Porn for Women: The Twilight Saga
Her face rose a thousand corpses.
The scene is familiar: tents clustered together, their occupants camped out for days. Committed to their purpose, they won’t leave until they get what they want. No, it’s not Occupy Wall Street. It’s the highly anticipated release of the latest film in The Twilight Saga, Breaking Dawn: Part I. Dubbed Twihards, the devoted army of women obsessed with author Stephenie Meyer’s paranormal teenage romance are giddy as schoolgirls, regardless of their age.
“What’s different is that this is female based,” a woman among those camped out told CBS News. “If these were guys that were really into a sci-fi movie or an action movie, people wouldn’t be so interested.”
That may be true. However, the most fascinating aspect of Twilight fandom isn’t its dominant gender. After all, it would be more bizarre if men were into it. What is fascinating is why women of all ages are so profoundly moved by this story and its characters.
The tale follows the romantic exploits of Bella Swan, a mopey teenage girl out of step with the world and unimpressed by the people in it. She perks up upon meeting Edward Cullen, a century-old vampire locked in seventeen-year-old form. Romance ensues, interrupted by raucous undead politics. It turns out vampires at-large aren’t particularly keen on Cullen’s lifestyle choice. (It makes sense if you think about it. Even among humans, it’s taboo to date the livestock.)
As potentially fatal complications manifest so does a love triangle between Bella, Edward, and a friendly neighborhood werewolf named Jacob Black. The tension between these three forms the backbone of the saga, with Bella persistently in danger and constantly fought over.
As a man, understanding the female obsession with Twilight is difficult. However, there is one form of illicit entertainment which seems an instructive point of comparison. Twilight is to women what porn is to men.
Before playing the chauvinist card, note that women admit as much:
“We call it brain porn,” jokes Jenny West, 32, a New Jersey finance executive who co-runs an adults-only blog…
What makes Twilight “brain porn”? It fulfills the female ego in the same way pornography appeals to men.
Pornography exaggerates the most cathartic aspect of romantic encounters while dismissing real-life baggage. It elevates an irrational self-indulgence while ignoring any sense of responsibility, particularly to the other. For men, this translates to reckless sexual satisfaction. For women, it’s more complicated.
Sure, women like sex too. However, their enjoyment typically requires stimulation of the mind as much as the body. Women hope to be loved, desired above all others, and valued more than life itself. The Twilight Saga embodies this fantasy.
Pornography imagines that women exist for the sole purpose of satisfying men. The women in porn are not only willing, but eager. They are depicted as if satisfying a man is the means by which their own life is sustained. This is without the slightest pretense, explanation, or justification. The unconditional nature of the attraction is essential to the fantasy.
So it is in Twilight, only with the roles reversed. Edward Cullen and Jacob Black adore Bella, not due to any apparent merit, but simply because she is there. Indeed, they indulge her whims and endure her moods without conditions of any kind. Any objection they do offer is complimentary. I’ll only turn you into a vampire if you marry me. Every conflict between the three leads only serves to demonstrate how thoroughly both males are devoted to Bella.
Warning: Explicit language
The most objectionable example of this porn-like dynamic is the frequently shirtless Jacob. Watching his unrequited obsession with Bella play out on-screen evokes the same eye rolling disgust that women have endured for years while watching two-dimensional bimbos fawn over undeserving men. The relationship begins with him filling in for the absent Edward, serving as a platonic scratching post to tide Bella over until her main squeeze returns. From there, Jacob engages in progressively more demeaning exercises in fruitless devotion.
In the third entry of the series Jacob manages the lackluster achievement of badgering Bella into admitting some love for him, albeit not as much as she holds for Edward. Her ideal scenario is to be with Edward while having Jacob around to dote on her within the boundaries she sets. She treats Jacob like some kind of pervert for not being satisfied with this arrangement. In this way, the dynamic between Bella, Edward, and Jacob is not unlike that between a husband, wife, and mistress. Bella wants to marry Edward but have Jacob as a kept man. The only difference is that Jacob satisfies her emotionally rather than sexually.
Stephenie Meyer deserves a tip of the hat for a truly unique cultural achievement. She has managed to distill the essence of an addictive, illicit entertainment and bring it to a new audience without carrying over any of the taboo. It’s a masterful accomplishment. Men’s primal tastes are too brute to pull off such a trick.
PJM FLASHBACK: The Porn Star as Leftist Hero ”The left touts XXX actresses like Sasha Grey as agents of social change.” and icons of female empowerment.
Gah. I’m probably gonna be dragged to see the current episode in this series at the theater, this weekend. I dunno why the missus feels the need for me to join her in attending this; she could as easily see it without me, or with a friend of hers. But she seems deeply invested in my participation in this ritual, so… =’[.]‘=
Ray -
Feminists have convinced a lot of women that the “natural” order of things is for a woman to have an “Alpha” lover, and a “beta” male to support her, tend to the house, kids (whoever may sire them), and so on, all out in the open, without having to hide anything, or risk any losses of their chosen lifestyle. The “beta” males are simply supposed to accept this state of existence without complaining. My guess is that your wife has bought into that idea, and either has her Alpha lover all picked out (or possibly, already in bed).
Of course, what remains is for her to “teach” you that this is the right and natural order of things. Making you go with her you to twilight movies is part of your education.
you think his wife is having an affair because she wants him to go to a movie with her?
Also under the heading “Porn for women”:
http://www.docmercury.com/gallery/porn-for-women
That’s great!
“What’s different is that this is female based,” a woman among those camped out told CBS News.
IOW, indulging females in their porn is ok?
Twilight is to women what porn is to men.
“We call it brain porn,” jokes Jenny West, 32…
Ha. Think again.
Hint: Playboy is to men what porn is to women.
Both ways, Mr. Hudson and Ms. West, it’s marks on paper and becomes porn only after your brains interpret them.
The only reason women frown on porn you might prefer Mr. Hudson while making excuses for their preferred porn being “different” (and therefore ok to indulge in openly) is that our sexist culture put women in control of – among other things – deciding whose porn shall be taboo.
Those are fabulous. I do think it ironic, however, that those things won’t actually get a man laid. We like those things of course, make us like the guy more, but watching our husbands do the dishes or ask for directions doesn’t exactly inspire shirt ripping.
I’ll take your word for it.
I never expected to read something this intelligently penetrating about a teenie-fantasy movie. My word, what gems we overlook because of our preconceptions!
For me, the heart of this excellent article is this brief paragraph:
Indeed. For men, sex is about conquest. For women, sex is about bonding and security. Every attempt to efface this critical difference has been wrong-headed at best, ludicrously vicious at worst. And in that synopsis lies the root of the sexual / social / familial malaise we suffer today.
And all these years I thought my husband enjoyed sex for the bonding and security…
IOW, not all men are conquistadores.
Then you are ignorant.
Wrongo–For men sex is about fun, entertainment, a fun time. For women it’s about control………..
“I never expected to read something this intelligently penetrating about a teenie-fantasy movie.” If something is ridiculously popular, there is a reason, just not always an easy to see reason.
There are all sorts of interesting angles in pop culture analysis. I just saw the movie myself and am drafting a post on Hollywood’s habit of bending essentially modern myths to serve political purposes. Joseph Campbell had good points about archetypes driving stories. In the popular stuff, you can always find the archetypes. And in Hollywood you can always find someone trying, and failing, to get around them.
Anyone remember “Beauty and the Beast” from the 80′s. It was the same thing. No sex, but endless devotation and protection by the Beast for the beauty.
Hmmm, I’m beginning to look at my daughter’s obsession with Beauty and the Beast when she was two years old a bit differently now. Now she’s 20, I see some resemblance between her last date and the beast – big, barrel chested sweet heart of a guy with sandy hair.
Oh, I’m sure that Meyer had Beauty and the Beast on her mind. Bella = Belle. The difference is that Belle actually had character; she was worthy of devotion.
“Stephenie Meyer deserves a tip of the hat for a truly unique cultural achievement. She has managed to distill the essence of an addictive, illicit entertainment and bring it to a new audience without carrying over any of the taboo. It’s a masterful accomplishment. Men’s primal tastes are too brute to pull off such a trick.”
No, it’s not unique and has been going on quite well for a long time. 18th century Gothic romances, anyone?
Precisely. Explains why so many women across every social strata are addicted to romance novels.
I’m glad to not be one of them. -From the same “anonymous” you responded to.
I am not a romance novel reader either.
Again, as I have stated elsewhere in the comments, that “Twilight” is NOT PORN. Romance novels are not pornography although some of them may have passages of pornographic description. “Twilight” is like “Star Wars” for women. (Although, I confess, I prefer “Star Wars”.) Why are men denigrating women’s entertainments when their own is so stupid when you look at it with a moral microscope? It’s all a freakin’ waste of time for the sake of escapism!
Touchy, are we?
Nah, it is porn. In the same way you find it mystifying and odd that men would stare at images of unreal women doing unreal things with men you see at somewhat disgusting, men similarly it mystifying that women will as obsessively follow a story of unreal “men” confessing unreal emotions over women we see as annoying and average.
The effect on men that porn has is to buttress unreasonable expectations about female sexuality expression. The effect of Twilight and romance novels is to butress unreasonable female expectations about male emotional attachment and exression.
Our post-victorian, feminist-soaked society still attaches more shame to male sexual desire than it does female emotional expression, so you have some weight of zeitgeist behind your bigotry against male porn versus female porn. But that too is changing, since men are caring less and less about female sensibilities.
Any soap opera of the past few generations employed this same alpha lover and beta orbiter plot trope.
Girls seek to create it daily by having a dominant boyfriend, with a few spare “friends”, whom they lead on without every giving any physical attention to.
Nothing new here, folks.
Even the silliest porno flick was never this slow, dull-witted and boring. Those things are at least unintentionally funny sometimes. This set of movies (and the books, too, I guess) is utterly, intentionally boring.
See, you yourself admit that “Twilight” is nothing like porn which gives it to people like yourself quickly and most excitingly. People need to quit comparing men’s pursuit of porn to women’s enjoyment of “Twilight”. It’s just an attempt to denigrate women’s pursuits.
I suspect now you are trolling. This sort of conclusory, accusatory yelling is not really the stuff of reasoned posting, but mere name-calling.
If your post was actually sincere, I would argue that your denigration of some mens’ pursuits–porn viewing–relative to twilight is as baseless and unsupportable as anything directed at Twilight, except that in your mind, Twilight is somehow less objectionable because…well, you don’t really have a basis for that, except perhaps that whole icky male interest in actual physical congress.
I wonder. This is fiction for teenagers. We can’t have the characters gleefully shtupping each other on every page. There’s also this thing called “dramatic tension” – otherwise known as “Will they or won’t they?” In a single novel, they usually do. In a series (paper or TV) they hold off for an unrealistically long time, usually due to the kinds of emotional complications that real people don’t have. It’s almost a cliche. I don’t know whether this is an intentional pandering to the female psyche – keeping the hunky guy on the hook for as long as possible – or just a dramatic technique.
Since I worked in daytime television and have written about 15 novels, I can tell you that URST (UnResolved Sexual Tension) works in your favor. Once the act has been done, then what? You either have a couple or she’s a slut. Couples are boring to audiences and sluts are sluts. End of story–literally.
That definitely makes sense as a technique. Maybe it works better on women due to the difference in psychology mentioned in the article. However, when you’ve been watching two characters on a TV show dance around the issue for six or eight seasons, you start to think they’re not just “complicated” characters but mentally ill or something.
Hope you are wrong as far as ‘Bones’ is concerned. Probably devolve into a kinda Rob and Laura kind of deal though. Was there ever a man and wife famous cop drama? I’m thinking there was a famous old grey movie but I can’t put my finger on it.
MacMillan and Wife (Rock Hudson and Susan St. James) were on Tv in the 70s, and Nick and Nora Charles (The Thin Man series) (William Powell and Myrna Loye) in the 30s were husband/wwife detectives
Hart to Hart is one…
Faye Kellerman has a half-dozen, or more, terrific novels like that, with a Jewish flavor, and no hang-ups.
Nonsense.
For example, in The Big Bang Theory (rather happy title given the subject here!);) Penny and Leonard sleep together, eventually pair up then break up and go back to being friends.
Characters in Friends – Monica and Chandler – slept together, fell in love, became a couple. The storyline CHANGED, didn’t collapse.
Mad About You was about a couple AFTER they met and married. Though their meeting was part of the storyline, their marriage was the basis for the whole plot.
Scrubs’ main couple get together and break up regularly. Sure it eventually gets resolved, but it’s part of the storyline.
These tensions are just part of the story.
Writers who can’t write beyond the UST are either lousy writers or their shows are not designed to go beyond the UST.
It’s been done successfully in many shows, can be done again, and I’m SO SO SO tired of reading that women with more than one sexual partners are “sluts”. That word, BTW, i n its original form referred to both men and women.
Give it up and grow up already!!
The Twilight fad shows how the unplanned, Hayekian order of the market can produce unexpected insights into the human condition.
Indeed. Spontaneous order can have the damnedest consequences, can’t it?
Francis, if you want people to read the links at your website, please make sure that they are functional.
The underlying URL works just fine.
IOW, remove the final / to make it work
You know, all this psycho-babble about why “men love porn” is a bit disturbing. Porn may be the most disturbing, base thing going on in society today. The disturbed people who participate in creating porn (actors, directors, producers) are the bottom of the barrel; they’re no better than farm animals who get in on out in the pasture. There are so many other disturbing things that are behind any man’s attraction to porn. The few men I know who love the stuff are selfish jackasses who have no respect for women and society at large. It’s evil stuff. Let’s not water it down with talk about how it allows a man to connect with his base desires without all the “baggage” (what, like relationships? What baggage!).
As if today’s women are all about “the relationship” prior to consent to sex. Most gals have bought into the feminist meme of delayed childbearing/marriage, have a career and be just like a man, who can have babies. By the time they decide the bio clock is ticking, they are near the end of their prime sexual market value, have slutted around and are looking for nothing but the inseminator. No wonder men are going “herbivore” and embracing porn as a rational substitute for Western women! MGTOW
Hmmm, maybe you’ve been trying to get it on with the porno type of gal instead of actually noticing the decent ones. You sound so upset that the porno type of gal will not actually have you. She just gets your money and gets rich off you.
There are decent men and women in the world who do not have to resort to porno-lifestyle in order to have decent, fulfilling lives. Actually, it’s pretty well-known that these are the most fulfilled people.
I think men (and women) who engage in any porno viewing are either (1) addicted and have emotional problems or (2) just all about getting pleasure the easiest way possible for self. I wouldn’t advise dabbling in it to anyone.
“Twilight” is NOT LIKE PORN.
Let me see if I can explain men and porn to you, Emily, if not for your own edification, than at least for the sake of your sons and husband (whom I can assure you are getting much more exposure to pornography than you care to admit).
First, some personal background. I’m a married man with a baby daughter who met his sweetheart in his teenage years and has been monogamous with her ever since. I’m very religious in a Judeo-Christian sense and have been so also since my teenage years. However, I’ve had a pornography viewing habit since I was 12 that I’ve never been fully able to shake, despite earnest efforts to do so. At one point, I was attending a 12-step program for sex/pornography addicts before I realized it wasn’t doing me any good and I wasn’t as nearly as messed up as the people going there, nor ever would be. My pornography viewing habits have decreased in recent years to maybe only a few times a month from a peak of daily or more than daily, in some part from getting older, in other part from just learning more about how to keep myself mentally healthy.
For me, porn isn’t about “conquest” or any of the alpha-male/beta-male stuff. It’s about fun, pleasure, friendship and human connection without any of the strings (if not outright chains and shackles) that come along with it in the modern real world.
While the basis of “porn for women” may be the back story of how the characters met and formed a relationship, it’s the lack of back story in porn that appeals to men. A couple (or more) don’t know each other, they meet, they expose themselves to each other, they have orgiastic and transcendent pleasure together. End scene.
Compare this to the modern real world where people who don’t know each other tend to stay, by mutual agreement, unknown to each other. Where personal relationships are define much by judging, ostracism, sizing up, putting down and cold Machiavellian calculation about the other person’s utility to one’s on goals. Where exposing oneself to another–emotional let alone physical–could be a dangerous miscalculation that can endanger one’s standing in society, however meager. Where all the proper conduct of a relationship, be it romantic, platonic, or professional, is governed by some secret rule book the size of an unabridged dictionary written in an indecipherable language. Where the world is a cold, cruel place full of unloving, unforgiving, ugly and aloof people who expect you to suffer and toil for their good regardless of your own needs or desires.
If only the world were like a porno, where we could be meet, love each other and enjoy each other–for who we really are behind our clothes–without preconditions or thoughts to the ramifications. Unfortunately, practical considerations prevent this. Unfortunately, “practical considerations” are exponentially increasing along with the complexity of this world.
(As a post-script, I’ll say that I’ve significantly curtailed my pornography viewing since having my daughter. Of course, this is for alot of obvious reasons: less privacy in my household, more feelings of responsibility, more work and tiredness, etc. But the biggest reason is that it’s just psychically reassuring to see a little soul toddle around the house and enjoy life in a way that we grown-ups with our grown-up baggage cannot. Draw whatever conclusions you will from this.)
If people regarded viewing porn as cheating, which it truly is, there’d be a whole lot less of it going on, and a much greater revulsion to it.
Except it isn’t cheating so who cares what would happen if we shared your false belief. With porn the is zero risk of STDs, paternity suits, or attempts by the other woman to steal the man away. With all the free porn out there it doesn’t even have to involve any financial drain. It also has the advantage of quelling the male need for variety in sex, and the difference in labido between the sex. my wife has no desire to have sex nearly as often, nor as experimentally as me. It gives me an outlet. One that if I didn’t have would lead me to seek a new partner. My wife is fine with it and sometimes watches with me.
LE,
Sorry you missed it on this one. You should have riffed on how politically correct female produced ‘erotic art’ was about free expression and striking back at the strictures of our male dominated society.
It was kind of ‘one note’ this time. To be really funny you need a juxtaposition and a mindless dichotomy. Otherwise not too bad. Love the sarcasm but it is a little limited this time.
It needed a ‘punchline’ this time not just the usual.
Every man who watches porn is watching a woman who helped create it.
Another miss from “contrary drone.”
Every female in porn is making money off of sad, pathetic men who seemingly just can’t have a healthy relationship with a “real woman” or is just a lonely beta male with no personality.
Heh, you seem to like denigrating men.
Oh, I’ll say it. Twilight is /worse/ than porn.
