On the Power of Fiction
To anyone who's had to hear me blunder through a badly-phrased and frustrated rant about why people who say "it's just a book! Lighten up!" drive me up the wall, this post says what I've been struggling to articulate.
It's also interesting to note that this blog, made up of members of the religious right who occasionally post things about homosexuality being entirely a choice etc., vilifies Twilight and the relationship it portrays as abusive and controlling and so on. It's an interesting point that I hadn't thought about before -- many people cite the morality of Twilight vis-a-vis its pro-abstinence shtick while ignoring the suicidal and destructive underlying message. Not to mention (as the blog writer points out), it's not abstinence for the sake of purity or closeness with God; it's abstinence because the controlling, asshole boyfriend says he might hurt her during sex (which, once they're married, he does). Meanwhile the relationship is very, very sensuous, leading young girls to believe that they can have the same level of sexual tension and near-misses in THEIR relationships, when their boyfriends will most likely not have Edward's -- ahem -- self-control.
I know people on my flist like Twilight, and I'm sorry, because I don't want to rant at you (you're all lovely people and not insane <3). But it's just ... this is not something I think young girls should be reading, and it's not something that mothers should be approving and encouraging. Fiction matters. Entire revolutions were based on words; if Thomas Paine never write "Common Sense" and "The Rights of Man", the USA and France would look very different today.
Not that I'm placing Twilight on the same level as revolutionary pamphlets or Huckleberry Finn, of course. But this is a generation whose attention span is appalling -- and this is what we're focusing on to give them. You listen to millions of 14-year-olds convinced that Edward is the perfect man and tell me that we shouldn't be careful.
It's also interesting to note that this blog, made up of members of the religious right who occasionally post things about homosexuality being entirely a choice etc., vilifies Twilight and the relationship it portrays as abusive and controlling and so on. It's an interesting point that I hadn't thought about before -- many people cite the morality of Twilight vis-a-vis its pro-abstinence shtick while ignoring the suicidal and destructive underlying message. Not to mention (as the blog writer points out), it's not abstinence for the sake of purity or closeness with God; it's abstinence because the controlling, asshole boyfriend says he might hurt her during sex (which, once they're married, he does). Meanwhile the relationship is very, very sensuous, leading young girls to believe that they can have the same level of sexual tension and near-misses in THEIR relationships, when their boyfriends will most likely not have Edward's -- ahem -- self-control.
I know people on my flist like Twilight, and I'm sorry, because I don't want to rant at you (you're all lovely people and not insane <3). But it's just ... this is not something I think young girls should be reading, and it's not something that mothers should be approving and encouraging. Fiction matters. Entire revolutions were based on words; if Thomas Paine never write "Common Sense" and "The Rights of Man", the USA and France would look very different today.
Not that I'm placing Twilight on the same level as revolutionary pamphlets or Huckleberry Finn, of course. But this is a generation whose attention span is appalling -- and this is what we're focusing on to give them. You listen to millions of 14-year-olds convinced that Edward is the perfect man and tell me that we shouldn't be careful.