Ever since I took a gamble and purchased the first two books in the series after hearing the Harry Potter-like buzz, a tiny part of me has wondered if perhaps my taste and IQ levels have dropped.
Initially, the buzz brought out defensiveness; there’s always flash-in-the-pan successors who ride a fad’s coattails in attempts to be the “next big thing”. I felt that the Twilight series was probably just that. One day, I succumbed to the intriguing covers and heft of the tomes, and thought I would give it a shot. Hell, I’ll read anything, anytime.
What happened next? I quickly ran through the books and had to get the final two. I loved them and they roused within myself the various emotions of love. I cried, I admit. I felt Bella’s pain at losing Edward and wondered (and hoped) if somehow I would find someone that I loved that deeply, that it would truly ache to lose them. Although initially I could care less about Jacob, viewing him as simply a stopgap between Bella and the one that was always meant for her. Though, after seeing Jacob “in the flesh”, my appreciation grew, and I saw in him the same feelings I’ve felt before. How well I knew what it was like to love earnestly from afar, but it simply wasn’t meant to be. I’ll admit it: the story got to me.
Yes, I saw both Twilight movies at midnight. Yes, I’ve read the books a few times apiece. (Though that in itself is hardly an impressive feat for me.) I own each movie’s individual soundtracks and scores. But I have never been one for over-the-top fandom, which would call for me scream and squeal like a teenager, and I definitely didn’t start here. I own nary a Twilight t-shirt, though I did scour the Internet before pre-ordering my favorite “deluxe” DVD packaging of “Twilight” when the first movie was released on DVD last March.
It’s hard for me to defend my like (okay, maybe love) for Twilight in the face of points raised by others, both in person and in this delightful age of the World-Wide Web. Sometimes I wonder if I will “lose a part of myself” by actually spending time at all on Twilight. Should I hide my face in shame, heading to a midnight showing? The various issues raised by others has had me thinking.
The first issue is related to the Twilight fandom in itself, in which we see moms in the same frenzy as the series’ younger readers, partaking in the juvenile behavior of asking the cast to sign body parts or undergarments, and drooling over the underage-hotness of Taylor Lautner’s Jacob. ”Twilight” got screams when Robert Pattinson came onscreen. ”New Moon” was all about Jacob in terms of the audience delight. Seeing older woman behave like young girls in a fashion that was never attractive to begin with is like, for me, hearing nails scrape across a chalk board. (For that matter, when young girls do it, it elicits the same response.) It would just embarrass me to no end if anyone saw me reduced to that state, especially in the presence of anyone of notoriety. Luckily, that has never happened with me.
Second, the actual quality of Stephanie Meyer’s writing is called into question. Again, I have to pretty much concur with the Twilight doubters who wouldn’t deign to read any more of her “fourth grade reading level” writing. I wouldn’t call it fourth grade level, but I would never compare it to even J. K. Rowling. However, I feel that I have to point out, there is likely something to be said somewhere for communicating in the vernacular, in language that can be understood by many. As one reader says:
“I work as a part-time editor and [the following paragraph] as an example of Ms Meyer’s book is one of the things that prove that Twilight is a not so carefully written book.
‘He lay perfectly still in the grass, his shirt open over his sculpted, incandescent chest, his scintillating arms bare. His glistening, pale lavender lids were shut, though of course he didn’t sleep. A perfect statue, carved in some unknown stone, smooth like marble, glittering like crystal.’
‘incandescent’: It’s used out of context. A lightbulb can be called incandescent because ‘it emits light as a result of being heated’(Webster’s), but it certainly cannot be applied to a person’s description.
‘A perfect statue, carved in some unknown stone, smooth like marble, glittering like crystal’: It’s a pretty good picture though it losses most of its impact by the earlier use of the adjectives ‘incandescent’, ‘scintillating’, ‘glistening’.
If you read it after omitting those three adjectives, doesn’t it sound better? ‘He lay perfectly still in the grass, his shirt open over his sculpted chest, his arms bare. His pale lavender lids were shut, though of course he didn’t sleep. A perfect statue, carved in some unknown stone, smooth like marble, glittering like crystal.’”
I concur. (Though I would be a liar to say I have never committed the above sin at any point in my writings.)
Before I move on to the third point, I have to say that both the issues of fandom and the author’s writing do not diminish what I took away from the novels. I did and do the same midnight showings for Harry Potter as I do now for Twilight, and stay apart from the craziness around me. Though it is somewhat electrifying to be in an environment of this kind of anticipation and glee. As for the writing, books don’t just merely ask you to read the words; they ask you to see. While reading, whatever I saw in my mind’s internal calliope, I liked.
