A New Pop Phenom: Twilight
Book-to-movie adaptations are a curious thing that almost guarantee that people will read the book to find out what the fuss is all about. The Harry Potter books became a phenomenon once the first book was translated to film and now the same can be said for Twilight and its sequels.
However, when the message sent to the fan base is mixed, one tends to look twice and raise an eyebrow.
Twilight is a Mary Sue-style story that details the adventures of teenage Isabella (Bella) Swan, who relocates to Forks, WA so that her mother can be happy with her new husband. Bella is palpably insecure but is nevertheless inexplicably showered with attention and inclusion at her new school. But instead of accepting the attention, she gravitates toward the vampire Edward Cullen and eventually begins a relationship with him. However, the human Bella is more prey than partner to Edward, who has to resist the impulse to feed on her and at the same time protect her from vampires who, unlike his family, don’t resist feeding on humans.
Seems interesting? The sales say yes. The audience says yes. Yet the audience must gloss over several things that spoil what should’ve been an intricate and interesting plot.
Bella’s attraction to Edward Cullen is highly unhealthy. While teenage girls are apt to fawn over boys, especially the attractive and popular ones, there is more than a fair bit of disregard for how Edward behaves. He rebuffs Bella, then gets close to her, repeatedly saying that it’s best that they do not come together – but doing little to distance himself at the same time. He watches her sleep for two months, a move lauded by some as romantic rather than stalking. When Bella threatens to reveal how Edward miraculously saved her life from an oncoming car, Edward employs a classic Gaslight line that is often used by abusive men: “Nobody will believe that, you know.”
This line should ordinarily send alarm bells clanging, but instead, Bella takes it upon herself to pursue and land Edward. Once she does, the book is weighed down with descriptions of Edward’s unearthly beauty and Bella’s insecure attempts to make conversation with him. In the course of trying to land him, she has him come to her rescue even in non-threatening situations that could be avoided, such as an incident wherein she wanders into a dark alley for no particular reason.
It’s as though teenage girls are simply not capable of being strong in this novel. Stephenie Meyer portrays Bella as inconsistent and weak. Fainting at the sight of blood in biology class, and yet chasing after a vampire with stalker tendencies? Insecure, and yet effectively fawned over by the entire school? Non-sequitur.
The descriptions of Edward’s physical beauty become annoying very quickly. The ‘seraphic’ face, the ‘sculpted, incandescent’ chest and, of course, the diamond-like sparkling skin – while it paints a lovely picture in and of itself, this is piled on top of literally hundreds of other descriptions of how gorgeous this guy is. Together, the combination is almost unbearably cheesy. All the while, Bella’s appearance is only hinted at and paired with questions such as why Edward is capable of looking like a runway model while she can’t.
Since this is the start of a series, it should take the reader in and keep attention steady, which Twilight often fails to do. The plot is rife with openings for potential twists, which the author either deliberately ignores or overlooks completely. The popularity of the book, however, leaves a lot of room for other authors in the fantasy genre to get their work noticed.
Copyright Katharine Wyse. Published 1 July 2009 in The Zone.
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Sounds like a better use my time would be re-watching “Gaslight”. :)
permalink — 1 July 2009, 23:46