Now, Bob, why would I denigrate men? I have four sons. And I have a father and a spouse who have no need or want of porn.
I only denigrate porno loving perverted losers. If that offends you, then I can only guess that you might be one. Porn is for lonely men. Wonder why they might be lonely. . . hmmm.
Mmmmmmmmmm…yes, why might they be lonely? Could be depression, old age, prostate troubles, death of a wife, divorce, being out of the dating loop, or any number of evil things.
Plenty of women are dating in cyberspace, an activity I consider more depraved than porno.
Men, this emily poster is 100% predictable in her arguments. You see this same trope by women (and simpering males) all across the internet:
1) Porn is demeaning and degrading, and no one disputes this. (Except of course testimonies from participants, some of whom are not upset with it. But Emily and her sort will wave that away with her dumbed-down version of false consciousness theory.)
2)She will define “real” manhood as requiring the absence of porn consumption. No supporting arguments, of course, just a simple declaration of what a real man is by a woman. As if she and her like-minded women are arbiters of manhood. Imagine her reaction if a man tried to say that real women didn’t read romance novels or such. She would call you controlling and mysognist.
3) Finally, she then denigrates any man either consuming porn or disagreeing with the above nonsense as unable to maintain a relationship or otherwise attract women.
Those of you protesting that you like porn and are married with a nice woman/family will be dismissed as either liars or delusional; surely you woman is not satisfied by you, as you are not a real man. Etc.
Don’t bother with her, guys. Her arguments are faith-based bigotries and unexamined assumptions. She cannot even develop enough emotional control or distance to see what she is doing, let alone correct her logical errors.
Pretty good analysis. I don’t think the male impulse to sex is all about conquest, though. Conquest, sexual or otherwise, is a means to an end, not the end itself. The end for most men, I think, is a unique sexual experience, something akin to the culinary experience of discovering and patronizing a new restaurant. It really doesn’t matter if the food, while very good, is inferior to your wife’s or girlfriend’s cooking. It’s different, and that’s often satisfying.
Finally, the comparison of a male addiction to pornography with the female addiction to the Twilight Saga, or to vampire and romance novels in general, is incomplete without noting another fact: both addictions are equally repulsive to the opposite sex, for men find female self-obsession as repugnant as women find men’s obsession with sex.
“There are so many other disturbing things that are behind any man’s attraction to porn. The few men I know who love the stuff are selfish jackasses who have no respect for women and society at large. It’s evil stuff. Let’s not water it down with talk about how it allows a man to connect with his base desires without all the “baggage” (what, like relationships? What baggage!).”
LovelyEarth:
We’ve never met. I’m not a selfish jackass; I love and respect women and always have. Society seems to think I’m an asset, I mentor a twelve-year-old boy. What’s wrong with wanting to see women enthusiastic about sex especially when your wife of thirty years is pretty cool to the idea?
Anonymous
Love and respect your wife of thirty years and maybe she won’t be so cool to the idea. You might score some mentoring points along the way as well.
I wouldn’t let you mentor my 12 year old. In my opinion, your behavior shows a disrespect for your wife and lack of commitment to do what is pure and right by your marriage and God. (If God is not involved in it, then why are you even married? What difference would it make? Is it just a legal binding or is there any spirituality involved in the marriage bond?)
I’m a woman with four boys and one daughter, and I swear, I don’t trust men today thanks to the attitude you have and mention here.
My father and mother have been married as long as you have, even longer. And they have six children – all daughters. My father set an example that men do not need porn, and decent men certainly do not. Decent men are far and few between.
Porn is a scourge, and it’s destroying our culture. Perhaps if you gave up your porn, you might actually have a wife who warms to you. But you do have to sacrifice yourself first. . . A noble man wouldn’t expect his wife to sacrifice herself first. You’re a coward, and you are not noble.
Brrr. You seem very cold and un-Christlike to a gentleman whose only “crime” is that he enjoys porn with his wife of 30 years. He must be doing something right to make his marriage last so long and you are very wrong throwing the words coward and (un)noble at him.
Read what he said. His wife was “cool TO[emphasis added] the idea,” not cool WITH it.
Reminds me of a magazine cartoon I saw years ago with this caption, “My problem is, my wife understands me…”
What’s wrong with wanting to see women enthusiastic about sex especially when your wife of thirty years is pretty cool to the idea? – Anon
Um, Terence, studying the sentence structure, he said “especially” and then used the point about his wife being cool (as in, it is “cool” to her) to the idea to ENHANCE his argument that there’s nothing wrong with female enthusiasm for sex. Unless he is an almighty idiot, no thinking man would undermine his own argument by tacking a second, contary second point onto it. If his wife was cool to the idea (as in, she doesn’t like it), why would he bother to tell us? He would hide it, as it renders his main point useless. No, he clearly meant he enjoys it WITH his wife of 30 years.
Actually, James, the sentence structure looks to me as though he is contrasting his wife’s coolness to the “hotness” depicted by other women. I’ll leave it to the resident grammarians to unravel the complexities of Anon’s syntax.
As for the possibility of the person being an idiot as known through his contradictions, you said it not me. In my world, here’s a contradiction: “I like porn. I’m mentoring a 12 year old boy.”
Maybe the commercials are right. Maybe, literally anyone can be a BigBrother or foster parent.
We are coming from way, WAY different places.
Done.
Um…how can you be so sure that the guys you know don’t look at porn when you’re not around? Do you keep dibs on them with a webcam or something?
As someone who managed an adult book store for more than ten years (back before the web made such a thing economically unfeasible) I think I can actually add a little something to this discussion.
I can tell you with near certitude that your father, husband and sons have watched porn at some point. There’s also a very good chance that they view it at least once a month, even if its just a quick peek at some ‘dirty pictures gleaned from the net on their phone. Those small percentage of men who refrain from any viewing of porn are usually so uptight/dedicated to their moral view of the universe that they are insufferable boors.
You might be saying “But my men are upstanding, religious types.” I’m sorry to have to tell everyone this, but pound for pound my best customers were always preachers, teachers and cops. The more they pound the pulpit about the evils of homosexuality, the more likely they were to rent gay porn. The more macho they seemed, the more likely they were to rent the tranny stuff. Show me a moral cornerstone of society and I’ll bet you dollars to dog crap they have a substantial porn habit.
And its not just Christians. I sold stuff to everyone, Sihk holy men, good Muslims, … hell, I even sold a device to a Buddhist monk once, shaven head robe and everything.
Lastly, from my experience and observation, porn is NOT like crack where it corrupts and takes over a persons life from the first hit. It’s more like beer. Many guys will have a bottle or two after work to relax, but if circumstances prevent that, well then its no big deal. Most men don’t beat their wives or wreck their car every time they have a beer. Most men are not alcoholics.
Nearly all men watch porn to one degree or another. A small percentage of them are addicted: that is, for them it takes over and deforms their life. For the vast majority of men it represents no more of a problem than shoe shopping does for women.
Thanks Boogeyman for the inside scoop.
Emily is an insufferable prig, invoking God to bolster her pompous comments: in other words, a typical bible-thumping know-it-all pretending to moral superiority. I hope she shows her letter to her pure-as-the-driven-snow sons, assuming they’re over eighteen, so they can laugh their heads off the next times their mas——ing to some porno site.
Meanwhile, as I noted months ago on this blog, the entire new Vampire publishing genre is just the old dead romance genre resurrected with new blood. All the writers have done is change the heroes to vampires and werewolves. The stories are the same, the writing is as bad as always, the romances as preposterous as ever. That anyone could fall for this nauseating mush is beyond belief. Barbara Cartland and serial killing vampires really don’t mix.
I just had a horrible thought.
Nearly every major film inspires a porn parody/knock-off*. If “Twilight” is really porn for women, this means that some wayward marketing geniuses might start generating cheapo Twilight-ized versions of every hit movie to come down the pike? The blood curdles.
* [cough] I mean, so one HEARS [cough harrumph].
Based on my spam folder it’s been done — to death….
One was already made, several years ago. Big budget, good production values. sold/rented very poorly.
I’ve just never understood the attraction women seem to have toward vampires. Wouldn’t a blood sucking vampire be the same as any normal male who sucks the life out of his woman (or his women if he is a bigger pig than normal)? Imagine if the vampire dude were to convert his mortal love into an immortal. “You never take me anywhere” takes on a whole new dimension when this problem will exist for all eternity….
And an awful lot of women don’t get how men are so enthralled by orcs, hobbits, jawas, wookies, and scantily clad women in bikinis enslaved by a huge, fat boogery fellow like Jabba the Hutt. Puh-leeze. Stereotypical men’s movies have given us lots of ridiculous fiction creatures and beings. Why are men so fascinated by those?
Why do women watch “The View”, like Fabio, read Harlequin Romance novels, soap operas, care whether they wear white shoes before Sept., and figure out ways to stay out of Vet’s Hospitals?
Thou dost protest too much. The girl is a horrible actress anyway and no normal guy would put up with her whining crap.
Emily, maybe because they think they are ugly like the orcs and the hobbits….but somewhere out there, there could be a hot chick in a bikini cavorting with dragons who would be enthralled, at least temporarily, by their “Hut-ness”?
(Ok, more likely that they would have to keep her on a chain like Princess Leia to keep her from getting away, but…you get the picture.)
I think the “cantily clad women in bikinis enslaved by a huge, fat boogery fellow like Jabba the Hutt.”, is the easiest to start with. Looking at the current situation misses out that the entire scene is about rescuing people from his grasp. Perhaps I’m wrong but I don’t think many men are wishing they were Jabba, generally they want to be Hon Solo.
Orcs, in movies where they the evil sort tend to be huge, strong, and ugly, exactly the type of evil-personified creatures the good man should triumph over. Especially in a world where evil can be so hard spot before it acts I think people like having some that is obviously bad to hate.
Hobbits, I think are simply(or not simply) the little guy triumphing, the imperfect still being the hero. Most men, are not Conan the barbarian, which is likely a good thing, they aren’t perfect people and they know it but they’d like to imagine they are. Yet, its also good to see examples that bravery and nobility, etc, can come with a form that I think most people would consider imperfect, perhaps based on the hairy feet alone!
That’s just one way to look at why Men might be pulled into these aspects and these worlds. One solution cannot fit all.
—————————–
As a side note, I’ve always felt that calling Twilight soft-core porn was more appropriate, in the same way that romance novels, or James Bond, or Conan can act that way, they are not explicit in the way the direct porn is but they are that sort of serving-fantasy, for better or for worse.
Ok….here’s my half-a’d analysis….
It’s kinda like the women who “date” or marry guys on death row. He’s dangerous, sure, and could kill her in no time flat with little more than his bare hands. He has the rap sheet to prove it. But he can never actually touch the woman or consummate the relationship, so this dangerous critter is “safe” or “tamed”. (They rarely go for the old, ugly inmates, too. It’s usually the “cuter” or “hotter” guys, BTW. All the better if he’s gonna die soon, so he leaves a “good looking” corpse behind for her. It’s only polite.)
The chicks involved often say how “pure” their love is, how romantic his wordy letters are (they get long letters proclaiming their undying love….not surprising considering he probably doesn’t have anything else to do, being locked up in solitary virtually 24-7….), how they have a deep bond that goes beyond the mere physical, the transformative power of their deep devotion to one another (more likely the fact they are both in love with…him), etc.
The fact that they can never be together, and “society just doesn’t understand” what a great guy this serial rapist/murderer really is…..you get the picture.
Vampire lovers are just a less extreme, more socially acceptable version of all that crap. The vampires involved can’t touch the woman because they would hurt her. They’re constantly talking about how much they love each other but can never be together, this is a DEEP LOVE that no one else understands, and if the rest of the humans could only see beyond their preconceived notions of evil….they’d adore him too.
Most importantly, he’s never an old, ugly guy who sits on the couch, slamming beer after beer and burping the alphabet. He’s not gonna be so “rude” as to actually DECAY before her eyes. He’ll stay young, beautiful, and hawt, and if he has an exotic accent, all the better. (Yeah, yeah, I know….they’ll scream that “looks don’t matter”…..but then again, have you ever seen any of them squeal over the dude in Nosferatu? Me neither.)
It’s kinda like the women who “date” or marry guys on death row.
Vampire lovers are just a less extreme, more socially acceptable version of all that crap.
Yep, they’re just variations of the same dark female perversion.
The vampire is the ultimate blue hero: a blood-sucking parasite who never dies… kind of like the government.
“frequently shirtless Jacob”
I recently saw Breaking Dawn: Part 1 with my cousin. Jacob’s shirt comes off in the first few seconds of the movie.
As a junior high English teacher, I see that Twilight promotes rather healthy morality in a society that is producing more and more Girls Gone Wild behavior, including videoing girl fights on the Internet. Twilight is actually a modern rendition of Romeo and Juliet. It is popular (as was Shakespeare’s play) because the author has a way with words ( I am not comparing her to Shakespeare however, which most American teens are too uneducated to “get.”) Women love romance: it is our fantasy The love story drags out too long, probably because the author realized she could sell more books. (Her original plan was a trilogy). My husband describes it as a “teen yearning” love story, but between the lines, it encourages chastity until marriage, true love before sex. Dads out there, how can you dislike that?!
The movies are shallow because they leave out so much and make the love story sappy.
Your analysis of Jacob’s role is very interesting and has me re-thinking, but I contend that Bella discourages rather than encourages
his behavior. All 3 in this supernatural love triangle battle with selfish versus self-sacrificial inner conflict, and Meyers somehow finds a supernaturally plausible way to resolve this conflict happily for everyone (unlike another love triangle classic A Tale of Two
Cities, in which the 3rd wheel has his head chopped off to prove his unselfish devotIon).
Girls love this story because it is well-written, right on down to hilarious teen humor and young perspectives on life. Women love it like they have always loved this type of love story: love makes sex as good as it gets for most of us.
Twilight is a disaster for women. Let me count the ways:
1. Identity wrapped up in some Alpha male (or two) fighting over you. Ick. Also self-defeating, only the most beautiful will achieve this dubious distinction.
2. Like porn produces unrealistic expectations of the opposite sex. How many guys will be as “perfect” as the un-naturally mature Edward? Or as wealthy, powerful, etc.
3. Plays to women’s hypergamy, desire for a male of much higher status, again only the most beautiful women will get any kind of commitment, the rest will just get … SEX.
This last is the kicker. In real life, girls (and unseemly middle aged women screaming over teen guys, reverse the sexes and see how that plays) are simply going to put out. Because demanding Alpha males can and do get that action. Meanwhile even the most beautiful women will get cheated on — because Alphas are desired by every woman. The women who marry them either put up with cheating or give up Alphas. Merely attractive women get at most a Lewinsky-type passing liason. Nothing more.
Basically, Twilight creates a legion of Monica Lewinskys. Average to fat women who think because an Alpha has sex with them, they are something “special” instead of just another quickie. This makes the rest of men, their peers, invisible to them, and encourages (once again) the hypergamous “soft harem/polygamy” forming that characterizes the modern sexual marketplace. I.E. 80% of women hooking up with mostly the top 20% desirable men (the Alpha A-holes).
This does NOT IMHO create “MGTOW” but rather the Kevin Federline-ization of modern American men. Men desire sex. If women act out their hypergamous fantasies of Twilight (which is manifestly unhealthy, even unhealthier than male-porn) men respond by slacking (no sense being a beta male Jacob-type provider) and putting all energies into Alpha Male displays — “Game” ala Mystery and Style and PUA, Jersey Shore Guido-esque a-hole type stuff, thugging it up (see the Black community, illegitimacy rising from 24% in the 1960′s to over 70% nationwide today, and over 90% in the urban core, see also White British Chavs) and a host of other dysfunctional male behaviors. X-box slacking and hook-up culture.
Men are PRECISELY what women demand in them. Encourage instead of (driven by women themselves) hypergamy among women and you get the slacker generation and Federlines of today (he has by last count five kids, only two legit).
I agree with whiskey. I’m surprised that no one has added below youtube video to this discussion yet which supplements the main point of this article very well.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K4uuGvmAxTI
I agree with you to a point as witness the women who fall all over professional athletes. No wonder professional football teams give a class on how to avoid predatory women! BECAUSE YOU CAN GET INTO TROUBLE THAT WAY!
I know porn has been around for most of the history of the (so-called) civilized world but the loosening of morals has led not only to unrestricted pornography, which has come to be equated with the 1st Amendment for some ungodly reason, but an increase in the sexual depredations on our children.
Kablam! Staked it like an iron rod through a glittery vampire’s heart. Well said.
If those crowds were made of middle aged men squealing at teenage girls onscreen, someone would call the cops.
and David W., the attraction for these silly women is the allure of bad-boyism plus the promise of being lifted up to elitism…. that the dark princeling of the night will make HER an immortal princess, so she can lord it over all the other peasant girls….
And here I thought Ann Rice was the last word in horny vampire novels!
Well, yeah….gay horny vampire novels. (Oh, come on….Lestat & Louis? Lestat rarely chums around with a female for long, ya know.)
Obviously you’ve never read Laurell K. Hamilton’s Anita Blake books….
There is something more insidious going on with the Twilight phenomenon. I don’t know one adult woman who is attracted to those books – vampires and werewolves? The women I have friendships with have real men and homes with children to care for – those books are for teenage readers. One has hopes that those young readers will grow up and yearn for a real encounter with love one day. My teenage daughters found the books so boring that they have no plans to see any of the movies.
Maybe you have had the wonderful wisdom to have raised Honors and Gifted students who would be intellectually bored by the “yearning” in the books. I am very sincere in saying hats off to you because nowadays that is a rarity and an indicator of extreme common sense and dedication to raising mature, successful young adults. I however am in the trenches with the low self-esteem under-achievers. Frankly, I am shocked at the self-righteous, superior-attitude vitriol against these books.
The vitriol spraying on Twilight books and the success of the movies is almost cartoon-like. Where on earth does it come from, anyway? Someone tell me: have the Harry Potter books attracted this sort of (very weird) and main stream attention?
A story that makes one want to go on and find out what happens next, is a well-written story. Also, the story is a romance, from the point of view of a young girl (altho the unfinished “Midnight Sun” gives a glimpse into Edward’s life). That girl is a (gah!) a virgin. And so is Edward. Until after the wedding, of course.
It has been my theory that much of today’s lefty anger is about free love. The Boomers have invested a large part of their emotional lives in belief of free love, and its corollaries, like freedom to divorce, and “a cold marriage is bad for the kids, so divorce is OK.” And of course, Bella decides to go through with her pregnancy even though it will kill her, even though Edward wants her to abort the ‘monster.’
