Why I will never read Twilight
At first I hated Twilight because of a ridiculous association I had with the cover of the first book. Then I read the first sentence and found it hilarious. Then, the more I heard about it, the more it sounded like the worst thing for teenage girls to be reading.
Still, I thought I should look further into it before condemning it completely. After all, I thought Buffy was a pretty stupid show while it was still on (I had the impression that it was more about the main character being 'sexy' than anything else-- sort of like Charmed truly ended up being) and once I watched some of it I realized that Buffy's role as hero is not directed by her gender (and that the show is awesome).
So in the interest of fairness, I read some feminist-perspective reviews of Twilight, and was unfortunately not surprised at what I found.
From a review of the movie (the writer couldn't finish the first book):
"Bella Swan (Kristen Stewart) is the anti-Buffy; she's a mortal high-school girl committed not to slaying vampires but to being slain by them. Make that one particular vampire: Bella's highest ambition is to be snacked upon by the lavender-lidded, incandescent-chested Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson) and thus to join him forever in the realm of the permanently teenage dead."
A quote she provides from the book: "He lay perfectly still in the grass, his shirt open over his sculpted, incandescent chest, his scintillating arms bare. His glistening, pale lavender lids were shut, though of course he didn't sleep." HAHAHAHAHAhahaha*breath*HAHAHAHAHahaha
Another reviewer, this time of the books, also discusses Bella vs. Buffy:
"Comparisons to another famous human girl with a vampire boyfriend are inevitable, but Bella Swan is no Buffy Summers. "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" was at heart one of those mythic hero's journeys so beloved by Joseph Campbell-quoting screenwriters, albeit transfigured into something sharp and funny by making the hero a contemporary teenage girl. Buffy wrestled with a series of romantic dilemmas -- in particular a penchant for hunky vampires -- but her story always belonged to her. Fulfilling her responsibilities as a slayer, loyalty to her friends and family, doing the right thing and cobbling together some semblance of a healthy life were all ultimately as important, if not more important, to her than getting the guy. If Harry Potter has a vampire-loving, adolescent female counterpart, it's Buffy Summers."
She goes on to describe a rather horrifying point later on in the series, when Bella takes "a quasi-suicidal high dive into the ocean, after which, on the brink of drowning, she savors visions of her undead boyfriend: 'I thought briefly of the clichés, about how you're supposed to see your life flash before your eyes. I was so much luckier. Who wanted to see a rerun, anyway? I saw him, and I had no will to fight ... Why would I fight when I was so happy where I was?'"
Does anyone else find that really, really scary?
Also, the thing that brought this all on:
In today's paper, under the "surfing the net with kids" section, they gave a bunch of Twilight sites. If that wasn't bad enough, they talk about how some of the sites have gobs of fanfiction... LULZ. I would bet so much money that most Twilight fic is NOT kid-friendly.
Finally: This sort of thing is actually sort of helpful in that it makes me look at my own stuff and make sure that I'm not just avoiding being anti-feminist by writing about male-male relationships. I know I've seen it before-- you read some slash fic and think "well, Male A is sort of mean to Male B but I guess that's okay" and then say, "Hey, wait a minute-- if Male B was female this would be awful!" I do think there is some difference, because social context does count for something, and inequality of physical power is certainly a factor, but I'd really prefer not to use slash as an excuse for abusive relationships. So, erm, those are my thoughts and things I worry about in my fic.
ETA: Apparently my brother saw the Twilight movie? 0.0 He had this to say: "Even by anime standards they look weird and do weird things and people don't react to weird things-- even by ANIME standards!"
If anyone disagrees with my analysis, I would love to hear some counter-examples.
Still, I thought I should look further into it before condemning it completely. After all, I thought Buffy was a pretty stupid show while it was still on (I had the impression that it was more about the main character being 'sexy' than anything else-- sort of like Charmed truly ended up being) and once I watched some of it I realized that Buffy's role as hero is not directed by her gender (and that the show is awesome).
So in the interest of fairness, I read some feminist-perspective reviews of Twilight, and was unfortunately not surprised at what I found.
From a review of the movie (the writer couldn't finish the first book):
"Bella Swan (Kristen Stewart) is the anti-Buffy; she's a mortal high-school girl committed not to slaying vampires but to being slain by them. Make that one particular vampire: Bella's highest ambition is to be snacked upon by the lavender-lidded, incandescent-chested Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson) and thus to join him forever in the realm of the permanently teenage dead."
A quote she provides from the book: "He lay perfectly still in the grass, his shirt open over his sculpted, incandescent chest, his scintillating arms bare. His glistening, pale lavender lids were shut, though of course he didn't sleep." HAHAHAHAHAhahaha*breath*HAHAHAHAHahaha
Another reviewer, this time of the books, also discusses Bella vs. Buffy:
"Comparisons to another famous human girl with a vampire boyfriend are inevitable, but Bella Swan is no Buffy Summers. "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" was at heart one of those mythic hero's journeys so beloved by Joseph Campbell-quoting screenwriters, albeit transfigured into something sharp and funny by making the hero a contemporary teenage girl. Buffy wrestled with a series of romantic dilemmas -- in particular a penchant for hunky vampires -- but her story always belonged to her. Fulfilling her responsibilities as a slayer, loyalty to her friends and family, doing the right thing and cobbling together some semblance of a healthy life were all ultimately as important, if not more important, to her than getting the guy. If Harry Potter has a vampire-loving, adolescent female counterpart, it's Buffy Summers."
She goes on to describe a rather horrifying point later on in the series, when Bella takes "a quasi-suicidal high dive into the ocean, after which, on the brink of drowning, she savors visions of her undead boyfriend: 'I thought briefly of the clichés, about how you're supposed to see your life flash before your eyes. I was so much luckier. Who wanted to see a rerun, anyway? I saw him, and I had no will to fight ... Why would I fight when I was so happy where I was?'"
Does anyone else find that really, really scary?
Also, the thing that brought this all on:
In today's paper, under the "surfing the net with kids" section, they gave a bunch of Twilight sites. If that wasn't bad enough, they talk about how some of the sites have gobs of fanfiction... LULZ. I would bet so much money that most Twilight fic is NOT kid-friendly.
Finally: This sort of thing is actually sort of helpful in that it makes me look at my own stuff and make sure that I'm not just avoiding being anti-feminist by writing about male-male relationships. I know I've seen it before-- you read some slash fic and think "well, Male A is sort of mean to Male B but I guess that's okay" and then say, "Hey, wait a minute-- if Male B was female this would be awful!" I do think there is some difference, because social context does count for something, and inequality of physical power is certainly a factor, but I'd really prefer not to use slash as an excuse for abusive relationships. So, erm, those are my thoughts and things I worry about in my fic.
ETA: Apparently my brother saw the Twilight movie? 0.0 He had this to say: "Even by anime standards they look weird and do weird things and people don't react to weird things-- even by ANIME standards!"
If anyone disagrees with my analysis, I would love to hear some counter-examples.