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If you're a Twilight fan looking for intelligent discussion, or a person who doesn't like Twilight, OR simply someone who wants to get away from all the hype...this spot is just for you!
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Twilight: Literature's Darkest Hour
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-------------------------- There’s no way you haven’t heard of it. From the first publishing of that first book to the most recent perfume-bottle scandal, Twilight has permeated the very core of pop culture, not to mention high school conversation. No matter whether you’ve read the books, seen the movie, or were just forced to listen to millions of girls babble about its “just amazing!”-ness, you’ve been exposed to that teen phenomenon: Twilight. But is it really that great? I say not. And no, it’s not because I “just don’t get it,” as so many people have told me. I do get it – everyone wants to be that perfect girl who finds that perfect guy in that perfect whirlwind of a romance. But are the characters of Twilight really all that perfect? And what is it, exactly, that makes me hate the books so very much? Is it the awful writing style? The horrid characters? The subliminal messaging? It’s all that, and more.
“That’s not true,” you say. “Bella’s not perfect at all! She’s just a normal girl!” Really? Then name just one character flaw. You can’t, can you? Oh, and clumsiness? Yeah, not a character flaw. Without flaws, there’s just seeming perfection, right? Poor Jane Austen’s been rolling in her grave since the moment Meyer first decided to base her ridiculously perfect character on Elizabeth Bennet. No good character is flawless; Bella, however, is just that. She claims to be generous and kind, always thinking of others before herself. She’s supposedly hardworking, caring, uncomplaining. For no apparent reason, everybody adores her. She makes friends instantly, through no effort of her own – other people just walk up to her and instantly become her best friend. Every guy within a 5-mile radius is completely besotted with her, despite her (constantly) claimed ordinariness. She seems to be the It Girl of Forks, Washington. But really, she makes a pretty crappy friend. She doesn’t actually seem to like anybody in her life (except for Edward, of course). She can barely tolerate her high school friends, she thinks her parents are pathetic, and she treats Jacob like dirt. Superiority complex, much? She barely speaks to anybody, except to use them – especially her supposed best friend, Jacob. From flirting with him to get the werewolf vs. vampire story from him in the first book and exploiting his naiveté to “hear” Edward yell at her in the second one (and what was that about, anyways? A short bout of schizophrenia?), all the way to splitting up his wolf pack and then (justifiably) freaking out over his disturbing wolf-crush on her newborn daughter in Breaking Dawn, Bella basically walks all over the poor kid. Funny how the only time she ever displays any gumption at all, it’s only to use and manipulate everyone around her. That’s real swell, Bella. And don’t even get me started on that pathetic “But I love JACOB, too!” attempt at a plot twist in the third book. If you’re going to suddenly fall in love with a second character, at least have the courtesy not to go on about how much you absolutely, always-and-forever, over-the-moon luurve the first guy for over 1000 pages. Make up your mind, for heaven’s sakes. But besides her (definitely not purposeful on Meyer’s part) evilness, isn’t Bella just bland and boring? She does nothing exciting for the first 500 pages of any of the books, and then, in sudden, 20-page action sequences right at the end, she faces an ominous death threat from which she is, of course, rescued by one of her male minions. But in those first 500 pages, she does absolutely nothing but gripe to the reader about how much her life totally sucks. Each and every little thought that ever flitted through her mind-numbingly boring brain is written down in meticulous detail, no matter how insignificant or irrelevant that thought was. Not only that, but she finds some sadistic pleasure in repeating herself over and over and over, changing up the adjective order every once in a while. I mean, I get it. She’s in love. But really, spare me the details about how “unworthy” she thinks she is of her little boy toy. Because to me, she makes herself sound like she should have LOW SELF ESTEEM – HANDLE WITH CAUTION stamped across her forehead in bright red caps.
