Twilight - A Critical Look.
Twilight. The number one international best seller. Read by thousands, adapted into a relatively successful movie and reprinted twelve times in 2008. Twilight. The story of an unconventional and forbidden romance existing between a teenage girl and a housetrained vampire…
As a compromise to my friend whilst on a relaxing holiday, we decided to both pick and read a book that we wouldn’t enjoy. Just for kicks and giggles and an excuse to whine. Hers was the third instalment of the Inheritance Cycle, which started with the book Eragon, written by Chris Paolini. A painful read if ever one existed and so I had to take that tossed in chip and raise her bet.
I chose Twilight, by Stephanie Meyers.
Now, while my choice held an element of cheating intention - unlike a lot of the target audience out there, I saw the movie first having never expressed an interest in the books before - we decided that it would be a good pick due to the painful endeavour that the movie proved to be.
It was a challenge that the stubborn part of me was all too willing to accept while I begrudgingly handed over the money for the book that seemed to burn and blister my hand like a telltale initialled iron. Even so, part of me rejoiced in the idea of sitting in the sun, reading and bitching to my friend about something that, in my humble opinion, should never have been published. An easy read, a laugh and a challenge accepted and won.
Now, it is saying something that my love of reading hadn’t won me over to these books when they first came out. To me, they were principally a child’s book filled with implausible romance and unimaginative ideas. I steered clear of them, taking such a wide birth that I would almost not enter a bookshop for fear of being tainted by the endless shelves covered in black, white and red covers.
Don’t get me wrong, I love the idea of vampires and werewolves, the epic struggle between them and the plight of those that get caught in the middle. However, none of those aspects of the books in question had been enough to get me to read them, all for the reasons above.
Let me tell you, the writing is nothing ingenious. There are a multitude of authors out there who can write phenomenally better than Meyers, who can carry a story with a much better voice and flow. I have even managed to pick out some editorial and grammatical mistakes in my editions of the books - the latest ‘Special Edition’ release which brings me to wonder how many errors went unchecked in the first publications.
This alone worries me. It eats at me actually, fuelling my contempt towards these people who claim author status while pumping out blocks of text that resemble bad fanfiction.
For that is what turning the pages of these books felt like. It holds an uncanny familiarity to it. The flick of the page sounds like the light click of the mouse, the motion needed to adjust the too large books mirrors the need to scroll down a page of fan written dribble. The characters feel stolen, plagiarized from somewhere else with a small but funny disclaimer marking them as such. The storyline moves at the same languid pace, lots of emotion, tears and heart felt declarations with a bad guy threat thrown in at the end as a complete afterthought. Something to keep the fans involved and a way in which to have our characters fear for each other and show their selflessness.
Meyers’ characters, sadly, aren’t overly unique either. The concept of vampires with a conscience dedicated to doing the right thing and preserve humanity has existed almost as long as the idea of vampires themselves. As soon as humankind moved out of the medieval burn-the-witch frame of mind, this concept has been toyed with, abused and entertained by those that dream of a more exciting life and something far from the norm.
So the vampires alone can’t make the series. Surely other readers know that this isn’t ground breaking stuff. Surely they understand that there hasn’t been a single original vampire idea since Anne Rice lost her mind and sent her characters to hell.
Or do they?
Taking target ages into account, I’ll give the benefit of the doubt and relate it to something that the general teenage girl will probably understand. Buffy. Angel. Vampire. Soul. I doubt I could spell that out any clearer.
So if it isn’t the appeal of the wildly derivative vampires, then let’s look at the characters as individuals.
Bella is painful. There is no other way to describe the monotony of her dreary, emotional teenage thoughts on existence. She is self loathing, unsure and hardly holds a single self sufficient thought in her mind. She trips, she stumbles, she can’t zip up bags, walk in a straight line or even speak correctly most of the time. She has no feeling of self-worth, no faith in herself as a person and there isn’t a single shred of confidence anywhere to be seen within the substantial chuck of text.
