WHY TWILIGHT SUCKS

During the summer of 2008 I was very bored, and when I'm bored I tend to spend a lot of time at the library. (I'm a dork, I know, you don't need to tell me.) One day I happened across a book called Twilight. I picked it up, read the summary on the back, thought "Hey, cool! I love vampires!" and proceeded to check it out of the library. The last vampire book I'd read was Anne Rice's Interview with a Vampire, and I had high hopes for the book that had every teenage girl in the world squealing with delight.

Disappointment came quickly. "My mother drove me to the airport with the windows rolled down. It WAS seventy-five degrees in Phoenix, the sky a perfect, cloudless blue. ... My carry-on item WAS a parka." (page 3). Hello Be-Verbs! 'Bella was sad. Bella was leaving. Vampires are real. Vampires are supposed to be scary. Be-Verbs are boring.' (I think you get the idea.) Stephenie Meyer's grammar and writing leave much to be desired, but with grammar such as that, she obviously never made it past freshman english. Making four of your first five clauses unbearably passive is a rough way to start a book, (note that I said 'book', not 'novel'). "Flying doesn't bother me; the hour in the car with Charlie, though, I was a little worried about." (page 5). There's a rule in the english language that we all need to abide by. It's called reflection. Whether you mean to or not, you do it, (unless you're Stephenie Meyer, of course). Usually writers try to maintain the same verb tense within paragraphs, at the very least within sentences. "Charlie had really been fairly nice about the whole thing." (page 5). Really?! Was Charlie really fairly nice? He had REALLY been fairly nice?! Are you sure? Thanks for emphasizing it for us. And really, couldn't you have put "really" in a different place, Ms. Meyer? Put two adverbs in close proximity to each other, and you get into trouble... really, truly, you do. Long story short, I was not impressed by the writing in the first chapter, but I figured there must be some redeeming quality about Twilight for it to have sold millions of copies world wide, so I continued reading.

In chapter two the thesaurus-raping begins. Bella is teenager who grew up in a really fairly progressive city- Phoenix- and is now living in the Pacific Northwest. So she obviously she has the lexicon of an eighteenth century Oxford scholar and has no qualms about utilizing it.

Examples:

1: "...it was sure to be awkward with Charlie. Neither of us was what anyone would call verbose." (page 5). I promise, only verbose people use the word verbose.

2: Bella doesn't bring her Arizona clothes to Washington; not because they're too skimpy, or unsuited for the rainy, cold Forks weather.... they're "too permeable." (page 6). I thought only microbiologists, contact lenses, and Gore-Tex advertisements used the word "permeable". Apparently teenage girls from Phoenix do, too.

3: Bella and her mom didn't put together their money to get Bella some, but not too many new winter clothes... they "pooled [their] resources to supplement [Bella's] wardrobe, [which] was still scanty." (page 6). Yes, Stephenie, and I'd like you to do a tetra-annual report on that in order to better create a sustainability of buzz words that make us sound more possessed of intelligence than mayhaps we be.

Where Bella is concerned, Meyer uses adjectives such as: plain, clumsy, weak, uninteresting, and unattractive. Nevertheless, no fewer than five boys become infatuated with her with in the first 125 pages. While this gives hope to clumsy, awkward, and plain girls everywhere, it's merely the beginning of a sickeningly ideal modern-day fairy tale. It's hard to say which is more difficult to swallow: Bella's perpetually low self-worth, or the fact that all the other characters are obsessed with her.

Unlike Bella, the vampires, (especially Edward,) are described with words such as: gorgeous, perfect, beautiful, flawless, glorious, godlike, and any other words you can find when looking up "beautiful" in a thesaurus. When your characters and stories are all about appearances, I suppose you'd need to use a thesaurus to keep things from getting a bit too repetitive. Most of Meyer's descriptions are corny at best, and annoying at worst, but on a few occasions I found myself laughing out loud at the ridiculousness of the picture she was attempting to paint. "Edward . . . 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. A perfect statue, carved in some unknown stone, smooth like marble, glittering like crystal." Is it just me, or does that sound like a passage out of one of those bodice-ripping romance novels with Fabio on the cover?

If Twilight has taught me anything, it's that to get a guy (or girl,) you just need to be undead, unbelievably attractive, and ultimately perfect. That's all. And in today's materialistic, appearence-obsessed society, that philosophy, sadly, works. Never once in four "books" do you hear Edward or Bella talk about the other's personality, or why they love each other, (besides they're obvious good looks). Even the passage in which Bella realizes she loves Edward is incredibly dull. "About three things I was absolutely positive: First, Edward was a vampire; Second, there was a part of him -- and I didn't know how dominant that part might be -- that thirsted for my blood; And third, I was unconditionally and irrevocably in love with him."