Bella’s co-star in the series, Edward, is a hundred-plus-year-old vampire stuck in a seventeen-year-old’s body. The supposed epitome of male beauty, he proves himself to be an abusive jerk. “Not Edward!” you say. Well, let’s look at the evidence. Below are a few points from an article dealing with how to spot a potential abuser (the quotes from the article are bolded): 1) Admits to hitting women in the past. Hitting? Try ripping them to shreds and setting them on fire. While Bella’s watching. If that doesn’t sound any warning bells, then I don’t know what would. 2) Shows up unannounced at your job, home, or places you visit. Oh, you mean like her bedroom? In the middle of the night? To watch her sleep? Creep. 3) May offer to take you to any of these places on a daily basis so that you may grow dependent on him. Kind of like how he insists on driving her to school, back home, to work, to Jacob’s – that is, before he flatly refuses to let her leave the house, which takes us to numbers 4, 5 and 6: 4) When you want to visit with a friend, go out to the movies or some other past time, he oftentimes vehemently objects or he uses tactics to make you feel guilty so that you will stay home. Need I remind you how many times he didn’t let Bella go wherever she wanted, including her best friend’s house, because it was “dangerous”? 5) When he is angry with you he keeps you in a room with no access to a phone. He may lock you in the room. Like the numerous times that he claimed he was “protecting” her, by not letting her visit her friends, call her family, etc. Which is especially obvious in the fourth book, when he takes her to a desert island and doesn’t let her have any contact with any of her friends or family, all to “protect” them. 6) He threatens to commit suicide when you try to break up with him. I really don’t think that I need to explain this one. Stephanie Meyer did an excellent job drilling it into our heads. 7) He doesn't like who he is and makes regular references about himself as being "stupid," "ugly," "dumb," and asks you, "Why do you want to be with me?" Again, self-explanatory. Just substitute the word “monster,” “killer,” and “murderer” for “stupid,” “ugly,” and “dumb.” 8) He expects you to call him wherever you go and will become angry if you don't. Again, this is only to protect her, of course. Because poor, defenseless Bella can’t even be trusted to spend some quality time with her friends without somehow almost getting herself killed. And that’s only a few of the points mentioned in the article. Clearly, Edward is one messed up guy. The fact that he displays so many “potential abuser” warning signs should scare Bella silly. But since it’s Edward, it’s all okay. After all, he only does it because he loves her. Right.
The story begins with poor little Bella, unwanted by her own mother – who’d rather spend time with her shiny-new hubby (and really, who can blame her?) – moving in with her dad in the hole that is Forks, Washington. Since she’s underage, she must continue with her education, the poor thing, and so it’s off to high school she goes. There, she’s instantly mega-popular, adored by all – except the hottest boy in school, who seems to hate her for no reason she can fathom. Oh, no! Whatever will she do? Well, nothing, really, except complain. At least until super-hot-boy comes back to school a few days later. Very, very few things happen and are described in intimate detail, and then Bella decides that since super-hot-boy doesn’t like her, he must be either blind or one of the undead. So she Googles vampires, and lo and behold – super-hot-but-strangely-uninterested-boy fits tons of the descriptions provided. Bella confronts him, and he confesses to being a vampire. And now that the “uninterested” part is conveniently taken care of – boom, Bella and super-hot-boy are both madly in love. Where is the romance? There’s no love story there. Not even a love-at-first-sight story. Just an easy method for Stephanie Meyer to spread her extremist right-wing propaganda under the façade of a fantasy love story. Now, I know that most of you won’t agree with me here, but just hear me out.
Not at any point in her day does she ever do anything for herself. Her life revolves around the men in her life, pleasing them, being subservient to them. If she, by some complete fluke, manages to get herself in trouble, she’s pathetically useless. Forget about trying to do anything remotely useful to save herself – she always counts on some man to save her while she stands in a corner and screams prettily. Bella’s a pitiable, pathetic damsel-in-distress, completely useless to have around in tough situations. What happened to the independent woman? Girl power, and all that? Meyer seems determined to destroy her readers’ notions of a woman’s ability to do anything for herself. What kind of a model is Bella for third-wave feminists everywhere? Bella’s greatest ambition in life seems to be to please Edward. And isn’t that reminiscent of the early 1900s? Think about it – by the age of nineteen, Bella’s a married teenage mother with no prospect of a future. She’s completely dependent on her husband’s money; she plans on living her life for him and their child. She doesn’t want an education or a job. What Meyer seems to be saying is, screw feminism and everything women have accomplished – what really matters is having a man to serve. Edward’s extreme abstinence-until-marriage ideals are paraded through the books until the couple does get married – and that’s when the no-birth-control issue comes in. Of course, since they didn’t use any birth control, Bella gets pregnant – and she becomes determined to give up her life for no reason whatsoever. She succeeds in dying pointlessly during childbirth – really, the only time she’s ever been successful at anything. And why does she die in such a brutal way? Because she idiotically refuses to allow Carlisle, an experienced doctor, to deliver her baby through a C-section. Why would she do that? The baby was pretty much fully developed; the procedure would have been safe for both her and the baby. But instead, she waits until the pregnancy goes horrible wrong, and then proceeds to kick the bucket in the most painful way Meyer could imagine. The birth is gruesome: the baby breaks her spine and rips her insides to shreds before it’s delivered, then bites her the first chance it gets. Once she’s pretty much taking her last breath, Edward finally decides to turn her into a vampire. What a shining example for girls everywhere to emulate. Now, what I’m about to say may seem completely contradictory to the rest of this article. But I truly think that the storyline, if given to an author who had any actual talent, might make an amazing novel. Hey, even Stephen King agrees with me: the background story’s good. Just change everything else, and you’ve got yourself a hit.
