SPOILER ALERT:
I could never get into the whole Twilight thing, and not because I'm impervious to the charms of youth-oriented fantasy and sci-fi. Harry Potter? Magical. Hunger Games? I'm ravenous for more. Twilight? A glorified dime store novel with low stakes (pun intended), murky morals, and unfortunate implications when it comes to gender politics. This may not be a particularly original take on the material but an accurate one; Bella and Edward's relationship is framed as epic romance but is at worst offensive and condescending to women, and at best ickily co-dependent. It is a 12-year-old girl's uncomplicated idea of romance, and while wish fulfillment literature is not a crime, the author of the books and the screenwriter and directors of the films haven't done the work of unpacking the more incendiary aspects of the story.
In the latest installment, the hundred-something year-old Edward (Robert Pattinson) marries his teenage girlfriend (Kristen Stewart) and whisks her away to a private island in Brazil, where he finally agrees to boink her in a highly anticipated and thoroughly disappointing sex scene. I mean sure, he breaks the bed with his "passion," but both players seem oddly sedate, with expressions more perplexed than enraptured and nary a hair out of place. After only one session of love-making and afraid of further hurting the bruised, still-human Bella, Edward withholds, prompting a ridiculous and, for Bella, humiliating montage in which she exudes sexual frustration while playing chess on the beach and awkwardly trying to entice him with lingerie. He finally gives in, but his fears are validated when Bella finds she is pregnant with a fast-growing, blood-sucking fetus, the birth of which could have terrible, unforeseen consequences, if she even survives long enough to deliver, that is.
Stephanie Meyers claims that the Twilight series is not a pretext for some Mormon parable, but Breaking Dawn continues her terrifying march against female sexuality. In the first three books if Stella, a bashful tomboy-ish virgin, has sex with Edward, she risks being killed by his blood-lust; depicted in the films with much panting and the occasional kiss, followed by Edward ruefully flinging the girl away for her own good. In the fourth book, married Bella is finally able to have sex (a curious coincidence), but the poor milquetoast has to deal with the consequences in the form of their hybrid spawn, which slowly eats her alive from within. A severe punishment indeed.
Twilight: Breaking Dawn is about the horrors of marriage and childbirth more than those of being a mewling vegetarian vampire, and throughout the series, Meyers makes a woman's life seem like a torturous trial at nearly every stage, from the pain of mediocrity and pulsing hormones in the earlier books to the persistent specter of death hanging over perfectly common life choices in the later ones. No wonder a girl needs the protection of an agonized vampire and a rage-filled werewolf (not to mention a singular blandness) in order to make it out alive. As a 20-something woman who recently married and struggles with the idea of having children, I found watching the latest chapter to be honestly frightening and engaging in a womb-aching, worst-fears-come-true sort of way, one that references pregnancy as a classic body-horror mainstay. However, despite stumbling onto such a universal gem of a phobia, the story is kept from being meaningful by emotional politics that are confounding and puerile, divorced from the implications of the narrative, a fact the film was unable to mitigate.
I'd hoped that Bill Condon (Dream Girls and Gods and Monsters) might be able to inject some life into this morally questionable but enjoyably salacious material. Thankfully, he does manage to bring some horror back to the toothless vampire series; Bella's birth scene commences with an exaggerated breaking of bones reminiscent of the best of the hallucinations in Black Swan and continues with much bloody snipping and contorted-faced screaming. When Edward injects her with his vamp-juice in order to save her life, we see her writhing in agony in her mind only, before realizing she is physically paralyzed in by morphine.
However, Condon inexplicably offsets the welcome infusion of blood with jarring pop touches; if this is the installment in which Bella is forced to grow up and face the adult consequences of marriage and sex, why is this film drowning in indie pop and weepy emo? Why is sucked-dry pregnant Bella surrounded by vibrant movie color, why does she get magical makeup when she turns into a vampire? Aesthetically, the best Twilight offering is still the first, when Catherine Hardwicke kept the more unassuming, less bloated but, yes, ultimately less ambitious film to a chilly Washington-state palette of grays and harsh whites. There are other missteps, like the hilarious CGI werewolf-conference that made me feel like I was on peyote, or the handling of Jacob falling in love with an infant child, still creepy despite Condon's focus on Renesmee all grown up and trying to distract us with the word "protector."
As far as I can tell this moral of this film is that getting pregnant is like being inhabited by a bottomless pit of a parasite that will eat you alive, and if you happen to survive the birth of this hungry little fucker, you must die just a little bit in order to be reborn into Mother, prepared for the sacrifices ahead. Maybe the director who brought this conceit so vividly to life should start going by Bill Condom.
Follow Farihah Zaman on Twitter: www.twitter.com/brandnewfarihah
Douglas Anthony Cooper: My Girlfriend Studies Vampires. At Harvard.
David Crumm: Why Christians Should Love Twilight: Vampires, Werewolves and the Bible
But after I stopped laughing and thought about what I'd read, I was absolutely disgusted by the way Bella was portrayed. She had no personality of her own and seemed to wrap her whole identity in her relationship with Edward--even while a "true love" was literally staring her in the face. Yes, to some extent it was an accurate representation of teenage love, but the rest of the books continue along the same line. Bland Ms. Bella eventually marries and becomes a vampire and--what?--suddenly she is the *protector* of everyone around her? She's shown absolutely no strength through 4 books and sex, pregnancy, & death turn her into a "real woman"? Is that the take-away message?
I think you meant Bella, not Stella.
Cheers!
As for Jacob, I never really took the imprinting storyline as being pedophilic in anyway. I read it just as if a child had imprinting on a parent. Up to that point, imprinting had always been addressed as a way of finding your true mate, but it's not unreasonable to think it could also happen the way it did with Jacob & Renesmee. Frankly, I was glad to see more time given to Jacob & his story. He actually showed some true strength and sacrifice in his willingness to love and protect his friend even though he disagreed with every single choice she had made. And when she had a child, he loved that child unconditionally despite who her parents were.
Observing the all-female audience in the theatre (consisting of mainly moms and tweens), they loved the film. Women moviegoers should be proud; it is rare that a film targeted to the female demographic ever does this well at the box office. What did the Spice Girls used to say?, "Girl Power."
These movies appeal to young girls. From what I remember, young girls run on pure emotion, and that's the target audience for these movies. The older women who are into it, I think, are reminded of the yearnings and desires of their youth, which they have likely lost with age (just like men).
For our next forway into pop culture, let's take a look at Pixar's Monster's Inc. Is it a coincidence that all the main monsters are adult males and that the little human child that leads them to a better world is a girl? I think not!!!!!
Again, this book did not reflect Mormon principles or beliefs. But even if Meyer had chosen to do that, so what? There are many literary works that reflect religious preferences and beliefs.She would have just as much a right to write a book about her religious beliefs as this author does to write this anti-Mormon article.
The fourth book was horrifying in too many ways to count; this article does a good job of dissecting what amounts, in the end, to subliminal perversion. Whether or not the supposedly pious Meyers is aware of this or nor is interesting in itself, but I'm inclined to think she got in over her head and didn't even know it.
And how is what you're saying any kind of argument? If it's made-up, it's pure entertainment and there's nothing else to be said about it?
"Sex is naughty" is a creep subtext.
There's a reason why directors still use dark colors, low light, and creepy music when they want to create suspense.
There was NOTHING shown as to why they even fell in love. He liked the way she smelled and she...well there was never a reason why she should like him.
This latest is just a continuation of her war on young girls it would seem.