All of this, in Breaking Dawn, hits the heart of today’s preconceptions about the good life. And the outrageous reality is: this story is popular with young AND middle aged and old women. Hmmm. The Playboy Club Hugh Hefner zeitgeist is, I think, in an advanced state of rot.
Janet, I agree. Excuse me for over spiritualizing the vampire phenomena but I believe it’s demonic and diabolical. Stick a pretty face on the supernatural darkness and you open the door to all kinds of things like necrophilia and witchcraft. Sane societies don’t embrace ancient evils with lipstick painted on. It’s a symptom of the creeping darkness as order breaks down.
My daughter is also disinterested in the Twilight books and movies. Right now she’s busy reading The Odyssey and writing her own books. I do admit to “brainwashing” her against the Twilight stuff–any story about a girl who literally gives up her life for a man is NOT the lesson I want my daughter to learn.
Oddly enough, I don’t care for the movies anymore than I care for any other random entertainment out of holiday. The one “Twilight” movie I saw didn’t blow me away, and I could care less for it. I haven’t read the books.
But two of my sisters really love the series. They are adults, married with children. They are not groupies, and they are not delusional. But they do enjoy the books. They went to see the latest film, and outside the theater, they met a man and woman, married, who LOVE the series. And they both, man and woman, sleep with a “Twilight” pillow. They are retirees.
I don’t really see this phenomenom as any different from the trends I see other people practicing (they are all just put-ons really): biker lifestyle, vintage chic lifestyle with the pin-ups, grown ups enjoying roller derby, tattooing, NFL football cult, golfing, really getting into cross stitching and quilting. . . It’s just something to do.
It’s not porn. Some men would just like to believe it is in order to justify their own form of escapism and self-pleasuring.
I watched the original “Twilight” movie on TV last night, just to see what all the fuss was about. That’s two and a half hours I’ll never get back. Good God, who would ever want to be a teenager again? The only thing missing from the movie was the Agony of Acne.
I think I can safely give The Saga a pass.
“Girls love this story because it is well-written, right on down to hilarious teen humor and young perspectives on life. ”
….what. what?
woman, this is some of the worst written schlock to hit the market in YEARS. The protagonist is cardboard, her “love interests” are so wooden you could hang a portrait from a nail driven into their foreheads. The dialogue and narration are enough to make a student of literature weep and tear his hair.
The vampires SPARKLE.
Quit trying to justify it as great literature, or even good literature. It’s a crappy paperback laundry-room bodice ripper without the bodice ripping. The columnist pegged one thing dead on; it’s wildly successful with twilight fans because they’re the sort of women who get all sweaty at the fantasy of emotionally emasculated brain-dead prettyboys fighting over them.
Did you read the books?
Enough of them to know that they’re awful.
All the characters in the books have areas of competence. Masculine, manly competence. Jacob, the shirtless hotty? Is a gifted auto mechanic, and restorer of classic motorcycles. He grows into being a tribal chieftain. Sam Uley, likewise, is a chieftain who keeps the drug-dealers off his reservation. Edward has several degrees, and assists his father- vampire. Carlisle Cullen, the father, has labored as a physician for literally centuries. The mother restores buildings. One daughter tunes up cars. The two sisters design and sew and are very computer-literate.
Bella keeps house for her father. She’s a good cook. Are you saying my life of caring for my family is meaningless? Just asking. She works part-time while in high school at a sporting-goods store. She applies to college. She gets married to her high school sweetheart- whome she expects to attend college with- and then has a child. The other characters, as well, have high school sweethearts. One plans to attend college with her boyfriend- him in one dorm, her in another.
The characters get married by a clergyman from her father’s denomination. There are discussions about running away to Vegas–the characters choose to get married in front of their family and friends and town, to show them the best part of their life choices.
What’s not to love?
Well, the whole pregnancy depiction, for one. And the ridiculous name chosen for the offspring.
You need more cringe-worthy moments?
Moon Unit?
This article is ridiculous. It deftly dances away from the facts and elevates what is foolish to a higher standard. Which is untrue in itself.
Simply put, the men in this series are portrayed as mindless dolts only spurred on by the urge of their penis. That is quite an insult and should not be accepted.
That the female hope lies in being cherished above all others and valued more than life itself? What total drivel. Women have always preferred a hard working family man of decent morality to share their life with.
Few expect more than that and even fewer would be able to tolerate such an on-going fantasy of such desperate proportions.
This ‘enterainment’ would suit the immature mind and the less experienced in the ways of valuable living.
“Women have always preferred a hard working family man of decent morality to share their life with.”
Alas. If only that were true, there wouldn’t be armies of divorced ladies, say 30-60, who have had to raise an entire genration of brats as single parents, with all its attendant calamity. By the time the pretty boys have all gone bye-bye, there aren’t too many eligible MEN left lying about. Some smart lady has already grabbed him.
That’s why this stuff, along wth women’s magazines, which encourage the same stupidity, should be derided by all thinking people, for the trash it is.
“Pornography imagines that women exist for the sole purpose of satisfying men. The women in porn are not only willing, but eager. They are depicted as if satisfying a man is the means by which their own life is sustained. This is without the slightest pretense, explanation, or justification. The unconditional nature of the attraction is essential to the fantasy.”
mmmmmnah, I’m gonna have to dispute that. Save for a particular subset of fetishists, the main gist of porn isn’t about “subjugating women” or women “existing to satisfy men,” it’s about, well, SEX— uncommitted, free, easy-access sex whenever you want it, with no consequences, no commitment, and no courtship. It’s fantasy gratification for that carnal nature that constantly screams “Can I stop with this stupid mating dance and just DO IT now??”
Also, it’s largely a cultural issue, not a biological one. Contrary to common myth, men have “romantic” and emotional needs; women can and do have strictly biological appetites. In other eras and cultures, for instance ancient Greece, it was WOMEN who were regarded as the ravenous sex beasts, dragging MEN down with their insatiable carnality. The truth, I suspect, is right about dead center…. it’s just that in modern culture men are made to feel ashamed for having ANY desires, while women are constantly encouraged to “explore their natures”, emotional, carnal or otherwise.
I was thinking that maybe a good reason for the popular vampire movies is because of the special effects?
I will watch movies about science fiction, vampires, earthquakes….etc
Just about anything with a half decent story line in order to be amazed at the special effects. They simply blow me away and I always wonder; how do they do it? The older versions of these story lines don’t interest me. It’s the special effects.
Maybe that is a reason for their being popular?
What I don’t like about this and some other contemporary “horror” books and movies is the making of heroic characters out of monsters. Vampires and werewolves should be viewed as evil incarnate, yet we are celebrating a young woman’s love interest in them and they in her. Once young women were taught to run from not to vampires and werewolves.
Rice is masterful with this stuff and has the advantage of being a very good wordsmith as well. She also has a fine hand with erotica and writes erotica under a pen name which escapes me. Her works are populated with good and evil vampires and all of her work is heavily laced with Catholic thought and not a little voodoo and other folk superstition. But she, too, makes heroic characters any sane and moral person should recoil from.
Steven King is one of the most popular contemporary writers and his schtick is to take normal, ordinary good things and make them monstrous. Read or watch some King and you’ll never trust a kid or cat or a clown again.
It is just another insiduous penetration of post-modernism into our culture. If we can’t judge vampires and werewolves, what can we judge? The message is vampires may be bad to you, but they’re good to me and my opinion on this matter is just as “right” as yours.
Well said, Art. I was waiting for someone to said that.
Vampires and werewolves don’t like each other which creates enormous tension for people with sophisticated minds.
The author should write the exact same one with a Jew and a Muslim, then a cat and a dog, then a bottle of water and an oil drum, then an angel and a devil, then an owl and whatever is anathema to an owl.
I think somebody needs to inform Art Chance that vampires and werewolves don’t really exist. Ehem. It’s called fiction.
Hannibal Lector is a fictional character also and the character in “Dexter” but they are amoral monsters not heroic figures. Werewolves and vampires are obviously fiction but they are symbols of dark impulses not light and truth. That some of you as Art says are incapable of judging evil puts you in the post modern relativist camp not the conservative one.
Typical vampires represent the dark side, as they drink the blood of innocent humans to survive.
These guys don’t drink human blood, on principle. They can’t help that they were made into vampires. That places them in a superior moral position to the vampires of old literature.
They agonize about temptation, and stay disciplined and resist and go after vampires who feed the old way and kill them off. The defend their friends and kill their enemies.
What was it that Art said about being too-brainwashed to recognize good and evil?
Well, Claire, they exist for me, and if they exist for me, they exist. Who are you to judge my conclusion that they exist?
I’d think so much more of you “educated” children if you knew how thoroughly indoctrinated to post-modernist thought you are, but you wouldn’t know post-modernism as a philosophy if you got hit in the head by Foucault’s corpse.
They don’t exist, Art.
I think it’s a rabbit and an owl, in that order!
How can adults have a problem with a “quadrilogy” that has previous non-readers reading 2,000 pages that encourage chastity until marriage? I have seen it many, many times, and once these non-readers get over their fear–yes, fear–of an intimidating- looking 500-page book, they get over their phobia of “chapter books” and read read read.
Once again, have any of you rock slingers actually read the books? Any of you as experienced with adolescents as a 20 year reading teacher? Or are you judging by the sappy movies? You must either be men, or women who are tripping over each other to “prove” you are above female stereotypes.
I have no such fear. I most often read “male interest” fiction by male writers such as Tom Clancy, Daniel Silva, and Patrick Robinson. I read conservative non-fiction by Malkin, Coulter, etc. Plus Shakespeare, Charles Dickens, and other classic writers. I love the Twilight books because they get girls to read, including some disinterested -in- school students for whom I fear pregnancy by 8th grade. Sometimes I hear from them in high school, and they say I’m the teacher who taught them to love to read. High praise indeed for someone with “an immature mind” who is “less experienced in the ways of valuable living.” I say having a positive influence on our morally-confused youth is one of the most important indications of “valuable living.”
“Pah!” to all you self-righteous uncomprehending dolts.
I’m not surprised at all at adults not liking books that feed into teen fantasies. To some of us, we’ve moved on and the story is just repulsive. I don’t like Barney either, but my toddlers did.
““Pah!” to all you self-righteous uncomprehending dolts.”
OK, I get it, anyone who doesn’t agree with you is a “self-righteous, uncomprehending dolt[s]. Typical effin’ teacher who thinks only “educators” can raise children. There’s a reason a lot of America hates you, and it isn’t because we’re uncomprehending dolts. I’ve endured the “educational” system through four kids. I was a voracious reader as a child and still am, but if I’d been forced to read the politically correct crap that gets served up to kids these days for their reading classes, I’d have probably opted for video games, too.
It’s easy to get adolescents interest in anything that piques their puerile interests, and horny vampire stories certainly accomplish that. So, why not assign Lady Chatterley’s Lover in the 6th or 7th Grade? That’ll really get them interested in reading. And why settle for the “Twilight” stuff, when you could serve up Anne Rice; The Vampire Lestat would be a great role model. You people try so hard to keep an open mind that your brains fall out.
“rock slingers”, “uncomprehending dolts” ? Boy, I bet your a real agenda free public school teacher. Well, the wonderful job, you and your homies are doing turning out educated critical thinking young adults I guess gives you the credibility to sneer at others. Do you have a video of Lindsay Lohan lecturing on substance abuse that you show? Do you have a Lady GaGa dress up day?
I’m actually very conservative and have even started a one-woman battle in my school against “diversity” which means “anything but patriotic White Christians” by having Patriotic Day every Thurs. I wear a patriotic shirt, tell inspiring stories about America’s (past) greatness, and encourage my students to do the same, which puts me at peril with chicken PC administrators. I live in Texas and picked Thursdays 2 years ago because that was the day Cinco de Mayo fell on that year, and I was fed up with the rising tide of anti-America/pro Mexico demonstrations that are tolerated/encouraged on Cinco de Mayo.
My “tag” on the articles I normally comment on is STR–Start the Revolution, which I am doing daily by my career-threatening actions.
As I said earlier, “Pah!” on uncomprehending dolts who didn’t read the books, don’t know the desperate straits teachers are in to just get kids to READ, and who don’t know my core beliefs!
Hey,
I had a really hard time getting my 8th grade boy to read, then I gave him a great new series called, ‘Penthouse Forum’. /sarc off.
Good gravy, it is mind candy. Of course, you can get girls to read porn directed at them. Good messages? Sex with dangerous predators is a good thing? ‘Love’ that injures you is good? Sex with men a hundred years your senior is just fine? I could keep going all day on the ‘good messages’ in ‘Twilight’.
Give it up. Defending the series because it ‘gets girls to read’ is no different than defending ‘Penthouse’ because it get’s boys to read.
*BTW, I don’t really have an 8th grade child and I am not encouraging anyone to read porn regardless of age, sex, or maturity.
Read my lips (or better yet, the books). I’ll speak slowly: THEY–ARE–NOT–PORN. The first sexual act happens on about page 1,600, in the 4th book, after marriage, is not graphic or anatomically- detailed, is not the central theme of the book, and is actually beautiful in its expression of pure love.
In case you really don’t know, Edward and his family deny their very natures by not drinking human blood and by protecting “the human.” Edward refuses to have sex with Bella because he’s an old-fashioned gentleman from the early 1900s, and also because he’s afraid of physically hurting her.
It’s what most women want all along, and what most men want after they grow up a little. It’s what is becoming harder and harder to find in this angry, jaded, Girls Gone Wild culture. My life has taken some difficult turns in my years, but I will never be too bitter to
deny young ladies their dreams of pure, true love. Am I living a teen’s fantasy? No. But I’m glad my young girl students are filled with eager hope.
Don’t enjoy it, don’t read it, but don’t condemn it without knowing what you’re talking about.
You do know that CAPS ARE SHOUTING? That said, you really need to examine why you are defending the indefensible. Yes, I know all about Twilight. You responded to my sarcasm about porn but not my points about in appropriate ages, dangerous sex with predators, love that literally ‘hurts’, and the general creepiness of a hundred something adult choosing to pass off and live as and among children. Children I might add that it takes all his willpower not to kill and abuse. Great messages.
The point was that it was not porn but that it is mind candy with a tasty poison center and it’s sure easy to hook people. Who cares if ‘Bella waits for sex’? The sex could kill her. Oh wait, it did. Now she’s some kind of creepy vampire with a werewolf mystically bound to her baby (which is some kind of undead/living weird ass mutant monster).
The message is that girls should wait for sex with men several times their age, marry them, then totally lose her own identity and life while joining him in some kind of unholy half-life? I guess if you are raising girls to join the ‘Fundamentalist Mormon Church’ and preparing them to be sister-brides.
I wonder if you could ever separate fantasy from fiction?
There are actually some young people who can.
Pray tell….what exactly IS the high moral ground you are trying to teach the young ladies you instruct?
After all, Bella’s pregnancy is so horrific that Edward counsels her to abort the infant, the birth of the child causes her to nearly die from blood loss (not to mention the broken bones she sustains giving birth ~ Edward mercifully transforms her then into a vampire so she won’t die), and the child resulting from this episode is the subject of a debate as to whether or not she deserves to live because she’s an unnatural crossbreed (who at her birth is the new object of devotion by Jacob, since he is now the “soul mate” of said newborn child….talk about creepy, he looks at a baby and instead of thinking “aw, cute”, he’s thinking of her as his future bride. Eww.)?
Sorry, I’d rather my kids get their moral insights from Shakespeare. You see, it wasn’t all THAT long ago that my English teachers managed to make them interesting for us. Not a lot of graphic detail about sex, even in “Romeo & Juliet”. (Hell, you could even be lazy like some of our teachers were and rent the movies that have been made, including the one with Leonard DiCaprio back when he was hotter than this Edward dude could ever hope to be. You could even show how it influenced “West Side Story” if you had some gumption.)
I’d rather my daughter find out that sex could result in someone going nuts, getting pregnant or some of the other scenarios the Bard depicted, instead of learning that it might be a good thing to have a vampire on obstetrical standby in case she breaks her spine delivering her first born. But that’s just me.
I don’t think you’re getting the point of the porn-for-women accusation. No one is saying that they’re actually porn, with people taking their clothes off, and having sex that’s detailed in the stories. Instead, the accusation is more nuanced, and apparently that’s lost on you.
As I understand it, the argument against actual pornography, by those on the left, eschews prudery in favor of a feminist argument. It’s not that pornography shows naked women; it’s that it portrays them as rabid sex maniacs, and completely distorts the actual physical act that is part of the process of being in love with someone. It cheapens it by portraying it in an unrealistic fashion, by essentially catering to male fantasies about what women are like.
By that light, the Twilight novels and movies, with their painfully good-looking, gentlemanly, incredibly sensitive and ethical teenaged boys, are essentially pornography, for women. They play into the romance novel ideal of the man that women *want* to be wooed by, whether he actually exists or not. And on that level, explicit sex or not, they are porn for women. Not in the literal sense, but in the metaphorical, relative sense. Women, feminists for the most part, complain about having to live up to the standards of modern porn actresses; but think about it, no teenaged girl is expected to be inhumanly self-denying, and the only men who are this sensitive like other guys (nothing wrong with that, I’m just sayin’…). One is as unrealistic as the other…
So what? It’s fiction. Are you saying people are too stupid to differentiate?
I have read all the books.
I have also read Julius C. in the original latin, as a youth, prior to reading literally thousands of books during my quest for three college degrees and in the decades since.
I have spent years teaching a physical fighting art to children and young adults.
I seem to qualify as much as you, perhaps more, when I say those books are, in fact, crap, and they give impressionable young women a shot of unrealistic expectations regarding men and the womens’ eventual prospects of a relationship with men. Similarly, I find young mens’ vision of women and how women will act in eventual relationships is adversely impacted by online pornography.
BTW, if you are a teach, it saddens me: you seem to have a narrow, hard mind.
So women are to stupid to differentiate oh great, wise sage? And what does your teaching a fighting art have to do with your SUBJECTIVE opinion about teen books?
Reading ain’t exactly rocket science; if you need a carrot and a stick approach they’ll probably need to be hypnotized to attend college and tortured to get a job.
Are you glad they liked Barney instead of Bevis and Butt Head?
Sure, but as their mother I didn’t give them the Beavis and Butthead option. Yet “Twilight Mom” addresses “adults (who) have a problem” with Twilight, without allowing for the more mature concept of nuanced dislike.
