Fugitivus Discussion Forum

Because I can't imagine this movie being mentioned with any less enthusiasm...a thread to discuss the craze of movies that is Twilight.

So Shakesville did a pretty good piece on describing the new Breaking Dawn trailer: Film Corner! Twilight

And, is it just me, or (TW for violence)

I find Twilight troubling in a lot of ways, but I know people who like it, and that's when I shut my usually loud and cynical and generally unpleasant-for-non-cynical-folks mouth and kind of mumble something about, "Well, some of my friends say they think it's bad..."

But I also find some of the backlash against it troubling, too. I think it's one of those things where everyone jumps on board to bash it in order to prove their own sophistication, and I think most of the time people just hate it because lots of teenage girls love it, so there's ageism and misogyny there.

My feelings about Twilight can pretty much be summed up by this blog.

You feel... EXTREMELY OFFENDED by its literary style?

Well, no. I feel offended by its disturbingly unhealthy portrayal of romance and relationships, which is Dana's other main topic of focus. My feelings about its literary style are more complex, but I definitely get a kick out of watching that lady take it apart.

Heh. Compared to the horror show that is plot and characterization, the writing style is downright delightful. I read all four of the novels because I heard someone refer to the horrifying birth scene in the last book and assumed they were exaggerating or satirizing a much tamer scene (alas, they were not. Damn my curiosity!). I was really surprised by how readable the prose was, given the content - it might not be *well* written, but it is *readably* written, which is unfortunately rarer than it sounds. But that is an awesome site.

OTOH, while I really, intensely dislike the books, I don't have anything against fans of the series. I, too, have enjoyed some pretty awful (both in terms of content and style) crap in my day, and the tendency of people who really don't give a fuck about abuse victims or feminism in any other context to gleefully seize upon Twilight's modeling of unhealthy relationships and lousy female role models to brow beat (only female!) fans for liking the series drives me up the goddamn WALL.

On another note altogether, I found this series of posts really kind of interesting, though if memory serves me correctly , a content/trigger warning for ableism is definitely in order for some of them:
http://stoney321.livejournal.com/317176.html
They're written by a woman who grew up in a conservative LDS household, but in adulthood, left the faith. She points out, in really irreverent fashion, a number of interesting bits of LDS folkloric and theological allusions that show up throughout the novels.

The thing is, Dana's stylistic criticism of Twilight tends to run along lines that I particularly approve of. She's not just pointing out where Meyer broke the rules; she's pointing out where Meyer broke the rules in ways that made her writing muddled, redundant, contradictory, or otherwise uncommunicative. Frankly, if I wrote a book and somebody started a blog like Reasoning with Vampires about it, I would bake that person a cake.

And I hesitate to think what kind of books you've been subjected to, Isabel, if Twilight qualifies as readable. Granted, my sample space is small—I mostly only hear about the places where it isn't, thanks to Dana. But I hold out the naive, wistful hope that published works really ought to be held to a higher standard.

The sort of books I've been subjected to include the first drafts of aspiring novelists I know. Since I'm an English teacher who likes to read sci-fi and fantasy (the primary genre people I know write in), I get tagged for beta reading a lot. Some of these novels are awesome and beautifully written. Some make Meyer's writing look graceful and inoffensive.

Dana is absolutely right that the books are *badly* written on a stylistic level, even aside from the content, however, and her takedowns are wonderful. I'm kind of tempted to bookmark some of the posts dissecting common punctuation abuses and ask her if I can point comp students to them as a resource. Her posts on comma abuses and words with inappropriate connotations in particular seem like they're sufficiently sharp and funny to stick in the mind, while still being about *someone else's* work, so wouldn't lead to anguish and despair the way having a similarly snarky and memorable comment on a similar issue in the student's own paper would.

Hex, that site is hilarious.

I actually have to thank Twilight for my introduction to feminism. Because being in the relationship I had been only to see it mirrored on those pages, was frightening. (I've been told recently that most romance novels have this type of theme) I won't lie, I can see why everyone loves it. Heck, I sort of do myself. In the trailer I linked, how AWESOME is that wedding scene?! All those pretty flowers, eeeee! Ahem, I mean...yes. It's the "ideal man" (Edward SO isn't, he's a creepy stalker who's verbally abusive) who will live forever, "take care of you", money will never be a problem, and oh yeah, he's "dangerous" (Only because he's a vampire! Not the other, more important things I mentioned...yep). I just don't like how some young women are taking this so seriously, to the point where they think this type of relationship is ideal.

And yes, Isabel, you're right. The other end are the people who criticize (to put it lightly) the fans who love this series. That's not right either.

Yeah, it's not that they criticize the actual problems with the texts, or, more importantly, the wider social problems that the texts reflect. Instead they reinforce some of the messages of the text in their own behavior - women are stupid, women's choices don't need to be listened to, men know better and are allowed to treat women with contempt (I'm generalizing on genders here because I, personally, have only seen young men policing young women over fan-status IRL, though I'm aware that women also police other women as well).

As for its appeal, I think Dana over at RwV made an excellent point about the dangerous irresponsibility of writing the protagonist in a way that normalized and even romanticized self-loathing and self-destructive tendencies. Would I have liked the books if they came out when I was 17? TW - I certainly would have been able to identify with the protagonist, even if I disliked her and her decisions. Reading about her self-loathing would have been like irresistible literary crack.

Also, I was up until 3:45 am reading the entire archives of RwV, because they were awesome. Thanks, Hex

Edited to remove some unnecessary detail from the spoilered section