Not unless it is about Edward, of course.
I understand that, especially these days, teenagers are feeling more and more ill at ease in their own bodies. The ‘Emo’ trend is taking the world by storm, washing away the ideas of individually by having all the ‘individuals’ in the world dress in the same black skinny jeans while flicking their red streaked hair. I, believe it or not, understand this strange transition in the world, or at least I think I do. What I don’t understand is why our heroine, Bella, is so determined to take this depreciating emotional movement and drag it down even further.
Love. That is a possibility and the only explanation given within the books. Obviously rational comprehension has nothing to do with it. It doesn’t matter that she is fundamentally still a child, even in the eyes of the law. It is totally irrelevant that she has never dated before, never felt those fuzzy feelings towards anyone in her life. But now, standing there and looking at Edward, she just knows that this is deep, never ending, ‘I’d die for you’ sort of love.
Call me an old hag with my twenty odd years of breathing, but I don’t buy that one little bit.
The object of her affection isn’t much better. Edward is a mishmash of all romantic male leads, blended so seamlessly together that it is easy to forget that his name is Edward and not Romeo. Shakespeare goes wannabe gothic. Tall, cold and distant, he is a vampire with a brooding personality, a hint of the old world left in him and a sarcastically shy charm. He worries, he considers himself scum and the bad guy and hides behind a calm mask that shows nothing of his inner turmoil. A true anti hero; so true that it rests precariously on the line of stereotypical and boring.
On top of that he is as unstable as an open tin of paint balancing on a needle and while it fairly adds to his charm, it also has the ability to turn him into somewhat of a prick. Very forthright, honest wording there, but there is hardly another way to describe it. A prick, but girls everywhere love him.
Our other lead, Jacob, adds a slight spark of originality to the story, but at the same time, he is so hopeless that you can’t help but beat yourself with the book every time he suffers. What started out as a fascinating character merely degenerates into a mind numbing, awkward stand-in who solely exists to pine over our female lead while adding even more emotional dribble to the text. A sour disappointment which not only leaves a bitter taste in your mouth but also burns all the way down to the pit of your stomach.
Yet in light of all this, these books have taken the world by storm. A quick browse of fan communities is enough to show that there are as many crazed, over the top and dedicated fans as there are Lord of the Rings geeks. I’ve seen people renounce the horror that is Harry Potter due to these books and the world they exist in, claiming Twilight superior. Bookshops have rows of empty shelves that show the obsessive demand easily outweighing the speed of supply.
But why? That is what I am so desperate to know. Even as my mind keeps telling me that it is imperative that I immediately go and pick up the third book and keep reading, I at least have the perchance of normal mental function to question:
Why?
What is driving the minds of the rational, civilized world to frantically read these books? Why is it gripping my mind despite the fact that I know I am not lost head over heels in this world? Why am I battling that rising wave marking the onslaught of a new fandom with all my sensible thoughts even while I absentmindedly make ‘just a few’ icons.
Is it some form of social anxiety? A feeling that one can’t be whole and converse with others of the human race unless you have read these books. Peer pressure to the extreme, threatening social isolation and ridicule if you are unaware of what happened to Bella and Edward after her eighteenth birthday.
I know people who have cancelled dates and outings to stay at home and read these books. I know of people who stayed up to three in the morning, surviving on only four hours sleep and unhealthy doses of caffeine merely to progress in this saga.
To further push this point, I walked into the kitchen at work the other night and found myself gaping. A kitchen, filled with guys who, when bored, play cricket with a makeshift bat and a potato were all having a relatively intelligent discussion about Twilight. Until that night, other than recipe books, I was sure that most of these guys couldn’t read. They sure as hell don’t display the common aptitude needed to be able to readily understand a sentence consisting of more than eight words strung together, let alone a series of novels. Yet here they were, talking about a fateful meet with wolves and a vampire in a small clearing and I almost wanted to scream.
Has the world gone mad, leaving me alone to stand back and see the steady decline of judicious intellect?
