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and then I spent way too many paragraphs on twilight
This is an entry in which I blather about Twilight! I can't even promise that it's coherent blathering, but my viewing of Breaking Dawn and the internet's predictable memetic reactions to it have given me thoughts and feelings.
The cliff notes version of my relationship with the whole Twilight ... franchise, experience, whatever, is that I'm observing it with popcorn and fascinated amusement. I couldn't even get through the first book, but I had lots of slightly bewildered enjoyment when I saw the first film -- everything that had skeeved me about the book was still there, but the film had been injected with as much plot as it reasonably could without changing the story, and without Bella's inner monologue it sort of read as the story of a bunch of desperately awkward misfits falling in weird teenage love. Compound this with Robert Pattinson's choice to play Edward as brimming with self-loathing, and I was ... kind of charmed.
So I ended up actually reading through the rest of the books, and delightedly imagining how they were going to stage some of the Breaking Dawn stuff on screen. (They play it straight; it comes out alternately hilarious and horrifying.) I've watched the films as they've come out, too, and I've mostly been there for the lols, but you know what? This whole thing is kind of fascinating.
Because, yes, a lot of the subtext-verging-to-text is awful. Edward watching Bella sleep way before she knows about it or gives permission isn't romantic, it's goddamn stalkery. He removes the engine from her car. Jacob kisses her after she tells him no and Charlie's okay with it. Imprinting is truly deeply creepy, and Sam's wife is right to forgive him for permanently scarring her. Meyer's subconscious -- or maybe conscious -- Mormonism is bleeding through every page, and a lot of that makes it to the screen. We all know these things, and all of them are true and a bit awful.
But something crystallized for me when I saw an excerpt from this NPR article: "[W]hen a saga popular with pre-adolescent girls peaks romantically on a night that leaves the heroine to wake up covered with bruises in the shape of her husband's hands — and when that heroine then spends the morning explaining to her husband that she's incredibly happy even though he injured her, and that it's not his fault because she understands he couldn't help it in light of the depth of his passion — that's profoundly irresponsible."
My reaction to this might not make too much sense if you haven't seen the scene in question, but: not only is that reading a stretch, but it kind of ticks me off. From my slightly fuzzy memory of the scene in the book, Bella basically doesn't get what the big deal is -- she had a good time, she gets bruised constantly anyway because of her Clumsiness Flaw, Edward's overreacting. For all that, it's still a bit sketchy. But the scene in the film is preceded directly by Bella having an extended flashback of the wonderful ways she's just been touched, and when Edward freaks out about the bruises, they're -- soft fingerprints, a couple little spots on her back, bruises that clearly don't hurt. I've been bruised much worse than that on purpose. So when Edward is horrified that he injured Bella, and Bella says no, he didn't, it was great -- not only do I believe her, but the issue at hand is that Edward hasn't wrapped his head around the things that Bella likes and is capable of, not that Bella is forgiving Edward for abuse. I hasten to add that I'm not trying to downplay injury: it read to me that Bella specifically liked it.
And that was the fascinating thing about this movie: in lots of ways it's about Bella's agency. I mean, the NPR article is accurate when it says Bella is "a woman with no life at all outside of her literally all-consuming pregnancy," but ... it's also about a choice she makes. It's a fairly crazy choice, but ... man, there's a certain point when I've heard about Bella being a lump and how these books are sending such a terrible message to teenage girls so many times that all I can hear is We have to defend these poor things who don't know any better. And I don't know about you, but when I was fourteen I would have devoured these like crack candy and, hey, also known that if a guy actually watches you while you sleep, he's probably not good boyfriend material. (For the record, at fourteen I would've also been Team Jacob just because I am always on the werewolf side of the werewolves vs vampires debate.)
The point, though, is that this may be a pretty fucked-up narrative, but it's also a narrative about Bella, which is more than we can say for Hermione Granger and That Time She Did Most of the Work But the Narrative's Still About Harry. And -- hell, I'll be honest, I loved all the stupid scenery porn and Bella's extended fantasy sequences and the bit where they actually went for it with the horror pregnancy and Jacob had dramatic imprinting on Renesmee complete with dramatic flashforward sequences. That was the awesome crack.
Or, my much shorter review: EDWARD, YOU WERE IN THE SUN IN RIO. WHY DID YOU NOT SPARKLE? YOUR SPARKLE HAS FAILED ME.
The cliff notes version of my relationship with the whole Twilight ... franchise, experience, whatever, is that I'm observing it with popcorn and fascinated amusement. I couldn't even get through the first book, but I had lots of slightly bewildered enjoyment when I saw the first film -- everything that had skeeved me about the book was still there, but the film had been injected with as much plot as it reasonably could without changing the story, and without Bella's inner monologue it sort of read as the story of a bunch of desperately awkward misfits falling in weird teenage love. Compound this with Robert Pattinson's choice to play Edward as brimming with self-loathing, and I was ... kind of charmed.
So I ended up actually reading through the rest of the books, and delightedly imagining how they were going to stage some of the Breaking Dawn stuff on screen. (They play it straight; it comes out alternately hilarious and horrifying.) I've watched the films as they've come out, too, and I've mostly been there for the lols, but you know what? This whole thing is kind of fascinating.