The third point has me stumbling a bit. Critics are saying it has anti-feminist and misogynistic slants, also finding no real base for Bella and Edward being in love, besides his looks and her blood. As one columnist put it:
“To put it simply, dear reader, I was horrified. Not just by the sickeningly purple prose or the lack of general writing quality, but the books themselves are insulting on every level-as a woman, as a teenager, as a literature student, and as a graduate of the Harry Potter craze. What’s worse is that so few seem to realize it.
…
In New Moon, Bella enters a self-described “zombie” state when Edward leaves her. In fact, the author oh-so-cleverly inserts blank pages with the months’ names as a poorly conceived plot device for showing the depths of her heroine’s pain and also to avoid having to write the “hard stuff.” Bella turns near-suicidal; she purposely puts herself in harm’s way-going so far as to jump off a cliff-to hear her lover’s imagined voice in her head.
What does this say to readers, bearing in mind that the target audience is the tragically impressionable 12-17 year old girls? That they should fall apart at the seams for months if their boyfriend leaves them? That reckless self-endangerment is okay, so long as it’s to be close to your lover? What a lovely message to send to young women.
Eclipse. It is in this tome that Edward and Bella’s relationship takes a decidedly worse turn. Edward goes so far as to remove Bella’s engine from her car to prevent her from seeing her friend, Jacob, and even has his vampire ‘sister’ kidnap her from a weekend. Bella is a little peeved at this, sure, but she writes off Edward’s atrocious behavior with the terrifying “he’s just a little overprotective” and “he does it because he loves me”. Reader, I actually felt a little sick while reading this, despite these so-called good intentions (they’re always leading to hell, remember). Not only does Meyer give her two characters an obviously unhealthy-even abusive-relationship, but she romanticizes and idealizes it, and not only with Bella and Edward, but with Bella and Jacob as well.
Jacob, in fact, gets a bizarre personality transplant (lycanthropic dissociative identity disorder, maybe?) and turns into a real asshole in this book. He actually forcibly kisses Bella-twice-while ignoring her protests and actually threatens suicide should Bella refuse him. But not once does the thought of abuse, sexism, or inequality even occur to her main character! In fact, halfway through Jacob’s forced kiss (sexual assault, mind you) Bella actually decides that she’s in love with him. What is this??”
It makes me wonder how I read the entire series and didn’t come away with this. Maybe I “saw” too much, instead of “read”? Reading the criticisms is like a punch in the gut to me, as a woman who would not dare to condone abuse of any kind, having been a bit around the block there myself. Of course, I could counter the columnist’s words at various intervals. Books don’t exist to provide perfect moral examples of how to behave. No characters in these books were perfect. A stolen kiss between two friends who have teetered on the fence of romance, a severe depression when you lose the one you love, partaking in reckless activities after a breakup, and deciding you really love someone at an inopportune moment does not the end of the world make. They’re not particularly healthy, but it happens. Also, to expect that anyone reads a novel and immediately must emulate every facet of it is much like the argument that violence in the media and video games cause violence in and of itself, and not actual upbringing and parental involvement. Or as one responder, “Meg”, puts it:
“…while I agree that Meyer’s characters don’t exactly promote a healthy teenage relationship, I’d agree that a lot of teens don’t let a single book series mold their entire view of relationships. Aside from Meyer’s series, teenagers have access to a million other literary works with differing depictions of teenage romance. They are also influenced by the relationships of parents, extended family and siblings, as well as the world they live in: middle school and high school.
…
While I realize that 12-17 year old girls are much more impressionable than I am and have more than likely endured less real life dating experience than I now have at 25, I find it doubtful that every teenage girl reading this series will forever base her life off the romance between Bella and Edward.
The same way that I don’t believe Mortal Kombat, Street Fighter, Dead or Alive, Resident Evil and the many MANY other violent video games on the market automatically turn boys into blood thirsty killing machines. My brother played all these games and more as a kid, and he is now a gentle, kindly 28 year old man happily married and working at a credit union. He wouldn’t (and perhaps couldn’t?) harm a fly. And I, though I read Stephanie Meyers, and though I pined for my “romeo” as a teenager, don’t believe that those pinings and fantasies in any way warped my ideas about loving relationships or made me feel like I needed a guy to kill himself or constantly state his undying and totally selfless love for me in order for me to be in a satisfying, stable and healthy relationship.
I’d like to think that though teenagers are impressionable, they aren’t quite so impressionable that their entire view of relationships can be molded by one book series. If that were the case, said teenagers should be kept away from magazines, television and movie theaters, lest ANY type of media turn them into anorexic, lovesick, sexist, completely out of touch adults.”
Reading all the criticisms has me partly disagreeing and partly agreeing, all the while taking a sucker punch to the gut. Indeed, what is this?
After inducing a headache with the back-and-forth debate, my mind seems to fall on this conclusion: I’m with “Meg”. Also, as a truly voracious reader for the past 20 years, I should know unquestionably that whenever something from a page resonates with me, or anyone else, go with it.
That’s what I intend to do.
