I probably would’ve eaten it up with a spoon when I was younger.  I mean, come on!  Vampires made of glitter who alternate dramatic brooding with magical flying piggy-back rides!  It’s pretty much My Pretty Vampire Boyfriend…

Older folks are always having moral panics over the trash Those Kids Read Nowadays.  I’m glad that girls are bonding with other girls about books.  I’m glad that movies aimed at girls are making big money. 

& pointers to other research:  there’s a great deal of writing/ theory out there about the pleasures of reading pathetic stories, nostalgia, and melodrama as a form of bonding between women…

xoxo

Alec

Mormanism is the biggest authentically American religion.  Make of that what you will.

Never read the books nor watched the movies.  The whole turning mythical characters (witches, wizards, werewolves, vampires, etc) into teenagers has been overdone.

Oh, the opportunities for parody that this suggests.

The _Twilight_ trend also seemed to piggyback on _Harry Potter_, although I’ve definitely met fewer unabashed Twilight fans than Potter fans.  But I don’t remember HP fandom being gendered as male, so Twilight is not exactly “Potter For Girls.” 

The other unique thing to me about _Twilight_ is the daughter-mother sharing aspect, which I can’t recall in other pop-culture trends.  Did girls start reading them, then their moms jumped on the bandwagon?  Or have daughters and mothers been sharing them all along?

Mormonism is a denomination of Christianity.

I suppose, but Mormon have their own weird worldview that other Christians don’t share.  I have a close friend who grew up Mormon, and we’ve talked a lot together about our respective religious upbringings.  Culturally, at least, you can’t lump them in with other Christians.

Oh, and re the original question of the post:

V.C. Andrews.  That’s all I have to say about that.

Again, though, very few of us Gen Exers were inspired by those books to actually sleep with our brothers.  Kids are less literal then adults think.

I think in the book it sort of happens on accident, right?  Sort of like Blue Lagoon, like “we were cooped up and hidden from everyone else and nobody ever told us about the birds and the bees, so when we went through puberty the wires got crossed”.  No?

You can’t be Christian and not believe in the traditional doctrine of the Trinity and the finality of the Bible. That’s what Roman Catholics, mainline Protestants, and evangelicals all have in common.

As for self-identifying, what about the white supremacist “Christian Identity” movement? Or the Aryan Nations?

Mormanism is the biggest authentically American religion.

Actually, (and ironically) a surprising amount of it is ripped off from Islam, right down to the polygamy. Joseph Smith said as much off the record, saying he would be the “new Muhammad”.

Ha, I totally liked Ayn Rand when I was around fifteen. I liked so much dumb shit, it’s embarrassing, really. I don’t begrudge the kids for liking dumb shit; I assume most of them will outgrow it, along with their religions.

We’re in the midst of some kind of anti-feminist backlash…

As far as I can tell, we’ve been in an anti-feminist backlash since about five minutes after the feminist movement arrived. Susan Faludi’s Backlash was published twenty years ago.

I mean does this really sound anything like Roman Catholicism, or Protestantism, or Evangelicalism?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jFZ1jVO3-OE&feature=related

They’re polytheists, for fucks sake!

I think in the book [Flowers In The Attic] it sort of happens on accident, right?  Sort of like Blue Lagoon, like “we were cooped up and hidden from everyone else and nobody ever told us about the birds and the bees, so when we went through puberty the wires got crossed”.  No?

Her brother rapes her. Later she blames herself for wearing skimpy nightgowns around him. So I would say not so much, although undoubtedly there’s some weird-wires-crossed-horny-adolescent-sex-obsession elements there too.

Wow.

I either did not have good reading comprehension back in the day, or I had super messed up ideas about the notion of “consent”.

Well, as Jenny Dreadful says, I apparently grew out of it.

I read a complete take down of the books somewhere on the net by a former Mormon.  There’s all sorts of Mormonism in them.

I watched the first movie last night.  I kept thinking that it might be kinda fun, if Bella weren’t such a complete drag.  Everyone likes her…but why?  It’s not just the vampires.  From the moment she enters the school, other nice kids are friendly and try to include her.  She just is so jerky to them, and boring.

I suppose that’s part of the appeal: you can be really boring and a loner, but everyone actually loves you.

Edward, otoh, was just creepy.  I have to go watch Buffy vs. Edward again. ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZwM3GvaTRM ) 

We really need Buffy back.

Bella is a fantasy because she’s so incredibly dull but gets the guy anyway.

She’s the female equivalent of the pizza boy? That would explain a lot.

It’s always sounded like the classic Harlequin fantasy structure, only with blood and immortality.

I mean:
The heroine is extremely young and unformed: falling in love is her Big Adventure.
The heroine is a cipher, designed to enable transference in the reader, who imagines herself in the heroine’s place.
The hero is much older than the heroine.
The hero is emotionally distant, to the extent that the heroine believes that he dislikes her.
The hero has hidden erotic/emotional depths, which Only She Can See. Or “Only She Can Make Him Acknowledge”.
There is much implicit erotic passion, sublimated into the book’s one kiss.
The Hero is a lust object: he is typically chiseled and handsome.
The Hero is, metaphorically, cold. (yes, I know).
The hero is controlling of the heroine, for her own protection (in the classic ‘Doctor and Nurse’ or ‘Boss and Secretary’ Harlequin, he is protecting her from the dangers of his sexual desire).
Marriage and sex are equated, and are A Big Fucking Deal.

Romance novels seem to have moved on quite a bit—I haven’t read one for years—but this is the original classic formula, and I really wonder if the author hasn’t just deliberately borrowed it.

Caren, you may be referring to the hilarious “Sparkledammerung” which is here: http://stoney321.livejournal.com/317176.html

...and which is an excellent way to learn about the series without having to read it.

jrochest: Couldn’t most if not all of that apply to Charlotte Bronte or Jane Austen? Maybe that’s where the Harlequin writers got it in the first place.

It’s the utter uncomplicatedness of being Bella, I think. In real life, you have to feel bad about stringing men along, have to recognize the red flags that your boyfriend is an abusive stalker, have to work hard to provide for your future, etc, etc. In Twilight, Bella makes all her decisions based on emotions (especially lust) and never works at anything- the most work she has to do is sitting around withstanding various types of pain with her virtuous stubbornness. And everything comes out perfectly for her, over and over. I can appreciate yearning for a world where you don’t need to be smart, thoughtful, or hardworking to be right at all times.

I miss Buffy.

If it’s any source of hope Amanda, the young college set isn’t into it.  No, I haven’t read the books or seen the movies, but read enough about them to get the gist and some of the controversies.  But, I haven’t read paper one (thankfully) about it, heard examples from it in class discussion, etc.  And teaching classes that include lots of pop culture, the opportunity is there.

...and of course, the uncomplicatedness of being Bella reflects the story the LDS church (and most totalitarian religions) sells, which is “relax and follow these instructions are everything will shake out well for you.”

Wait, wait, wait, wait….. just had a flashback….does anybody else remember Dark Shadows??? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Shadows

Is this just lather, rinse, repeat?

But how is Twilight any different than nearly all other mainstream porn in this area?  Is the problem that teen girls are watching it instead of older men? 

Well, I’m not sure where I said I thought it was super great for older men to obsess about porn the way these girls obsess about Twilight.  In fact, if that happened, I’d find that fucked the fuck up.

I like the optimism of saying they’ll grow out of it, but usually that depends on getting other messages that conflict with the ones they’re getting from their pop culture, wouldn’t you think?  And sadly, there’s a lot of reinforcement for the idea that a man who is hyper-jealous and controlling just loves you.

Plus, I don’t know, it may be true of the tween fans, but I’m amazed at how many grown women eat this shit up.

I’m likewise baffled and fascinated by the popularity of Twilight.  I will note, though, that the teen-marriage aspect of the series’ tsunami of sexism doesn’t crop up until the later volumes.  In the first couple of books it’s all about eternal love and sex/death angst and how exciting it would be to get fought over by totally hot guys who could kill you—not exactly enlightened, but also pretty standard fantasy material for teenage girls trying to work through their emerging sexual feelings.

It’s not until the last couple of books that Bella becomes obsessed with getting married and vamped immediately so she can be a hot immortal teenage bride.  A huge number of fans were turned off by the last book, where Bella suddenly gets married and knocked up at 18 and goes through the most hilariously disgusting magic pregnancy in literary history in order to deliver a baby who is then immediately handed off as a child bride.  To Stephenie Meyer, this is all apparently very romantic, but a lot of her previously starry-eyed readers found it horrifying (and are now morbidly curious as to how the hell the train wreck of the final book can possibly be filmed).

There’s probably something to the idea of the books presenting a cool, fun patriarchy as an alternative to the boring real patriarchy.  Over the course of the series, the Cullens go from just the richest kids in a small town—their dad is a doctor, they own designer clothes and decent cars—to ridiculously super-wealthy, living lives of cartoon luxury; there’s a scene in the last book where Bella just grabs several thousand dollars in cash out of a cookie jar or something on her way out the door.  As a teen mom, her vampire family takes care of everything, leaving her free to hang out on either a tropical island or her fairy-tale cottage, with nothing to do but occasionally play with her creepily perfect baby.  It does look like a pretty sweet deal.

I’m not familiar with the timeline here, but were the books as insanely popular before the films? I mean, obviously they were fairly popular (they made a film) but was it a phenomenon yet? Putting insanely attractive faces to names may have helped.

Well I saw the Twilight movies (on Super Ecran… you pay X a month and you get all the movies, as long as you don’t mind watching when THEY decide to show them… I wouldn’t have paid to watch those specifically). It was not very good. But then, who am I to criticize? Apparently I’m the only person in the world who liked The Last Airbender (sorry Rotten Tomatoes but there’s no way this is worse than Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen… no way).