Because, yes, a lot of the subtext-verging-to-text is awful. Edward watching Bella sleep way before she knows about it or gives permission isn't romantic, it's goddamn stalkery. He removes the engine from her car. Jacob kisses her after she tells him no and Charlie's okay with it. Imprinting is truly deeply creepy, and Sam's wife is right to forgive him for permanently scarring her. Meyer's subconscious -- or maybe conscious -- Mormonism is bleeding through every page, and a lot of that makes it to the screen. We all know these things, and all of them are true and a bit awful.
But something crystallized for me when I saw an excerpt from this NPR article: "[W]hen a saga popular with pre-adolescent girls peaks romantically on a night that leaves the heroine to wake up covered with bruises in the shape of her husband's hands — and when that heroine then spends the morning explaining to her husband that she's incredibly happy even though he injured her, and that it's not his fault because she understands he couldn't help it in light of the depth of his passion — that's profoundly irresponsible."
My reaction to this might not make too much sense if you haven't seen the scene in question, but: not only is that reading a stretch, but it kind of ticks me off. From my slightly fuzzy memory of the scene in the book, Bella basically doesn't get what the big deal is -- she had a good time, she gets bruised constantly anyway because of her Clumsiness Flaw, Edward's overreacting. For all that, it's still a bit sketchy. But the scene in the film is preceded directly by Bella having an extended flashback of the wonderful ways she's just been touched, and when Edward freaks out about the bruises, they're -- soft fingerprints, a couple little spots on her back, bruises that clearly don't hurt. I've been bruised much worse than that on purpose. So when Edward is horrified that he injured Bella, and Bella says no, he didn't, it was great -- not only do I believe her, but the issue at hand is that Edward hasn't wrapped his head around the things that Bella likes and is capable of, not that Bella is forgiving Edward for abuse. I hasten to add that I'm not trying to downplay injury: it read to me that Bella specifically liked it.
And that was the fascinating thing about this movie: in lots of ways it's about Bella's agency. I mean, the NPR article is accurate when it says Bella is "a woman with no life at all outside of her literally all-consuming pregnancy," but ... it's also about a choice she makes. It's a fairly crazy choice, but ... man, there's a certain point when I've heard about Bella being a lump and how these books are sending such a terrible message to teenage girls so many times that all I can hear is We have to defend these poor things who don't know any better. And I don't know about you, but when I was fourteen I would have devoured these like crack candy and, hey, also known that if a guy actually watches you while you sleep, he's probably not good boyfriend material. (For the record, at fourteen I would've also been Team Jacob just because I am always on the werewolf side of the werewolves vs vampires debate.)
The point, though, is that this may be a pretty fucked-up narrative, but it's also a narrative about Bella, which is more than we can say for Hermione Granger and That Time She Did Most of the Work But the Narrative's Still About Harry. And -- hell, I'll be honest, I loved all the stupid scenery porn and Bella's extended fantasy sequences and the bit where they actually went for it with the horror pregnancy and Jacob had dramatic imprinting on Renesmee complete with dramatic flashforward sequences. That was the awesome crack.
Or, my much shorter review: EDWARD, YOU WERE IN THE SUN IN RIO. WHY DID YOU NOT SPARKLE? YOUR SPARKLE HAS FAILED ME.
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(although I do have to say that at some fans DON'T see that Edward is kind of bad boyfriend material. I have heard my aunt -- a very intelligent woman -- tell her daughters to not hold out for a perfect boyfriend like Edward because perfection doesn't exist in real people. This worries me. And I also think that at 14 I wouldn't have realized Edward's problems myself. That's pretty close to the age when I read Jane Eyre and thought it super romantic....)
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(Ahh, fair point. And I'm sure that Twilight's presentation of Edward as any kind of ideal actually is quite damaging. But I'm also just really impatient with the meme that everyone who reads Twilight needs to be protected from making bad decisions because of it.)
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And that was the fascinating thing about this movie: in lots of ways it's about Bella's agency. I mean, the NPR article is accurate when it says Bella is "a woman with no life at all outside of her literally all-consuming pregnancy," but ... it's also about a choice she makes. It's a fairly crazy choice, but ... man, there's a certain point when I've heard about Bella being a lump and how these books are sending such a terrible message to teenage girls so many times that all I can hear is We have to defend these poor things who don't know any better. And I don't know about you, but when I was fourteen I would have devoured these like crack candy and, hey, also known that if a guy actually watches you while you sleep, he's probably not good boyfriend material. (For the record, at fourteen I would've also been Team Jacob just because I am always on the werewolf side of the werewolves vs vampires debate.)
I agree completely that the conversation surrounding these books, and usually the harshest critics are those who refuse to read them, seems just entirely blown out of proportion to me. Pass the frakking popcorn.
And fair point about Hermione v. Bella also.
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Don't even get me started! Hermione Granger who "proves" that it's ok to be unattractive and clever EVEN THOUGH she has no (/barely any) female friends (or friends other than Ron and Harry), is almost painfully isolated, is viewed solely as a brain on legs until she sorts out her hair (with a magic potion!), and is misunderstood and overlooked by her best friends quite a lot. YAY! I'm so glad to be the clever swotty girl now!
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I dunno, my views on the whole series are mixed. I still love this shirt.