(no subject)
There's one thing in Twilight that seems psychologically implausible to me.
Edward, Bella's vampire love interest, was born in 1901. Bella is Elizabeth Bennett to Edward's Mr. Darcy. A relative of Edward's, concerned for Edward's health, turned him into a vampire in 1918, so that he wouldn't be killed in the now famous Spanish influenza outbreak of 1918.
Edward's decision to attend high school at the age of 109 can't have been made by anyone with a healthy adult psychology. There's nothing that high school could possibly teach him worth knowing, if he really is 109 years old and has access to a normal human memory. There's no reason that after 109 years he shouldn't be fluent in a dozen languages, and there's no reason that a normal human psychology should ever want for entertainment if it has learned to read in a dozen languages.
As I was writing this entry, I started thinking about one of my favorite not-very-well-known books: Replay, by Ken Grimwood. In that book, a man dies in 1988 and awakens in 1963 with all of his memories of the next 25 years intact. After aging for 25 years, he dies again and retains all of his memories from the past (subjective) 50 years. This happens several times, and he makes a bunch of fortunes (first by gambling, later by investing) and fails to reconnect with his wife and so on. It's a good, fun, light time. But what happens to him psychologically is (one of) the thing(s) that makes the book really compelling: after a while, he doesn't want to spend much time around people who haven't been undergoing the same kinds of experiences that he's undergone. Consequently, he's pretty lonely and miserable for a long time. Then he learns to be psychologically self-sufficient.
Grimwood has another book about a long-lived person. It's called Elise and is about an apparently immortal woman who was born in Versailles in 1683.
You know, now that I think about it, even motherfucking Highlander had more plausible immortal psychology than Twilight. The scene in which Duncan and Ramses are walking on the battlefield and Ramses is bringing Duncan into the fold has more plausible inter pares connection than anything I've (admittedly only read about) in Twilight. Even Queen's "Who Wants To Live Forever?" has more psychological plausibility.
I haven't said anything about this anywhere else, but while it's on my mind I'll mention that Mr. Darcy strikes me as as fictional and incredible a character as Mary in There's Something About Mary. I don't know of any heterosexual men who have the same kinds of motivations as Mr. Darcy. I stand prepared to be angrily corrected by my adoring legions of female blog-fans.
Anyway.
Why is it that Edward has enrolled in high school? It it to be closer to Bella? I could understand why he would do it if Twilight's metaphysics involved true love, that old motivational conjuring trick. But the moment that we invoke true love, we've left the psychologically real world in which Ben and Elaine in the last scene of The Graduate escape onto the bus and then look at each other, wondering what in the fuck are we supposed to do now? Sit around and knit and purl and work in advertising while we wait to die? When true love is invoked, we're in the world of The Princess Bride, a novel written by William Goldman to entertain his daughters. (The story goes that he asked his two daughters what they wanted him to write about. One said "Princesses!" The other said "Brides!")
I understand some motivations for wanting to be near people who are much younger, but all of those motivations are either of the Cormac-McCarthy's-Love-For-His-Son-John variety or the Roman-Polanski's-Love-For-Ejaculating-In-The-Anus-of-the-Unwilling-Thirteen-Year-Old-Samantha-Gailey variety. Edward's attraction to Bella seems a lot more like the Roman Polanski variety than the Cormac McCarthy variety.
I just can't imagine that anyone is expected to believe that a 109-year-old would find anything a high school girl said the least bit interesting. I don't want to suggest that their relationship would turn into the sort of man-having-contempt-for-woman-because-of-her-interest-in-ephemera and woman-having-contempt-for-man-for-his-snooty-and-disdainful-view-of-people-who-just-want-to-have-a-good-time that we saw in, for instance, the relationship of Pierre Bezukhov and Helene in War and Peace. But I can't imagine that they have anything at all to talk about as equals. When Edward was Bella's age, he was eligible for the draft in World War I. Edward is two years younger than Ernest Hemingway and Humphrey Bogart.
Here's another thing that's struck me since I've been noodling around looking at Twilight-related stuff. The images of the Volturi that are available from the New Moon film are very, very gay. I can't think of anyone who isn't gay who would be male and dressed the way the Volturi are dressed. This doesn't mean that I'm dressed like a (non-gay) lumberjack all day or anything, and I want to make the disclosure right now that I noticed when I lived in Berlin that my unaltered manner of dress was several notches more straight in Europe than it was in America, so it's not like I'm a big advocate for the notion that men should look every moment like they're going to fuck every slit they see. It's just that I don't know anyone who isn't really campily gay who dresses like the Volturi.
That brings me to the sexlessness of the Twilight universe and full-circle to its psychological implausibility. Any dudes who are dressed like the Volturi are not living within the bounds of square heterosexual society that proscribe sexual activity in Bella's life (and in the lives of the sexually frustrated female readers, most of whom are square Emma-Bovary types, one supposes). Dudes who are dressed like that are sucking each other's cocks and fucking each other every second they're behind closed doors and have the slightest twinge of lust. That's what the Castro was all about. But in this universe, we're to believe that there's some chastity code (which, and I hate to bury this in a parenthetical statement, but here we are and here it is, which totally frustrates the sexual drive and allure that vampires are supposed to have. In fact, and I don't want to go all Mary Daly on this shit, it's kind of the entire point of vampires that they seduce and then penetrate you and then leave you changed and broken to square society while giving you that ol' sexual vampire allure. But I digress.). This chastity code goes against everything vampires are about.
I've said just about everything I care to say about this at the moment. If anyone knows why Edward enrolled in high school, let me know.