Plus, I don’t know, it may be true of the tween fans, but I’m amazed at how many grown women eat this shit up.

A google image search of ‘twilight moms’ reveals (eventually) a motivational poster as a kind of take that. I don’t know if it’s nearly as ‘spot on’ as some would like to think, but it does mean you aren’t the only one.

I think it’s just a kind of mix from women who were into vampire stories when they were young girls, romance novel junkies, and anybody else who might even superficially identify with Bella. Personally, I shrug it off as ‘it takes all kinds’, even if it’s a bit uncomfortable.

I’m with Jenny.  Kids like all kinds of dumb stuff that they eventually outgrow, and if parents act like it is a problem, they will dig in just to be contrary about it.  And vampires are just sexy.  They always have been.  I can’t say I will ever read any Twilight - I tried to read Harry Potter once while babysitting and thought it was poorly written and easy to spot.  (And I read TONS of SF/F etc. from age 11 onward.) 

I’ll agree that it is depressing to think of the vast swathes of our culture that are totally patriarchally indoctrinated.  Particularly our own Taliban, which are legion. 

You know what I miss?  “The X Files” when it first came out and was really good.  There were a couple of vampire episodes that were full of smoky sexiness.  Plus, it was equal opportunity sexytime:  both Mulder and Scully got their own episodes, before they got together.

But I tried to rewatch it and couldn’t get into it.  Anyone want some boxed sets?

Plus, I don’t know, it may be true of the tween fans, but I’m amazed at how many grown women eat this shit up.

Including my sister, who is not some brainwahed Utah Mormon but an uber-liberal (I’m talking borderline Nader voter),  college-educated, vegetarian, atheist, and since 2005 a New Yorker. She told me she was “addicted” to the book series the last time I saw her. I couldn’t believe it.

Bitter Scribe—yep, especially Wuthering Heights. But all the Brontes and Austen could write, and their characters do more than simply fall in love, and are more than the sum of their hormones.

There used to be a 10 point list of instructions for writing a Harlequin, which I can’t turn up online, unfortunately. But there’s lots of critical treatments of this stuff: Radway’s “Reading the Romance” or Modleski’s “Loving with a Vengeance”.

I understand why teenage girls might like it and not be able to see the issues that you and other feminists might see. Maybe these young girls might have never been exposed to any other line of thinking other than the patriarchial one in their young lives.  As it is, as a late 20 something year old man, I didn’t really think much about feminism or the patriarchy until sometime in college and honestly, until I stumbled onto this site.  It’s certainly an eye and brain opener and I don’t know generally what young girls and young women’s exposure to feminist thought is, but I can tell you, as a straight white male, it is close to zero. And that’s rather unfortunate.
  And, as was expressed so eloquently by Amanda and other writers, the plot of the book is kind of exciting. It’s got good looking men, romance and excitement. After all, it’s entertainment and we don’t want to get too old fogey about it.  But, most teenagers (because we men like some stupid shit when we’re boys too) outgrow these fads and learn about respectful and equal relationships.
What I don’t understand is how grown women like it so much and how they appear to be squealing like…well, teenage girls, over the movie.  I would think that when a woman was grown and had kids, she would have figured out all the signals of an abusive relationship and be able to warn her daughter about it.  But, then again, men grow up and sometimes act like boys too.
I tried to read it because everyone on the train was reading it but aside from the issues you’ve all described, it wasn’t written too well.

I miss Buffy.

I take it you’ve seen one of the many images that have Edward Cullen with Buffy and/or Blade hovering in the background, with text something like “Twilight: How it Should Have Ended”.

But all the Brontes and Austen could write, and their characters do more than simply fall in love, and are more than the sum of their hormones.

Of, of course. A plastic wineglass can be patterned after a crystal goblet, but it’s still plastic.

Chiming in as someone who found parts of Twilight appealing on first reading (what can I say, they were simpler times) I have to agree - if Edward Cullen is the sparkly version of a vampire, Twilight is the sparkly version of a patriarchy.

Although I couldn’t articulate this at the time, I remember the way he ordered her around “for her own good” made me want to punch him in his perfect vampire face (well, *that* I could articulate, just not the thing about the patriarchy). Still, it didn’t prevent me from reading all three books, partly because I kept expecting Bella to grow a backbone. It was like Meyers kept writing in these little teasing hints of character growth then not following through. I wouldn’t be surprised if other readers were disappointed and repelled by the final book not only because of the weird vampire birth scene, but because we kept expecting a little more kick-assery and a little less deus ex machina, despite the evidence of the first two books. It’s really a feminist primer: no matter how sparkly the patriarchy might be, you just can’t win.

By the way, went back and re-read the first page of Twilight, and I can’t understand how different my standards for writing quality were a scant few years ago.

That was the impression I had too—that the whole phenomenon is really catering to a fantasy that someone out there actually cares about you, and feels feelings for you.  The fantasy of being wanted rather than the fantasy of doing something.

And make no mistake—this a huge draw for teenage girls, particularly the kind that read books and feel insecure and worry that no one would ever “choose them.” And as someone mentioned already, Meyer did make Bella a cipher—any girl could easily paste her face over Bella’s and trot off to have some hot vampire so madly in love with her that he’ll sit up and watch her sleep and try to read her thoughts.

From what I’ve read about it, it *is* porn. It’s like a porn primer. Tween girls started reading when Bella and Edward were pledging to remain abstinent and there’s nothing scary about that. There are no scary cocks, and they can safely masturbate to the fantasy without leaving a comfort zone. It starts off with urges and obsession and stupid rescue-the-damsel unrequited love and it ends in headboard-busting, black-out sex. So there’s a payoff there.

I still maintain that giving a little girl Twilight in the formative years of her sexuality is as responsible an act as weaning an infant on Yoo-Hoo.

Twilight is a harem anime for non-Japanese girls. In a typical harem anime, an average Japanese boy or girl (its usually called reverse harem if the main character is a girl) gets fawned over by attractive people of the opposite sex and often those of the same sex to. The lead of a harem anime is typically an average but nice, cheerful teen so that the readers can imagine themselves as the lead and live vicariously through the manga. Twilight serves the same function. The girls live vicariously through Bella because of her averageness as a character.

Generally, I think that criticism of media of questionable value tends to miss the forest for the trees. Most people are at least okay at telling fiction from reality and don’t take their cues on how real life should be from the books they read, music they listen to, video games they play, or movies and TV they watch. Its usually safe for people to read bad books, in terms of values and literary quality, like Twilight or play video games like Grand Theft Auto. People who can’t really distinguish between fiction and reality or take their cues in real life from fiction most likely need more serious help than that provided simply by media with a better values system behind it.

It’s not like there aren’t better books for that age category. The Hunger Games series for instance isn’t half bad. And I don’t think I need to name the series that started this whole craze in the first place.

Including my sister, who is not some brainwahed Utah Mormon but an uber-liberal (I’m talking borderline Nader voter), college-educated, vegetarian, atheist, and since 2005 a New Yorker. She told me she was “addicted” to the book series the last time I saw her. I couldn’t believe it.

While I can’t entirely understand the Twilight fangirls, I do know that sometimes people can enjoy truly atrocious crap of whatever form of media just because they like turning their brain off for a while.

I have almost all Jack Chalker’s books: I can point where he recycles plots, where one novel series has a purely gratuitous physical transformation scene that seems jammed in simply to appeal to his fan base who expect that from him, the parts that are meant to appeal to the teenage fanboy that are moderately to outrageously sexist, and so on.  Still, sometimes I’ll go read a few of the books just because sometimes I like mind-candy.

You can appreciate The Wire or Mad Men while still watching The Dukes of Hazzard or The A-Team.

With the VC Andrews books—-and I was right at that age and a reader, so I ate them right up—-my sense is that we delighted in the unbelievable perversity of it all.  You felt like you were getting away with something.  Plus, it’s a soap opera.  VC Andrews is a lot more like I imagine the books that True Blood are based on are like.  It was sort of the opposite of Twilight.  My girlfriends at that age would sneer at any books I had that weren’t stocked to the max with perversity.  Ordinary sex wouldn’t do.

People who can’t really distinguish between fiction and reality or take their cues in real life from fiction most likely need more serious help than that provided simply by media with a better values system behind it.

See, here’s the problem with this argument:

1) Grand Theft Auto is rated M. This means that you’re not supposed to play it until you’re 18. Now, I’m not naive. I know parents buy this game for their kids. But it’s not marketed at kids. It’s not in the “E for everyone” section of the store like Twilight is in the Young Adult section of Barnes & Nobles. It’s not advertised during 4Kids commercial breaks.

2) Grand Theft Auto is a fantasy that has very strict lines drawn. People play it because they can get away with stuff that they would go to jail or be executed for IRL. When you steal a car and run down pedestrians in the game, the vicarious thrill is because you will probably never, ever do such a thing in real life. This is a conscious understanding: the reason this is enjoyable in the game is because it allows you to do something that is foreign to you.

3) Twilight, however, is a fantasy that is set upon a very real foundation. No, there are no such things as vampires or werewolves, but there is such a thing as patriarchy. And worse yet, a lot of women, and even more young women don’t even know what it is or what it looks like. So while yes, sparkly crystaline vampires is a fantasy, and young girls reading the book are able to consciously point to that element of the book and declare “this is a fantasy. It’s not real. I know that there are no such thing as vampires,” but they aren’t looking at things like domestic violence, controlling/stalkerish behavior, and rape in the same critical, conscientious way. In fact, they’re eagerly absorbing that element of the story because it’s being packaged as “romance,” which is something that women are trained up to desire pretty much from the moment they’re verbal. This is a message that is already background noise to so much of our cultural narrative—from Disney Princesses to tabloids gushing about who’s found happiness (or heartache) with who. But with Twilight, this completely over-the-top, completely un-examined message is basically mainlined to girls as they are beginning to form their sexual and romantic identities. And I’m sorry, but that fucking scares the shit out of me.