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Best Twilight article ever.
I´m really tired of all that...
I completely agree with you when you say that Meyer has no talent... well it´s true! Meyes is just a normal woman who decided to wrote something, she´s no Tolstoi or Dostoievski (i wish)
I can´t lie, i really love Twilight but for some reason i can´t explain why! Twilight it´s just NOT my type of book, i´m used to read Charles Dickens, Tolstoi, Doistoievski and i just don´t why i love Twilight... but i do! I love the books, i love the story... i can´t deny it!
thanks for this great article!
I can't even remember I how long I have been trying to convince people of this... It's so blatently... bad lol. If you want to make her 'cool', just do it instead of suddenly giving her all these friends. And all the guys? It's ridiculous! How can an awkward, plain girl be asked to the prom 23,823,927,359,734,953 times?
Even Bella's name bothers me. Bella Swan? It's the prettiest frickin' name in history! Her name is giving us a totally different picture of her then Meyer tries to paint - I feel like she's contradicting herself.
And, I don't care how you out it, Edward sneaking into Bella's room to watch her sleep = creepy.
I've only read the first book, so I won't comment on much more, but I competely agree with you. (Especailly about Meyer repeating herself... how many different ways can she say 'Edward is sparkely'?)
Great article :)
and well contained. I very much love the picture of the author
Props to you!
Great, great article.
Whenever I see/ hear young girls discussing how twilight is there favourite book ever, it just makes me want to cry. If they like it then fine but it's bad enough with just the disturbing abusive relationship and sexism, but it really is just awful, awful writing.
It makes me want to beat them over the head with some Nabokov or some Orwell or something.
Firstly, let me address the idea that Edward Cullen is physically abusing Bella, or anyone, for that matter. I just replied to an article suggesting that, so I will keep this brief, but let me just say that I am getting tired of people who obviously haven't read the books spreading the rumour that Edward, without Stephanie Meyer, the woman who CREATED him, realising, is abusing Bella. He has never laid o finger on Bella, never will, and I would appreciate it if these obviously very bored people would get a life and find something better to do than pick to pieces a book they so obviously detest in search for more flimsy 'proof' that Edward Cullen abuses Bella. In other words, get a hobby. I suggest Harry Potter.
Now that that is out of the way, let me say this - I try to be open minded. I do not like Hannah Montanna. I can accept that there are people out there who do not like Twilight. However, Hannah Montanna has never done anything to me, never hurt me in any manner, the only grounds I have for disliking her are that I believe she (well, Miley Cyrus, really) is setting a bad example for young children. But that's none of my business. I suppose people could dislike Twilight for a similar reason, or perhaps it just annoys you. But what grounds have you for hating it? What did Twilight do to you?
Imagine for a moment that you are a happily married woman with a lovely husband, home, and children, and you love to write. One day you get an idea for a book, you send it to a publisher after many years of very hard work, and when it gets published you are shocked - you never thought that something you'd written would ever get published. It is an immediate success, and the world is swept up into Twilight Mania. But then there are people who start tearing you down, making wild accusations about your motives in writing the story, saying your characters are either weak or abusive, and insulting not just the way that you write, but who you are.
Do you think that because Stephanie Meyer is famous it does not hurt? Imagine if your best friend in the world wrote the crappest story ever, would you tear her down, tell her it was rubbish? No! Well why should Stephanie Meyer not be treated with that same courtesy? Treat others as YOU wish to be treated. I can't believe there are people who are so close minded that they think since Stephanie Meyer is now wealthy, she is a cold, dead celebrity that does not feel anymore and is not effected by harsh, unfair, and unnecessary criticism.
If you would like to respond to anything I've said, please send me a message on fanpop and I'll get back to you ASAP.
I never said Edward was physically abusing Bella. Edward was (so far) "only" emotionally abusive, but he showed many warning signals of a potential abuser - i.e. he may be physically abusive in the future. The points in the article illustrate character traits and habits that physically abusive men often personify in the beginning stages of a relationship - they are signs that women should be wary of, not idolize. Abusers use control tactics to isolate their victims from friends, family, and anyone else that may be able to help the victim get out of the abusive relationship. Edward clearly isolates Bella from everyone around her.