Goodness. Love is a grocery list. And a very dry one at that. It's a good thing that Bella's love for Edward is stronger than the fear that he may eat her... apparently physical perfection makes up for violent and deadly dispositions. The following Edward wiki-description (painstakingly crafted by an uber fan, no doubt) proves my point:

Edward is described by Bella as being impossibly beautiful. At various points in the series, she compares him to the mythical Greek god Adonis. His skin is "like marble"– very pale, ice cold, and sparkles in the sunlight like diamonds. She describes his facial features as being perfect and angular - high cheekbones, strong jawline, a straight nose, and beautiful, full lips. His hair, which is always in casual disarray, retains the unusual bronze shade that he inherited in his human life from his biological mother. His eyes, once emerald green, are now described as a liquid, golden topaz. His fingers are described often as slender and he is said to have a dazzlingly crooked smile. Edward stands at 6'2", and has a slender but muscular build. Edward, like all vampires in the Twilight series, possesses superhuman beauty, strength, speed, endurance, and agility. His scent and voice are enormously seductive, so much so that he occasionally sends Bella into a pliant daze entirely by accident. In Twilight, Edward explains that like other vampires, he does not need to breathe, though he chooses to do so out of habit and because it is helpful to smell his environment.

Edward is charming, polite, determined, and very stubborn. He is very protective over Bella and puts her safety, humanity and welfare before anything else.

Edward is also musical, able to play the piano like a virtuoso. He enjoys a wide range of music, including classical, jazz, progressive metal, alternative rock, punk rock, but dislikes country. He prefers indie rock to mainstream, and appreciates rock and classical music equally. He mentions in Twilight that he likes music from the fifties better than the sixties, and dislikes the seventies entirely.

Sigh... Perfection. Not only is he hot, shirtless, polite, charming, romantic, seductive, alluring, and Adonis-esque, but he plays the piano. Virtuosically. Sigh... No wonder almost every teenage girl in the world is crazy about him.

But... what happens when we turn that around? Say we had a male protagonist. Edward was human, and Bella was the vampire. Bella would have looked something like Aphrodite only sexier and much more physically alluring, and the national reaction would have been much different. While the guys might have hooted, hollered, and screamed "aoooooooga!", the ladies would have had a different reaction to this. Instead of the sighs and the "oh my"s, I'd bet the vampire Bella would have been met with grunts of disgust. Many would have scoffed and said "That's what we always get, some impossibly attractive girl with big...um...eyes." Others would have shrugged and brushed it off as "Another Baywatch Bimbo figure...so?" Some might have even become indignant and rage against the perpetuation of a stereotype and point out that, yet again, guys just prove themselves to be pigs.

But isn't that just the problem?

Isn't Edward just a perpetuation of an impossible stereotype? The dashing Brad Pitt, sans real person problems and a touch of the exotic? A figure who, while superficially mysterious, is perplexingly and frustratingly perfect? A standard that if striven for and demanded will ultimately lead to nothing? I'm sorry to break this to everyone, if this is the standard men are held up to, they will never totally measure up. Physically, emotionally, undead-ally...ain't gonna happen. (Not that I don't love you, boys, but it's the truth).

So what is Edward? Is he as ideal as many would argue, or is he something worse-- a soulless dream, a vampiric Twinkie without the cream filling? If the latter is true, no wonder marriage rates are down and divorce rates up: We can't find our respective Edward Cullens and Carmen Electras! (Not that this is the only reason for that...) But when so many women and girls and men devour these books over and over again, isn't a bit concerning that readers are consuming an image of a man who's not just unrealistic, but impossible? Is this healthy? Is it wise? Worse, Edward's relationship with Bella, from what I can gather, is one based mostly on barely restrained lust between them both and a touch of over-controlling boyfriend syndrome. Is this the match made in heaven I keep hearing about?

Now, before anyone gets feisty, I understand this is fiction. I understand it's escapism. I understand it's essentially a modern-day fairy tale. But even fairy tales have some sort of deeper meaning to them. I'm saddened and disgusted by what people will read in order to get a quick buzz out of literature. No thinking, analysis, introspection, or even grammar to worry about. Just a sexy, recast Victorian novel that appeals to the High School Musical crowd. Because it's got vampires...but it's safe vampires. Because there's no (overt) sexuality, no (explicit) nudity, no (really) naughty words, no meaning... just safe entertainment. Where J.K. Rowling is fresh, inventive, and so carefully plots, structures, and layers her books with a sophistication that only deepens as Harry gets older, Meyer is content with -and perhaps succeeds in- titillating her readers with action, overly gorgeous characters, and superficial, safely non-sexual foreplay at the expense of character and plot development, depth, and good writing.

