"Twilight" Bad For Girls, But Not The Way You'd Think
twilightHaving finally watched "Twilight," I have to shift my position slightly. I went into "Twilight" prepared for a movie where the young female protagonist makes bad choices. I can forgive bad choices, particularly when they're made by teenage girls. That's what teenagers DO.
What I wasn't prepared for was a movie where the young female protagonist makes NO choices. Bella does not act, but is acted upon. She drifts along, pulled by the current of other people's decisions. Her passivity is appalling.
Whatever happened to "Well-behaved women rarely make history"?
We expect the story of a teenage girl who falls in love with a vampire to be transgressive. But Meyer has performed the interesting trick of not just neutering the myth of the vampire, but normalizing it. He's a vampire, and he sparkles, but he lives with a tight-knit family who don't drink human blood, with a father who (as the town doctor) holds a valuable position in the community, and "teenage" siblings who dutifully attend high school, despite being several hundred years old.
Everybody loves Bella, and well they might. She is both pretty and agreeable, the perfect teenage girl. At least in the movie, the closest she comes to disagreeing with someone, making a decision, or taking a stand for something is when she tells her father that he should try a salad, because he eats too much steak.
Much is made of Bella's clumsiness. (By the way, "clumsy" is not a character trait.) This clumsiness - the sole flaw in her perfectly serene and agreeable self - is simply an excuse for other people to rescue her. When she slips, Edward is there to catch her.
The story rewards Bella for her passivity by coddling her. Bella exists in a sort of zoo, a safe environment where all her needs are met, and all dangers are averted for her. The story is an inflatable bouncy castle, and Bella is the empty plastic Barbie jouncing around inside it.
She is never confronted with actual danger, forced to make a difficult decision, or faced where a situation where she has to think on her feet. At the end, for about five seconds she is alone in a room with the "sadistic tracker" who tosses her around a bit, but the Cullens leap in before too much damage can be done, as we know they will.
The danger of "Twilight" is that Bella never thinks for herself, or takes action. For this, she is richly rewarded. She gets the guy, and whenever something bad happens, everyone rallies around to protect her. Bella never need learn how to protect herself - that's what her boyfriend is for!
And once again, we run across the old saw that "stalking = love." Edward enters Bella's bedroom without permission, and watches her as she sleeps. But it's not creepy, heavens no! It's just because he wuvs her. When she learns of his nighttime trespassing, her heart melts. In a better world, this romanticization of creepy stalker behavior would be richly punished. In our world, alas, it is richly rewarded.
Comments
Very creepy
Erika wrote:
"And once again, we run across the old saw that "stalking = love." Edward enters Bella's bedroom without permission, and watches her as she sleeps. But it's not creepy, heavens no! "
Exactly. The only similar watch-while-sleeping thing I can think of is possibly in Lolita.
Very very creepy. I'm not fond of the "jealousy = love" equation either. I'd much rather my kid were reading Scott Westerfeld's Uglies and Pretties than these books--and better still, S. E. Hinton.
I whole-heartedly agree! I
I whole-heartedly agree! I watched this crap with my daughter and we were so disappointed at the female character's total lack of personality. I don't know why I was expecting something more like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, I thought that kids were into kick-ass action, but apparently not. I hate to sound so paranoid, but there is some kind of brain-washing going around in mainstream entertainment to take away girl's desire to be strong. More and more I'm seeing behavior that in my day(the 1990s) was deemed unacceptable by girls/ women. Now we can add apathy. So sad.
"The story rewards Bella for
"The story rewards Bella for her passivity by coddling her. Bella exists in a sort of zoo, a safe environment where all her needs are met, and all dangers are averted for her. The story is an inflatable bouncy castle, and Bella is the empty plastic Barbie jouncing around inside it."
This is perhaps the most spot-on description I've come across yet of the series!
I get the book's appeal--Edward is infatuated with Bella & wuvs her so much he doesn't want to sleep with her until they're married, which is a "dream" for many young girls. However, it's not a realistic one, nor is the stalking a healthy one.