“Pornography exaggerates the most cathartic aspect of romantic encounters while dismissing real-life baggage. It elevates an irrational self-indulgence while ignoring any sense of responsibility, particularly to the other.”
My hat to Mr. Hudson. That is most intelligent, concise and pentrating (no pun intended) description of the essence of pornography that I have ever read. Mr. Hudson also identifies the key difference between male-based and female based erotica. Men want to fantasize about raw sexual prowess while women want to fantasize about being “adored.” That adoration requires that the woman has complete emotional and psychological control of the situation. The more dangerous the lover (a vampire or werewolf for example) the more satisfying the feeling of control over him. Kudos all round to Mr. Hudson.
Look up the definition of pornography: Printed or visual material containing the explicit description or display of sexual organs or activity.
Uh, “Twilight” is not pornography by academic definition. Only by Mr. Hudson’s definition. . . you know, the one that you love instead of the truthful, real meaning of “pornography”. Be careful not to adopt the wrong meaning of words.
Based on watching the movies, I can’t see that Bella has any attraction whatsoever to Jacob, and the only attraction I see towards Edward is that he can bite her and make her a vampire. The actress portrays shallow vapidity with a skill thathints that this, sadly, might be her natural state.
What I’ve read of the books seems to confirm this. Bella wants vampiric immortality. The way to get it is through Edward. So that’s what she does.
Stephanie feeling the bite of Father Time on her throat perhaps? These are the worst kind of mary sue novels.
Apparently, most of the people commenting here won’t open THEIR minds to a new and apparently difficult thought that a novel that gets teens to read 500-page books (which are far from porn as the sex happens tastefully in the 4th book and only AFTER marriage) could possibly be a good thing. You will not listen to an experienced conservative teacher, and your ire is misplaced.
I am such a loud anti-PC conservative that I have to stop my rants against libs, Obama, Pelosi, the lapdog media, and yes,
UNIONS before my co-workers run when they see me coming. I am an anomaly among teachers.
I am the first one I heard to call teachers’ associations “unions” and to quit mine, even before Obama and his Ship of Fools made
their coup. I rooted against the Wisconsin teachers and thugs while knowing my opinions hurt ME in my meager pocketbook
because I’m one of those dedicated conservative teachers.
I am very surprised at these narrow-minded comments in a forum which I’ve always found to be chockful of intelligent comments
with which i usually agree. Many of you are the ones who have your minds slammed shut. I call people like you people whose
minds are like clenched fists. I have said for 3 decades that libs are so broad-minded, they’re flatheaded. Other than your political
philosophy (with which I agree), people like the commenters here are very similar to brainwashed libs who won’t listen to a different
opinion. Your vitriolic ad hominem attacks remind me of the libs’ unfounded bitchy smearing.
I don’t recognize very many of you commenters, so apparently I’ve wandered into an article that appeals to a different kind of PJM reader. The comments here are examples of the extremism libs find so easy to deride. Grasping the significance of the Twilight phenomenon of creating readers from non-readers appears unfathomable to people not in the trenches with low self-esteem low achievers in an educational system that has failed them.
My thoughts here as an avid PJM reader are “Why can’t they see?” Perhaps someone else could explain it better than I. As I said, I give up.
I too, am flummoxed as the almost universal sneer at these books. Henty, RL Stevenson, boys’ writers, are lauded by the very same sites. Have you noted the almost universal allegiance to “Star Trek”?
So much of Twilight is actually quite conservative, embedded in a world of magic (yup, magic, people, vampires and werewolves don’t exist, not even in Forks.) And it is that conservative message that angers so many of today’s punditry. Sex after marriage. Marriage is important and traditional. Having a baby, even at the risk of one’s life, is important. This is from the centre, a woman’s story.
Anyway, I have noticed that my favorite right wing punditry (almost all are men), never bring up the joys of “Anne of Green Gables”, or Georgette Heyer, or Jean Webster’s “Daddy Long Legs.” Or Esme Weatherwax. Nope. William Shatner is the god of the right wing guy.
Don’t give up, Twilight Mom.
Thank you. Read my post below. Apparently, I can’t be silenced! Mine is also the “let’s have a book burning” comment as well.
Once I was called a feminist by my insecure mother-in-law who happens to be married to a porn addict. . . all because it leaked out somehow by my spouse that I think pornography is one of the most destructive forces in our culture.
My mother-in-law is a conservative. My father-in-law is a libertarian.
I’m a Conservative. I’ve never called myself a feminist, but hey, call me one if you think being morally upright, following God, and showing respect for all human beings is feminist. You can legally look at your porn, men (and women), but that doesn’t necessarily make it noble or even okay in the end.
That anyone would compare “Twilight” to pornography displays a total lack of understanding of what pornography really is: “Printed or visual material containing the explicit description or display of sexual organs or activity.”
“Twilight” is fantasy. So is NFL Fantasy league, so is lots of fiction literature that men and males typically like to read and watch at the movies.
Apparently, stupidity isn’t only linked to liberals. This is so disappointing to me as a Conservative.
“That anyone would compare “Twilight” to pornography displays a total lack of understanding of what pornography really is: “Printed or visual material containing the explicit description or display of sexual organs or activity.”
I think Mr. Hudson’s description is a far better description than yours. You seem to be fixated on a particular aspect of Porn, while being unaware that there are numerous other aspects such Bondage, S&M, and Fetishes. Not to mention, such things described as horror and slasher porn. There are all sorts of people out there who “get their thrill” from all sorts of illicit behavior. To confine the category of “porn” to depictions of only the sex act is to miss the point. As I believe someone mentioned, endless fascination with the Lechters and Dexters of the world, is a type of “porn” far worse than viewing the sex act. As is viewing movies like the Saw series. But I believe they speak to the same impulse satisfaction without consequence model as Porn.
it takes how many times to teach someone to pick up their socks?
A book about a regular girl deserving complete devotion from her man- a series where one whole, entire book is devoted to her learning to choose wisely and well- one where she completely learns each aspect of each young man’s character-is a book that makes men nervous.
We’ve had nearly the entire Baby Boom teaching us that only extraordinary women deserve marriage, and that, even then, they cannot expect faithfulness. Plus, all women were expected to wait until after college and then start a career, before seeking love, marriage or children. The imaginative leap that says what one desires in high school- love, devotion, a first love lasting a lifetime- is now considered porn. That’s the story of our great- grandmothers, of possibly our grandmothers, certainly not our mothers. And- in the book- the least morally serious character is the one who ran away from her first choices, abandoning her husband in his hours of need. She did choose following only her own bliss- without thinking her commitments could be part of her bliss.
That’s why it’s so ferociously torn-down. It’s the papers being served to the Baby Boom- their frivolous lives are not appealing to the next generation. All four slots top slots on best-seller lists, world-wide- are a clue that women, normal, ordinary women, want to love, and be loved, in stable, good relationships. It’s the ” Shoulda putta ring on it” of books.
Sorry, I can’t see past this: “”Pah!” to all you self-righteous uncomprehending dolts.”
Perhaps you’re myopic.
And perhaps not.
Oooh, good one. Guess we’re playing “got you last.”
Let’s have a book burning! Sheesh.
steph meyer writes about a literal DEAD WHITE EUROPEAN MALES, and their American DEAD WHITE EUROPEAN- EXTRACTED PRIVILEGED, EDUCATED MALES.
Please- I thought conservatism was the redoubt of DWEM-boats.
The movies are corrupted from the books, b/c the screenwriter and the director cannot imagine a woman who desires to be fully devoted to one loving man. The movies are a joke. Although, one has to appreciate a movie where a barely clad fit young man is a “plot necessity.”
The writing is in a style that has been decreed out of fashion. That’s why it is so mesmerizing- it doesn’t sound like anything else. It references most of the classics of Western Lit. It mentions by name many of the books a teenager should be able to expect from a decent education. They are being edited out as not relevant- say, replacing Pride and Prejudice or Wuthering Heights or Romeo and Juliet- with In Orbit, by Wright Morris, or The House on Mango Street, or The Things They Carried. A person reading Twilight can then go find the more classic works, and have the confidence to finish them, and dialogue in their imagination with the work. They certainly won’t find imaginative engagement in their classroom, if these books are foreign to the teacher. Likewise, among the many fansites are tutorials by teachers and librarians, both about Twi, and about the classics, and further, how to read and analyze literature.
It’s a very maternally feminine world. This is a very different construction of femininity than we are used to seeing.
Were you to insist on the porn of it- the critics who loathe it with a passion have already beaten you to that: google abstinence porn, for possibly the single most sneering, contemptuous book review ever written. It’s how I started reading Twi: I wanted to know what had driven a critic around the bend- it had to be good.
The movies and the books are different. I’d happily let my daughter read the books.
To truely debase humans from loving that which died for them, the world system wants women to love the Nephilim. Part human, part something forbidden.
Only the Nephilim can love a women correctly? Is that the story? Perhaps, talking to the undead is who really understand women is the theme.
What would Noah say?
Excellent point about the Nephilim!
Nephilim? What book did you wander in from?
FWIW- girls aren’t supposed to love rebels without a cause, boys in motorcycle jackets, boys flying jets if they have a bad attitude, boys who dance, boys who disco, boys from the jets, the other boys from west side story, pigs aren’t supposed to love little green frogs, capulets aren’t supposed to love montagues, cathy isn’t supposed to love heathcliff, need I go on? That’s sort of the argument in favor of seclusion and parents choosing partners- girls are capable of seeing the best in nearly every sort of lost soul, socially unacceptable boy.
That this girl gets four books, three of which to really consider what she is committing to- and that she rightly receives more than is on offer in pop culture- is marvelous. That abstinence, waiting, courtship, meeting the families, marriage- is given the full treatment, over the course of 2,000 pages- is a tour de force of imagination.
The Nephilim are some strange little verse in one single book in the bible. They aren’t vampires. they aren’t even in the imaginative stream that the author draws from.
The author has stepped out of a drab, realistic, kitchen sink drama, into an imaginative realm to consider elements of good character- we all know immortal vampires are from the realms of imagination. But- a talented young man who loves his parents, can play a musical instrument with comfort, literate, studious,this young man- this young man desires an innocent, virginal wife devoted to his happiness, able to fit into his family, and willing to bear his children. That’s Mormon young men all over the place. And others- my church has masculine, athletic young men who can play piano. They can reasonably expect to court and marry non- debased young women. That’s the dream that every women’s magazine basically campaigns against. That’s what makes it revolutionary.
Vampires, and Werewolves. The undead, and/or evil spirits. Take your pick.
The Nephilim are the earth born from fallen Angels, and human women. The Vampire, and Werewolves look human, but are filled with evil spirits. I think Nephilim describes them very well.
There is something worng with those who call evil good. They are very New Age.
As to the movies: the producers have been desperate to draw in young men. They cannot imagine that a movie can be successful with ‘only’ a female audience. Eclipse spoiled much of the story in its emphasis on violence (the final battle between Edward and Victoria is so much better in the book than the movie version).
Yet, Breaking Dawn is even more successful than the previous movies. Altho I would note (again) that the first Twilight, with a very small budget and a woman director (gah!), and very silly special effects, made more than $10 for every $1 invested.
Hmm. Maybe even Hollywood is getting the message. The Hunger Games is in production, as are TWO versions of Snow White. And Mattie Ross (in True Grit, the movie and the book) has as vivid a personality as has Anne Shirley of Green Gables.
And I’ll be in my seat with extra popcorn for Snow White! That’s the most exciting movie trailer I have seen in ages! It covers something other than- boys, cars, boys with cars, boys chasing pot… it covers women, and girls growing up into women, with some seriously awesome-looking special effects that go with the themes of the movie, it looks like, so far. It has been years since I’ve been excited about an action movie. I am so glad that the women aren’t disposable ornaments.
The last movie I saw onscreen was Tangled, with my daughter. Before that, Casino Royale. The Snow White movie looks like an even smarter mix of the best features of those two movies.
Apparently I can’t give up. I’m re-posting my earlier comments here. I am EXACTLY the kind of teacher conservative parents want.
I’m actually very conservative and have even started a one-woman battle in my school against “diversity” which means “anything
but patriotic White Christians” by having Patriotic Day every Thurs. I wear a patriotic shirt, tell inspiring stories about America’s
(past) greatness, and encourage my students to do the same, which puts me at peril with chicken PC administrators. I live in Texas and picked Thursdays 2 years ago because that was the day Cinco de Mayo fell on that year, and I was fed up with the rising tide of anti-America/pro Mexico demonstrations that are tolerated/encouraged on Cinco de Mayo.
My “tag” on the articles I normally comment on is STR–Start the Revolution, which I am doing daily by my career-threatening actions.
As I said earlier, “Pah!” on uncomprehending dolts who didn’t read the books, don’t know the desperate straits teachers are in to just get kids to READ, and who don’t know my core beliefs!
There is another aspect of Twilight that has fascinated me: the undercarriage of the story is a ‘quest.’ In Midnight Sun, Edward imagines an angel “irresponsibly” shoving Bella in his path. Bella has a foreshadowing dream/vision of Alice and Edward, with glowing red eyes, as part of the Volturi.
Bella and Edward cannot separate from each other. (thus, New Moon). Remember, this is a quest, as ancient a story telling structure as Gilgamesh. Tension is created when the hero (Bella) strays from the quest (ie, she almost falls for Jacob).
Breaking Dawn is the culmination of this quest: she marries Edward; she is pregnant and refuses an abortion that would save her own (human) life; and Edward saves her by making her into a vampire, and into a full part of the Cullen family.
Her talent is to protect. And so she does. In the final confrontation (no guy battles here), she protects her family and its allies, against the Volturi. She achieves the quest.
People like quests. I think this theme is one of the reasons for Twilight’s amazing success.
Right you are. I find it fascinating how the author laid so many “nuggets” from the very beginning that are consistently elaborated on in the subsequent novels. I particularly enjoyed how Bella’s ever-present selfless loyalty to family and friends manifests itself in her supernatural special talent of being a “shield.”
The author is a self-described straight-laced Mormon who named many of her heroes and heroines after her own family members. Her husband’s name is Christiaan. Edward’s struggle with his own doubt that he possesses a soul and his fear of risking Bella’s soul by any selfish actions add a theme of redemption to a fascinating and unique love story.
I am sure we’ve lost any non-literary posters, but they were rather snarky anyway.
oh, be careful! One of my sons’ teachers got written up for writing out a timeline of American history when she was supposed to be teaching “reading” -you know, the non- content “cat on the mat” stuff? She was in Texas.
You are exactly the sort of person I’d like teaching my kids. And, you need to ignore the grouchy, wrinkly old men who are griping that their women dream of regular girls with handsome young men. As if Harlequin isn’t the best- selling book line in the western world, and fabio isn’t famous for book covers.
it’s exactly like star wars. it is steph meyer’s first four entries in the great literature lottery. star wars only has violent, basically neutered women in it. Padme dies of childbirth. Anakin’s mother gets the reverse Pieta treatment- her son cradles her then kills her tormentors. Twi is an immense leap out of the stereotypical masculine, violent, hierarchical imagination,into a feminine, family- oriented, peaceful, lush private life. It is an affirmation of most women’s lives.
“I’m exactly the kind of teacher conservative parents want…” I guess humility is not your strong suit. The poster who said that conservative males’ god is William Shatner….please! I home schooled my eighth grade son having him write essays from Paul Johnson’s “Modern Times”. He’s in grad school at Georgetown now majoring in public policy. We are blue collar lower middle class Christian conservatives. Feeding kids pop culture trash as culturization is like giving them twinkies in the lunch room.
Nothing wrong with giving them twinkies in the Lunchroom. The problem arise when you give them only twinkies in the Lunchroom.
Yea because nothing says “healthy relationship” like dating vampires and wearwolves.
I’m sure it’s a fun story and getting people to read is always great, but some of the supporters of it are a bit over the top.
And exactly what do these “over the top” readers do that is so threatening? I can laugh at Rocky 16 or Die Hard Till You Die movies and enjoy them on a certain level. I think The Godfather is probably the best movie ever made. I’m not afraid of treading into different genres.
Why do the people commenting on these pages who have obviously not read the books–and/or who are not capable of analyzing literature above a superficial level–have such strong feelings against it? Something scares them. Hmmmmm…I’ll have to ponder that. My first thought is that we conservative Chistians have been so discriminated against that we’re moving backwards towards priggish, Quaker-ish hysterical fear and intolerance of everything not strictly traditional. Over-reaction, people. Will book and witch burnings will be next?
Wine is better than soda, Pride and Prejudice is better than The Flintstones, The Mote In God’s Eye is better than Capt. Future, etc., etc.
“Wine is better than soda,…… “
Depends on whether you’re sitting down to dinner or at a BBQ.Depends on whether you’re 10 or 21.
You’re wrong: it depends on whether you’re a starry-eyed idiot residing deep within a perceptual trap.
Next: who is more spiritual? A man having breakfast at an Ohio truck stop or a turbaned yogi on the Ganges in Varanasi, India?
Enough, I’m calling liberal troll or just mind-numbed teacher troll on you. You’ve got just about every standard lefty meme in your posts while trying to insist that you’re a “Christian conservative.” If you really do consider yourself a Christian conservative, you really need to spend some time with your own thoughts and try to achieve some consistency. If you’re just a troll, you don’t do it very well. Nobody here is advocating burning either books or witches; that’s the stuff lefties like to accuse the right of however. The fact that we don’t like the books and movies and believe that they come from a morally bankrupt and even perverse point of view doesn’t mean that we have any interest in keeping the morally bankrupt and perverse from writing and reading them. I really like Anne Rice’s occult books, but I wasn’t giving them to my kids when they were adolescents. I’ve only read or seen snippets of Twilight, but it was enough to know that it comes from a perspective that I believe is dreadfully wrong, but which has perverted the thought of those that fancy themselves “educated” in The West. The denial of absolutes and the notions of right for me is right is perverse. Teaching young women that it is OK to love and be loved by monsters is wrong. Teaching young women that monsters are anything other than monsters is wrong. This muddled thinking, especially in women, is the basis of the fact that we no longer have parents but rather enablers in The West. And you want to celebrate this crap because it gets over-indulged, lazy children to read rather than go get knocked up by their boyfriend in the 8th Grade. I submit that it makes them more likely to get knocked up by their boyfriend in the 8th Grade, especially if they’re fantasizing that he’s a cute vampire.
Methinks thou protests too much. You’re too funny, and you’re sounding just as venom-spewing and uninformed as a liberal. Read my earlier posts about what I am doing in my school to try to keep our proud heritage alive against a rising tide of socialism and anti-Christianity, and then hang your head in shame.