Even more horrific was the general survey of the theatre when my friend and I succumb to boredom and saw the movie, long before the ‘Bad-Book’ pack was ever made. Of all the people in there, over sixty percent were males and an overwhelming amount of said males were in the mid to late teens.
Now I would understand it if it were Angelina Jolie parading around, or the latest Bruce Willis blockbuster; eye candy and the explosions to match. But with a relatively unknown cast, Twilight is all about a romance so deep that somehow drowning in it isn’t even an option. You sink, you struggle, you pray for death and yet all you seem to do is linger somewhere between breathing and suffocating.
Are males becoming softer, feeling the trend of our currently warped, unhinged emotional society and bending with it? Should we be expecting a wealth of guys who, up until now, were idolizing the likes of gangsters and wrongly convicted criminals to be telling us that we are their lives? Is society going to start reading like the pages of a Mills and Boon spoof?
More importantly, is this what girls truly want nowadays? Are years of feminist struggle for individuality being neglected so that we can revert back to being damsels in distress, waiting for our Prince Charming to come and save us? Is that what these books are reflecting or are we all, as a society reflecting the ideals of said book? Life imitating art, or is it the other way around.
On the other hand, maybe the thoughts and feelings of our own sexuality and experiences have nothing to do with it at all and it is all about the fear of alienation. A desperate need to keep up with the times and feel social acceptance through pop culture. Is Stephanie Meyers the new dealer of the populaces’ drug in the form of the badly written word?
I am well aware of the social implications of me asking these questions out loud. If it is in fact peer pressure that pushes us all to read these books then I almost shudder to think of what such outspoken opinions will bring down upon me. Enforced segregation, vengeful wrath, indefinite hostility, angry fangirls wielding pitchforks and torches screaming ‘Burn the witch!’ and that is just to name a few.
But so be it.
Maybe I am like Edward, suffering from the proximity of his singer, only it is not someone who sings to me, but something. A thirst for truth and a need to understand this wholly incomprehensible social trend.
So please, enlighten me. What was it that kept your mind so occupied and determined to turn page after hopeless page, eyes scouring and hanging on every recorded word?
As a compromise to my friend whilst on a relaxing holiday, we decided to both pick and read a book that we wouldn’t enjoy. Just for kicks and giggles and an excuse to whine. Hers was the third instalment of the Inheritance Cycle, which started with the book Eragon, written by Chris Paolini. A painful read if ever one existed and so I had to take that tossed in chip and raise her bet.
I chose Twilight, by Stephanie Meyers.
Now, while my choice held an element of cheating intention - unlike a lot of the target audience out there, I saw the movie first having never expressed an interest in the books before - we decided that it would be a good pick due to the painful endeavour that the movie proved to be.
It was a challenge that the stubborn part of me was all too willing to accept while I begrudgingly handed over the money for the book that seemed to burn and blister my hand like a telltale initialled iron. Even so, part of me rejoiced in the idea of sitting in the sun, reading and bitching to my friend about something that, in my humble opinion, should never have been published. An easy read, a laugh and a challenge accepted and won.
Now, it is saying something that my love of reading hadn’t won me over to these books when they first came out. To me, they were principally a child’s book filled with implausible romance and unimaginative ideas. I steered clear of them, taking such a wide birth that I would almost not enter a bookshop for fear of being tainted by the endless shelves covered in black, white and red covers.
Don’t get me wrong, I love the idea of vampires and werewolves, the epic struggle between them and the plight of those that get caught in the middle. However, none of those aspects of the books in question had been enough to get me to read them, all for the reasons above.
Let me tell you, the writing is nothing ingenious. There are a multitude of authors out there who can write phenomenally better than Meyers, who can carry a story with a much better voice and flow. I have even managed to pick out some editorial and grammatical mistakes in my editions of the books - the latest ‘Special Edition’ release which brings me to wonder how many errors went unchecked in the first publications.
This alone worries me. It eats at me actually, fuelling my contempt towards these people who claim author status while pumping out blocks of text that resemble bad fanfiction.
