The Twilight Series – A Review

I have read very little literature that I found offensive. There’re a lot of books that I just didn’t enjoy, and i don't like to read till the end - adult, young adult and children’s fiction (I have eclectic taste as you can tell) – but very little that I found ‘offensive’.

 In fact I’ve only read one other book that I found unbelievably offensive.  Mitchell Bard’s Complete Idiot’s Guide to the Middle East, purporting to be an extensive overview of the middle-east conflict, was in reality such a fucking anti-Semitic piece of shite I couldn’t even finish it!

Coming back to my rant for today – Twilight. Before I continue with the rant though, I must confess (ashamedly) that I have read all four books in the Twilight series written by Stephanie Meyer. Friends of mine, the girls only, told me how fantastic it was and that I had to read it. So I started.  Easy reading it was, just not necessarily good. Halfway into the book I was horrified. Still, I persisted. If I was going to say anything to these girls I had to know what I was up against. I kept hoping, naively, for Meyer to redeem herself and her inane characters at some point in the successive books. But, it never came.

There’s no doubt that the Twilight series has made a huge impact on the teenage literary population. The series has sold more than 100 million copies, and Twilight fan fiction, fan sites, and fan blogs crowd the Internet. Scores of fans have made the trek to real-life Forks, Washington, where the series is set. A trilogy of film adaptations of the books, starring Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson is already out and said to have grossed more than $1.7 billion.

To put it bluntly, though, I’ve never understood the Twilight series. I refuse to call them a saga – Lord of the Rings was a saga. Twilight is not. To me, the vampire genre died after Buffy* the Vampire Slayer and nothing will ever be able to live up to her legacy.

*For those of you who are going “Buffy, really?” know this – Buffy spawned a new generation of what I like to call The Power Puff Girls. She put the Girl in Girl Power. In the writer’s words – “The very first mission statement of the show was the joy of female power: having it, using it, sharing it.” The supernatural elements in the series stood as metaphors for personal anxieties associated with adolescence and young adulthood. The debut of Buffy (1997–2003) eventually led to the publication of a number of books and hundreds of articles examining the themes of the show from a wide range of disciplinary perspectives including sociology, psychology, philosophy, theology and women’s studies. Now be honest – you’ve never really watched Buffy have you?

Coming back to my original rant, to summarise: my main reasons for disliking the Twilight series are that it is badly written, embarrassingly cliché, and most of all, anti-feminist – the subject of this article.

Here’s a brief outline of the main plot (I use the word ‘plot’ very, very lightly here) of the Twilight books: Bella Swan, an ordinary seventeen-year-old girl, moves to a small town, and there she meets and falls in love with the dazzlingly beautiful Edward Cullen, who, surprise surprise, turns out to be a vampire, and then Bella decides that she wants to be turned into a vampire so she can spend the rest of her existence with him.

Bella is the ultimate drama queen. Not only that, she is also irksome, whiny, petulant and an embarrassment to women everywhere. True, she’s just seventeen so she can’t be fully blamed for her fucked-up, immature tendencies, but if she’s going to be making adult decisions like, let’s say, getting married or having sex or giving up her ‘humanity’ forever and ever for the man she loves, then I’m going to treat her like an adult.  And as an adult, she is an embarrassment to women everywhere.

First of all, all the men in Bella’s life essentially control her and she lets it happen. She just makes a show of being really annoyed anytime Edward ‘over’-protects her in his assumption that she is just a fragile little girl who can’t help but put herself in danger’s way. Classic damsel-in-distress syndrome (that I thought had gone out with the 1970s Mills ‘N’ Boons). But eventually she lets him get away with it because she “loves him” (read: she wants to please him).

Second – The very first time Edward and Bella share a “moment,” it’s in the act of him protecting her from a skidding car. I’m not saying he should have let Bella die, but it is rather symbolic of their entire relationship: Bella on the ground crouching in fear, and Edward poised over her, shading her from the elements. What are you trying to say, Ms. Meyer? Do all women innately need protecting? The problem with being constantly protected from danger is that you are also kept from truly living, because life is dangerous by definition. Bella has no life outside Edward, and she is okay with that fact. That’s not love; that’s self-denial.