I don’t believe you; simple as that. You’re either very confused about who you are and what you believe or you’re just trolling to see what you can get the slack-jawed, knuckle-dragging, mouth-breathing conservatives to say.
Wow – I was going to reply to your first post, Twilight Mom, and then was floored to see how far this thread went! lol. Amazing how this teen series manages to get people talking for it, against it and with such passion! I had never heard of this series until about two weeks before the first movie came out – and I came home to see my teen son engrossed in a book for almost two days without stopping. He hates to read. My first thought was “gee, this *must* be something I won’t approve of so I had better take a look and see what he is reading!” He was at a Christian youth conference that Saturday so I grabbed it and started reading. I had it finished before he came home and I cornered him to get the friend who loaned him the book to loan ME the rest of the series! I had them finished before we all went to see the midnight showing of the first movie. It was a great family fun time – we have seen all four movies now at midnight. It’s been a fun tradition.
Some of you make great points already so I won’t go over them again, but I agree with you, Twilight Mom. I was an English major in college and had discovered classic lit before I was a teenager, cutting my teeth on Jane Eyre at the age of 9. I was an honors Shakespeare student in college and also studied gothic romance novels as well – my first thought about Bella and Edward, long before it was alluded to in the novels was that they were like Romeo and Juliet. I really enjoyed reading and finding the literary nuggets and allusions to classic literature or story elements throughout the series. The books were much better than the movies, but having read the books, the movies have a certain appeal and what is not shown in the movies, is filled in from what was read in the books. By themselves, I imagine the movies are not as “rich” an experience as reading the books.
I have two daughters as well, one in high school and one in college, and they both thoroughly enjoyed reading the series and seeing the movies (as a matter of fact, they left 20 minutes ago with their brother to go see Breaking Dawn as a sibling bonding time – lol – before eldest daughter and son go back to college out of state). One aspect they both love is the sexual morality in the series. No sex before marriage. They have both said they find it refreshing to go see a modern movie that they don’t have to feel embarrassed or have to close their eyes throughout the film! No bad language, no sex and nudity… They do feel Jacob does take his shirt off rather too much, as does Mom, but we can deal with that. Breaking Dawn does have the “sex scene” – but *gasp* Edward and Bella are married, imagine that, and it is pretty tame compared to most movies and TV. They think that is awesome as they both are committed to remaining pure until they marry. Oh and some of the teen humor is classic – all three of them love that.
I think it is an extraordinary phenomenon that a series can appeal to a mom, a twenty something, and two teens, both male and female and has given us some nice time together, both viewing the movies and talking about the books. I don’t understand the hate that gets spewed over it. Harry Potter never appealed to us – we tried reading it aloud as a family years ago and never made it through the first book as we found it to be uninteresting – but we certainly don’t go around bashing it the way people bash Twilight. For goodness sake, it’s a story! Don’t take it so seriously, just enjoy it! Or ignore it and leave it to those of us who do
I don’t see anything threatening at all. I find Anne Rices vampire series, which Twilight owes more to than Dracula, a much better read.
I was a JRR Tolkien LOTR nerd when I was a young man and my folks were glad I was reading and they themselves had read the books and liked them, but they never gushed over the books like you and other hyper-fans are with Twilight, or like what I saw from parents with kids reading Harry Potter books. I thought much the same towards the Harry Potter series. Sure, good stories, engagingly written. But they aren’t the be-all-end-all of reading or authorship that is being touted by the fans.
I think part of the revulsion that some people display is that Twilight depicts a personal relationship between a 100 year old vampire and a teenage girl as desireable and dreamy; the stuff of ordinary young girl fantasies, when such a relationship with an actual human a mere 20 years older would be viewed with suspicion and the man considered a pervert or more likely, developementally stunted in some way. The abstinence message is, in its way, kind of weird, put into perspective. “I won’t sleep with you Billy because I’m saving myself for a 100 year old walking dead person thats older than my great grand pappy and feeds off of the blood of animals and humans.” Yea, THATS so normal, ordinary and desireable.
See where the critics are coming from?
There really is something about this book that is bringing out the intolerant conservatives that the libs try to brand all conservatives as. Can’t put my finger on why so many of you are in such a lather as to so passionately denounce a book that most of you haven’t read. Interesting. I will continue to try to psychoanalyze this.
I will tell a little story. When I was in college (from which I graduated magna cum laude, yes really, and I know here come the personal attacks), my boyfriend was the President of the Young Democrats. He could not believe that he couldn’t brow beat me into voting for McGovern. I have voted Repub every election of my life, albeit usually as the lesser of two evils.
I tell this story to “prove” that I am a conservative and a strong-minded woman who is not all goo goo eyed over a “hunk.”
So no, I’m not a liberal troll. I am not a teacher who has posters of Lady Gaga in my room and none of the other ridiculous assertions of other ridiculous posters against me are true either. I don’t dance around goats’ heads naked at midnight. I alone have
initiated a Patriotic Day in my classes against administrators’ liking. I am a member of my school’s Warriors for Christ group, ready to be a warrior when the day comes that a liberal administrator tries to shut us down. I am an unrepentant and through-and-through conservative, EXACTLY the kind of conservative teacher most of you would want your children to have, and I do not understand this article’s sparking of so many frothing, foaming attacks against this book or my expression of approval of it. Readers of PJM are my peeps, and I’m not liking what I’m seeing here.
Please tell me that all of you are just in bad moods today!
I’m with you. I don’t understand it either. Can’t anything in life just be fun anymore? Can’t people read sometimes just for pleasure?
I’m with you ladies on this one.
I can’t believe anyone could compare this to porn. You get a couple of attractive guys (in the eyes of beholders of course) taking their shirts off, and wham! men are really in a lather. I think they are threatened. Or perhaps it is the moral messages in the story that make men think they are doomed. . . that a young attractive girl might actually withold sex until she is married, that a guy would be so self-controlled and respectful towards his beloved. . . are these unachievable, threatening characteristics to men today? Are they afraid they can’t live up to such standards, so they denigrate what females may like about this series?
I have to tell you. . . my sister, in her 30s with a baby and a toddler, has a husband who is actually bringing this up in his therapy. He can’t handle her enjoying the “Twilight” movies. He has gotten to the point that he criticizes all of the women in our family if we go out to see a movie with any man in it that he thinks we might be attracted to in some way. I had to suffer him insulting me for seeing “Real Steel” because it had Hugh Jackman in it, and in his mind, all he could think was that I went to see the film so I could see Jackman take his shirt off in it. (Nevermind, again, that women have had to endure countless films and ballgames with half-dressed and naked women in them for the gratuitous effect of entertaining the men. Nothing like going to a pro ballgame and watching the perverts with their binoculars during the time-outs.)
How can men be so upset about this film? Don’t be hypocrites, guys.
Twilight Mom – You may or may not be politically conservative (let’s assume you are) but regardless, you are dodging or at least tip-toeing around a key issue here.
My teenage daughter read one of the books and I asked her what she thought about the fact that the 2 main male characters were a vampire (an evil entity) and a werewolf (an evil entity). She said, “I know, why not just make them 2 regular human guys with interesting character traits? Then it would be a great story. It’s like the author is trying to make evil things acceptable by making them look and sound pretty and by implying they are not evil, just misunderstood.”
My daughter gets it, thank goodness.
You seem to want me to accept the vampire-thing as just fine for my daughter because it/he “only” feeds on animal blood (see, he’s practically normal!), and to accept both male characters simply because the author gives them fictional attributes that are counter to their very essence in historical literature. I cannot, regardless of how much lipstick is being placed on them. It’s like a fictional Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin being revised to show how wonderful they actually were if you just give them a chance. It doesn’t work.
I asked my daughter if she was going to read the other books or see the movies and she said “no, it’s stupid to make 2 of the main characters evil creatures then pretend they aren’t. It’s annoying.”
Again, my daughter gets it, thank goodness.
Others including Janet, Art Chance and trangbang68 have alluded to the same idea here and you have not really addressed it, (i. e, the type of creatures the author chose). Of course she did it to sell books but is that any kind of basis to pretend there is something moral about it?
As trangbang wrote: “Sane societies don’t embrace ancient evils with lipstick painted on. It’s a symptom of the creeping darkness as order breaks down.”
Thank you, trangbang68, perfectly said…
In our household we will somehow find stories that are more honest to pass the time with. There is plenty out there to choose from. And you may be a political conservative but that has no bearing on whether this series is morally conservative, which you seem to be trying to make it out to be. We hardly need even more mixed moral messages, dear conservative lady.
JD
well, take scissors to your bible. there’s a scary bad guy in it, too. and a scummy wife-stealer. and a sheep-stealer.
twilight references the bible. to catch the references, one has to be biblically literate. it references the iliad, as well. and the odyssey. and wuthering heights.
I’m way, way more comfortable with Twi, than dracula, or anne rice’s vampire novels. dracula corrupts at least two young women in the novel. Rice’s vampire novels are riffs on AIDS in New Orleans gay society, with a candy coating.
Twi-takes the vampire canon, and the main character struggles against his cursed state by choosing to act in a decent fashion. We are all born of a fallen humanity. Twi pushes that small notion to an imaginative extreme- the poor guy hasn’t any hope of redemption yet still chooses to behave honorably. This argument about souls continues for the first three books. It’s a serious examination in vernacular. Would pre-marital sex endanger one’s soul? They choose the honorable state of marriage.
The Simpson’s have a show where Bart Simpson sells his soul, and then struggles to get it back. We can sniff that it’s just a cartoon- but also recognize that
serious literature engages the “what if?” in all sorts of ways, to illuminate our answers.
There are, btw, in the book, unreservedly evil vampires. It’s not all candy-floss. But- they are judged as evil by their actions and intentions- which are predatory, base and selfish. The abstaining from their nature- which is miserably uncomfortable- is the interesting part of the Cullen vampires. This is the illuminating part.
For at least forty years kids have been urged to give into each of their base impulses- the surgeon generals keep saying kids ought to masturbate, which is against catholic teaching- even the girl scouts have manuals suggesting “sex play”, glamour magazine has articles where everyone is assumed to be on birth control- and getting pregnant is the failure, marie claire regularly has laudatory articles on single mothers. There is writing saying girls should be athletes so their hormone levels are so low that they aren’t interested in making out….Twilight has a girl who is interested in a young man in a very healthy, physical way, and controls herself. It’s not comfortable for either of them. It’s a brilliant way to illustrate this, without the nagging, embarassing lecture that goes in one ear and out the other.
You may be a conservative but you are arguIng like a liberal; refusing to concede that there can be an honest disagreement with your opinion by calling critics “intolerant” and accusing people of being just like book burners.
Literature!!!!! “Now “Twilight” is literature. What next? Snooki is Katherine Hepburn? Jello Biafra is Frank Sinatra? Give it a rest, teach. Every post you post you further incriminate the public school system.
Read my post right above your mean-spirited one, “trangbang” and then hang your head in shame over your misdirected insults to one of the few principled teachers who is holding out AGAINST what you are accusing me of. And all because I think there’s no harm in an adolescent novel, for Pete’s sake! I’m shaking my head in disbelief.
My usual “tag” is STR–Start the Revolution– and I’m on the front lines of the Resistance against the idiocy that’s been happening in public education that I’ve viewed first hand and fought against every day of my life for decades.
I’m y’all’s hero and you just don’t understand it.
Dahlin’ you’re not my hero, and no literate Southerner would ever write “Y’all” unless s/he was mocking the white trash, though s/he might speak it casually among close friends. You’re either very misguided or you’re simply a liberal troll having fun with the rednecks.
Now I tire of you.
Good job saying it makes all women of all ages giddy because I’m a few years older than a teenager LOL
“We call it brain porn,” -Ha this quote sums it up!
Bravo Art!
I found this article extremely entertaining. Vampires don’t sparkle, 17 year old girls who are emotionally like Bella are not anywhere near ready to make life choices, and frankly, the human-vampire hybrid baby was the last straw. I saw the first movie, I’ve never seen the others, and thankfully, my children have pursued other authors in the past few years. Just…ugh
LOL. The comments here are almost as voluminous as the Twi-books.
Read the series because my teen, non-reading god-daughters were not just picking up the books but sticking with them. Slogged my way through the entire series, for the same reason. Took them to the first film, ditto.
The Twi-addiction has waned, but for one kid at least, this new-found love of reading has not.
Great literature? No. Useful tool? Maybe.
Forget it, GDI. Everyone here knows better, even though they haven’t read the books. It’s kinda scary to find out this is the calibre of conservatives I thought I had much in common with. Apparently, not.
“Dahling,’ you’re not my hero, and no literate Southerner would ever write “Y’all” unless s/he was mocking the white trash, though s/he might speak it casually among close friends. You’re either very misguided or you’re simply a liberal troll having fun with the rednecks.”
Art, now you’re making fun of my way of talking? I’ve liked some of your posts on other pages on other days, and my brother has your name, but I’ve lost all respect for you today. That is how we Texans really talk, literate or otherwise. Where in blue blazes did you get this “liberal troll” crap? You are so obsessed with that, and you are so wrong. Small-minded and mean-spirited too.
And suh, you are no gentleman.
I’m not buying it; you’re some kind of fraud or troll and you’re just snickering at the at the “mouth-breathers.” Oh, but you are right; I’m no gentleman, there’s no reason to be one anymore.
Perhaps you mingle with the wrong crowd, Art. That’s your own poor decision making. Or perhaps the decent ladies avoid you.
The last “decent lady” I met, I culled out of the herd of sluts and nuts and married 21 years ago.
“There’s no reason to be a gentleman anymore.”
Oh really…. Try it, Art. You might like ti and people might like you better, too.
Outside my family and a small circle of old friends I’m way past giving a tinker’s damn whether anybody likes me or not. Generally, the things you have to do to be liked make one not like one’s self very much.
The actors have ruined their careers and will be a laughing stock in 15 years.
Just like that guy that played “Luke” from “Star Wars”. . . What’s his name? Oh yeah, Mark Hamill. And then there was the terrible acting from that dude named “Han Solo”. . . wait, he’s still around!
“Twilight” is “Star Wars” for women. Get over yourself.
I’m quite sure the 45 million they’ve each earned form the series might ease that pain down the road.
Unbelievable shadenfreude on this.
The actors didn’t have careers in the first place. The main guy had a bit part in the Harry Potter series, and then three years of unemployment. The main girl starred in minor movies that nobody saw- her quote- nobody saw her movies. This platform drove their careers into the stratosphere. They acted out the dreams of millions of people- the dream of being known, and loved, and worthy of commitment. Since Hollywood has been force-feeding us the not-dream for years- movies about men cheating on their wives, about women who can’t commit to men, men who can’t commit to women- I certainly hope that someone wakes up.
I don’t want pre-marital sex glamorized for my daughter. I can’t take my kids to the grocery store without them getting whacked in the face by Cosmo- and all it’s shrieking little copycats- my innocent children are embarassed to look at the magazines–in a supposedly regular environment! The pornification of America includes the grocery store, but it certainly doesn’t include Twilight.
I want, for my children, what Twilight imagines- a careful, respectful courtship, and then a smoking-hot honeymoon, and then beautiful children. Who wouldn’t wish this?
I disagree that this is like “porn for women”. I think it’s more akin to “football viewing is to men what ‘Twilight’ saga is to women”. Both football and this movie series are nothing more than soap operas for each gender. (I swear ESPN is like the Soap Opera channel for men. . . so much emotion even rolled up into that viewing despite men trying to act like they are not emotionally charged creatures. Nothing like a bunch of sports human interest stories. With some slutty cheerleaders thrown into the mix!)
I can’t believe the number of men who are so riled by women actually liking this movie series. This movie series has quite a few men running scared and shooting insulting dart-like comments at women in attempts to trivialize women and their interests.
For decades, our culture has okayed and even encouraged men at their leisurely time pursuits, but geez, when women pursue anything of innate interest to their gender, culture trivializes it, insults women, and tells women that it is a waste of their time. What I smell hear stinks. . . it’s FEAR and HYPOCRISY in men.
I’ve seen the first movie ONCE on DVD for free at my sister’s home. Cheesy entertainment. . . and even the diehards will tell you that. Not all the “diehards” take this movie so seriously. Many of them love the storyline and even the cheesy entertainment for sheer escapism. It’s not like every fan of this series is getting her (or his) jollies sexually watching this stuff. If women wanted to see a man take his shirt off, it’s easy to see that on regular TV. Men searching out porn to get sexually off on is totally different than this, and I think this is just an attempt by men to justify what they do while trivilizing women. And honestly, my brother-in-law is rendered totally insecure about this movie series. Men who keep on chirping on about this “porn” for women stuff are typically your most insecure bubbas who can’t quite grip their own obsessions with stupid, wasteful entertainment like televised sports channels and socially networked video war games.
“Twilight” is a lot like “Star Wars” or “Lord of the Rings” for women with all the “wiki” info on line (akin to all the details of Star Wars characters, places, costumes, weaponry and space vehicles). Very encyclopedic. It’s easy for the fans to get absorbed into such details and enjoy talking about it, learning about it, etc. Just like any other hobby. (Geez, know any boring idiotic golfers? Or guys who have memorized baseball facts and statistics?)
“Twilight” is NOT LIKE PORN. It’s more like “Star Wars” for women. Get over it, insecure men, and quit being hypocrites. You jerks have sat around for years engrossing yourselves in the most innane interests while women have “accepted” it. Let these fans have a little fun without belittling them.
What the heck is wrong with a couple of nice looking guys taking off their shirts in a movie? Women have had to endure bare female breasts and scantily clad babes in movies for ages. If women said a word about having to endure that, men would say, “You’re just insecure.”
I’ll say it: Some of men need to quit being so insecure and hypocritical.
(I haven’t even read the books. I’ve only seen the first movie once for free. Not all women are into it, just like not all men like “Star Wars” and NFL football.)
Women need to read about Eve and the Serpent in The Garden.
What are you trying to say, Rance?
You seemed to have left out that Adam was there, and what did he do about it? Did he protect her? Did he stop her? Uh, did he stop himself from eating it?
He didn’t.
It’s important you preach to men too. No good taking the Bible in little bits. The whole thing can be believed and heeded in whole. If you only read part of it, Rance, you might as well not follow it.
Two wrongs do not make a right, Emily. This article is about women, Emily. I am not condoning Adam, Emily. You are the one trying to remove the guilt of women, Emily.