What I don’t get is the entire vampire craze. What’s wrong with good, hairy werewolves?

You can appreciate The Wire or Mad Men while still watching The Dukes of Hazzard or The A-Team.

That’s the best explanation I’ve heard yet for her Twilight addiction.

Speaking of The Wire, I got Season One a month ago on DVD and I’m burning through the series. Halfway through Season Four, and goddamn, this is great television! If any of y’all out there haven’t seen it yet, buy the first season. Some of the best $50 you will ever spend.

Mighty Ponygirl at 80: I understand that the bad values that Twilight is based on are historical, well not historical because they are still present but I can’t think of a better word at this time, and have and continue to inflict a lot of damage on women and girls directly and men and boys indirectly. Still, I think that generally most girls and women who indulge in Twilight will emerge through unscathed and undamaged. I have faith in people to know the difference between fantasy and reality. The girls and women who can’t get through Twilight unscathed probably need some form of therapy rather than a book with better value system behind it.

As a teen mom, her vampire family takes care of everything, leaving her free to hang out on either a tropical island or her fairy-tale cottage, with nothing to do but occasionally play with her creepily perfect baby.  It does look like a pretty sweet deal.
Comment #63: Shaenon on 07/09 at 09:50 PM

Oh so that explains Bristol Palin.

I read about the first chapter and a half of the first book (it was the free Kindle sample from Amazon) just to test the water a little bit, and I see no need to read the rest of the series. I’ve heard enough about it from my friends that I know what happens. Bella is such a mind-numbingly dull, stuck-up, petty little blank slate I don’t think I could get through an entire book in her POV without large quantities of alcohol.

“Oh, I have to share a bathroom with my father, poor me!” “Oh no, I’m the new kid at school and everyone’ll be mean to me!” And then when everyone is ridiculously nice to her, “Why can’t these small-town hick kids leave me alone!” And when she learns about the Cullens, “Thank goodness I’m not the most interesting person here after all!” Except there’s nothing interesting about her. She’s unexceptional in every discernible way. Not only does she not have any talents, she doesn’t even have interests.

I can see how a lot of bored young girls (and their mothers) would project themselves into Bella’s place without any inconvenient characterization getting in the way, but she’s probably the most thoroughly unlikeable narrator of any book I can recall trying to read.

To add to Mighty Ponygirl and Lee’s discussion - when we turn our brains off and enjoy, generally that means that thinking critically about whatever we’re enjoying would ruin it. So our enjoyment doesn’t stem from liberal, feminist values, it stems from the comfortable old tropes we’re fed by the world around us while we’re growing up.

So I sort of agree with both of you. For most people reading Twilight the conditioning is already in place.  Someone who is consciously turning their brain off probably will be least affected, since they’re already aware of the banal evil that is Twilight culture. For others, though, I can see how it just provides more reinforcement for keeping one’s awareness switch in the “off” position; banal evil is so comforting when that’s what you’ve grown up with. Twilight is not exactly going to destroy anyone’s life, though.

Is this Amanda’s first “What’s gotten into kids these days?” moment?

Uh-oh: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0J9s50G-veg (just the first seconds)

55, a lot of girls at my university love Twilight. I hear people talking about it quite often. Unfortunately.

The “Are Mormons Christians?” question is a strange one. Mormons certainly believe that they are, though I’ve had Mormon friends tell me that the Church has emphasized this in recent years so as to seem less weird and different to potential new converts, whereas in the past, the LDS Church made no such attempt to be socially mainstream.

And many, if not most, Evangelical/Catholic/Mainline Protestant Christians do not consider them Christians, as Mormons do not believe in the Trinity, and therefore do not believe that Christ is in fact *part of* God.

Perhaps a relatively minor theological squabble. But there’s certainly enough cultural differences that Mitt Romney seriously downplayed his religion to appeal to the evangelicals and Catholics. I’ve gone to evangelical churches and heard statements in sermons likening Mormons with Muslims and other “infidels”. But the Mormons sure want the cultural acceptance that comes with being Christian.

The Trinity, together with the belief of the Bible as the only Holy Scripture, is the key to being Christian. If you don’t believe in both those things, you’re not a Christian.

Self-identifying ? Please! If we went by that, then Lybdon LaRouche would be a liberal Democrat!

Er, Lyndon LaRouche.

And to be clear, I’m a Deist, not a Christian, but its a little unfair to compare any kind of Christianity to the insanity that is Mromonism. Christianity was, at one time, a progressive force in history, whereas Mormonism has never been. It’s always been reactionary. It was backwards even for the 19th Century and it’s even more backwards and regressive now.

My sympathies, AOM.  Then again, we’re flyover country and coasts tend to get/do things long before it hits here.

Hi all had to chime in here when I heard Amanda wondering about the True Blood series. I recently read the first True Blood book Dead Until Dark at the beach the other day. It was an interesting take on the whole vampire thing better than Twilight from what I have heard since I have never read the books and can’t even try to but Amanda hit the nail on the head about the True series. I don’t see myself picking up another one but was curious about what the fuss was about at least with True Blood. I do wonder why all the fuss with vampires lately? I remember when they were not sexy but downright scary.

I think part of the huge rush to novels about vampires, werewolves, et al. is because we are in an anti-feminist backlash moment.  Actual live human boys are treating young women fairly horribly, and instead of writing about that, we get non-human boys with all sorts of pathological behaviors. 

I used to read female private detective novels (Sue Grafton, Linda Barnes…) as “my” escapist genre of choice.  But they sort of died out.  The already successful series continued, but few new ones began.  What started showing up were very similar characters in a paranormal world.  Both the Anita Blake and Sookie Stackhouse series started out in the mystery section of the bookstore.  I asked a writer about this and she said that the social-justice-fighter feminist PI just wasn’t feeling socially relevant.  So in the new millenium, Nancy Drew started fucking vampires and solving mysteries where the evil doers weren’t human.

OK, I guess you all aren’t old enough to remember Dark Shadows which I suggested earlier.  It was billed as a soap opera on in the 3 or 3:30 p.m. time slot - tons of tween and teen girls rushed home form school to watch it, their moms waiting with milk, cookies and talk of the show, as I remember. 

1) Could it be that some moms old enough to have seen or even be vaguely familiar with it are reliving a bit of their youth?

2) Could it be one of the few things moms and teen/tween girls can bond over?

3) For those bringing up the Brontes, DS had tons of references and outright ripoffs of their plots.

A completely offhand response but my girlfriend tells me women dig it because the main female love interest character is in fact the main character and its about sexual tension. You want what you can’t have etc and instead of being the person to whom the main character has to jump through hoops to penetrate the boy toy has to jump through hoops to get to her. I didn’t really understand that distinction but there you go. From what I read on wikipedia I reckon the next director will be David Cronenberg but there you go. 

I’ll link this post from pajiba that was a review of the last film that i thought was insightful and the companion piece that explains how worse things have happened and how its obviously so successful when the majority of films are for boys aged 12 -40. http://www.pajiba.com/film_reviews/twilight-review.php and http://www.pajiba.com/seriously_random_lists/how-twilight-doesnt-signal-the-end-of-cultural-civilization.php

Is this Amanda’s first “What’s gotten into kids these days?” moment?

Well, you know, once someone’s starts heading for their mid-30s it’s inevitable.  First it’s the books, then the TV shows and movies, then it’s the music.  Followed shortly by the fashion.  The phrases “Back when I was…” and “Kids these days don’t understand that…” will start showing up in regular use, and after that’s there’s nothing tp look forward save for talking about walking both ways uphill in the desert heat to school, where you spent 16 hours a day studying, dammit, and this was before the invention of that new-fangled “air conditioning” contraption so you sat there in the stifling heat and you liked it, dammit, and people had plain text emails that only went to computers and phones were for talking on, not sending pictures or twittering.

Yep, only a matter of time…

I read the first book because I am in no way fantasy genre, vampire, sci-fi, etc. averse and it was the crappiest thing I’ve read in quite some time.
But I do feel that anything that gets people to schlep out to Forks, WA and in the (nearest major airport city) Seattle area spending $$ for things with “Twilight” on them is a good thing in this economy.
I just have to laugh at it or grit my teeth when my aunt brings it up.

While I understand that the Bella character is seriously disturbing (disturbed?) from a feminist point of view, I think that the fact that the stalker/abuser is a vampire is somewhat balancing the message. It clearly associates stalking and abuse with an evil creature.
But I haven’t seen the movies nor read the books, and I’m not planning to do so in the foreseeable future, so maybe it’s worse than I would think.
Most of us have unhealthy attractions to things we know to be potentially nefarious, it is the eternal theme of Faust and Mephisto.

@ ArtOfMe #88:

55, a lot of girls at my university love Twilight. I hear people talking about it quite often. Unfortunately.

I teach English literature and have found Twilight references (as part of discussions of romance plots and gender/genre norms) to get big laughs.  Whether women love it or love to hate it, they overwhelmingly know about it.

Actually, what Danica #99 says is worrying much more than the objectionable subtext: that a crappy book and its lame adaptation to the screen is transformed into a huge cultural phenomenon.
Will this spiraling towards poorer and poorer taste ever end?

@ Bernard SG #100:

I think that the fact that the stalker/abuser is a vampire is somewhat balancing the message. It clearly associates stalking and abuse with an evil creature.

But the “stalker/abuser” is also the fantasy boyfriend/mentor/protector.  That’s part of the problem.

Romance novels seem to have moved on quite a bit—I haven’t read one for years—but this is the original classic formula, and I really wonder if the author hasn’t just deliberately borrowed it.

