The Definitive Mormon Commentary on Twilight, part I
Just in case you're lacking in information:
1. Stephenie Meyer is the author of the Twilight series, a Young Adult vampire romance. She's LDS (Latter-Day Saint), aka a Mormon aka a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.
2. One of the fun things (if by fun one means bewildering, annoying, and only occasionally amusing) about the attention garnered by the movie and books is reading the religious analyses of the series by people who aren't, in fact, unbiased experts on Mormonism.
3. The title of this post is satirical. Other LDS bloggers have said things that I don't necessarily agree with. Shocking, I know. The hive mind must be malfunctioning--maybe it's all the sparkles jamming up the machinery.
Having threatened promised a post about Twilight and my religion, I then found myself undecided about how to begin. Finally I decided to just start somewhere. This post is an overview of a recent conversation I had about the series with my friends Kit and Em. We're all LDS. We read books. We're experts!
(Apologies in advance--there will probably be another post at some point. One that consists of more than just a loose transcription of chatting with friends.)
I should give more of our backgrounds. As I already stated, we're each LDS; we're out of our twenties and living in a state that's not in the mountain West of the US. Other than that the differences are substantial. From no relatives at all in Utah to growing up in Salt Lake City... from family with a long history connected to the church to a second-generation member with few LDS relatives. Parents who stayed together and united in their religion, divorced parents, parents with different faiths.
What does this all mean? ('Cause it's a lot of blather for a post about a teen vampire series...) Let's see: we're not the Little, Brown company's target age group, we share a religion but different perspectives on life and we're all awesome people. That last bit is important information in general. *g*
I felt the need to educate my friends about one particular element that we'd all overlooked in reading the books. Thank goodness for the internet, because now I'm aware of this gap in our comprehension of the series. All of us missed the important symbolism of Edward. He's a representation of Joseph Smith! How could we all three have overlooked this?!
The parallels are obvious! Smith has been described as having blonde or brown hair; Edward's is bronze. Smith was reportedly handsome (no photos, though I have to say that from the one painting done while he was alive, whatever), Edward is dazzling. Most people said Smith had blue eyes and Edward's are golden (okay, sometimes the irises are black instead), but I'm sure this was just an oversight! Joseph Smith was one of the founders of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, a 'father' figure of my religion. Edward Cullen was the father of a vampire-human hybrid baby.
It's all clear now! Sadly, my two friends didn't accept the Edward-Joseph Smith correlation. They found it amusing! One of them even mentioned that it would be like writing Peter, James or John as a romantic hero. (Since I'm actually a total Andrew fangirl, I really had to bite my tongue not to say anything. He's always overlooked--like George Harrison of the Beatles!)
Ah well. You try and inform people and they find it laughable.
(I still can't figure out how anyone actually does believe that Meyer intentionally or unintentionally modeled Edward Cullen on Joseph Smith. I stumbled across the idea on three separate websites, without even trying. Uh... thanks for the laugh?)
We all agreed that Renesmée was just about the most ridiculous baby name ever. My hopes of this not being connected to Mormon culture were sadly dashed during the conversation. Kit, who grew up in Utah, said that 'hybrid' baby names (an original combination of two relatives' names) were somewhat common, though she did point out that she's heard lots more odd names while working in a (non-Utah-based) dentist office than she ever encountered in Utah. Then Em said that her brother was thinking about naming his soon-to-arrive daughter Landy, for L and D (the parents' initials). Rats. I was hoping to refute the connection, but my own family history made it difficult for me to be sure. (Meyer has lived most of her life in Arizona, a state with more church members per capita than mine and which shares a border with Utah.)
We also agreed that Jacob imprinting on Renesmée is somewhat disturbing in context, and definitely disturbing without context. Em's reaction was that she didn't see it coming and maybe she should have, but it just never occurred to her until BAM! There it was.
This post by an LDS blogger about the first book states that in making a relationship between Bella and Edward fated, it is fundamentally un-Mormon. We're big on the whole free agency thing. I wonder what the blogger would think of the imprinting in the fourth book?
As a side note, if anyone is thinking that there's a religious connection there because we force our underage daughters into (polygamous) marriages with older men: wrong church. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints hasn't allowed polygamy for over a hundred years; some groups that wanted to continue the practice split off at that time. Sometimes the initials FLDS are used, sometimes the phrase fundamentalist Mormons--that can lead to confusion but that's not the church (or culture) that Stephenie Meyer grew up with.
When I asked Em and Kit if they saw anything that was a reflection of our religion, they both agreed that the sexual abstinence before marriage was the obvious one. Of course, it's not like Mormons have copyrighted that principle, or were even the first group to teach it, but apparently we're really good at teaching it. Maybe that, or we just haven't shut up about it.
By the way, just because Edward and Bella don't have sex before marriage does not automatically place this series in the category of 'safe books for your twelve-year-old to read.' Nor should it be guaranteed a spot on a theoretical list of 'moral' books for its (sort of) lack of sex or for being written by an LDS author.
We didn't read the books with analytical intent. I mentioned in my first post about the novels that I was curious because of the hype and because of the religion Meyer and I share. Possibly we could find more religious parallels if we looked harder, but... they weren't that interesting. I don't have any desire to re-read the books.
I can't wait for the next movie, though. You know that most of the special effects budget will probably be used up making Taylor Lautner (Jacob, the werewolf kid) look taller, so we'll still have anatomically impossible vampire moves while climbing trees! Oh, and the strange perspiration effect sparkles! WHEEE!
eta: Em just reminded me that I left out our discussion of Edward's lipstick color, and that we're eagerly waiting to see what shade his lips will be in the next movie.
eta 2: Mormonize your name! *dies laughing*
Thanks to frolicndetour for looking over this and the previous post as well.