So, at the beginning of time one woman ate an apple and now all women are forbidden to read books? did I miss a step?
Yes. You need to read the comment by Leatherneck above. You missed several giant steps that would take more words than contained in this article and all of the comments combined to explain. I was not being simplistic. Leatherneck hinted at the end result. I hinted at the beginning. Think: “as it was in the days of Noah.”
Trang bang doesn’t need quotation marks, it’s a village in Hau Ngiah province northwest of Saigon where I spent some time in 1968-1969.
Good to see you’ve moved on and aren’t hanging onto the past.
With all due respect, I’ve moved on fine, a-hole. Go suck some vampire blood, twit.
Sure doesn’t sound like you moved on, given your need to discuss this with strangers on the internet.
My aged father still counsels combat vets at the local VA, including some Korean and Vietnam vets who are still trying to process it all. Go see the local version of him. Talk it out with people who understand. It takes a lifetime.
thanks for your concern. Seriously. I have a wonderful life. I just don’t suffer aging hippie nitwits well like Jane. Actually getting over being a war is not a lifetime work unless you want it to be one.
Guess what? You want it to be one.
Amazing how in Viet Nam, where the vast majority were rear echelon, there’s no rear echelon vets.
If I’m a nitwit where does that put someone dumb enough to go to Viet Nam?
Jane,
I’m proud I served. Are you proud you were smoking weed and spreading STD’s in the sixties? Quite an accomplishment. Serving your country doesn’t make you a nitwit. Using the very freedoms others purchased and defended with their blood to despise and disdain your country makes you less than a nitwit. It makes you a pathetic parasite. This is why most younger people despise left wing Baby Boomers. You were childish parasites who loosed all kinds of garbage in our culture in the sixties.. Now you’re in your sixties and still childish immature lames. You might still be singing “If you’re going to San Francisco” but everybody else says it’s time to turn the music off on the Worst Generation.
Committing war crimes isn’t serving your country; just ask Nazi concentration camp guards.
I’ve never had an STD though I admit it is not for lack of trying. No one in Viet Nam purchased any freedom for me and those people weren’t doing anything to America to justify what we did to them; stop acting like they were on the point of invading us to justify yourself. Being proud of a war crime is contra-indicated.
So you’re proud you served: the question is who did you serve: the devil or the briny blue sea? Even when I was 14 I knew better, dumb hippie (freak) and all. I actually don’t fault professional military who were there, they did what they had to do. But all these years later, one should realize when one is on the wrong side of an issue.
I was just in Cambodia and Viet Nam in August, Mary and the young people in those countries despise the communists for the repression and atrocities they committed. At the Genocide Memorial in Phnom Penh, when it rains the bones of the murdered still leech up from the mud. Sure there were civilian losses. There was My Lai and a whole lot more civilians murdered by the North Vietnamese. Brave men served in a war that was sold down the river by left wing politicians. You compare American soldiers to Nazis because you are an amoral fool.
The dead disagree.
Wow! Reading some of the responses here makes me realize that Twihards are just as vehemently defensive of their fandom as Paulistas are of Ron Paul! Not that there’s anything wrong with that, of course.
Seems like some have missed the point of this article completely (or are in utter denial). Twilight is not “like” porn in that it has lots of drippy sex; it is “like” porn in that it is crafted to satisfy the same sorts of unrealistic fantasies which women have as porn does for men. Let’s face it: Men and women are, generally, wired differently. Men are instinctively gratified by graphic depictions of sex, often in the absence of commitment or complication. Women are instinctively gratified by the emotional and social aspects of secure, committed relationships, especially those involving exclusivity and devotion, with or without sex. Twilight takes masculine devotion to the sort of unrealistic, idealized extremes which porn does the sexualization of women. Twilight depicts males who are “perfect” where the salient characteristics are concerned, and presents them in a scenario in which real men wouldn’t be so utterly and unbelievably selfless with their emotions.
So, Porn is:
A depiction of women who are ideal specimens of physical beauty selflessly and without any believable cause engaged in sex with men who generally lack any emotional commitment, while,
Twilight is:
A depiction of men who are ideal specimens of physical appeal, as well as social and emotional pliability, engaged without believable cause with a female in a relationship which is stretched out for however many novels/movies without any sex. These men (even teen werewolf Jacob) are not only unconcerned with sex, but also grudgingly tolerate each other for her sake. When sex finally does occur, it is not presented for the sake of the sex, but as a symbolic reward for commitment.
These are just two different standards of unrealistic, idealized fantasy, and two different media created to gratify them. I’m not criticizing anyone for enjoying either; I’m merely pointing out the similarities, the parallel psychosocial functioning.
Now I’m gonna go hide behind the couch, before the inevitable incoming fire. =^[.]^=
Pornography is: “Printed or visual material containing the explicit description or display of sexual organs or activity.”
How is “Twilight” pornography? I hate that such intelligent, thinking people are not going by to the foundational truth of what pornography is. Distill porn for what it is, and it is NOT what the writer of this article says it is. It’s naked people parts engaging in sexual activity. And it’s explicit.
“Twilight” is not that.
When you resort to simple semantics (Pornography is: “Printed or visual material containing the explicit description or display of sexual organs or activity.”) to deny the charge that Twilight is pornographic, rather than to address the points being made, you dodge the issue.
Fine. Would you settle for grossly unrealistic, exploitational wish-fulfillment? That’s what links Twilight with porn. Bella Swan’s treatment, especially of Jacob, but also of Edward, is exploitative. She is manipulative of both, but the way she treats Jacob in the second movie (yes, I’ve seen it) is particularly execrable, using him as an emotional surrogate for Edward, leading him on until she gets what she really wants, which is Edward back. And both “men” are depicted taking it all, the noble Edward being somehow the more noble because he’s conflicted, but ultimately following Bella around like love-sick puppies with no needs of their own except her.
The fact that this “saga” makes that sort of thing “all right” is what makes it “like” porn. Both are rooted in immature notions of male-female relations. Twilight idealizes the notion that a man would subject himself to that sort of treatment in the same way porn idealizes the notion that a woman would submit to sexual exploitation. Both are unrealistic depictions of human interaction, and both are calculated to satisfy base, emotional needs in men and women which cannot possibly be met in real human life. A real relationship is more than just sex, and more than just noble, self-effacing romantic devotion. Love goes both ways, involves a give-and-take that is absent in both porn and Twilight. =’[.]‘=
Emily, I do not believe you have a clue as to why men like porn. To you it’s just the “icky” sex thing. The element of fantasy fulfillment completely escapes you. Most movies are about fantasy fulfillment of some one sort or another. The question usually becomes whether we, as individuals, are “down” with that particular fantasy. I believe that although people engage in fantasy, that isn’t necessarily how they would like to live their existence. Perhaps it would have been better had the author described the films as fantasy fulfillment for women as opposed to fantasy fulfillment for men. Obviously referring to it as “porn”, raise so many negative connotations in your mind that you are incapable of understand the point he is making. Or perhaps you’re one of those who believe that women are morally superior to men, and therefore nothing they do, could have any of the negative implications associated with the idea of “porn”.
I can tell why I DON’T like porn; there is always a door leading to the outside world in any room I’m in. Within that world are women, real women.
Keepin’ it real bra’ yeah. I’m 500 dude. Spleesh. Peep?
I agree. And, for what it’s worth, dictionaries do not set the standard definition, they merely relay them; when they are updated, editors scour the modern usage of the word and then use it to define terms or add or change secondary or primary definitions.
Anyway, currently I see people using the term “porn” in more ways than depictions of sex, ect…, but also as an exploitation of one physical impulse without anchoring to realistic balance, like, always upping the stimuli ante in order to illicit a singular response.
STR, relax, they just don’t get it. They just don’t see it. Forget it. I found your comments very interesting and it’s great that you have such passion for showing students the joys of reading.
A few people have mentioned the strong negative reaction from men. One in particular said, “The boomers just got handed their papers.” Ha! Very well put. But many of them subconsciously understand that and are reacting angrily. Free Love wasn’t the best idea since the wheel? Of all their lodestones to crush, that is the worst.
Younger men dislike it for a different reason, they are dismayed that Bella falls for a guy that they could never compete with. They think they will never be able to measure up to that standard, it makes them think they will never have a chance, because girls’ standards are too high.
Women with daughters love it for the reasons mentioned, that here’s the story of a relationship where the boy isn’t just trying to have sex with her. How nice! Yes it’s a fantasy, no it doesn’t mean she is pining for an older man or pining to become a vampire. Sadly in this day and age it’s almost necessary to the story that he be a vampire, mainstream culture has taken us so far off the track that if Edward were to be human and wanted to wait to have sex, many readers would think he’s too much of an oddball.
There’s a great book called The Fourth Turning, showing how we go through cyclical cultural changes. We are living in a decade (2010-2020) equivalent to 1930-1940. A huge debt bubble has burst, the rest of the decade will be a depression, and the live-it-up ethos of the last generation will be discredited in many different ways. Sadly, another world war is looming; starting maybe 2019-2021. Many people feel it coming, like a chill wind blowing through the trees, they just don’t know exactly what it is. Culturally, the idea of being responsible as an individual will be making a comeback.
Twilight is one huge signpost showing the cultural shift that is under way.
Wow, get out the hip boots. It’s getting piled up high and deep here. “Twilight” is the sign of a great cultural shift as we head into an uncertain decade of financial breakdown with war clouds on the horizon. Instead of W.H. Auden’s “September 1939″ we get the “huge signpost” of a vampire classic for the ages.
I’ll cop to it. I’m a boomer. I’m embarrassed that I used to listen to Crosby, Stills and Nash and their trite lyrics, but if this generation considers “Twilight” a huge cultural icon, maybe we weren’t so lame after all.
The thought that young men can’t compete with an androgynous looking pretty boy vampire like Edward is ludicrous. I could find 100 better specimens in a church service or military base any day of the week. You must be working late on your degree in Wymen’s Studies at some illustrious university to come up with this claptrap.
And you’ll find twi-moms at church, and at that military base, and volunteering at hospitals. sunday school teachers. supporters of military men from their twi-fan clubs. supporters of children’s charities- based on what the actor’s support. the author is a sunday school teacher and ward leader, and devout mormon. her fans- likewise. there are military characters given respect in the books- one vampire was a confederate war veteran. he’s an honorable man.
What’s trite about the lyrics of Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young? “Wooden Ships” is trite? Boy meets girl or an apocalyptic tale told almost nowhere else in music then or now.
“Almost Cut My Hair” is trite? I lived that song. A station wagon full of cowboy hatted yahoos tried to run me over while hitch hiking cuz I had very long hair. Even jumping back at the last minute, the fender brushed my pants. My friends ran away, they cut their hair so to speak. I stayed, the wagon came around again. What’s trite about attempted murder, police sirens, dealing and paranoia?
What would be trite about the only time I can remember off hand where the word “freak” was used, which was how we actually referred to ourselves. We despised “hippie” or “flower children” and the like.
Those guys were right on; you’re not.
That explains a lot. Anyone who still reveres “Almost Cut my Hair” and “Wooden Ships” is an imbecile. Maybe you can donate your liver to Fat old hippie David Crosby the next time he needs one. It’s ironic in another comment you chide me for not moving on from my experience serving in Viet Nam while you cherish the memory of being a hippie. Double irony , you’re the type of boomer leftist trash that your fellow Twilighters here so disdain. I’m with them on that. Light up another fat one , there Susie Creamcheese. …Keep dreamin’ about the bombers turning into butterflies above the nation, fool.
I never said I cherish the memory of being a hippie and in fact I never cherished being a “hippie” because I never was one.
I was addressing the term “trite” which is a word for something common and overused. Since the story in both songs is original and one true to life as opposed to mess cooks in a forgotten (not by you) rice paddie, you simply set up a strawman argument about something I never said and declared victory.
Sort of like in Trangle Bangle where typist/clerks were given Silver Stars for being unlucky enough to find themselves in a tropical hell hole where everyone hated them. By that standard I should get a Medal of Honor for falling down a flight of stairs.
Draftee?
Jane #1 or Jane #2- I’m getting confused by your stupidity . Was it Jane Stair or Plain Jane ? I apologize for calling you a “hippie” when actually you were a “freak”. I guess you still are one huh?
My MOS was 11-B20 ,Light Weapons Infantry. I served in Delta Co. 2/14th Infantry, 25th Infantry Division in 1968-1969. Where you’d serve, Jane? 10th Pill Poppin’ Train Pullin’ Freak Brigade?
Adios, enough of this time wasting.
I and a few friends went to our high school principle and told him we were dropping out of school and weren’t coming back til America left Viet Nam. I never went back.
That’s how I served. It was a little easier on the Vietnamese. I signed up for the draft when I was 18 because that’s not the time to fight. If I’d been drafted I’d have told them to stuff it.
And since you’re confused here’s the difference between a freak and a hippie. A freak is a pragmatic, sometimes criminal, one might almost say evil version of a hippie. We didn’t buy into green tea, yoga, taxing the rich, political correctness, flower power.
We had our own light weapons and I would bet the percentage of casualties in terms of how many of my friends who failed to make it to 21 with their mental faculties or even lives intact was higher than your regiment. But we only dealt with people who came at us. Who was coming at you before you got on a ship and sailed to the other side of the world? Answer: no one.
twilight is a point for point refutation of the entire, complete baby boomer ethos. it starts from the very first page- life gives you more than anything you hoped for- and that’s worth dying for? life gives this girl her father back, as a strong, nurturing presence facilitating her growth- he gives her a 1955 truck, and then puts snow tires on it, to keep her safe- life gives her a young man- frozen in time- who desires to learn about her, completely- by listening to her in rapt fascination- life gives her a single date with the young man’s family-life gives her a kiss, life gives her friends at school who care for her.
She, likewise, cares for and nurtures everyone in her sphere. She cleans house, she shops, she cooks for her father. She does conscientious work on her homework- honoring her teachers- she works, even in a class she’s familiar with-biology- she doesn’t snark at the teacher- she does the work- she listens to her young man, loving and accepting him. She is respectful to his family. She’s peaceful with his sisters. She helps her friends as she is able- suggesting dates, helping with homework, listening to them talk- all of it- She’s a great, modest, kind, thoughtful role model.
This is absolutely opposite of “question authority” “don’t trust anyone over thirty” “do your own thing” “drop out” “free love.” That’s what critics hate. It’s absolutely the walking papers for the baby boom’s ethics. Good riddance.
Ari what a great and thoughtful summary of the story Twilight tells. But the story has a little more sympathy for the boomers than that too. The parents are emblematic of the boomers and both were acted excellently in the movies. The mom… well, us boomers, we liked to party! And then its, Ok, it was great we had this quality time, see ya! The dad is kind of hesitant, he has learned he didn’t know everything when he was 20. But even though the parents messed up, Bella still loves them. I see the dad as kind of apologizing for the world the boomers have left for the next generation. He wants to make up for it, but he doesn’t have that much to give her. And things are never going back to the way they were anyway. And then, all too soon, before he can make it all right, she’s leaving to get married to start her own life. And he doesn’t really like that it’s with a vampire, but he feels all he can do is to trust her to maybe know better what to do than he did when he was her age.
As for good riddance to the boomers, well their kind will be back, in another 60 years, in another turn of the cycle!
Yes trang I like digging deep, enjoyed your comment, except you’re way off about the area of study
But as for Edward, well let’s see, he has superhuman strength, he can fly, he can play the piano, he doesn’t sit around watching ESPN, he seems to think only of her all the time. He’s too perfect. Anyway, for whatever reason, some young men I know were angry at the story because he was so perfect. For what’s worth I think this generation of men will have the chance to be another “greatest generation”, along about 2020 as I said, and they already have the desire in them to prove themselves. Very different from my generation! (Not everybody, just generalizing.)
Generalizing about generations is kind of dumb anyways. The Occupy riffraff aren’t boomers. Most of the demonstrations and rock festivals of the sixties were stupid acts of self indulgence, but I don’t recall many people crapping on police cars or raping girls in the park. The entitlements which the boomers are pilloried for were created by FDR and LBJ, liberals from other generations. I spent my twenty-first birthday humping the Iron Triangle in War Zone C along with others who were ghetto kids, working class kids, boys from the barrios and hollows of Tennessee. They were the best of our generation.
I would say the young men to emulate are not Edward but the kids who fought in the streets of Fallujah and in the Korengal Valley of Afghanistan.
Really? Primal. How about just not stupid enough.
re: The character in “As Good As It Gets”. When asked how a man could write so well as a woman:
All this touchy-feely EMO vampire carp is for spoiled kids and young adults who have no grounding in the real world. Hollyweird trash at it’s penultimate.
The fan base ranges in age from six to 78. Six for the first movie, up to 78- a fan review on Amazon. Since I can count on my hand high- level programmers, high-tech executives, leaders of scout troops, leaders of brownie troops, office managers, librarians, writers, school-teachers, wives of soldiers, project managers, dress designers, musicians, skateboard designers, filmmakers, marketing executives, MBAs, classics graduates, phds in teaching positions….I’d say a lot of very succesful people in real life relate to the highly competent, devoted families written about in Twilight.
Heh. Turn your list around a bit, and let’s ask ourselves: What are the demographics (male and female) which enjoy porn?
To seek somehow to ennoble Twilight by enumerating its fan base in terms of experience and success is ridiculous. Neither career nor age (except at the lowest end of the scale) is a useful denominator of the appeal of Twilight, or of the appeal of pornography. The man who tells you he doesn’t look at porn is being about as honest as the man who claims never to masturbate, and that includes PHd’s, Scout Troop Leaders, Fortune 500 CEOs, etc. Much akin to pornography, Twilight panders to the desire for an unattainable fantasy. Instead of unrealistic sex, it uses unrealistic emotion to indulge those needs, because that is the “button” to push in most women’s brains, whereas for men, that button is most often sex. =^[.]^=
And porn has male fans ranging in age from 12 to 90.
Ragnar, Ayn Rand, whose character’s name you’ve adopted, would totally disagree with your demeaning statements against women. Interesting that you would pick a book written by a woman of reason and accountability as your inspiration while trashing women and the books they write.
I am curious as to what you think you understand of Atlas Shrugged that you would select the “brute force” pirate instead of one of the “pure reason” heroes.
John Davidson above: I’m sincerely glad you have a smart and sensible daughter. That is a huge accomplishment these days.