I was looking through the romance section a big used bookstore and remembered an entire series that I’d forgotten from the 1980s called “Second Chance at Love.”  Harlequin came up with a whole line of books that were incredibly innovative for the time because—get this—the heroine wasn’t a young virgin!  She was in her 30s, and was either widowed or divorced.

It’s hard to explain what a huge change in the genre that series was and it opened the genre up in a huge way.  That’s why actual romance genre fans scorn the Twilight series, the same way that actual mystery fans scorn The DaVinci Code.  It uses 30-year-old tropes to tell a story so cliched that it would get tossed in the circular file if you sent it to a genre publisher like Avon or Signet, but it can be a huge success with people who don’t actually know anything about the genre.

Phylosopher, the average teen girl’s GRANDMOTHER watched Dark Shadows. I’m 42. My mother watched it while pregnant with me. (it accounts for that extra i in my name) I watched the entirity of it when Sci-Fi was running it, back when the channel was new. I also watched the reboot with Ben Cross.

At least Dark Shadows was interestng. Josette/her modern incarntion had enemies, had to deal with things and would never be “driven to the airport with the windows rolled down.” (I didn’t know airport windows rolled down) And Barnabas wanted to be human, fought to become human, and never stalked or harmed the woman he loved.

@94, East of Weston, the Anita Blake novels were better BEFORE she got into the sex. I’m at the end of a binge because Narcissus in Chains is killing me.

Paranormal is a hot hot hot genre right now. Even vampires, which last year were “totally over” in romance circles are still surging. A lot of readers are burning out on vamps and weres. though. I think angels/nephilim will be the next big things.

And Mnemosyne, what you said. 

I’d have eaten Twilight with a spoon at 15. At 42, I’m just disgusted with the yearning for martyrdom that Bella has and I shared at that age. I think it’s a religious thing.

@ FlipYrWhig “But the “stalker/abuser” is also the fantasy boyfriend/mentor/protector.  That’s part of the problem.”

This is the central problem for me. In fact, it’s the whole problem. There isn’t really an ‘also’ that I can see, but an IS. Vampires in the Twilight series aren’t ‘evil’, they are SUPER AWESOME BADASSES.  Stalking and abuse isn’t stalking and abuse, it’s the natural jealousy that happens when the guy is soooo into you he can’t see straight (bonus points because Bella managed to snare such a super awesome dude who is so cool and a bit dangerous! But not really dangerous to you!  Except by accident!  He can’t help it and would never WANT to hurt you!)

Then there’s the fact that OMG no-one else understands Bella. I really don’t think that that is the kind of thing that needs reinforcing for people who are in/could easily fall into abusive relationships like this.

I’ve read two of the books and watched the three movies out so far and am about to start forcing myself through the third book. Perhaps it is a little nutty because reading/watching Twilight stuff leaves me feeling sick and shaky but I feel like it’s something I HAVE to do because I can’t defend myself from the people who insist on enjoying it uncritically if I can’t find calm ways of expressing my dislike and explaining why they need to stop trying to convince me it’s good. No one reacts well to you bursting into tears and yelling at them to stop drinking from the poison well.

For all intents and purposes I was Bella between the ages of fourteen and about twenty. When I was a self-esteemless asshole who was kind of obliviously shitty to the actual great people in my life because I was panting after my super-awesome-dangerous-but-not-to-you-(intentionally, anyway! he’s dangerous remember! price you pay for hanging with the cool crowd and all that!) bad dude boyfriend.

I think the most painful parts for me are the weak moments when Bella ‘asserts’ herself. It’s not real assertiveness, it’s acquiescing while maintaining a veneer of independence. When Bella DOES get her own way, it’s because that way was pretty much the way it was going to go anyway except this way there’s an easy out for her not to see precisely how fucked up the whole situation is. She asserted herself!  She is a strong woman!  She did it with humour because she alone knows how to talk to and tame the savage beast!

Bella’s creepy superiority-inferiority is the one real parallel I see with the Buffy series. It’s just never explored, or even acknowledged, just like all the other bad shit which is the real problem with it.  It’s presented not just uncritically, but in a hidden way that tracks almost perfectly with messages we get in real life from real abusers and from ourselves when we’re deep in those situations.  I don’t think that people are putting themselves in her place because she’s an empty shell (and I don’t think that everyone who likes it is doing thit because my friends and I read/watch for the bad writing/terrible acting which is the only way I can get through it safely and I know there are plenty of people who can enjoy it and understand the problems with it) but that they, like Bella, are semi-ERASING their own personalities by counting traits instead, which is super teenage behaviour and usually results in exactly the kind of self-isolating asshole behaviour that Bella engages in over and over again. Bella is a) clumsy b) smart c) in love with Edward.  And that’s it, forever.  She can’t ever be not smart, or an asshole, or anything else ever, even for a second, because that’s not part of her identity. Which means that even when she is CLEARLY BEING those things, she’s not.

I know that my incredibly strong aversion to the series personally is not necessarily a reason that they’re actually as bad as I think they are but.. they frighten me so much. I’ve never had such a violent reaction to anything. I’ve reconsidered friendships with certain people who like the series SO MUCH because their enjoyment of it is terrifying to me. I CANNOT EXPRESS how much these books are NOT OKAY and how just typing this completely directionless and totally muddled comment is turning me into a wreck!  I’m meant to be working!  This is patently ridiculous!  But I just want to grab everyone by the lapels and scream at them to stop, KEEP AWAY, DANGER DANGER.

Nice little essay. I like the way you brought it around to a sophisticated analysis at the end. Fortunately, I know nothing about this Twilight thing. I have a teenaged daughter though. I’ll ask her about it later, you know sometime in the early afternoon when she’s finally awake, and see what she thinks. As far as I know she’s never read the books or seen the movies, but I suspect this could be one of those “how little parents know” things. We’ll see.

The girls and women who can’t get through Twilight unscathed probably need some form of therapy rather than a book with better value system behind it.

Lee, you’re making a lot of fundamental errors here.

First of all, you’re arguing the koo-koo bananas dichotomy of mental illness: that someone is either so completely fucked up in the head that only intense therapy and medication can resolve it, OR, they are completely 100% sane and unassailable by cultural influences and tropes that are regressive or harmful. NOT TRUE.

Second, you’re arguing that mental illness is something that IS or ISN’T. While it’s true that there is often a genetic predisposition requirement for mental illnesses (like so many things), it does not exist in a vacuum. If you are submerged in a culture that tacitly reinforces domestic violence, female subservience, and the sublimation of the female identity to the all-important goal of “having a man around to take care of you,” you have the precursors trained up in you for a book like Twilight to be the kill shot.

Third, you’re somehow waving off the downright obsession that a lot of tween- and teen- girls have with the series AGAIN, in the formative years of their sexuality and romantic identities. This is HUGE. A lot of people want to believe that they always had shit figured out forever, the moment they started on the path to critical thinking, but this isn’t the case. Your tween-teen years are periods where you are figuring out who you are, what you like, and what you want in life, and sometimes you aren’t as rigorous about vetting bullshit as you think you are. And while you might not come out of Twilight by your rigorous standards of mental illness, I don’t know that a lot of girls are going to come out “unscathed.” And if you’re obsessed with Twilight to the point where you and your friends have reading circles and you have posters of Twilight up on your wall and you go to the movies in Team Edward shirts, then I’m sorry but Twilight is probably influencing your development as a romantic and sexual human being. Even if you don’t end up knocked up at 18 and handing over your life to some guy, you’re going to have huge blinders to male controlling behavior because so much of you ate that shit up a few years ago under the guise of “romance.” If your boyfriend hits you, you’re much more likely to wave it off as something he did out of uncontrollable jealousy because he loves you that much. If you do get knocked up by some guy you’re convinced you’re in love with, you’re probably more likely to believe that .... what was the line my friend quoted to me a few days ago… “It wasn’t just a child, it was his child. Not a choice, a necessity.” (vomit).

sometimes you aren’t as rigorous about vetting bullshit as you think you are.

To wit, a lot of libertarianism is born and bred in high school because it requires that selfish, self-absorbed mindset. Not a lot of people reading Atlas Shrugged after 20 feel the need to run off an become objectivists. But people who read it in high school/early college are much more likely to become lifelong assho… I mean, objectivists.

To make matters worse - this dude who used to be vice president of focus on the family just wrote a book about how good the Twilight series is for tweens and teens.  According to this dude, parents that are concerned about the use of vampires and werewolves in the books (Witchcraft! Satanism!) can put their worries aside because at its heart, Twlight is just reinforcing the Christian patriarchial mindset.  Which is a good thing according to this dude.  hooray!

I’m an adult woman who definitely has trouble with a lot of big Hollywood movies on feminist grounds (Knocked Up was upsetting and Superbad was like… just outrageously misogynistic in my opinion, made me incapable of enjoying the movie as a whole despite some parts that would otherwise have been funny) and I like the Twilight movies. (Haven’t bothered with the books—I’ve had friends read excerpts to me and the writing is embarrassingly bad…)

For what it’s worth, I think Bella is actually a kind of interesting character. She’s darker and moodier than girls in these big teen films usually are, and presented as being adventurous, something of a tomboy, and not at all interested in her looks. (Of course, she’s also presented as just “naturally” beautiful… But as the female star of a big Hollywood movie of course she’ll be beautiful.) She drives a beat-up truck; she’s something of a loner (very unusual to find in a female teen lead I think isn’t it?)... She’s even learns how to repair motorcycles! In general in the series I think she’s presented as being *physically* brave. Her “special power” is interesting too—her mind can’t be read, and she isn’t subject to “mind control” either. I would say that she’s also presented as more sexually aggressive, less capable of sexual restraint, than her “boyfriend,” though obviously this isn’t unambiguously a feminist message as it can play into patriarchal myths and fears too…

As for the vampire guy: honestly, he’s embarrassing. *Kind of* reminded me of Edward Scissorhands (the character not the film obviously!) in his manners except that of course that was all deliberate weirdness/quirkiness whereas this Edward (that’s his name right?) just seems like a spaz. It’s painful to watch… But I guess I’ve gotten somewhat good at taking what I like and leaving the rest (otherwise I could never watch blockbusters). The second movie does make pretty obvious that the werewolf (Sam?) is the “healthier” romantic choice for Bella. But I can’t be the only person who’s ever chosen the wrong guy—especially at age, what, 18?!?

