Breaking Dawn Part 1 (WTH? Part 1?)
Ok, so this continues my initial impression of Twilight- terrible literature, watchable movies. This is also the first time reading the books where I felt that I was actually reading horror, and an interesting take on body horror.
Massive spoilers for Breaking Dawn, and the rest of the Twilight. Also, I'm a pro-choice lady, and I talk about my experiences with pregnancy and loss.
Something that's always surprised me is how I can't stop consuming stuff related to Twilight. I watched Twilight with betrayme when it first came out, and thoroughly enjoyed myself. I don't honestly understand why Hardwicke got canned- especially after I read the dreck that was the book. She made it way less ridiculous, gave Bella and Charlie more emotional nuance than in the entire series, and vampire baseball was worth the price of admission.
I may or may not have downloaded a steadicam version and projected it on my living room wall and giggled hysterically with Megan a few times.
Look, I've written Mary Sues. They were terrible, I was thirteen, and they never saw the light of day. I think they are part of peoples' maturation, budding sexuality, and learning how to interact with media and literature. It's a safe way of exploration. Anyway, I don't care it's a Mary Sue. If I cared about every book with a Mary Sue, I'd have no energy left for anything else. And I think we all know that the first three books is a consistent glorification of a controlling guy and a submissive lady. Whatever, again, don't like it, but it's terribly obvious. Also, not even going to get into imprinting on people too young to consent. OBVIOUSLY WRONG. (Even the movie hardly went there- there's a moody shot with Embry and Claire on the beach and they aged Renesmee up for the imprinting scene.)
Side note- waking up bruised with hazy memories of the night before with your partner being moody and saying 'sorry it will NEVER NEVER HAPPEN AGAIN' is not romantic, it's abusive. Messing with your car so you can't see your friends is also abusive, which starts at the first book. So I guess, at least points for having a continuing theme?
Anyway, Breaking Dawn. There's a lot that gets under my skin in Breaking Dawn. It's a creeping kind of body horror, one that is uniquely female. As a female writer, as a mother, SMeyer is drawing on a common thread of experience.
I've been pregnant, I've given birth, I've breastfed and weaned and I try to be the best parent I can, and I fail a lot. I had a second trimester miscarriage, and it tore me open and left me broken. It's terrible to carry someone around inside of you that you have loved so deeply, and to know that you will never meet them. My womb was a grave. I started crying in the theater when Edward hears the baby, and they tell the baby how much they love her. I understand wanting to tell your child you have loved them, loved the potential in them, before anyone else knew them. I understand being terrified of your body, and of the pain, and of the distortion of yourself around somebody else.
But I can also tell you that if I had a pregnancy that threatened my own life, there would be no question- I would terminate. It would be awful. But it's something that I've thought about ever since I made the decision to have children, because I think everybody should think of these things before they do. And while Teddy's timing was an accident, he was a very wanted child, and Rosalind was too. But it comes back to the reason why I'm pro choice, and a large part of my professional ethics- actual people come before potential. And people have the right to determine what happens to their bodies, and if and when they want children.
Everybody talking about terminating Bella's pregnancy without consulting her first is a very telling point in how pro-choice is understood by a lot of people on the pro-life side. When I say pro-choice, that is what I mean- I want women to choose what happens to their bodies. I've met crazy women, weak women, strong women, and good mothers and bad mothers. But I would never tie somebody down and force an abortion, like Jacob suggests, or assume Bella would want one, like Edward does. I would never put my own life in danger for a potential child, but if somebody else wants to, and they are mentally sound and well informed, ok.
Being pro-choice is fuckall to do with being pro-abortion. I want to write that on a t-shirt and wear it everywhere. I wanted to write it on McCain's forehead in that awful debate where he was talking about the health of the mother, like we would use dying as an excuse to get out of making babies.
But because Bella comes out stronger and sparkly and with a lovely child that already sleeps through the night, a lot of ignorant young people are going to come out with the vague idea that this is what pregnancy and birth and abortion are.
That thought makes me want to Hulk out.
Not that I really think that we should depend on our trashy literature to educate our children. But I got schizophrenic messages from sex ed growing up- thank god for my mom- and abstinence only sex ed just makes me livid. Kids are getting ideas about sexuality from stuff like this, and that's also tragic.
I also want to bitch about the lack of breastfeeding. The lack of it in Breaking Dawn, like most media depictions of pregnancy and birth, taps into our society's obsession with sanitizing and controlling womens' bodies. I can buy the section- abruptio placenta, ok ok- and section by teeth, hey it's half vampire, which begs the question of how the hell you were going to abort it- but it's just such a disposable part of the pregnancy narrative.