Having said that, I must protest that I am not tippy-toeing around anything. The idea of fictional vampires and wolf shape-shifters (not werewolves) doesn’t scare me. Everyone needs to lighten up. People have always been fascinated by the supernatural, and it doesn’t make me a devil worshipper to enjoy a good read about a vampire with a conscience. The wolf shape-shifter portion of the story is actually based on an ancient Quileutes Indian legend. In the course of the 4 books, many “cold one” stories from other cultures are skillfully woven into the fabric of the story. Fascination with the idea of vampires is not a unique American teenager phenomenon. It seems almost every culture has legends about vampires. Weird when you think about that!
STR – I’m sorry, OK but here again it seems you are missing the point, which has nothing to do with whether fictional evil creatures scare you.
I would hope they don’t since you are an adult. But the story is directed largely at children and young adults. And younger minds are more impressionable. And the story blurs the line between good and evil by making creatures that clearly represent “evil” in any normal sense of the word into something that is not really evil but rather misunderstood.
Sort of like, let’s meet this so-called evilness halfway and see if bad things REALLY happen…..unfortunately, they can and do in real life when we mistake evil for something less than what it is.
My daughter also said some of her girlfriends told her that some things that used to be thought of as evil really aren’t, “you just have to understand them.” When I asked her what she thought of that she said “I think it’s crazy, but they don’t.” Where is THAT notion going to take those young ladies, whether in their dealings with young men or in general?
Another victory for pop-culture, I’m afraid. Yes, I am truly grateful my daughter sees through things that many others do not.
Also, I don’t believe I called you a devil-worshipper, at least I didn’t intend to, but I wonder what made you think of that?
“A good read about a vampire with a conscience?” If you say so.
We will have to agree to disagree.
JD
“Her ideal scenario is to be with Edward while having Jacob around to dote on her within the boundaries she sets.”
So, she wants one to be her lover and the other to be her dog, does that sound right?
Well, yeah. After all, the second guy IS a werewolf, right?
‘Women need to read about Eve and the Serpent in The Garden”
One of the most misunderstood Fables in the Bible, and used for thousands of Years to subjugate and oppress women on an almost maniacal scale.
1) there is no mention of an apple
2) The serpent is never identified as the Devil , Satan, Lucifer, Etc.
3) Their children would have had incestuous relationships
4) If true then the serpent spoke the truth and God Lied regarding results of eating the fruit of the tree
5) The truth is Eve sought wisdom, while Adam was content to be an ignorant gardener.
6) Serpent cults were the main competing religion to early Judeo- Christian beliefs…this Fable places the cross hairs squarely on them and gave tactic approval to violently destroy them.
As far as Twilight…its a movie,fer heavens sake get over it. If you are threatened by a movie then maybe get to a Gym and work and work out a bit more.
You need to reread the posts. It was a snotty responder who mentioned an apple! Please name a reputable theologian that denies that the serpent was Lucifer/Satan. Children under any origin of the species theory would have been incestuous by current standards. Your sci-fi buddy Charles Darwin made a compact with his cousins Galton (the father of eugenics), Huxley, and Wedgewood. They would only allow their children to marry a child of one of the others. After 2 generations 90% of the offspring died at birth. The gene pool was obviously much different by that time. (Actually, it had been for millenia.) The others were all mentally and/or physically handicapped. The truth is Eve sought to be God. (Many religions still teach the same idea.) Reguarding getting to a gym, I was a weight training instructor and taught a public education class of weight training for women. Six strikes…you’re out.
I’ve seen quite a bit of discussion on the conservative values exhibited in “Twilight”.
I can’t help but ask what is so conservative/traditional/religious about falling in love with a creature of darkness, condemned to live forever, which is a member of another species above human beings that uses humans as food (Edward’s lifestyle choice is irrelevant: that creature still remains what it is).
Twilight: A young woman is torn between Necrophilia and Bestiality.
How to put some everlasting values out there for young women and hide them in plain sight in a divergent thinking, hard to resist package, at the same time encouraging reading, steadfastness, continuity and perseverance. No small accomplishment Stephanie Meyers! Brava! Thanks Twilight Mom and all others for your thoughts. Seeing kids turn on to reading in this world of ideas (reading for all of their lives) is nothing to sneeze at. Why should this or an other series appeal to everyone? If your resident thinker/readers at home found that it didn’t attract them, that’s ok, too. As for me, I have liked and enjoyed this series and I’m OLD! I also loved the LOTR, which through mythology touched on and deepened my faith-bound Christian beliefs.
If the Twilight Saga is porn, as perceived by women, no wonder the industry seems to be run by nothing but dirty old men. On the other hand, if the Twilight Saga is a vampire and werewolf action series, as perceived by women, let’s hope to all things movie that women don’t take over the vampire and werewolf genres. Bambi had more action, gore and storyline. My wife laughed at me for wanting to watch the second one. She knew better than I did that it was nothing more than an afternoon soap opera. Then again, Barnabas in Dark Shadows was far more scarier and interesting.
I have suffered through all of the Twilight movies for the sake of my friends, one of which is so lost over it there’s no hope for her. Really what can you do about a forty something woman who’s read the books and ooh and ahhs over the characters?
Sitting through the latest Twilight Saga was the most painful sacrifice I’ve made for friendship. I hate Bella, Edward and Jacob. I wish them all a speedy death. I still don’t know what Edward and Jacob see in her. She is a horrible and worst of all boring person. Honestly, this is a polyandrous relationship except Jacob hasn’t been formally invited into it. The last straw for me was the scene inwhich a pregnant Bella is having her back rubbed by Jacob not her husband Edward. Then later Jacob bonds with Bella and Edward’s baby. That did it for me!
But, who am I kidding? I’ll be there for the last installment of this nauseating crap. It’s the price I pay to hang out with my girls.
“…without carrying over any of the taboo”
Sorry PJ, maybe you need to know the ending of this ‘saga’. I use to date a girl who was into this garbage and after she dragged me to the 2nd movie she rushed to explain how the rest unfolded. Apparently in the finale, the werewolf dude ends up ‘imprinting/whatever’ the girls new baby and watches over as it grows – knowing full well he will one day get with/marry that child… How is this underhanded pedo action NOT taboo hahahaha…
“The last straw for me was the scene in which a pregnant Bella is having her back rubbed by Jacob not her husband Edward.”
Isn’t Edward an early 1900′s gentleman. Weren’t those the days of male reticence. Long before our era of “touchy-feely”. When married couples made love with the lights out – with their bed clothes on. Perhaps the idea of caressing his wife, just never occurred to him. As it would to the younger Jacob.
You’re living in dream world. Englishman in India in 1800 had the clap like crazy and the ones who could had harems. Victorian London was loaded with hookers. These people were banging their brains out. 1 in 3 men in the East India Company in 1800 had Indian wives/girlfriends.
In fact, “Twilight” is much more tame than the proverbial Victorian “gentleman.” If it was like the stiff upper lippers, it would be R rated.
One other thing. On the subject of Bella being a teenager and Edward being much older. We forget that it wasn’t that long ago that a “teenager” of Bella’s age would have been married, a mother, and the head of her own household. And that in Edward’s era it was quite common for a much older man to be married to a girl of Bella’s age.
Interesting, my sister-in-law was obsessed with Beauty and the Beast at age 2 as well. If adoration is what women most crave in romance, I wonder if it was exacerbated in her by one of her parents who rarely provided it…
No…porn for women is known as “porn.” But yeah, this TWILIGHT stuff is absolute crap.
I really don’t care what people read. Catcher in the Rye was once considered “porn”. However, the one thing I hate about these dippy vampire novels is that they are now cluttering up the sci-fi section of the bookstore. Could they please, please be moved over to the Harlequin Romance section where they belong?
It seems that a lot of comments here revolve around the idea that vampires and werewolves are innately and irredeemably evil. Several critics have asked that this issue be addressed. I will attempt to do so.
In classic mythology the idea that monsters are innately evil would be a true statement. However, the nature of legends and mythology is that they change with the audience. For examples, look at the classic stories of King Arthur, Robin Hood, the Odyssey, Greek Gods, Norse Gods, Egyptian Gods and others. Look at how they have changed over the years (not just since the beginning of movie making). Any story or story element that is around long enough will be changed by future generations to fit the stories that they want to tell.
Twilight is not the first story to assume that not all monsters are evil. Good vampires have been part of the standard mythos for several decades at least. Same for werewolfs (although Jacob is really a wolfish shape shifter, subtly distinct).
For many centuries the belief that people are naturally “carnal, sensual and devilish” was predominant in many religions, including Christianity. Now, that belief has changed to “people are basically good”. So if you want a story about someone with an evil nature who, through daily choices and good actions, overcomes his very nature and receives an appropriate reward, you can’t use a human. She also points out that the beauty, wealth, talents, intelligence, and successes which he has gained are not enough to make him “good”. It is his willingness to deny his own desires that makes him “good”.
The story trope where the girl falls in love with the guy from the wrong social strata, or educational level, or race is nothing new. Stephanie Meyer is simply extending the definition of discrimination. Her point, that the girl should judge based on the heart and behavior of the boy rather than outward successes, is a valid and cogent example for modern girls to consider.
It is true that Edward and Jacob both are too perfect, but that is part and parcel of storytelling. Real people don’t get put in stories for the simple reason that nobody wants to read about real life. That has been true since the beginning of storytelling.
Uh…bookworm, I don’t know what books you’ve been reading, Homeboy, but Christianity has not changed the doctrine of original sin into “people are basically good”. That is the worldview of New age religion and psychobabble and not orthodox Christianity. That is a lot of the problem with the “Twilight” apologists, particularly the teacher who is a self described “Christian conservative” and every conservative’s very own “our Miss Brooks” (you might have to look that one up). People in post modern America including much of the church have lost the critical faculty of discernment and the ability to judge evil.
I agree with your assessment, those who would say it’s just a movie..get over it, are missing a very important observation, that is the ability to discern evil, whether in filmdom or society in general.
You, bookworm, and people like you are responsible for the downfall of our republican democracy. The whole post-modernist, right-for-me, self-esteem belief system has created a citizenry posessed of a medieval level of ignorance and suspicion and the absolute inability to discern right from wrong, good from evil, or to identify your own interests. We exterminated most of German “culture” and late 19th, early 20th Century thought in Germany and allowed it to flourish in the rest of Europe and especially here in the US educational system. Within 20 years all you useful idiots will be bowing and shouting “All Hail” to some Dear Leader.
Yes, the doomed love affair between a Hindu and a Muslim was very popular in 18th century India. Same thing, just make the girl an Englishwoman.
Thanks for explaining all of it better than I could hope to.
And guys, western civ isn’t just soldiers and weird old guys in aviator sunglasses with heavy beards- it’s young men composing beautiful music, and classic cars, and stunningly beautiful artwork. It’s young women like Nausicaa, who listened to an old, icky pirate guy washed up on the beach, and then helped him get home to his wife. She used her judgment-he was obviously a guy on the wrong side of the gods- he admits it- he was not a good guy. Should we throw the Odyssey out as an impious work? The guy obviously isn’t righteous. He’s not even faithful to his faithful wife. For that matter- can we throw out Tennyson? His take is that the old guy is bored with his loyal wife. That’s what’s considered great GUY literature?
Or, how’s about Kirk? Captain dip-his-wick-into-every-alien-strange-the-galaxy- throws-at-him? A girl can aspire to ???mary sue???who died on her first mission???or just being in the dip-wick lineup, like a page in Hugh Hefner’s scrapbook??? Wow, so very aspirational. Not.
It’s Anne of Green Gables, not Gilbert of Green Gables. That’s the big source material, as well as the school classics.
Catholicism has never given up on the idea of original sin. Some protestants still believe it. Many protestants don’t. Members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (Mormons) including Stephanie Meyer, never have believed in original sin. However, regardless of weather you believe in original sin or not, the idea that we are here on earth to improve ourselves is pretty standard doctrine. Anyone who consistently tries to do good, regardless of his or her past, can become good. Most Christians believe that even the dregs of society can be born again if they change their choices and start to do good. Are you going to deny that option to Edward? He didn’t choose to become a Vampire. Are you going to condemn him for something that someone else did to him? That is as bad as condemning the victim of a crime. He chooses to do good, despite his temptations.
Jesus said “By their fruits ye shall know them.” I see Edwards fruits as worthwhile. You however are judging by the outward appearance, that is what a hypocrite does.
bookworm,
Christianity is not just doing good. Nor, is it condeming those who do good.
What we have here is something not human, but appears human. A young lady is attracted to them. One is the undead, or a human murdered by a Vampire, then becoming a Vampire. Two wrongs do not make a right.
The other creature can be considered a Werewolf. However, he appears more a shape shifter. It is still looked at by most as an evil spirit inside a human. Not that wolves are evil.
So, Christians like me, would expect the girl to not interact with the dead, and to stay away from evil spirits. Both, mislead, both can do good works, but both are evil.
This whole thing is just another example of the world system that wants to mislead humans away from doing what is correct. The next thing you know, the young lady will be having some kind of offspring that G-d never intended. Just like in the time of Noah. When the daughters of men had children by the sons of G-d, or fallen Angels. Who gave birth to the Nephilim.
The world system attackes humans on many fronts. Spoiling the child in our schools, being in debt, drugs, out of wedlock children, Moloch worship (Abortion), Movies/TV that glorify the desire for money, and sex outside of marriage, Homosexuality as normal, humans interacting with the dead, etc…
Anything other than giving thanks to G-d the Father who sent his only son to die, be a sin offering, and rise from the dead for the creation he loved so much. Humans. The false god of this world system hates humans.
I can see where you are coming from. As a kid, my parents forbade me from watching “Bewitched”, and “Bedknobs and Broomsticks”, or from playing Dungeons and Dragons, on the basis that fictional accounts of magic could cause me to be attracted to devil worship.
As an adult I have concluded that since I (and my children) know the difference between fantasy and reality, this particular fear is not a valid reason to restrict this type of story. You are familiar, I am sure with the willing suspension of disbelief that underlies enjoyment of all fantasy and science fiction, without exception. Part of that, is to accept that in _this_ story Edward and Jacob ARE human. They aren’t beasts. They aren’t nephilim.
If you can suspend your disbelief enough to enjoy “Harry Potter” with his magic (which even has a good werewolf), or “Star Wars” and the force, or “Star Trek” with all their impossible science and immoral behavior, they why can’t you accept “Twilight”?
Personally I enjoy all of those stories, and I don’t have any trouble recognizing the difference between good and evil. Fantasy and Sci-Fi stories use impossible characters to explore real-life issues, such as sex before marriage, abortion, and the nature of love. That ability is the whole reason that Fantasy and Sci-Fi are popular.
I think we will have to agree to disagree. But your decision to not suspend your disbelief doesn’t mean that those who do are depraved and evil.
Apologies if pointed out, but as the series boiled down to it’s essence can be called: “The journey of one womans choice between bestiality and necrophilia.”
[mccain voce] Spank me, Lindsey — spank me!!
I’m sorry, I couldn’t force myself to read the piece and this just leapt into my mind. I listen to too much Rush.
My wife and I have both found much to appreciate and enjoy in the Twilight books and (to a more mixed degree) in the movies. I found the premise of this article thought provoking. Perhaps Mr. Hudson is right in saying that Twilight is to women what porn is to men, but shame on us men for not making more women’s fantasies come true!
Would I encourage my daughter to nympho-maniac slut-hood as a means of enhancing her dignity and her value to the community in which she lives? Probably not. Would I encourage my son to exercise sexual self-restraint in his pursuit of a woman and to be willing to sacrifice himself for her at any cost to himself? Absolutely. I try to do the same for his mother, albeit imperfectly. The ideal is a high one and Edward and Jacob set the bar higher than I can achieve but if the bar isn’t set higher than I can reach, then there isn’t much value-added in striving for it, is there? It should give us pause, men, that what women find enticing is that which breeds a healthier family and a more stable society and our complaint about it is that “I can’t meet such unrealistic expectations of constancy, devotion and selflessness”.
Discerning Evil is quite simple to do…However most self professed Christians are completely unable to do so and blindly follow scripture and leaders that claim to be acting on God’s Behalf. The most dangerous ideologies is believing you are acting upon God’s word, and righteous to do so. In fact this is one of Christ’s main focus of anger and disgust; the righteous acting upon scripture without careful deliberation of their acts and what intentions are truly grounded in.
Original Sin ; this is a construct manufactured in the early middle ages in Western Europe to raise funds from wealthy but scripture ignorant land owners that paid immense amounts of money to the church for dispensation of their ” original Sin”. It worked so well it stuck and continued to provide the Church with cash and fodder for their accounts. In eastern European Christianity the Theology of original Sin does not exist.
Unfortunately this concept was carried to USA by early puritans and western Christians and has ingrained itself into current teachings.
Placing the movie into Context of Theology, is a bit nonsensical. We are supposed to believe vampires and werewolves are real and therefore can affect our Spiritual Beliefs..? If that is the case then the fault lies not within the stars but within ourselves.
Placing the movie into the context of sexuality, things get a bit clearer. The Fable of Eve is little more than oppression of Sexuality, and has been used as such for thousands of years. Women are not allowed to speak in church, not allowed to be in leadership position, not allowed to express themselves, not allowed to desire or lust. All because of a Fable.
Twilight places this front and center, there is not only feminine power and passion but it is with a Vampire and a Werewolf, Spiritually off limits and so over the top it creates a backlash. It is unbridled and pagan..and therefore threatening to theology a Woman should be restrained and forever muted in her passions and voice.
In the end, the movie will probably tell us more about ourselves than we like to admit or reflect upon.
Where do you guys get your theology? Original sin is not a construct of priests in the Middle Ages to sell indulgences. It’s the heart of Christian theology, that mankind is alienated from God through sin, that Christ died to redeem men from the power of sin and give them the ability to overcome sin. It’s Theology 101. Believe it or don’t. It’s your choice.
No one is making the case that vampires and werewolves are real, only that they are fables long associated with man’s darker impulses. I personally believe that the blending of supernatural themes with sensuality in the vampire literature (which is far more extensive than Twilight) is very unhealthy and puts a pretty face on evil.
Here’s a syllogism:
The _Twilight_ series falls under the paranormal romance genre.
Paranormal romance is porn for women.
Therefore, the _Twilight_ series is porn for women.
Why does anyone give a rip about this article? No answers, please. I was born at night, but it wasn’t last night, and women are still a mystery to me.
This article hinges on an eccentric definition of porn. More useful than Justice Potter’s, but still weird.
It’s not remotely eccentric. Try to follow along;
1. Traditional pornography (“porn porn”, for you fans of The View) is strongly oriented to a male point of view.
2. Instead of just saying, “So women generally aren’t as interested in porn”, instead we ask, What is porn doing for men that causes so much interest? How does it fit into the male “system”?