I’m not saying there are no problems with the films from a feminist perspective (!); it goes without saying that there are a multitude. But I find those in most if not all Hollywood films. Especially ones about teenagers, maybe. (But at least this isn’t another make-over movie…)

Wasn’t the original battlestar Galactica series written by a Mormon?  Maybe Mormons are good at creating popfiction.

The whole Mormon christian thing is kind of funny, I spend a lot of time in southern Utah and Mormans really do see themselves as christians, and in fact most of them really think Mitt Romney is a viable candidate because they think Christians will vote for him.  In some ways it sort of reminds me of conservetives that thought people who supported Hillary Clinton would also support Sarah Palin; for the most part they were wrong.

I saw Eclipse(I don’t have air conditioning and the theatre does) and I think someone early in the thread hit the appeal of these movies.  Bella is completely boring and really needy yet everyone wants her, for so many people that feel they are going through life unnoticed the idea that a nerd can have an entire battle fough over them is probably appealing. 

I do like how they do the werewolves in the movie, making them big dogs is more fun than the scary lookiing Likens.

I agree that these books and movies are awful, yet have kind of enjoyed them. I’ve spent a lot of time trying to figure out the appeal. My thoughts:

My friends and I joke that the pages of these books are laced with crack.  That’s the only explanation for why, despite the crappy writing and offensive sexual politics, we could not put these books down.  Despite the lack of plot, I kept staying up way too late reading to find out what would happen next.  I could go on and on with critiques, most of which have already been touched on in this thread, but still I found these books strangely absorbing.

I think a lot of people have hit on elements of Twilight’s appeal. There’s stuff going on beyond the offensive sexual politics: It’s the fantasies- of being eternally young and beautiful and rich and having superpowers; of having an awesomely “perfect” boy obsessively in love with you; actually that’s two different kinds of “perfect” boys in love with you and fighting over you.  There’s this drawn out passionate romantic/ sexual longing, which has a certain appeal.  I agree with Freely; I liked Bella’s dark moodiness.  That really spoke to me now (in my late 30’s) and I’m sure would have really spoken to me as a teenager.  I also like how, especially in the movies, Bella is kind of a tomboy, and wears jeans and plaid shirts etc.
Also, the books are very frank that Bella is physically attracted to Edward; the books go on and on about how beautiful* Edward is.  I don’t think our culture acknowledges enough that women are physically attracted to men. The fact that men operate on physical attraction is taken for granted, but we’re told that women care about stability, a good provider, personality, etc. So it may be appealing to fans to have story where the girl’s attraction to the boy is based so much on his looks.

Also, at this point, I think the fan base includes some very tongue in cheek, love-to-hate-it fans.

*He’s described as cold, hard like marble and sparkly- which I don’t find remotely attractive, but Bella and other fans seem to find soooooooo beautiful.

I saw Eclipse(I don’t have air conditioning and the theatre does) and I think someone early in the thread hit the appeal of these movies.  Bella is completely boring and really needy yet everyone wants her, for so many people that feel they are going through life unnoticed the idea that a nerd can have an entire battle fough over them is probably appealing.

Twilight is the Transformers movies for women.

I do wonder why all the fuss with vampires lately? I remember when they were not sexy but downright scary.

Vampires have been sexy, or at least sexual, for as long as they’ve been in the popular awareness. The granddaddy of them all, Dracula, brought the sexy with unrestrained, sensual, shameless vampire women who lived with the Count and hunted children—and with Lucy Westenra who appeared from her tomb with scarlet lips and a blatantly allegorical sexual predatoriness.

Back in the day, vampires were scary *because* they were sexy.

just as I never understood people thinking “every breath you take” is a romantic love song.

Twilight always seemed to me to be a blatant retread of Inuyasha.

Inuyasha at least didn’t take itself seriously, and would poke fun at some of the more unsettling implications of the story. 

Wouldn’t Twilight be immeasurably improved if Edward had to wear a necklace that would make him collapse in excruciating agony any time Bella yelled “Sit, boy!”?

(And how pathetic is it when American media manages to out-sexist freaking Japan?)

Also, “My Will” beats the crap out of anything on the Twilight soundtrack.

Oh so that explains Bristol Palin.

I’ve noticed a recent shift in the religious right’s rhetoric about teenage sex; the call for abstinence seems to be giving way to a romanticization of teen marriage and teen motherhood, as long as the kids involved are nice middle-class white conservative Christians.  Maybe it’s the natural result of framing abortion and homosexuality as the only mortal sins (if not having babies is evil, having babies must be good, right?), maybe it reflects the increasing influence of the Mormon church and the far-right Christian patriarchy movement on conservative social politics, but whatever it is, it’s disturbing.

I always knew Inuyasha was barely-coded porn for girls, but then I got hired to edit the manga, and one of the chapter titles in my first volume translated literally as “Tetsusaiga’s Accidental Discharge.”

Tetsusaiga, of course, is Inuyasha’s enormous banana-shaped sword that grows when he takes it out and it’s hairy at the base and HOLY CRAP I LOVE JAPAN.

Vampires have been sexy, or at least sexual, for as long as they’ve been in the popular awareness. The granddaddy of them all, Dracula, brought the sexy with unrestrained, sensual, shameless vampire women who lived with the Count and hunted children—and with Lucy Westenra who appeared from her tomb with scarlet lips and a blatantly allegorical sexual predatoriness.

Back in the day, vampires were scary *because* they were sexy.

Enh…more the adaptations.

The real graddaddy was Varney, and he was of the classic European actual stinking completely unsexy walking corpse type of vampire.

For Dracula, the brides were never a huge part of the way people thought about the story until the movies.  Once you get to the movies and modern novels you get a clear progression.  Lugosi made them nattily dressed and classy.  Hammer Films brought out the sex appeal, not so much with Christopher Lee as with the women in the franchise; Dracula as a supernatural Hugh Hefner, basically.  Anne Rice brought us the self-absorbed goth angsting.  And Frank Langella gave us the pretty-boy woobie Dracula who really only wants to be loved.

“You can’t be Christian and not believe in the traditional doctrine of the Trinity.”

I’ll be sure to inform the Unitarians of this fact, I’m sure they’d love to know they’ve been mistaken all this time.

Rather than talking to gay columnists and other critics, perhaps you, Amanda, should, OH, I DON’T KNOW, talk to some of the FANS themselves.

I know, it’s radical, and you’d have to exert yourself, but there it is.

The echo-chamber of this kinda thing, columnists quoting columnists, is just absurd.

I’ll be sure to inform the Unitarians of this fact

Considering you can be both a committed atheist and a Unitarian these days, I would say the original statement was valid.

Unitarianism is for agnostics who feel the need to go somewhere on Sunday mornings, and have coffee afterwards.

I find it interesting to watch how her mother is presented.  She’s a classic man-pleaser, and you see how well that turns out for her, but it’s because she made bad decisions on whom to please.  She rejects Bella’s father, who is a “good guy,” and ends up with some unpleasant self-centered shitty ballplayer.

Bella is the “second chance” women wish they had, to hook up with the weird guy who ended up rich.  It’s not the man-pleasing that’s the problem, it’s the man you choose to please.

So I think the attraction to adult women is, at least in part, “if I knew then what I know now” kind of thing.  Echoed in the sagacity of the vampires because they live so long yet remain young-looking.

Why it’s vampires and werewolves and not, I dunno, mermen or space aliens… that I can’t explain. 
Comment #31: FlipYrWhig on 07/09 at 08:09 PM

Vampires == “cool,” ectomorphs; werewolves == “hot,” mesomorphs.  Those are the two physical types valued in high school.  Endomorphs are teh fattiez, no one wants them sexually, they are the clown who is funny for eating the most.

I suppose that’s part of the appeal: you can be really boring and a loner, but everyone actually loves you.
Comment #48: Caren-Sun-blocking Creator of Animorphic Pancakes on 07/09 at 09:05 PM

Bella is James Dean?

Wait, wait, wait, wait….. just had a flashback….does anybody else remember Dark Shadows??? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Shadows
Comment #58: phylosopher on 07/09 at 09:33 PM

I’ll not see, but raise you*, with Hammer Films.

*you either see or raise someone in poker.  The dramatic movie “I’ll see your five and raise you five…THOUSAND” is incorrect poker parlance.  According to poker players I know, anyway.

But, THANK YOU for introducing me to Garland Gray, he’s terrific.

Shaenon your @120 comment made me LOL - I knew there was a reason I liked Inuyasha….

“Wouldn’t Twilight be immeasurably improved if Edward had to wear a necklace that would make him collapse in excruciating agony any time Bella yelled “Sit, boy!”?”
Unless she started using it out of spite, as Kagome was so fond of doing…

The Mormon angle is a really important factor in the success of the Twilight novels, but not in the way that generally gets mentioned. There are plenty of other, better books that have the hallmarks of an effective teen romance: the “cipher” main character, ubiquitous descriptions of “perfect” romantic partners, etc. . . However, those other novels don’t have the express support of the religious right publishing arm.