All this is why I hate Twilight. The fact that so many girls, including girls that I personally know, believe that Edward's overprotective and emotionally abusive nature is ideal scares me. If this is what these girls are looking for in a relationship, they may be setting themselves up for a terrible future, a future full of hurt and fear. What I hope is that these girls will consider, even for a moment, what the Twilight haters are saying and why they are saying it.
Stephanie Meyer's fame has absolutely nothing to do with why I hate Twilight. I understand that she has feelings. But the fact of the matter is, when you publish a book, you are putting it out there for the whole world to see. There will always be critics. And what critics say may be hurtful, but the point is to take their criticism and learn from it. Even in the most "harsh, unfair, and unnecessary" criticism, there is some truth. Stephanie Meyer hasn't even attempted to address any of the issues brought forth by critics. She hasn't tried to defend herself, which to me suggests that she sees the validity of the arguments against Twilight, and has no way to respond and save face.
Finally, everyone has the right to an opinion. You may not like that opinion, but that doesn't mean that you're right. It also doesn't mean that you're wrong. This article was simply my opinion about the Twilight series, and the problems I personally have with the message that it conveys. By all means, write an article defending Twilight. Explain how you perceive the themes, why you believe the characters are good or bad. I'll be looking forward to reading it.
Props!
I will admit that I love Jacob. He's the reason I can stand Twilight; I have never liked Bella, never liked Edward, and always thought that he was creepy and controlling.
Great article! :)
I think she successfully showed an example of great pure love and not lustful one, Edward and Bella didn't have sex after the first date! Felt disappointed? Stephenie described wonderful things we people are supposed to do: friendship, care, respect for parents, love, marriage, birth of a baby, just do things God wants us to do, but do it properly without dirt. Nobody likes to be dirty, drink, eat smth dirty - only clean. But when it comes to relationship with people are we clean inside? In our thoughts, desires? I mean I liked the idea that E and B didn't have sex before marriage, it's just the way it's supposed to be. But instead they had lots of time to get to know each other, to build trust between them. I think it's a great book luckily appeared in our 21st century when people are so indulgent and do what they want and then suffer from their mistakes and do not understand why it hurts so much.
So guys, just admit it: Stephenie Meyer is just a person who discovered her talent and used it. Yes, she's not an experienced writer but what she did was really incredible. But actually I like to see such critical remarks because it only proves that the artist is really worth attention. All great famous people went through this. So stop judging others and try to do smth like that yourselves and we'll see what your results will be like.
When you describe the 'wonderful' things Stephanie wrote that God wants us to do, maybe you should leave out 'birth of a baby' since that's not a beautiful natural birth, it's a blood and guts c-section. And what you say about them spending lots of time getting to know eachother, Edward takes one sniff of her and decides he loves her enough to stalk her and watch her sleep every night, but actually, you know what? forget it, I'm not going to debate the points you made, if you wont treat your opinion as that of a mature polite adult I don't see why I should.
You are asking us to stop judging, look at the title of the spot. It's for critical analysis, something that is supposed to happen to authors. It is no great insult to any writer to have their books analysed, because when smart people have an opinion they voice it. And they do so without making childish statements like 'you are just jealous'. If people want to come here with a pro-Twilight viewpoint that's great, we have quite a few wonderful, polite and intelligent Twilight fans on the spot, and I am always eager to hear what they have to say, but you just made yourself look immature and dim. The people who are a part of this spot all treat eachother with respect, we may disagree and passionately debate about our different viewpoints, but we do it without being childish, and we make our points in the knowledge that we are talking to someone who simply disagrees, not the enemy, and not someone we accuse of jealousy just because they don't like the same author we do. Honestly. Jealous. Isn't it funny how many Harry Potter fans we have here, I wonder why none of them are Jealous of J K Rowling's success...how odd.
and i have to admit :
1)that the movie was as crappy as it could get , but it won aLmost all the awards on the mtv movie awards and teen choice awards but im not really surprized because there are million of crazy fans like me
2) yes yes i have to admit that there are many books that are better written that twilight
3) that the idea of the character of Bella swan is pathetic she always think about the others and she is like a description of meyer's face
but you have to admit that
1) edward is not an abuser please all the haters that say this hadn't read the books and if you had read the books and keep saying this you didn't get the book or read MIDNIGHT SUN so you can get a glimps at what edward is thinking and you can see he is the farthest thing from an abuser when it comes to bella
2) twilight IS a love story and a great one
3)give twilight a chance read it with an open mind and youll see you might like them :D
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