However, Ms. Meyer may be a tad delusional about her writing prowess. Meyer tries to portray this pair as a modern Romeo and Juliet or Heathcliff and Catherine (references to whom are glaringly frequent), Bella and Edward's relationship is more like that of predator and prey. The scent of Bella's blood tortures Edward, who drinks animal blood to keep from killing humans. His restraint is meant to look noble, although courting someone who smells like food could be seen more as a sign of mental instability. And Edward behaves like a predator in nearly every other way possible. He spies on Bella while she sleeps, eavesdrops on her conversations, reads her classmates' minds, forges her signature, tries to dictate her choice of friends, encourages her to deceive her father, disables her truck, has his family hold her at his house against her will, and enters her house when no one's there — all because, he explains, he wants her to be safe. He warns Bella how dangerous he is, but gets "furious" at anyone else who tries to warn or protect her. He even drags her to the prom against her expressed wishes. He is, in short, one of modern fiction's best candidates for a restraining order. There is a fine line between chivalry and chauvinism, and Edward Cullen crosses it incredibly frequently.

When critics accused Meyer of being anti-feminist, she retorted, "I am not anti-female; I am anti-human." Whether she was aware of it or not, this was far more than just a flippant remark. Just like the allegedly positive messages about romance and sexuality, any value that Meyer and her characters place on human life is only on the surface. More than once, Edward and his family look the other way- or even provide assistance- when fellow members of their species hunt humans, just as long as those humans aren't people they know.

These facts don't bother any Twilight fans. In fact, at the end of the third book Eclipse the question on everyone's mind was "Will Bella become a vampire like Edward and live with him forever?" To give up everything she has (including her family and friends,) and to become someone she is not has long been Bella's dream. Edward wants to preserve her humanity, presumably so she doesn't go to hell like all the other "soulless" vampires, but you have to wonder. Maybe he's just saving her for later, rather like a fat kid would save a piece of chocolate cake. However, becoming one of Meyer's godlike, sparkling vampires is an incredibly painful process, leaving the newborn vampire with an irrepressible urge to kill humans, meaning Bella would never be able to see her family again.

This event is what Bella and all her fans have been so excited about, but it can hardly be called a "choice". Bella frequently says things like "I never had a choice," believing her decision is compelled by a force "so strong that it could not exist in a rational world." This is slightly confusing and contradictory since Meyer and her publisher have promoted the books as being all about choice. The image on the cover of the first book is supposed to symbolize the apple from the Tree of Knowledge and the choice that Eve made. Does anyone else think that's a bad example? Because Adam and Eve were kicked out of Eden for that choice... a consequence that neither wanted.

Edward and Bella, though, deal with no consequences at all. In Breaking Dawn, swept off her feet by her romantic fantasy, Meyer recklessly breaks her own rules to ensure that the ending is not just happy, but- in Bella's words- "perfect." Bella undergoes almost none of the expected post-transformation struggles or sacrifices; instead, all at once she's gorgeous, talented, self-controlled, and even more admired than before (and goes from self-deprecating to insufferably vain). Awkward and implausible solutions are worked out to let her keep the relationships she'd given up. And by means of a wild plot twist that is never explained, Bella and Edward get to add to their family. (Bella is still human at that point, but Edward is, technically, a walking corpse without normal bodily fluids.) Even Jacob the werewolf gets Meyer's idea of a happy ending- which involves both an age-inappropriate relationship and the loss of his own free will. Meyer has deprived her characters of both choices and consequences. And young readers are left with the image of a girl who discovers her own worth and gets all she ever wanted, by giving up her identity and throwing away nearly everything in life that matters.

Now, in deference to Meyer, she is a multi-millionaire with a legion of fans so loyal to her writings, she could slap a dirty limerick down on a napkin and it would lead out the New York Times Bestseller List for weeks.

But that may be the most frustrating thing- instead of exploring great literature, probing the depths of the myriad genres and sinking into the human experience that good literature walks us through so effortlessly, fans of Meyer's work seem blissfully content with her brightly packaged, obscenely good-looking story that, at its core, lacks a soul. Like Bella, they're falling for a literary vampire, trying in equal parts to please them and suck them dry.

A/N:

LOL. you all have absolutely NO IDEA how much fun i had writing that. I had even more fun when the people who read it threw a fit and yelled at me. 3 of my friends still aren't talking to me. :P

and i figured i'd say that some of this was straight up plagiarized, but not a lot. Just a few phrases here and there that sounded awesome, so i added them in.

(okey dokey!! so that up there? is exactly what my cousin wrote. not me. she just asked me to post it, so i did, and i'm kind of scared... but i still want to know what you all think. personally, i kind of agree with her (about the writing) but i still like twilight... anyway, if you want me to pass anything on to her, let me know and i will)