What you get is a teen romance novel that is heavily pushed by churches as a “safe alternative”. Those girls who wouldn’t normally have given a damn about Twilight then read it because all of their Christian friends have done so. It’s success in Christian circles was just enough to provide a critical cultural mass that allowed it to gain success in broader mainstream culture.

In a sense this is a good thing. It’s a book that is succeeding despite it’s anti-feminist, disturbingly creepy attributes, not because of them. I imagine that books like Harry Potter will have cultural relevance far longer than Twilight. Give it 20 years, and the Harry Potter movies (the 3rd especially) will be showing on television, while Twilight will be a long forgotten franchise.

If I’m remembering correctly, Dracula wasn’t seen as all that attractive in the original Bram Stoker novel. He was described as being a tall old man with a moustache. That wasn’t even sexy by 1890s standards.

Dracula starts out as an old man, but rejuvenates over the course of the novel as he feeds.  And you can’t tell me that the brides, or the fates of Lucy and Mina, aren’t all about sex.

“Unitarianism is for agnostics who feel the need to go somewhere on Sunday mornings, and have coffee afterwards.”

Um, ‘Unitarian Universalists’ are completely different from the group called simply ‘Unitarians’.

I always knew Inuyasha was barely-coded porn for girls

Also gay boys.  Yum.

I don’t hate Twilight because I hate so-called girly things, as some people claim is the basis for Twilight hate. No, I hate Twilight because it’s bad.

Why it’s vampires and werewolves and not, I dunno, mermen or space aliens… that I can’t explain.

Biting fetish.  Um, I mean…I don’t know why either.  (14 year old me + LJ Smith’s books being quietly swept under the rug.  Nothing to see here people.)

Speaking as someone who currently has her ass on the line flirting with TWO different guys, a little bit of someone finding me irresistible sounds nice right about now.  Then I boot up Dragon Age: Origins and let Zev & Al take turns with my Warden.  Shaddup, the writing is better, and there’s a lot less of that creepy virginity fetish business.  Plus, the protagonist gets to save the world and slay the big dragon!

Meanwhile, if either of these two guys wanted to give me a sign… This is the last time I let Twitter play Cupid, it’s too mind-shatteringly slow.

(oh wait…gooooooaaaaaaaaaaal! Godless is getting her groove back.  Have a good weekend ya’ll.)

*He’s described as cold, hard like marble and sparkly- which I don’t find remotely attractive, but Bella and other fans seem to find soooooooo beautiful.

Sometimes when I read a book, no matter what the description of the character, I’ll substitute an actor or somebody else I might know in my mind. And I wouldn’t be surprised others might be doing it here, too.

And now with Pattinson, it’s even easier to substitute. There isn’t a makeup job in the world that can make him appear ‘cold, hard like marble and sparkly’. He looks like a dude with sunken eyes and an aversion to getting a tan.

I am so late to the party, commenting at this point is well….pointless. BUT, I will anyways.

Twilight taught me an important thing: the fact that I hate my job, even though no one is mean or unreasonable is justified because all of the women there, a 30 yr old, 37 yr old and a 55 yr old (plus our student worker who is 21) were all over the moon about twilight and the 30 year old (my peer) and the student worker went to the midnight showings of all the movies thus far (not together, that would be creepy). Gross…I’ve talked about the anti-feminist, pro-abusive relationship aspects of the franchise and they consider me Debbie Downer (oh, and all three have or are going through divorces with crappy, borderline abusive men).

Now, I actually had to read Twilight. Why? Because I was the Youth Group leader at my church (UU) and so many of the girls (and gay boys) were into it. We’ve had some really good discussions about Twilight, especially the abusive aspects and how its okay to want to be wanted, to want fantasy, but the marriage at 18 thing, the stalking, the controlling behaviors, the shaming her for having sexual feelings (which Edward does) are all red flags that dude is bad news. My youth group kids like to dis Twilight now because its so over the top anyway. The ladies at work, totally uninterested in examining their own pro-patriarchy training which quite frankly makes them all divorcees and bitter. The 30 yr old got married at 19 while in college!!! Blew my mind when I learned that, entire youth wasted on a total asshole—and of course, I ask, whose parents would allow their college freshman daughter to get married in the first place? Right, people from the rural South.The 37 year old is divorcing her husband (he never worked throughout her marriage and sabatoged her birth control) who is now abusing drugs and alcohol—she finally kicked him out, but now besides supporting her three kids she has to find subsidized day care and manage the house, work and try to finish her college degree. The 55 yr old was in an abusive relationship for decades, but mustered the self-esteem to divorce him when her last kid was graduating high school. The fact that none of them can take their individual experiences and tie it to the psycho relationship in Twilight really just shows are close “perfect” relationships according to pop culture and abusive relationship are—really, “perfect” relations all really seem to be like the grooming stages of abuser’s con. Gross.

“and of course, I ask, whose parents would allow their college freshman daughter to get married in the first place?”

It seems unfair to blame the parents.  It’s a sign of the degenerate times in which we live that even female offspring stop being property at 18.  You can’t even kidnap your adult daughter and attempt to coerce an abortion when the pregnancy is the result of an interracial relationship anymore.

Okay, how about, who throws a $20,000 wedding for their 18 year old daughter? Better? If her parents had said, hey its okay to have sex before marriage and to be in a long-term relationship, but maybe you should wait for marriage until after college is finished. I’m sorry I phrased it like they really had the ability/right to control her. I meant, they thought getting married at 18, spending $20,000 to do it was way better than pre-marital sex. I think that’s fucked up. Parents do have quite a bit of influence on their children, btw—especially when you respect their opinions, which she does.

To Anelia back up at #105 - hey, I resemble that remark agewise.  Seriously, some families have longer generations. MY own CHILDREN, not grandchildren, are currently barely tweens, yet I remember my contemporaries being DS fans in jr high -  sooooo…..

I’ll not see, but raise you*, with Hammer Films.

*you either see or raise someone in poker.  The dramatic movie “I’ll see your five and raise you five…THOUSAND” is incorrect poker parlance.  According to poker players I know, anyway.
Comment #125: oldfeminist on 07/10 at 03:48 PM

Not familiar with those by name, but if they were on “Creature Features,” which, back then, was on the only latenight channel.  Yes, children back before cable, there were only 3 national channels, one local and PBS the last two of which WENT OFF THE AIR at 10 p.m.  Then came UHF. 

So, late night babysitters watched Creature Features sometimes with a host named Svenguli. Great combination - shudder.  (It was that or talking head “serious” talk shows.)  I don’t know who did the horror films on CF - they were usually B&W;and seemed older, like ‘30-s and ‘40’s?  Sorry, I didn’t watch credits then.

Why it’s vampires and werewolves and not, I dunno, mermen or space aliens… that I can’t explain.

Biting fetish.  Um, I mean…I don’t know why either.  (14 year old me + LJ Smith’s books being quietly swept under the rug.  Nothing to see here people.)

NO, biting fetish may be correct, sort of.  Some researchers are happy to point out that there is some relationship between succubi/incubi and vampires - with vampires being not explicitly sexual in the act, but still taking in the victims life force.

Vampire= succubi/incubi Jehovah’s Witness version????

“Okay, how about, who throws a $20,000 wedding for their 18 year old daughter? Better?”

Immensely.

In case your interested, and you might actually find it interesting since you live more or less in the nabe, essentially Brooklyn Heights in this case, which is not where we live, but where my daughter hangs out; anyway, I asked her about Twilight and she said she had never read the books or seen the movies. Why not? Heard they were bad. Bad how? Bad as literature. And idiotic Christian propaganda (warms my heart to see all my sacrifices living in this hellhole pay off in great education for the kids).  Do any of your friends read them? A few. Why? They’re addictive. Page turners.

#47
Wow.
I either did not have good reading comprehension back in the day, or I had super messed up ideas about the notion of “consent”.

Don’t feel bad.  As I remember it, Cathy goes on about “Oh, I wanted it too.  If he wanted it that much.” And afterward, Christ throws himself at her feet and sobbingly apologizes.  It’s much more of a rape fantasy than an actual rape.  (Later on, Chris and Cathy move out to the country where they can act out the fantasy of themselves as a loving husband and wife.) When Hollywood did the movie, they cut the rape scene out because it grossed the audience out so much.

But getting back to the subject at hand, yeah, vampires are much less scary than real life.  Think about it; the Cullens live in a fabulous home, they never have to work (except for Dr. Cullen, and only because he likes it), they have all the latest gadgets and the most fashionable clothes, they’re beautiful, they’re strong and super fast, they’re envied, they have their wonderful true loves forever, and they never have to leave high school*, so you never have to deal with frightening questions like “What about college?  What about my career?” When you become a vampire, you never get old, you never get ill, plus you become even lovelier (everyone remarks how much more “beautiful” Bella becomes when she turns) and you get superpowers like mind reading or predicting the future.  Best of all, you don’t have to deal with coffins or garlic or sunlight dissolving you; you just get “sparkly”.

Like others have said, it’s a pretty sweet deal.  If you had to be the high school nerd who worked a paper hat job and lived in a shack for eternity, nobody would want to be you.

*Going to high school for a hundred years would be like 10,000 years of Hell to me, but hey, that’s just me.

I think angels/nephilim will be the next big things.

Ahem.

Sandman Slim.

The “hero” (and I use that term very loosely) crawls out of hell with a knife that sometimes doesn’t kill, a coin that tells the truth if it wants, and the Key to the Room with Thirteen Doors.  And a majorly pissed attitude at the guy who put him in hell.

