Breaking Twilight
by Elizabeth Johnstone
I've written about Young Adult books before, mostly because I have a real passion for the strength and the necessity of the YA genre - as well as the need for teenagers to branch out of it. The wildly popular Twilight series, the first book of which is currently being made into a movie, has made me painfully aware that, as always, there's a flipside to every coin.
The books, written by Stephanie Meyer, are intended for the 12-18 age group. And then when the teenyboppers are done reading, their mothers read them - and fall just as crazily in love as their daughters. And that's the kicker, because the readership of these books is mostly female. Sure, there's a few websites devoted to guys who read Twilight getting all indignant because nobody believes they exist, but seriously. The sheer amount of bad fanfiction with titles like "Why Do Good Girls Like Bad Boys?" alone probably outnumbers the male readers ten to one.
Let me be clear- I have read only the first book in the series of four. But I've done some research, gotten into heated (i.e. yelling and dramatic arm-waving) conversations, and read some brilliant commentary by Cleolinda on Livejournal, who has an entire Wiki on the subject of Twilight and it's um...sparkliness. Please read it. I also think I have a pretty good personal understanding of why people like these books so much, even though I'm at a loss to their actual literary merit. '’m what Cleolinda has aptly called a "lolfan," in that I read the books for the laughs. And make no mistake; these books are hilarious in their total absurdity.
First of all, the books are essentially about a young teenage girl, Bella, who falls in love with Edward Cullen, a preternaturally attractive vampire who doesn't eat people. Edward falls in love with her because she smells good. Sometimes there's an attempt at plot, but in Twilight, a book that's over 500 pages long, the first inkling of story appears around page 300. The rest of it is angst and oddly hollow descriptions of the ordinary girl and her beautiful, beautiful vampire.
After four books, we never really know why they're so in love, beyond the fact that THEY ARE. In all caps, because it's serious and life threatening and epic. These books read like the aforementioned bad fanfiction. They feel like a teenage girl, lonely and desperate, took her favorite story and put herself in it so she could experience "first hand" what every girl (hah!) wants. Which is, of course, all-consuming love and passion, the sole focus of a gorgeous man's desire, devotion, and protection. Forever and ever amen. Stephanie Meyer even says on the website that she was "in love with [her vampire] from day one."
But Bella's love isn't love, to me. It's obsession, and it's obsession with the unknown. That would be fine, if the obsession grew into a more genuine sentiment as she began to get to know Edward. But the more Meyer describes the characters becoming more familiar with each other, the more I felt like Bella isn't actually learning anything. Nor Edward, for that matter. They never get over that initial feeling of unfamiliarity, and in that way, the other three books seem to strike a false note when expounding over their love and devotion to each other.
Normal people would consider this a major flaw - barely fleshed out characters in an imaginary world that has very few rules and a plot that doesn't really work. But strangely enough, this is what makes these books so insanely popular not just to teenage girls, but to their thirty-something mothers.
I think it's what I like to call empty house syndrome-Edward is a beautiful, empty house that all these girls and women can dream just about anything into. Literally, he was Stephanie Meyer's dream. He's the guy the mother wished she'd married, he's the malleable bad boy that all the girls wish would throw them against the lockers in high school and kiss them (appropriately, with no tongue) senseless. Bella is the Everygirl - there's so much emphasis on her ordinariness that it's incredibly easy to just insert yourself into the story as her. It's you Edward is sparkling for; it's you he's "whispering fiercely" to.
And to a point, that's the purpose of literature. It's a grand escape to another world-I was a lonely, awkward teenage girl, too. I get it, I really do. I used to dream about the first person I would love like it was going to be some great, amazing thing. Twilight, however, stretches the fantasy so thin that it breaks.