3. And then we ask, is the anything comparable or analogical on the female side of things?
You don’t have to agree with the answers anyone is proposing to these questions, but if you can’t follow the concept of this argument-by-analogy then something really important got left out of your education.
The theology of original sin did not exist before Augustine, (circa 400 AD) created it. Over time the concept was further defined until accepted as Christian Theology at the council of Trent in the 16th Century. This is called Augustinian theology, but has little to do with what Christ taught.
There is nothing to fear researching and understanding origins of Christianity. Spiritual theology taught by Christ, and modern popular Christian theology are almost diametrically opposed. Christ never taught Original sin, in fact quite the opposite, it is theologians that came after, selling dispensation and creating wealth as they went. It was a great marketing tool for the early Christian Church.
Evil will never come dressed as a Vampire or Werewolf. It will come dressed as a Church leader, a banker, political / military leader…that is what people should be concerned with and fear.
Fearing a Movie is nonsense.
I do not know anyone who fears a movie. Perhaps, some small children.
The point is the information being sent to the masses. It is cool to hang out with evil beings. They are really good, or better than humans, and while you are at it have some strange offspring.
The unconditional nature of the attraction is essential to the fantasy.
That’s a woman’s idea of male porn.
Men don’t give the woman a thought. They’re wired to the picture.
If they’re looking for anything, it’s an answer to the question of why they’re obsessed.
Made the same point in my blog, The People’s Revolutionary Critic. http://tinyurl.com/6pm6wzj, but perhaps a little less eruditely.
Short take: “…the fantasy world (the films/novels) peddle is this: A young woman can have no discernible accomplishment, character, or even a personality, and she can have hunky guys ready to kill for her.
If that ain’t porn, I don’t know what is.”
Not a fan of this series but I might have been as a tween.
If the ‘Twilight series’ are ‘porn’ for females…
…were Anne Rice’s Vampire novels homo-erotic porn for hetero men?
Mike Newton!!!
Should be the battle cry of every man faced with deprogramming the Twilight-obsessed females in their lives. When they declare they’re Team Eward, or Team Jacob tell them you’re “Team Mike”. It’ll really mess with their heads that you even know the name.
He was the one very decent, very HUMAN, boy at Bella’s high school who asks her out–only to get discarded like yesterday’s trash. Poor Mike serves only one purpose in Stephenie Meyer’s twisted world: to show how deficient normal guys are compared the immortal god boys inexplicably fighting over Bella.
So let’s hear it for Team Mike! A team for the rest of us.
And add this much-needed reality check: Ladies, it’s the Mike Newtons of the world you’ll end up with IF YOU’RE LUCKY!!!
Yes, I married a Mike, after dating a few Edwards and Jacobs. A lot of women figure out that the “bad boy” really doesn’t make good husband material. (Just like men figure out that the blond porn babe doesn’t make good wife material). But we can have our fantasies, right?
Loved your post.
Only got through the first two books–the vampire thing really doesn’t do it for me. I wasn’t a huge fan of Bram Stoker’s “Dracula” either. But I am a Ph.D. in English literature who got tired of the classics and literary fiction and now enjoys primarily commercial fiction.
BTW folks–anyone read Bram Stoker’s version? It was scandalous during its day for tapping into female desire and repressed sexuality. Of course, now it’s a classic.
Oy. The main girl does have accomplishments, does have a personality, she does have worthwhile skills. Her skills and accomplishments are the sort of accomplishments and skills that any modest, devoted, kind, literate girl will have. She attends her mother, and then chooses to let her mother carry on a new romance with her second husband. She selflessly exiles herself to Washington, with her father, so that her mother can seek happiness.
She studies, she does her homework diligently. She reads extensively, and intelligently. She familiarizes herself with the classics. She imagines outcomes for different choices in these classics. People boast about going through the Jesuit’s discipline- imagining they are in the biblical stories, and so on. She imagines herself in a Shakespeare play. Actors do this, and we cheer when they say they studied the plays. She helps her friends with their work- signing graduation announcements with one friend.
She keeps house. You men keep jumping over this. She’s working- she’s cleaning house, she’s doing the grocery-shopping, she’s cooking, she’s cleaning up- she’s washing dishes by hand. She isn’t complaining- not one word. She’s good at this. Do you get that your wives might want a book that notices the everyday goodness of sustaining a household???? That’s twenty hours of her week, at least- cooking from scratch, washing dishes by hand, scrubbing toilets on her hands and knees– these are just the things mentioned in the books—you want family life valorized?? This is the book that does it.
She reads, which any professor will tell you is a worthwhile activity. She reads the classics. She studies calculus her senior year, even though it’s not comfortable for her. The other great math student is also a girl- an ambitious one. She holds good grades, even when she is miserable. She’s not acting out, or lurching about, or occupying anything. She’s doing the step by step good acts of a normal life. This is why her boyfriends adore her- she’s good, and kind, and modest.
For all you snapping about “womyn’s studies” FWIW- Twilight is anathema to them, because she is a good, modest, virginal girl. You should be ashamed of yourself for name-calling and slandering. And, well, for stupidity.
This is a quiet story about a modest young woman who loves very deeply, and is loved in return. Have you seen the movie? This is the love lives of the audio-visual club, the yearkbook committee, the quiet kids. this is not the randian exaltation of superior beings having vigorous, non-committal sex in public.
And- guys can aspire. Develop your talents. Love the girl in your life. Respect your parents. Take a shower so you smell nice. Listen to her, and listen deeply and empathetically. It’s not that hard. Be the right guy.
The main character Edward- he’s in a tee-shirt. He’s wearing a family crest wristband, reminding him to always behave honorably,to bring honor to his father. He’s driving the family car. He’s protective of his girlfriend. What’s so out of any guy’s league on any of this?
Last time I checked, men are capable of taking baths daily, right? There’s no law saying don’t do your homework. There isn’t any barrier to listening to someone talk. How is this too big a reach?
Your post defending the fairer sexes’ infatuation with this movie confirms my belief that I will never understand the mind of a woman. I take baths daily,have worked diligently all of my life to raise responsible adult children, have several grandchildren and then have to listen to a woman call me stupid for not undestanding the inherent good in a vapid movie about vampires and werewolves who only exist to put a female on a pedestal above all else. No wonder males feel emasculated in todays culture.
And I bet your wife thinks you’re great!
You’re not stupid- it’s just not your party. That’s all. It’s a girl’s party.
You don’t have to understand.
You already live the life the movie celebrates. That’s why you think it’s vapid. For women who haven’t lived that life- it’s a big fantasy. Ya’ll good guys should celebrate- you’re the heroes in this movie.
I saw Breaking Dawn Part 1 yesterday. It’s a good movie, and hits most of the great aspects of the book, apart from the comic Jacob/Rosalie interchanges.
But I understood that a couple of men just couldn’t take the birth scene, that they rolled on the theatre floors, grunting and puffing at the shock of it all. I think that either these men are morons, or the stories are concocted by movie types who want to scare sensitive souls from seeing Breaking Dawn.
Really, the birth scene is tame, especially as compared to the book’s description.
Congratulations for carrying on arguing with Twi haters, tho. I don’t have the patience. And since the best revenge is money, it seems that so far, Breaking Dawn has taken in almost half a BILLION $. Wonderful.
Ma’am: I would suggest the examples you’re offering are from the novels. As Bella is portrayed in the films, she has all the accomplishment and personality of a blank 3 x 5 index card.
you know, the movies are famously different than the books. I’m still ginched that the first Grisham book was hashed up so badly on themes. Sometimes that’s a good thing- “Field of Dreams” the movie was 100 times better than the story it was based on.
so, twilight, while not hitting all the cylinders that made it a beloved, sold hand to hand, worldwide sensation: has some subtle moments that I’m really good with. First off- nobody’s at a mall. Second off, I don’t see a single miniskirt. Third off- the high-school characters are behaving loyally and kindly one to another. Fourth- no eyeliner. No girls walking around with ferret-rings around their eyes. And big glasses. A strong supporting character thinking about her big speech- and people helping her, rather than tearing her down.
And a wedding proposal. They are not having pre-marital sex, and he still thinks she’s a hotty makeout queen. There seems to be two settings in pop culture right now- cold as ice, angry, indifferent, clueless, or already laid. There’s no lush flirtatious state. I’m happy there is a movie where a courtship is progressing.
Taylor Swift videos cover the same bases, really.
Twilight, Schmilight.
Boy reading conservative columns is a hoot! Always missing the point while declaring the end of society/American way of life on the basis of frivolous pop culture nonsense. Please. Get off of your high horses and relax. Sure twilight may be “porn” for women but why is that a bad thing? The author and the commenters talk as if women are too stupid to differentiate between fiction and reality, just as these Christians whose entire faith is predicated upon the grandest lie ever told– god exists– that say men that watch porn are evil or bad. Wake up people! Conservatism is dangerous at worst, farce at best.
Jon – Your point can be summarized as “Conservatives are stupid and dangerous.” Gee, that was a very insightful observation that contributed greatly to this dialogue…very well thought out, thank you very much. Now I understand the world and everything in it much better.
Ok so the last few lines may have been a cheap shot to express my discontent with conservatism, but you can still answer my first question. if twilight really is porn for women why is it a bad thing?
Wooooow. I cannot believe people are actually bickering about whether or not Twilight is porn.
Who cares?
Men will watch porn, women will read bad romance novels. THIS WILL NOT CHANGE.
Myself? I read fantasy novels and political essays. I’ve read romance and found it rather stupid. I mean, Twilight is no different than the romance I read that had this burned-before divorcee getting with a greek god. No seriously, an actual greek god. I forget his name, but I remember Eros being this motorcycle riding bad boy who smoked, and at the end in order for the main girl the break the main guy’s curse, she had to sleep with him for one whole night with him in her.
I mean, seriously! THIS IS /ROMANCE/????
No thank you.
You girls can stick with your porno, and I’ll stick with this awesome epic of heroism and political intrigue, oh and love on the side (think anything Brandon Sanderson, Robert Jordan, and Patrick Rothfuss).
btw–when did the monster that is the vampire devolve into pretty people with superpowers who sparkle in the sun? And why with the werewolf? Why can’t monsters be monsters? Next thing I know I’ll see a novel about a girl pining after a hot angsty /CTHULHU/.
And women around the world would //love// it!
ARGH!
romance novels cover private lives and emotions. women who read romance novels, in general, are happier in their private lives, and verifiably more demonstrative with their spouses. it’s a win- win for the couple.
Jon,
I do not give a whit about “porn for women” anymore than I do porn for men, as I imagine women can take care of themselves in this regard just as men can, whether they are greased by modern technology or otherwise (sorry).
My wife said to ask you if you like Beavis or Butthead better. I absolutely refuse to do that as it would be over the top presumptuous and very un-Christian.
That said, the issue of whether I prefer to see my daughter date a vampire or a wolf-changer (whatever) is key, I would prefer neither.
Hope that helps.
okay, so I’m puzzling out why the vehemence on the perfect guy bit. You guys keep mentioning his skills. Well, there aren’t girls lined up outside a Superman movie, squealing all out, and he flies. And Batman has super-strength, and a fast car. No girls at that premiere…so maybe, just maybe…. it’s super-listening? just a thought. He’s a gentleman who listens, and aske follow-up questions, and he’s the right guy. That helps a lot.
The “post-modern” bit is a joke. The Hunchback of Notre Dame was written when- 18th century? One of the first novels? There are three main men: one, a churchman, two a soldier, and three, a deformed, deaf-mute cripple. The priest is riven by seething darkness within himself, the soldier is a moral coward and predator. The only good, brave, kind character is the hunchback. I don’t think there was Post- Modernism prior to Modernism.
There’s an article here by Sunny (how does one link?) where she shows pictures of dictators in their youth. They’re adorable- looking. That’s what women’s literature is usually about- discerning the inner character that will get written on a man’s features as he ages.
we all know we’ll end up with regular guys. We’d just like to end up with guys devoted to us, and our offspring. How is that the end of western civilization? It’s the end of the boomer party, and that’s about it.
and, porn. I just skipped that as nonsensical. There is women’s porn. All the jokes about castration- you always thought it meant lopping off your manly parts,and keeping the rest of the Ken Doll. Go look at the ads in B**ch or Bust- they seem to lop off the manly parts and make plastic, sparkly, vibrating models of them, and then discard the rest of you. It’s not really possible to read femininist magazines in the kids’ section at the Barnes and Noble without molesting little kids’ eyes. The ads alone are more explicit than in Playboy. It’s kind of creepy. The whole modern conceit seems to involve putting a great deal of battery operated implements and print between a man and his wife.
Devotion, tenderness, love, smoking hot honeymoons, getting along with mother-in-laws–how does any of this have a downside?
The first I heard of the Twilight series was from my hairdresser. She lent me her copy so I felt obliged to read it, even though I’m not a fan of romance novels. I found the plot and characters boring and obvious, but I’ve never been susceptible to this type of novel. I prefer biographies of fascinating flesh-and-blood women. I’ve recently been re-reading the British author Lesley Blanch(whose own life resembled a romance novel). She was a brilliant writer whose perceptive biographies of bewitching women like Jane Digby, Harriette Wilson, Isabelle Eberhardt and Laurence Hope are enthralling.
I do, however, admire the success of Stephanie Meyers who, whether by accident or design, is the latest in a line of romance novel authors like Danielle Steele and Jackie Collins. Romance novels for women are like thriller novels for men in that literary talent is not important. What counts is identifying your audience, finding a compelling plot device that can be endlessly tweaked and inventing characters that will keep readers coming back for more.
Mary Gerund in comment #45…you owe Trangbang68 and his brothers who served to keep your sorry ass safe more than you can imagine. How in God’s name do you say something like that? You are lost.
Trangbang, thank you for having kept good people and dregs alike safe while they sleep…God bless you!
Thanks John, Mary is a fool who isn’t worth the worry.
Amen
“Amen”: that’s what about 2 million Vietnamese souls are doing who never did you any harm. Last I checked Trang Bang is no where near Venice Beach. I already said: I got no problem with career professional soldiers: they did what they had to do – it’s their job and opinions are not asked for or wanted.
Having said that, there is no reason to act like this was in any way an honorable war. The only reason that Kennedy and Johnson weren’t standing with earphones at a court like Nuremberg is that no one could make them – that’s not the same as being right.
Can any one explain to me how killing Vietnamese made me or one person in America safe? This was about global positioning and bases here and there and American hegemony, a chess game fueled by death. WW II had actual threats.
OK Mary, if you say so. Ummm….how do you sleep at night? Are you thankful that rough men stand ready to inflict harm on enemies of the United States so that you can sleep safely, along with your children? Would you rather, just for example, live under Sharia law under which, as a women you would be……oh never mind, please research that subject yourself, and please let me know what you think of life under Sharia as a free-thinking woman. Or do you prefer to live in the past? Hope to hear from you about your feelings about Sharia. That is, of course the more modern issue and the one that needs to be addressed currently.
Hello Mary – Hmmm, sorry for replying to my own comment, whatever…are you a 70′s flower-child who hasn’t qgotten over the fall of the Berlin Wall, or is there perhaps more to it (that most if not all of us can’t remotely relate to?)
I’m the Jenny that was actually quoted in this article and I believe a few of you have misunderstood what I meant by “brain porn”. I did not mean that Twilight in itself was pornographic (quite to opposite, of course). Rather, by “brain porn” I meant that women get off reading Twilight but in a cerebral/emotional sense, not in a sexual sense (that’s what fan fiction is for, thankfully).
I have to say I thoroughly enjoyed reading these comments – it’s always interesting to see how… passionate people can be about something like this.
The debates about pornography were… illuminating. I’m always blown away by how much some people care what grown men and women do behind closed doors and how colorful the sweeping generalizations were regarding people (or in this case men) who watch pornography.
I may have missed it (there were an awful lot of comments) but I don’t believe anyone mentioned anything about women who consume pornography (and I don’t mean we actually sit around gnawing on XXX DVD’s. I felt I need to clarify that since a few of the commenters above seem to take things very literally).
Pornography is lovely. I’m a fan of it, as are many of my 2000 + followers on my blog. Most of my readers are well-educated, in committed relationships, mothers, etc. Just normal, run of the mill people, really.
So, here’s the thing about porn – more people watch it than you probably realize. These are people who bag your groceries, take your blood pressure at the doctor’s office, write you parking tickets and so on and so on. There’s a reason why the porn industry is huge. It’s not just gross perverted men lurking in the dark corners of adult stores. It’s people from all demographics.
Cheers, Jenny
I just had to comment on what you wrote. Now I am not someone who usually replies to anything, I’m more a lurker than anything. But after going through these comments and being totally blown away by everyone’s understanding and feelings on this particular subject I must say that you have done a root toot-in good job at summing it up for those non twilighters. I am a stay at home mom of 4. I do enjoy a good pornographic story every so often, and I write them myself at times. (not very well but I try my hand at times) I personally see the whole twilight saga as a way for women like myself to escape the realities of the hum-dum daily life that I currently reside in. Every girl dreams of finding that special someone who would risk everything and want nothing but to be with her. And this story has two brooding men who adore and want this one slightly sloppy, emotionally unstable, reckless, helpless girl. This girl represents every woman at some point in her life. Every girl can see herself in this one character, so how easy is it to fall in love with the series? It would be impossible for a guy to understand the complexities of a woman’s brain. So why even try to explain it further? It would be an endless task that would get us nowhere. So now that i have put in my lil bit of evaluation (for lack of a better word) I just wanted to let you know that I agree with your comment 100% and if anyone else has issues then they are their own.
Laura, you wrote:
“It would be impossible for a guy to understand the complexities of a woman’s brain.”
OK, I’ll give you that one. You also wrote:
“And this story has two brooding men who adore and want this one slightly sloppy, emotionally unstable, reckless, helpless girl.”
If in fact they were men, as you refer to them, the message would be far less problematic in our household.
As I already mentioned, my teenage daughter read one of the books and I asked her what she thought about the fact that the 2 main male characters were a vampire (an evil entity) and a werewolf (an evil entity). She said, “I know, why not just make them 2 regular human guys with interesting character traits? Then it would be a great story. It’s like the author is trying to make evil things acceptable by making them look and sound pretty and by implying they are not evil, just misunderstood.”
My cranium may house a less complex brain than yours, but I am able to fathom that important distinction. I’m thankful my daughter can as well.