a vampire who looks like he has rolled in glitter is neither sexy nor dangerous. just sayin'

Ok, the Twilight rant is now. I feel I really shouldn't have to say this but it seems like a number of Twilight fans are easily angered people (not all but many. Seriously, these people got pissed when non-super fans laughed at the sparkle scene in the movie. It's a movie, get over it, it's pretty silly), so I'll say it: If hearing anything negative about Twilight will cause you to throw fits, scream, make a fuss or otherwise act in such a way that is not constructive to any sort of intellectual discussion, stop reading now. I'm going to write about what the feminist activist in me sees as the major issues with Twilight. That means I'm going to talk about what I think makes Twilight dull/offensive/pointless/whatever. And I'm going to try to do it in an intellectual way. This is my blog and my space, I'm learning to write about feminism, classism, racism, heterosexism, homophobia, ect in the language I'm learning through my explorations in radical feminism. I'm not promising to be perfect but I'm going to try to explain why Twilight, put simply, reeks of heteronormative, sexist, racist, classist (among other things...) principles that make me want to bang my head against the wall. If this will make you angry, I advise you go and read something else. Maybe Anne Rice? Meyers stole a good amount of her material from Rice, so maybe that would be of interest to you? Though stay away from recent Rice, she's gotten religious and weird. I hear her son is good. So yes, this is my warning now.

Continuing on........



Alright, so I'm not a Twilight person. My knowledge of the books prior to the movie was reading the plots of all 4 on Wikipedia, flipping through the first book real quick in a book store and reading one HYSTERICAL breakdown of the series. Also, Dani filled in some of the small details, like the fact that Jasper was apparently a confederate soldier. Why do I remember this fact? Because the guy who played him in the movie looks like a nice Jewish boy from Queens, which cracked my shit up. Too funny!

But, armed with the little knowledge I collect on mostly the inter-tubes, I went to a midnight showing of Twilight last night on Dani's urdging. I was mostly interested in seeing the crazy fans to be honest and, while there were some crazy fans, I'd have to say that the theatre I was in was only about half crazy fans. The rest of us were people who wanted to see the crazy people and also came to laugh at the movie. It made my movie more entertaining, since there were several funny moments before the movie started when rabid fans would babble ENDLESSLY about Edwards hair or something and someone-not-a-fan would laugh and make a joke about Twilight and the fans would be all confused that someone didn't like Twilight. And then there were lots of fans making fun of Harry Potter fans because Harry Potter fans are true crazies and Twilight is like, so superior to Harry Potter 'cause Twilight is about, like, deep love and it's so, like deep and MEANINGFUL. Also, did I mention Edward is SO FUCKING HOT OMGWTFBBQ!!

So pre-movie entertainment... Check! Happily enough they had a cool preview thing of Frost/Nixon and I snapped at some of the fans around me to shut up so I could watch it. Did they listen? No, but I could hear it alright enough. Also, when I discovered that Jack White sang a song for a James Bond movie (No, Jack White, don't sell your soul! NOOOO!!!) and proceeded to grumble about it, one of the fans of Twilight proceeded to tell me what a supercoolawesome song it is and I kind of nodded and then grumbled about not being able to hear the Frost/Nixon commerical when it was on.

But all of that is really not the point... Here my actual intellectual stuff will start (we hope).

One of the big things about Twilight that really bothers me is Bella's characterization. Here we have teenage girl, a common girl with no special aspects about her. Oh, aside from the fact that EVERY BOY LOVES HER and wants to ask her out. The nerve of them! Oh, and also, she's just adorably clumsy enough to give off the appearence of being a flawed character but not clumsy enough to actually embaress herself. And also the sexy sexy vampire who hates everyone and hasn't been in love since he was vampired magically falls MADLY IN LOVE with her and only her. Well, in love after he first wishes to rip off her head or something else equally strange. Oh Meyers, you romantic you.

Bella is this oddly perfect teen who spends a whole lot of time COMPLAINING about EVERYTHING in sight. Too cold, too wet, too green, too many people, too clumsy, too many boys, and on and on it goes. And, even more annyoingly, she seems to have no goals whatsoever, no particular interests aside from Edward. Oh, and complaining. So why is this character who ends up basing her entire existance around one guy and his family supposed to be an example of a good heroine? There is a surplus of weak women in literature who seem unable to survive without the love of some dude, we don't need more. Meyer writes a weak female character and, through the books, uses her as a vehicle to sell her Mormon theology (no, we never (as far as I know) hear explicitly about Mormanism but there's still a lot of WEIRD indirect stuff), especially with the weird baby thing in the last book.

What would improve this book? I think if Bella had a spine and thoughts that weren't "OMG EDWARD NOM ON ME! VAMPIRE SEX!!!!1!1!!!!!" The feminist in me weeps that Bella's response to the fact that Edward sits outside her window (We later find out that he actually greased the hinges on her window so he could sneak into her room to watch her with out her hearing him. CREEPY) and watches her sleep for months is basically "ok, cool, makeout time." You know what that behavior is? Stalking. And you know what else? If a friend of mine had a boyfriend who did that before they were dating (or really, even if they were dating), I would advise him/her to dump his creepy ass. There's also the fact that's he's pretty damn contolling of her, getting all pissy when other guys, particualy Jacob, look her way.

By the way, as to the Jacob Edward thing over Bella, can one of them just pee on her already? The role that whole drama played in the movie was distracting and kind of... random. Jacob just showed up enough to be distracting and also enough to allow Edward to be super possesive.

The point I was going to make though was that it is disturbing to me that Meyer glorifies this relationship. Edward's actions towards Bella are not always that of a loving and respectful partner. It's more that of an infatuated boy who will turn abusive fast. Watching the movie, I couldn't help but cringe at some of the things he said. The pair knew each other less then three months (I think, I had a hard time figuring out the timeline) and already they are madly in love with each other for life. Realistic and interesting? No.

My biggest feminist complaint is that Meyer creates this bland Mary Sue character who completely defines herself by the man she is with and has no goals whatsoever. She doesn't even give her father any credit for all that he does to make her feel at home and just pretty much ditches all her new friends at the first sight of Edward. How is this a likeably character?

Also, what is the deal with sparkling vampires? This is not threatening, dangerous, deep or interesting. As far as I can tell, these vampires lose nothing by being vampires. They just get sexier. And whiter, that too.

And did anyone else note that Bella is basically set up to look JUST LIKE MEYER? Seriously, if you're gonna do a self-insert thing, maybe at least pretend a little.






Ok, you know what? I can't take thinking about this anymore. There are loads of more things to pick at but I am neither eloquent enough to pick them out nor am I patient enough to read through more info. So go here and understand more

http://gawker.com/5096120/in-which-i-try-to-explain-twilight
http://gawker.com/5093291/ha-ha-the-twilight-movie-sucks

I'm gonna go to bed now. Tomorrow, expect poetry maybe, also some ranting about Hillary-hating and the subway system. Oh, and also, some skeletons for short stories. I've got some ideas brewing...