Edward, Bella's vampire love interest, was born in 1901. Bella is Elizabeth Bennett to Edward's Mr. Darcy. A relative of Edward's, concerned for Edward's health, turned him into a vampire in 1918, so that he wouldn't be killed in the now famous Spanish influenza outbreak of 1918.
Edward's decision to attend high school at the age of 109 can't have been made by anyone with a healthy adult psychology. There's nothing that high school could possibly teach him worth knowing, if he really is 109 years old and has access to a normal human memory. There's no reason that after 109 years he shouldn't be fluent in a dozen languages, and there's no reason that a normal human psychology should ever want for entertainment if it has learned to read in a dozen languages.
As I was writing this entry, I started thinking about one of my favorite not-very-well-known books: Replay, by Ken Grimwood. In that book, a man dies in 1988 and awakens in 1963 with all of his memories of the next 25 years intact. After aging for 25 years, he dies again and retains all of his memories from the past (subjective) 50 years. This happens several times, and he makes a bunch of fortunes (first by gambling, later by investing) and fails to reconnect with his wife and so on. It's a good, fun, light time. But what happens to him psychologically is (one of) the thing(s) that makes the book really compelling: after a while, he doesn't want to spend much time around people who haven't been undergoing the same kinds of experiences that he's undergone. Consequently, he's pretty lonely and miserable for a long time. Then he learns to be psychologically self-sufficient.
Grimwood has another book about a long-lived person. It's called Elise and is about an apparently immortal woman who was born in Versailles in 1683.
You know, now that I think about it, even motherfucking Highlander had more plausible immortal psychology than Twilight. The scene in which Duncan and Ramses are walking on the battlefield and Ramses is bringing Duncan into the fold has more plausible inter pares connection than anything I've (admittedly only read about) in Twilight. Even Queen's "Who Wants To Live Forever?" has more psychological plausibility.
I haven't said anything about this anywhere else, but while it's on my mind I'll mention that Mr. Darcy strikes me as as fictional and incredible a character as Mary in There's Something About Mary. I don't know of any heterosexual men who have the same kinds of motivations as Mr. Darcy. I stand prepared to be angrily corrected by my adoring legions of female blog-fans.
Anyway.
Why is it that Edward has enrolled in high school? It it to be closer to Bella? I could understand why he would do it if Twilight's metaphysics involved true love, that old motivational conjuring trick. But the moment that we invoke true love, we've left the psychologically real world in which Ben and Elaine in the last scene of The Graduate escape onto the bus and then look at each other, wondering what in the fuck are we supposed to do now? Sit around and knit and purl and work in advertising while we wait to die? When true love is invoked, we're in the world of The Princess Bride, a novel written by William Goldman to entertain his daughters. (The story goes that he asked his two daughters what they wanted him to write about. One said "Princesses!" The other said "Brides!")
I understand some motivations for wanting to be near people who are much younger, but all of those motivations are either of the Cormac-McCarthy's-Love-For-His-Son-John variety or the Roman-Polanski's-Love-For-Ejaculating-In-The-Anus-of-the-Unwilling-Thirteen-Year-Old-Samantha-Gailey variety. Edward's attraction to Bella seems a lot more like the Roman Polanski variety than the Cormac McCarthy variety.
I just can't imagine that anyone is expected to believe that a 109-year-old would find anything a high school girl said the least bit interesting. I don't want to suggest that their relationship would turn into the sort of man-having-contempt-for-woman-because-of-her-interest-in-ephemera and woman-having-contempt-for-man-for-his-snooty-and-disdainful-view-of-people-who-just-want-to-have-a-good-time that we saw in, for instance, the relationship of Pierre Bezukhov and Helene in War and Peace. But I can't imagine that they have anything at all to talk about as equals. When Edward was Bella's age, he was eligible for the draft in World War I. Edward is two years younger than Ernest Hemingway and Humphrey Bogart.
Here's another thing that's struck me since I've been noodling around looking at Twilight-related stuff. The images of the Volturi that are available from the New Moon film are very, very gay. I can't think of anyone who isn't gay who would be male and dressed the way the Volturi are dressed. This doesn't mean that I'm dressed like a (non-gay) lumberjack all day or anything, and I want to make the disclosure right now that I noticed when I lived in Berlin that my unaltered manner of dress was several notches more straight in Europe than it was in America, so it's not like I'm a big advocate for the notion that men should look every moment like they're going to fuck every slit they see. It's just that I don't know anyone who isn't really campily gay who dresses like the Volturi.
That brings me to the sexlessness of the Twilight universe and full-circle to its psychological implausibility. Any dudes who are dressed like the Volturi are not living within the bounds of square heterosexual society that proscribe sexual activity in Bella's life (and in the lives of the sexually frustrated female readers, most of whom are square Emma-Bovary types, one supposes). Dudes who are dressed like that are sucking each other's cocks and fucking each other every second they're behind closed doors and have the slightest twinge of lust. That's what the Castro was all about. But in this universe, we're to believe that there's some chastity code (which, and I hate to bury this in a parenthetical statement, but here we are and here it is, which totally frustrates the sexual drive and allure that vampires are supposed to have. In fact, and I don't want to go all Mary Daly on this shit, it's kind of the entire point of vampires that they seduce and then penetrate you and then leave you changed and broken to square society while giving you that ol' sexual vampire allure. But I digress.). This chastity code goes against everything vampires are about.
I've said just about everything I care to say about this at the moment. If anyone knows why Edward enrolled in high school, let me know.