I’m a latecomer, I know. But the question is ever present. *Do I Like Twilight?*
And they called it puppy love... ish.
Last night I acquired access to a budding, burgeoning, brooding teen fantasy which took the world’s “thinking” adolescents by storm. I say “thinking” because I have a great deal of difficulty imagining some of my town’s local shop-door loiterers or mini-motorcyclists (what on earth is it with those tiny bikes anyway?) sitting through such a tenuous and strained emo wet dream. I’m certainly not the target audience, however if I regress to my teendom and recall my ghostly pallor, sardonic wit and angry silences alongside the perennial activity of jamming portable music into my ears and shuffling around with my head bowed, maybe I can identify with the characters and comprehend the level of the franchise’s success.
Firstly, if you’re 25 and female, don’t watch it with your partner. This is a chick flick and a half. Let’s just put all societal progress which rages against gender stereotyping to one side for a second – I’m not generalising, but men and women are likely to view this differently. I believe my significant other to be particularly sensitive and romantic, but he’s male, and Twilight is not a film that holds up against the repeated phrase, “Oh come on, give her a good rogering!” I told him they’d not even kissed yet, to which he responded that this was likely to be two hours he’d never get back. I explained that if he got too excited he’d eat her, he said he’d rather he ate her, then the whole thing degenerated into ways in which they could have copulate safely, including my suggestion of a Hannibal Lecter mask. Not its target audience, either of us.
I came to the film with vague Twilight knowledge, but it was from an opinionated perspective. I’d discovered the series of novels through a LiveJournal forum which didn’t hold them in particularly high regard, and the more I researched, the more I agreed. The character of Bella came across like a spoilt, insipid brat, and I could not cope with the sheer amount of vampire folklore that had been altered, seemingly for the convenience of the plot. Rather than burn and disintegrate in sunlight, they “sparkle”. No fangs – their teeth are just “sharp” yet aptly look just like human teeth. And they do not sleep. The Cullen clan from which Bella’s beloved Edward comes are practising the vampire-with-a-conscience lifestyle first advocated by Louis in Interview with a Vampire. I spoke to my father, an Anne Rice fan, about this mockery of bloodsucking traditions, expecting his support. He disagreed with me entirely, informing me that Anne Rice herself had changed a fair bit too. No stake in the heart to end her vampires’ otherwise immortal years – dismemberment is the only option. Ironically enough, Stephenie Meyer follows suit. The one thing my father couldn’t quite get his head round was the “sparkling”, although he did tell me that Rice created a coven of vampires which evolved to survive the sunlight, so even this change he accepted. My one source of vampire elitism failed me – who else could I whinge about it to?
Whether this was a mistake or not, I became something of a Wikipedia expert on the subject of reading ahead and now know exactly what happens at the end of the four novels (the last of which was far less well critically received than the others). It does mean I agree somewhat with the critics who assert that the film would seem a tad ridiculous to those who haven’t read the books. I knew that Edward would be physically repulsed by Bella when he first saw her. It’s a pivotal moment. However to the unsuspecting viewer, whose shoes I wore as the film began, it all looks… strange. He seems to quietly retch as the fan blows her hair about in slow motion, which draws us to one conclusion. What an oddball. Which perhaps was the intended outcome – after all, he is otherworldly. While I don’t know about the book, in the film the minutae of teenage relationships is expertly captured; the awkwardness, the uncomfortable silences, the five minute gap from being virtual unknowns to boyfriend and girlfriend (something I desperately tried to remember but my 25-year-old brain wouldn’t allow me to envisage… perhaps it’s blocked such daft memories out). And try as I might with my cries of, “How long have they known each other?!” I couldn’t deny the breathless chemistry between the two, it was genuinely palpable.
I did however struggle to suspend my disbelief. I grappled with the notion that only Bella managed to put 2 and 2 together about the Cullens, and only with the added element of her bearing witness to Edward’s superhuman strength. Her classmates decsribe the Cullens to her as keeping themselves to themselves, she notices their porcelain features, they don’t eat in the cafeteria, and then one sunny day the Cullens are absent, and the classmates once again make themselves look like prize morons by telling her the Cullens are never around when the weather’s good. Let’s just recap. Pale. Don’t eat. Absent when the sun’s out. Incredulous as the idea of vampires may be, I deem it more incredulous that not one child in that school has thought of it before Bella saw Edward make a handprint in a car.
That aside, nothing prepared me for the violent conclusion. By this point I’d concluded that it was vampires by numbers, as not one iota of grisliness had graced the screen. Yet the final showdown between Bella and James was nothing short of gut-wrenching – one particular moment froze me, a person recovering from a fractured leg, to the core. It left nothing to the imagination. The Cullens’ subsequent intervention was also not for the faint-hearted. And while tooth-baring may not be nearly as terrifying without pointy canines, you forget that human teeth can do a heck of a lot of damage by themselves. Zombies, anyone?
In conclusion, I’m on the fence. I love the idea. I struggle with the incredulity. All-consuming whirlwind romance is perfectly plausible, particularly at such an age. But I’m horribly jealous of Meyer for creating such an epidemic (for want of a better word). It’s like the hormonal Harry Potter. But I’m at loggerheads with the erotica of abstinence because I can’t help but associate it with American right-wing religious movements and the writer’s own Mormon background. Perhaps I can treat the books and the forthcoming films as two totally separate entities, and maybe then I’ll find the product easier to swallow.