*Going to high school for a hundred years would be like 10,000 years of Hell to me, but hey, that’s just me.
Comment #146: Blue Jean on 07/11 at 12:56 AM

Again, I think this feeds the “if I knew then what I know now” thing.  If you could go to a new high school, and know how to deal with everyone, and have the option to kill the ones you can’t control or avoid, and have lots of money as well, it might be a lot sweeter.

all this talk about whether Mormons are christians is sort of like the movie…bad fiction

jike7E: I’m pretty sure that Dracula getting younger with more blood was an invention of the Coppola movie. I remember that in the book he started off looking like an old man and remained an old man until the end. I haven’t read Dracula since for nearly fifteen years so I could be wrong about this.

  The funny thing about Inuyasha is how the fan demographics for it are different outside of Japan than in Japan. In Japan, Inuyasha was aimed at elementary to high school aged boys. It was serialized in Shonen Sunday.* Shonen means boy. Outside of Japan, its seems that main demographic are middle and high school aged girls. At least in the United States and Canada. Don’t know about elsewhere.

*Inuyasha was drawn and written by Japan’s richest woman though, Rumiko Takahashi. Generally, the practice of the manga industry is to have most mangaka create manga for members of their own gender. Rumiko Takahashi is an exception in that all of her work appeared in manga magazines aimed at males rather than females with the exception on one short story.

oldfeminist at #148,

True, that.  Life would probably be a lot sweeter at the top of the high school food chain than the bottom (though I’ve never been any where near the top, so I can’t say) but it wouldn’t eliminate the noise, the endless classes about things I’ll never use and have no interest in, the future Shrub voters who natter on about their Saturday nights during lectures I am interested in, the mess, the busy work, the back biting, the endless rules, etc.  I spent high school feeling like a hemophiliac in a dark, narrow, noisy tunnel lined with razor blades, so I’d hate spending a hundred years there, eternal life or not.  Anything had to be better than high school, so I wasn’t too afraid about moving on.

However, if you really enjoyed high school, I can see why you’d be anxious about it ending, going out into the world, leaving your friends and family behind, etc.

As to “Why vampires?” I think Stephen King answered it well in “Danse Macabre”.  To paraphrase; modern vampires have always been connected to sexual anxiety and fears about the future*.  By becoming a vampire, you can conquer those fears and make yourself powerful instead of powerless. “Instead of fluid draining from my body, I will drain it from yours…”

Besides, other monsters just wouldn’t work as well, as you can see in the SNL short Firelight.

*Bram Djkstra does a great take down of “Dracula” in his book “Idols of Perversity”.

Sparrow;

Yeah, the first 400 pages of “Narcissus In Chains” are torture, but for the last hundred pages or so, we get the wise cracking, kick ass Anita Blake back.  Not sure if you’d feel it’s worth it, but it’s there.

Again, I think this feeds the “if I knew then what I know now” thing.  If you could go to a new high school, and know how to deal with everyone, and have the option to kill the ones you can’t control or avoid, and have lots of money as well, it might be a lot sweeter.

But we did have that option back in high school, didn’t we?

Again, I think this feeds the “if I knew then what I know now” thing.  If you could go to a new high school, and know how to deal with everyone, and have the option to kill the ones you can’t control or avoid, and have lots of money as well, it might be a lot sweeter.

Why does it have to be just about crappy classmates?  What about crappy petty authoritarian asshat teachers and admins who if they felt like it…do have ways to derail your future plans. 

However, if you really enjoyed high school, I can see why you’d be anxious about it ending, going out into the world, leaving your friends and family behind, etc.

You can also add the possible shock of finding out you were never as “special” or as “above average” student as you thought once you are pooled with college classmates who had much more rigorous academic and real-life experiences and who weren’t obsessed with football, lacrosse, or the regional country club social calender.

“I’m pretty sure that Dracula getting younger with more blood was an invention of the Coppola movie. I remember that in the book he started off looking like an old man and remained an old man until the end. I haven’t read Dracula since for nearly fifteen years so I could be wrong about this. “

No, that’s in the book. It’s explicitly stated that he grows younger the more blood he drinks. He also grows a black pointed beard, despite only having a moustache at the beginning of the novel. I’ve never seen a Dracula adaption where’s he’s bearded. Anyone?

“The real graddaddy was Varney, and he was of the classic European actual stinking completely unsexy walking corpse type of vampire.”

You’re right about Varney’s descriptions (I’m working my way through it now. It’s some of the most atrocious writing I’ve ever had the displeasure of reading. Still, at least Varney occasionally drinks blood, so he’s got that over Edward Cullen) but he’s not the granddaddy either.

The first fictional vampire story was John Polidori’s The Vampyre from 1819. The vampire in that, Lord Ruthven, was described as “beautiful”, albeit ghastly pale. He was based on Lord Byron. Polidori was Byron’s physician, and didn’t like him much. As Ruthven, Byron’s poisonous relationships and tendency to suck the life out of his conquests become literal blood-drinking.

There’s also Carmilla from 1872, which was a big influence on Dracula. Carmilla is beautiful, which the narrator Laura points out at every opportunity (Carmilla’s lesbian subtext is barely concealed whatsoever, I’m surprised they got away with it at the time). Carmilla’s not even pale; she has a lively colour in her cheeks. Weird. And she’s definitely romantic. Carmilla outright declares her love for Laura on a number of occasions and desires to be with her forever.

However, the book’s resident vampire hunter explains that a vampire’s desire for human blood sometimes takes on the form of courtly love, but it’s nothing more than the first stage of the feeding frenzy. That would be an interesting take on Twilight, I think.

Sorry, I’ve been pretty into Victorian vampire literature lately. Carry on then…

it’s also interesting to me that young men feel perfectly free to imagine being a hero that kicks ass, but some young women are intimidated by that.  And apparently prefer to imagine being a passive receptacle instead.

Amanda, you already know the answer to that, you’ve posted about it a billion times: it’s the problem of Perfect Girl Syndrome. Boys might have a lot of power fantasy heroes that are smart and handsome and run around kicking butt and stuff, but there’s also a critical mass of lazy schlubby “everyman” heroes who save the day sort of randomly, idiot man-children who the hot chicks are supposed to love because otherwise they’re evil harpies, and whiny-ass NiceGuys for eventually get everything they ever wished for without even having to expend the courage or effort to ask for it, that the ultra-badass heroes don’t seem like something you actually have to strive for or you aren’t anything. They GET to be Iron Man if they want to; they don’t HAVE to be Iron Man to justify the oxygen they consume. That would suck the fun out of it.

We’ve successfully left the movies where the ladies CAN’T do anything far enough behind that they’re not really something most young girls are seeking an escape from. Instead we’ve now got the expectation that, since women can do everything, each individual girl MUST do everything—EVERYTHING—and that’s portrayed in movies, too. In the movies billed towards girls, we need to be smart and courageous and exceptionally mature and compassionate and good at martial arts (or whatever) and save the world; in the movies billed towards guys, we need to be effortlessly good at everything enough to never need help except when the hero really wants to dramatically save us, we need to take care of doing everything for the hero and love him for no conceivable reason, all the while looking totally fabulous (but without putting effort into looking fabulous because then we’d be shallow).

Cumulatively, this results in the notion that men in movies are awesome just because they ARE, and whatever they end up DOING is just whatever fun thing the audience wants to vicariously do; the awesomeness of the women in movies is actually judged by what they do, and if they do not do everything right, they are not awesome. This turns being able to do shit into a big old chore that Twilight, and only Twilight, out of all the stories being told, allows you to escape from. (Dead Like Me had a fairly cranky, underachieving-everygirl protagonist, but being dead wasn’t as much fun for her as it was for Bella, so wasn’t really fantasy material enough to have gotten huge. Although it was very funny.) When you see all the ladies Doing Stuff, and all the dudes just sort of Being Awesome (and doing stuff if they feel like it), then seeing ladies doing stuff comes off as less inspirational and empowering than it does like “do I HAVE to?”

I am not immune to this, and I am, y’know, here. I love me some badass ladies in books and movies. I grew up on Tamora Pierce and Patricia Wrede; I’m currently a Castle fanatic. I love Detective Beckett. Beckett is awesome. She is smart and clever and pretty and no-nonsense and kind and HILARIOUS and a kickass martial artist and a great shot and is well-read in everything from classic plays to comic books and she speaks Russian fluently and sometimes, as I sit here, unemployed with a BA in fucking Creative Writing and only ten chapters of a novel*, the fact that I will never be as awesome as Beckett no matter what really just makes me not want to get up in the morning, because if I am not as awesome as Beckett than what am I worth, really**. I wouldn’t be surprised if there were girls out there who literally feel like failures because they don’t have superpowers, even if they intellectually know that’s impossible.

*I also find Stephenie Meyer more inspirational then J. K. Rowling, even though Rowling’s story is pretty inspirational (it is never too late to go from completely unemployed to a famous richer-than-God author overnight!), because the idea of having to write something as good as H.P. before getting published seems like a pretty tall order, but writing something better than Twilight seems just like a matter of doing it.

**This is when I go watch In Plain Sight instead. I still feel bad that I don’t think I could ever be a WITSEC inspector, but I feel better considering that Mary seems to draw most of her strength at being a WITSEC inspector through being hugely miserable and angry and Fucked-Up with a capital F.

Bright side:  Hey, I’m a Gen Exer, my generation was obsessed with Flowers in the Attic and we turned out fine.  wink Teenage girls are often drawn to dark/ non-good-role-model images of sexuality, most of them grow out of it and seek egalitarianism in their real relationships.  And there is actually a shortage of stalker-vampires in the world for teen girls to date—I’d be more worried about Flowers in the Attic, since brothers are a lot more common.  Again, though, very few of us Gen Exers were inspired by those books to actually sleep with our brothers.  Kids are less literal then adults think.