For that is what turning the pages of these books felt like. It holds an uncanny familiarity to it. The flick of the page sounds like the light click of the mouse, the motion needed to adjust the too large books mirrors the need to scroll down a page of fan written dribble. The characters feel stolen, plagiarized from somewhere else with a small but funny disclaimer marking them as such. The storyline moves at the same languid pace, lots of emotion, tears and heart felt declarations with a bad guy threat thrown in at the end as a complete afterthought. Something to keep the fans involved and a way in which to have our characters fear for each other and show their selflessness.
Meyers’ characters, sadly, aren’t overly unique either. The concept of vampires with a conscience dedicated to doing the right thing and preserve humanity has existed almost as long as the idea of vampires themselves. As soon as humankind moved out of the medieval burn-the-witch frame of mind, this concept has been toyed with, abused and entertained by those that dream of a more exciting life and something far from the norm.
So the vampires alone can’t make the series. Surely other readers know that this isn’t ground breaking stuff. Surely they understand that there hasn’t been a single original vampire idea since Anne Rice lost her mind and sent her characters to hell.
Or do they?
Taking target ages into account, I’ll give the benefit of the doubt and relate it to something that the general teenage girl will probably understand. Buffy. Angel. Vampire. Soul. I doubt I could spell that out any clearer.
So if it isn’t the appeal of the wildly derivative vampires, then let’s look at the characters as individuals.
Bella is painful. There is no other way to describe the monotony of her dreary, emotional teenage thoughts on existence. She is self loathing, unsure and hardly holds a single self sufficient thought in her mind. She trips, she stumbles, she can’t zip up bags, walk in a straight line or even speak correctly most of the time. She has no feeling of self-worth, no faith in herself as a person and there isn’t a single shred of confidence anywhere to be seen within the substantial chuck of text.
Not unless it is about Edward, of course.
I understand that, especially these days, teenagers are feeling more and more ill at ease in their own bodies. The ‘Emo’ trend is taking the world by storm, washing away the ideas of individually by having all the ‘individuals’ in the world dress in the same black skinny jeans while flicking their red streaked hair. I, believe it or not, understand this strange transition in the world, or at least I think I do. What I don’t understand is why our heroine, Bella, is so determined to take this depreciating emotional movement and drag it down even further.
Love. That is a possibility and the only explanation given within the books. Obviously rational comprehension has nothing to do with it. It doesn’t matter that she is fundamentally still a child, even in the eyes of the law. It is totally irrelevant that she has never dated before, never felt those fuzzy feelings towards anyone in her life. But now, standing there and looking at Edward, she just knows that this is deep, never ending, ‘I’d die for you’ sort of love.
Call me an old hag with my twenty odd years of breathing, but I don’t buy that one little bit.
The object of her affection isn’t much better. Edward is a mishmash of all romantic male leads, blended so seamlessly together that it is easy to forget that his name is Edward and not Romeo. Shakespeare goes wannabe gothic. Tall, cold and distant, he is a vampire with a brooding personality, a hint of the old world left in him and a sarcastically shy charm. He worries, he considers himself scum and the bad guy and hides behind a calm mask that shows nothing of his inner turmoil. A true anti hero; so true that it rests precariously on the line of stereotypical and boring.
On top of that he is as unstable as an open tin of paint balancing on a needle and while it fairly adds to his charm, it also has the ability to turn him into somewhat of a prick. Very forthright, honest wording there, but there is hardly another way to describe it. A prick, but girls everywhere love him.
Our other lead, Jacob, adds a slight spark of originality to the story, but at the same time, he is so hopeless that you can’t help but beat yourself with the book every time he suffers. What started out as a fascinating character merely degenerates into a mind numbing, awkward stand-in who solely exists to pine over our female lead while adding even more emotional dribble to the text. A sour disappointment which not only leaves a bitter taste in your mouth but also burns all the way down to the pit of your stomach.