I'm going to go read Growing Up Cullen until the bad taste in my mouth goes away. Is anything fun happening on ontd_twatlight?
Massive spoilers for Breaking Dawn, and the rest of the Twilight. Also, I'm a pro-choice lady, and I talk about my experiences with pregnancy and loss.
Something that's always surprised me is how I can't stop consuming stuff related to Twilight. I watched Twilight with betrayme when it first came out, and thoroughly enjoyed myself. I don't honestly understand why Hardwicke got canned- especially after I read the dreck that was the book. She made it way less ridiculous, gave Bella and Charlie more emotional nuance than in the entire series, and vampire baseball was worth the price of admission.
I may or may not have downloaded a steadicam version and projected it on my living room wall and giggled hysterically with Megan a few times.
Look, I've written Mary Sues. They were terrible, I was thirteen, and they never saw the light of day. I think they are part of peoples' maturation, budding sexuality, and learning how to interact with media and literature. It's a safe way of exploration. Anyway, I don't care it's a Mary Sue. If I cared about every book with a Mary Sue, I'd have no energy left for anything else. And I think we all know that the first three books is a consistent glorification of a controlling guy and a submissive lady. Whatever, again, don't like it, but it's terribly obvious. Also, not even going to get into imprinting on people too young to consent. OBVIOUSLY WRONG. (Even the movie hardly went there- there's a moody shot with Embry and Claire on the beach and they aged Renesmee up for the imprinting scene.)
Side note- waking up bruised with hazy memories of the night before with your partner being moody and saying 'sorry it will NEVER NEVER HAPPEN AGAIN' is not romantic, it's abusive. Messing with your car so you can't see your friends is also abusive, which starts at the first book. So I guess, at least points for having a continuing theme?
Anyway, Breaking Dawn. There's a lot that gets under my skin in Breaking Dawn. It's a creeping kind of body horror, one that is uniquely female. As a female writer, as a mother, SMeyer is drawing on a common thread of experience.
I've been pregnant, I've given birth, I've breastfed and weaned and I try to be the best parent I can, and I fail a lot. I had a second trimester miscarriage, and it tore me open and left me broken. It's terrible to carry someone around inside of you that you have loved so deeply, and to know that you will never meet them. My womb was a grave. I started crying in the theater when Edward hears the baby, and they tell the baby how much they love her. I understand wanting to tell your child you have loved them, loved the potential in them, before anyone else knew them. I understand being terrified of your body, and of the pain, and of the distortion of yourself around somebody else.
But I can also tell you that if I had a pregnancy that threatened my own life, there would be no question- I would terminate. It would be awful. But it's something that I've thought about ever since I made the decision to have children, because I think everybody should think of these things before they do. And while Teddy's timing was an accident, he was a very wanted child, and Rosalind was too. But it comes back to the reason why I'm pro choice, and a large part of my professional ethics- actual people come before potential. And people have the right to determine what happens to their bodies, and if and when they want children.
Everybody talking about terminating Bella's pregnancy without consulting her first is a very telling point in how pro-choice is understood by a lot of people on the pro-life side. When I say pro-choice, that is what I mean- I want women to choose what happens to their bodies. I've met crazy women, weak women, strong women, and good mothers and bad mothers. But I would never tie somebody down and force an abortion, like Jacob suggests, or assume Bella would want one, like Edward does. I would never put my own life in danger for a potential child, but if somebody else wants to, and they are mentally sound and well informed, ok.
Being pro-choice is fuckall to do with being pro-abortion. I want to write that on a t-shirt and wear it everywhere. I wanted to write it on McCain's forehead in that awful debate where he was talking about the health of the mother, like we would use dying as an excuse to get out of making babies.
But because Bella comes out stronger and sparkly and with a lovely child that already sleeps through the night, a lot of ignorant young people are going to come out with the vague idea that this is what pregnancy and birth and abortion are.
That thought makes me want to Hulk out.
Not that I really think that we should depend on our trashy literature to educate our children. But I got schizophrenic messages from sex ed growing up- thank god for my mom- and abstinence only sex ed just makes me livid. Kids are getting ideas about sexuality from stuff like this, and that's also tragic.
I also want to bitch about the lack of breastfeeding. The lack of it in Breaking Dawn, like most media depictions of pregnancy and birth, taps into our society's obsession with sanitizing and controlling womens' bodies. I can buy the section- abruptio placenta, ok ok- and section by teeth, hey it's half vampire, which begs the question of how the hell you were going to abort it- but it's just such a disposable part of the pregnancy narrative.
I'm going to go read Growing Up Cullen until the bad taste in my mouth goes away. Is anything fun happening on ontd_twatlight?