As a member of Gen Y - young enough that I have some friends my age who are Twilight-obsessed (although, we mostly missed it by a few years) - I am inclined to believe this assessment follows for my generation as well.  I think Twilight is misogynistic and promotes abusive relationships and is all-around awful, but I don’t necessarily see a lot of difference for the girls I know who are into that stuff and those who are not, even the younger ones.  It seems like, when you’re a teenager, the many many guys you know who are not Edward convince you that it’s unrealistic - and by the time you’re at that age when there might be creepers like that, you’ve realized it’s not such an ideal after all.

I think it’s somewhat typical for teenagers to have fucked-up ideas about guys.  Not as fucked-up as those books, maybe, but there does seem to be an idea as a teenager that devotion is the No. 1 thing you should want in a guy, no matter what form that takes.  As you grow up and become more independent, that inevitably goes away.  Not to say that Twilight isn’t a concern and we shouldn’t do more to counteract that messages, but I think sometimes the panicky attitude a lot of the feminist movement has toward Twilight is a bit excessive.  Teenagers are a lot better at separating fantasy from reality than we give them credit for, and most of them know that they shouldn’t necessarily be dating taking advice from the pages of romance novels.

My grammar was somehow atrocious in that post.  I apologize.

**This is when I go watch In Plain Sight instead. I still feel bad that I don’t think I could ever be a WITSEC inspector, but I feel better considering that Mary seems to draw most of her strength at being a WITSEC inspector through being hugely miserable and angry and Fucked-Up with a capital F.
Comment #158: thecynicalromantic on 07/11 at 10:23 PM

Good perspective on “In Plain Sight,” though I think of the skills she has as an agent coming from not being able to trust anything, ever, as a survival tactic, though the energy to do so with everyone certainly comes from a dark place.

The “not perfect” factor is also huge in “Saving Grace”—here, it’s a woman who drives drunk, smokes, can’t manage to not screw every man she meets, doesn’t even apparently own a comb, but is chosen to be visited by an angel and becomes a hero in multiple ways, without actually having to change any of that.  Though the ending was rather WTF—did they only have two weeks to figure out an ending and film it or something?

What I’d like to hear on those hideous Burger King commercials regarding Team Edward and Team Jacob:

“Choose Team Jacob.  Wolves mate for life and are monogamous.  So if Bella chooses Jacob, he’d still be a jerk, but he’d be a FAITHFUL jerk.”

At least that’s a PLAUSIBLE reason for choosing a werewolf mate ...

Fortunately for me, I’ve moved past the “I’m 14 years old, nobody likes me, my body has betrayed me, and I’ve a healthy dose of self-hatred” that really, really helps the liking for Twilight.

I have this suspicion that Meyer developed the whole “Twilight” thing as a sort of conservative reaction to “Buffy The Vampire Slayer”. 

Unlike Bella, Buffy has no need for a “protector” since she is perfectly capable of kicking the crap out of anyone who threatens her or her friends. 

Buffy not only has no need for a patriarchy, she willingly walks away from the control of the patriarchal Watcher Council.

In the “Buffy-verse”, organized religion has little real relevance.  The importance of “artifacts” of Christianity (crosses, holy water, etc.) is limited to their usefulness as weapons against vampires. 

After Buffy, probably the second most empowered character is Willow—a lesbian witch.  (While I freely confess to not having read any of the “Twilight” books or seen any of the movies, I strongly suspect LBGT characters are non-existent)

I’ve been hardcore avoiding Twilight and finally caved this weekend and watched all three movies (still plan to steer clear of the books and their crap prose). ...the conversation Bella and Edward have at the end of Eclipse contributes, I think, to your argument—where she suddenly announces her wanting to become a vampire isn’t just abt being w/ Edward, but because she’s always felt like a big weirdo and out-of-step with others… and I was like, Well that would’ve actually been interesting if it were what this story was really abt from the get-go .

I can maybe kinda understand how folks get drawn into the narrative—I was completely appalled by everything I expected to find appalling (In addition to the abstinence bullshit and Edward being a controlling stalker, I also feel like the narrative sort of excuses and naturalizes hegemonic male sexuality and aggression and positions women as responsible for managing these things—the scene in “New Moon” where whatsername’s facial scars are revealed shortly after Bella pulls up her sleeve to look at her own scars I found particularly striking in a not-good way), but also found myself oddly riveted by the mythology and plotting and developing affection for some of the secondary characters like Alice, Jessica, and, I’ll admit it, Jacob (one of the reasons I finally caved was I find myself really drawn to Taylor Lautner and also critically fascinated by the Taylor Lautner phenomenon—is there something potentially subversive abt a young man being so blatantly objectified in a manner normally reserved for women, or is it just reinforcing dominant masculinity and foisting some really fucked up regulatory body image stuff on young men?)

Something I suspect is that like many narratives w/ shallow characterizations, I think it might be possible that folks treat the characters like dolls that they can sort-of play with, fantasize abt and project shit onto however they see fit. There’s a… genericism there that I think maybe contributes to this level of mass popularity.

The other thing I find disturbing abt the series it’s almost total humorlessness and lack of irony—and I think that kind of very shallow earnestness—kinda similar to what we see in mainstream nashville country or professional wrestling—is fundamentally conservative—my friend Martin wrote a crazy long but kind of brilliant essay abt this w/ relation to Kesha’s Tik Tok—http://martinseay.wordpress.com/2010/03/16/“ain’t-got-a-care-in-the-world-but-got-plenty-of-beer-ain’t-got-no-money-in-my-pocket-but-i’m-already-here”/

“It’s actually all very Mormon (from my understanding at least). And I don’t think Bella gives up her soul. “

The traditional ideology that governs Edward and other characters is that vampires are soulless—Bella does not believe this and I think her belief system is ultimately the one the text most authorizes.

“wealth porn - the cullens are amazingly wealthy, due to centuries of hoarding wealth and alice’s stock market prognostications.  so much text is devoted to their house, the fancy cars they drive, alice’s designer clothing from paris and when bella becomes one of them, she’s got all this nice stuff too!  like so much content in popular culture today, twilight presents an awful lot of wealth porn for people, especially those without all this stuff, to lust after.”

Definitely—was snarkily discussing the movies w/ my best friend over the phone, and she said something like, “The only reason to choose Edward over Jacob is THAT HOUSE.”

This was one of the most useful things in this thread for me. Thanks, aligorami:

“Bella’s creepy superiority-inferiority is the one real parallel I see with the Buffy series. It’s just never explored, or even acknowledged, just like all the other bad shit which is the real problem with it.  It’s presented not just uncritically, but in a hidden way that tracks almost perfectly with messages we get in real life from real abusers and from ourselves when we’re deep in those situations.  I don’t think that people are putting themselves in her place because she’s an empty shell (and I don’t think that everyone who likes it is doing thit because my friends and I read/watch for the bad writing/terrible acting which is the only way I can get through it safely and I know there are plenty of people who can enjoy it and understand the problems with it) but that they, like Bella, are semi-ERASING their own personalities by counting traits instead, which is super teenage behaviour and usually results in exactly the kind of self-isolating asshole behaviour that Bella engages in over and over again. Bella is a) clumsy b) smart c) in love with Edward.  And that’s it, forever.  She can’t ever be not smart, or an asshole, or anything else ever, even for a second, because that’s not part of her identity. Which means that even when she is CLEARLY BEING those things, she’s not. “

Kids these days and their vampire movies…....

oops.  Already said. Sorry.

“The only reason to choose Edward over Jacob is THAT HOUSE.”

Also pretty much the reason why Elizabeth Bennet chooses Mr. Darcy, when you get right down to it.

Dracula was definitely sexy, even when it got a bit hilarious. Didn’t the hero have to drive his - ahem - “stake” into Lucy’s - ahem - “heart” to save her? I still can’t get through that part, book or movie, without giggling, and I’m a guy.

I think every era gets the monsters it deserves. Reread Frankenstein as a romantic novel with the creation as the romantic hero and you’ll see what I mean. He’s an even more romantic character than Austen’s Darcy, and all he wants in the world is a woman in his life. You can probably guess a woman’s age if you know her vampire. All the teen girls in my junior high were in love with Barnabas Collins of Dark Shadows, so you can guess mine.

For some reason, possibly the tween bonding, Twilight always reminds me of the Private Life of Henry Orient. He’s not a vampire, but my mom was a big fan of both the movie and the show on Broadway, because it reminded her of her tween school days back in the 30s. The two girls in Henry Orient had seriously hyperactive imaginations. I thought they were hilarious. If you aren’t familiar with the story, they were the stalkers. Poor Henry just wanted a consensual adulterous affair.

P.S. I live in Port Angeles, not far from Forks, and I think Twilight has been great for the town. The big attraction is usually the Hoh Rain Forest, and Forks a dying logging town you have to drive through. For the past few years there has been a new type of tourist. You can tell by the goth/emo versus REI dress. I only wish Forks had more stuff for tourists to see and do, but I gather Bella led a pretty mundane life. Even in Port Angeles we notice Twilight. The latest movie premiere - our movie theater is the one closest to Forks, maybe 55 miles - brought serious crowds into town on opening night. (There must of been hundreds.) Bella Italia, down the block from the theater, is now mobbed with fans. Neil, the owner, had no choice but to start serving mushroom ravioli. Life imitates art. (Now, we need the movie about the small town that was the setting for some new literary sensation and movie and appropriately freaks out.)

“Pietoro, I am a confirmed, tithing, etc. Unitarian Universalist, and I promise you we would be scandalized at my church if anyone tried to call us Christian.”

Only problem is, I’m NOT claiming Unitarian Universalists are Christian… UUs are not the only ‘Unitarians’, however. My POINT was there ARE non-Trinitarian Christian denominations. They’re called ‘Unitarian’ as well.

I’ve never been able to get into vampire stories where the vampires have sex. The whiole point of the vampire lust thing is that the blood is a metaphor/replacement for the sex. If you put the sex in, too, it just cheapens and makes redundant the whole idea.