Yet in light of all this, these books have taken the world by storm. A quick browse of fan communities is enough to show that there are as many crazed, over the top and dedicated fans as there are Lord of the Rings geeks. I’ve seen people renounce the horror that is Harry Potter due to these books and the world they exist in, claiming Twilight superior. Bookshops have rows of empty shelves that show the obsessive demand easily outweighing the speed of supply.
But why? That is what I am so desperate to know. Even as my mind keeps telling me that it is imperative that I immediately go and pick up the third book and keep reading, I at least have the perchance of normal mental function to question:
Why?
What is driving the minds of the rational, civilized world to frantically read these books? Why is it gripping my mind despite the fact that I know I am not lost head over heels in this world? Why am I battling that rising wave marking the onslaught of a new fandom with all my sensible thoughts even while I absentmindedly make ‘just a few’ icons.
Is it some form of social anxiety? A feeling that one can’t be whole and converse with others of the human race unless you have read these books. Peer pressure to the extreme, threatening social isolation and ridicule if you are unaware of what happened to Bella and Edward after her eighteenth birthday.
I know people who have cancelled dates and outings to stay at home and read these books. I know of people who stayed up to three in the morning, surviving on only four hours sleep and unhealthy doses of caffeine merely to progress in this saga.
To further push this point, I walked into the kitchen at work the other night and found myself gaping. A kitchen, filled with guys who, when bored, play cricket with a makeshift bat and a potato were all having a relatively intelligent discussion about Twilight. Until that night, other than recipe books, I was sure that most of these guys couldn’t read. They sure as hell don’t display the common aptitude needed to be able to readily understand a sentence consisting of more than eight words strung together, let alone a series of novels. Yet here they were, talking about a fateful meet with wolves and a vampire in a small clearing and I almost wanted to scream.
Has the world gone mad, leaving me alone to stand back and see the steady decline of judicious intellect?
Even more horrific was the general survey of the theatre when my friend and I succumb to boredom and saw the movie, long before the ‘Bad-Book’ pack was ever made. Of all the people in there, over sixty percent were males and an overwhelming amount of said males were in the mid to late teens.
Now I would understand it if it were Angelina Jolie parading around, or the latest Bruce Willis blockbuster; eye candy and the explosions to match. But with a relatively unknown cast, Twilight is all about a romance so deep that somehow drowning in it isn’t even an option. You sink, you struggle, you pray for death and yet all you seem to do is linger somewhere between breathing and suffocating.
Are males becoming softer, feeling the trend of our currently warped, unhinged emotional society and bending with it? Should we be expecting a wealth of guys who, up until now, were idolizing the likes of gangsters and wrongly convicted criminals to be telling us that we are their lives? Is society going to start reading like the pages of a Mills and Boon spoof?
More importantly, is this what girls truly want nowadays? Are years of feminist struggle for individuality being neglected so that we can revert back to being damsels in distress, waiting for our Prince Charming to come and save us? Is that what these books are reflecting or are we all, as a society reflecting the ideals of said book? Life imitating art, or is it the other way around.
On the other hand, maybe the thoughts and feelings of our own sexuality and experiences have nothing to do with it at all and it is all about the fear of alienation. A desperate need to keep up with the times and feel social acceptance through pop culture. Is Stephanie Meyers the new dealer of the populaces’ drug in the form of the badly written word?
I am well aware of the social implications of me asking these questions out loud. If it is in fact peer pressure that pushes us all to read these books then I almost shudder to think of what such outspoken opinions will bring down upon me. Enforced segregation, vengeful wrath, indefinite hostility, angry fangirls wielding pitchforks and torches screaming ‘Burn the witch!’ and that is just to name a few.
But so be it.
Maybe I am like Edward, suffering from the proximity of his singer, only it is not someone who sings to me, but something. A thirst for truth and a need to understand this wholly incomprehensible social trend.
So please, enlighten me. What was it that kept your mind so occupied and determined to turn page after hopeless page, eyes scouring and hanging on every recorded word?