Strong heroines are definitely what young readers need; even if they make bad decisions they can learn from them, as the author here suggests. I used to like the Night World books as a teen; I think those had some pretty good characters. Bella is about as interesting as a piece of burnt toast
Absolutely Amazing!
My Dad actually sent me the link to this article through email... I'm in to the whole twilight thing! but i'm a teenager so... Any-who i read this article and it hit the way i feel about Bella spot on its amazing the way she has no personality and is just written to be pretty much defenseless... I still continue to read the books though they are pretty entertaining...
Great post! I also liked your
Great post! I also liked your comparison between Twilight and Buffy!
I watched the movie
I watched the movie "Twilight" and I can say that this is simply amazing!
I disagree.
Maybe the writer should read the whole series (especially Breaking Dawn) because she certainly doesn't rely wholly upon other people in THAT book. I'm sorry, but she makes choices that are difficult (choosing to see past Edward being a killer, choosing to go to the Ballet Studio to her death, to name just a few in that movie/book). She's a weak human and she still shows incredible strength in future books and throughout the series.
I feel very much like her in many ways. We all can't be heroines of great valor our entire lives. We often get past our own internal struggles before we show great strength. I don't know about you, but until I was put in a hard situation, I didn't have any reason to make hard decisions, and I didn't have to be that strong of a person to the outer world. Bella is the same. She's simply living her life until Edward comes along. She doesn't have to be some amazing woman, she's simply being herself. Struggles do come along (in later books) and she faces them, whether her choices are correct or not, she does what she must. I think she is a very admirable character who is put in a situation that she cannot face alone. She's not a super-hero, she can't save the day. Sure, someone comes and helps her in the end quite often, but that's not her choice. Strength is not about the ends, it is about the means. She chooses to go to her death, forsaking her love to save her mother. Is that not a hard choice?!
As for the "Stalking part," I agree on a level. They are not in any relationship at all when he starts to come into her room and watches her sleep. That is not appropriate. However, later on he still watches her and I think it takes a more romantic turn. Have you ever had a lover watch you sleep? I know I have, and I think it's very romantic. Yes, the timing in the movie/book is WAY too soon, but later it becomes acceptable.
Don't be so quick to judge the characters either. The situation the Cullens are in make their lives less interesting. Stephenie chose to make them this way so they draw less attention to themselves. This is not a character flaw or weakness. They are well-behaved so they will be less conspicuous in town. The father is a doctor, which is a very valuable position, and (if you read the books) is because he is wishing to make up for being a monster who by all rights shouldn't exist. He is played out to be a saint because he choses to be. These are not character flaws. If you want scary vampires who cause havoc, read Dracula or something by Anne Rice (which by the way, I am a huge fan of both). She has taken a myth and normalized it for a new generation of fans. This is not about making a common "vampire book," she is making something that is different and that should be respected.
Not to say that there aren't severe flaws in these books, there are. You need to take them as they are. The writing isn't the greatest, the characters don't really develop until later books, and most of the "twists" are expected. I find that Twilight is one of my least favorites out of the series especially when it comes to her relationship with Edward. She IS very dependent on him and often makes me want to smack her pretty little head when she gets all "gooey" about him. "He's so beautiful, oh my god"...we get it; he's good looking. Get over it.
Like I said, take the time, read the series and form your own opinion. However, you will find that if you take the books for what they are, you might just enjoy it more than you think. Very much like Harry Potter, the books get better and have more "juiciness" as they go. They become more complex and more involved with the characters. Give them a chance, then form opinions.
Abuse = Love?
There's an anti-twilight website that tries to bring to light the abusive elements of the dysfunctional relationship between Bella & Edward. I'm glad you brought up the stalking element. I know I was a silly teenager who idolized movies too (the Titanic generation), but it saddens me that the world is swooning over such a weak character, the men who are constantly moving her around like their pawn.