There are a million tiny examples of how Edward controls and manipulates Bella emotionally, and how she lets him, even enjoying his doing so: he won’t let her drive her own car, he won’t let her do stuff by herself, he hovers outside (or inside) her bedroom at night, at some point even ‘forbids’ her from meeting a male friend of hers. I just want to shake her (and the sweet, otherwise intelligent young girls in my class) and say, “If he really loved you, he would let you be free to do what you want!”

What is Stephenie Meyer trying to convey to teenage girls? In my opinion, she’s saying that love is about the protection of women, all of whom must necessarily have low self-esteem, naturally. Find a man who can protect you from the big, scary, dangerous world out there, girls, and you’re all set. All you have to do to snag the man of your dreams is give up everything that makes you who you are.

Third – Bella’s personality really irks me. She is weak, clumsy (so she keeps on insisting), and seems to depend wholly on her boyfriend just to survive. In the first book, she nearly passes out at the sight of blood, and a boy has to rescue her and take her out of the classroom before she completely loses consciousness.

Later on, she is almost crushed by a truck and is yet again saved by someone in possession of a penis – in fact, this time it’s the borderline-abusive vampire Romeo himself. And finally, she is almost attacked one night, by a group of shady-looking men while out with her girlfriends (they were going shopping silly – only girlfriends love that shit), but does not attempt to scream, cry for help, or even try to fight back. She considers doing all those things, of course (!), but then remembers that she is a girl, so apparently trying to defend herself would be pointless – because having a vagina and two X chromosomes renders one incapable of attempting to struggle when you are attacked. I’m sure Wikipedia must have some article that’s proof of that, but for once, I’m disinclined to be bothered.

The second book in the series, New Moon, is by far one of the most disturbing ‘romance’ novels I have ever read. In this installment, Edward leaves Bella because apparently he has just decided that it is too dangerous for them to be together (he’s a vampire – she’s a human – the whole craving-human-blood thing, you know; at this point, they have been together for an estimated five months, and yet he has only figured this out now).

Bella consistently thinks that she is somehow not worthy of Edward . When he and his family leave, Bella becomes severely depressed, and goes into a catatonic (this is not an exaggeration) state for three months where she cannot remember anything she does. She gets suicidal more than once. Is this a healthy reaction for a teenage girl? And if it is not, why is no one in her life acknowledging the obvious self-esteem issue she has! Surely a healthy relationship should not involve risking one’s life just to see or hear the voice of one’s “soul-mate”.

It comes across, to me at least, in more than one instance, that Bella’s love for Edward seems to have its root in Edwards beauty and she is constantly in disbelief of  his interest in her (because she is  so plain). There are also countless other recurring references to Edward’s beauty (in all its manifestation) and Bella’s plainness (in all its manifestations). Thankfully someone else has already counted and catalogued them here.

Here’s a small excerpt:

References to Edward’s Beauty: 165
Broken Down into the following categories -
Face: 24 (Favorite adjectives: glorious, heavenly, seraphic)
Voice: 20 (The voice of an archangel et al)
Eyes: 17
Movement: 11
Smile: 10
Teeth: 8
Muscles: 7
Skin: 7 (Note: This only contains accounts of Edward’s skin being beautiful. I didn’t count references to it as “pale,” “cold,” or “white.” If I had, this number would be about ten times larger.)
Iron Strength or Limbs: 5
Breath: 4 (EVEN HIS BREATH IS AMAZING.)
Scent: 4
Laughter: 3
Handwriting: 2
Chest: 2
Driving Skills: 1

I’m usually very happy whenever my friends show enthusiasm for reading anything. But not this time. This is a terrible series. Not least because its characters are stereotypical. Unfortunately, it has given more ammunition to those fervent, but I believe misguided, believers of Abstinence. The more I read this kind of ‘literature’ the more I worry that we don’t tell our children enough. Part Two to follow soon.