And Another Thing... (originally posted 3/1/09)

Allow me to clear something up.

When I listed “vampire-themed romance” as a guilty pleasure, I was emphatically not referring to the Twilight series. Though I’ve read all four books and seen the movie, I don’t so much like them as I am intrigued, confused and mildly disgusted by them. In fact, one might say I appreciate them ironically, in that I appreciate them in a way that is contrary to their literal intention (assuming that their literal intention is to tell a romantic story about a teenager and her vampire boyfriend, rather than to brainwash a generation of young women into subservient baby-making machines, that is...)

Here’s what I don’t get. How can there be so many girls (and not a few women) out there who think there’s something romantic about a patronising stalker who physically prevents his girlfriend from doing anything he disapproves of? Or a manipulative bully of a “nice guy” who believes that being in love with a woman is a license to take advantage of her friendship in order to try to force himself on her or trick her into physical intimacy (I actually disliked Jacob a lot more than Edward. Bella at least agrees to participate in Edward’s bullshit, but Jacob persists despite her repeatedly telling him to stop)? I can understand the teenagers, a bit, as when I was one myself I was actually in that relationship I didn’t see anything wrong with it until much later. But shouldn’t grown up ladies know better? And shouldn’t grown up lady authors think twice about publishing a book that indicates fucked up asshole love is true love?

In fact, there were times when I got the distinct impression that the characters had motivations that the author herself didn’t understand (unless we’re meant to see Bella as an unreliable narrator, which would make Stephanie Meyer a way more sneaky and subtle writer than seems possible). It was pretty obvious to me that Edward resisted making Bella a vampire because it would mean giving up a significant amount of control over her. It’s a move right out of the creepy boyfriend play book, but its pretty clear Meyer meant us believe his stated motivation (some claptrap about her eternal soul).

This is why I actually liked the movie a bit more than the book. With most of Bella’s internal monologue stripped away, the audience had to view the characters’ behaviour with a certain amount of detachment (the cheesy special effects, I think, inadvertently enhanced this), which made their general fuckeduppitude more obvious. I also liked how Edward, who in the book is presented as utterly flawless, came off as just as much of a freaked-out adolescent basket case as Bella. It made the relationship seem less accidentally-creepy-cause-it’s-suppose-to-be-sweet and more deliberately-creepy-to-make-a-point-about-obsessive-teen-love (this was possibly aided by the fact that I am fully grossed out by Robert Pattinson, both in the movie and in real life).

I’m also interested in (and troubled by) what the success of Twilight means for vampire fiction as a whole. It has always been about the subversion of repressive sexual norms, gender roles, religion, “traditional morality,” but now the genre’s hottest commodity is a vehicle for preaching abstinence and heteronormativity, with plenty of casual sexism and a soupçon of anti-choice rhetoric tossed in for good measure.

How sad is it that in a series about a sexy vampire and a sexy werewolf there are only a couple of instances of entirely accidental homoeroticism?

Very. Very sad indeed.