The four women of my house are all aglow this week over the eminent release of “New Moon,” the second movie in the Twilight saga. They have their tickets purchased for opening day and are divided into friendly camps of “Team Edward” and “Team Jacob,” although I’m sure they would happily join whichever “Team shows up at the door.”
I freely admit that I have not read any of the Twilight books, but I know the stories. (SPOILER ALERT: if you have not read the books and plan to do so, please don’t read further). The basic outline is something like this: Bella meets Edward the vampire in book one and they fall in love (with lots of soulful staring on her part, lots of soulless longing on his). In book two, Edward leaves Bella to protect her from the violent nature of vampires, allowing Jacob the werewolf to move in, usually shirtless. Something happens at the end and Edward and Bella are reunited.
Book three finds them fighting a dangerous vampire threat while working out their confusing love triangle. Bella realizes that she loves both Jacob and Edward, but the wily wisdom of the old bloodsucker wins out, leaving Jacob to run away, searching for a silver bullet.
In the final book, Bella and Edward marry and immediately conceive a child. Bella nearly dies during childbirth, so Edward turns her into a vampire as well, promising them an immortal life of youth, devotion and pale skin. Jacob, having returned and not wanting to be left out, “imprints” on their newborn daughter, which is somehow explained as making her his soul-mate (but not in a creepy way).
I assume that there is much more to it than that, but honestly, I could care less. I still can’t get past the disturbing premise. First, we’re supposed to accept that it’s perfectly okay for a one hundred year old vampire to stalk the halls of a high school and hit on teenage girls. As a father of three daughters, I have a minor objection to that.
Then, I have to wonder, why is this guy still in high school? How stupid is he? This has to be his 20th trip through twelfth grade! Is this supposed to be an indictment on the state of our public education system? Storywise, the only reason Edward is in high school is to meet Bella. That’s not fate, that’s stretching credibility. He should have moved on with his life long ago. (He could be a young looking Doctor. It worked with Doogie Howser).
Fans ignore all of this however. His age supposedly gives him a worldly essence, a Victorian romantic spirit as if a young Heathcliff himself walked straight off the moors into a modern American high school. “Men don’t act like that these days,” those caught under his undead spell will say. “He respects her and protects her. He’s so courteous and manly.”
Have they looked at the guy in the movie? He reminds me of an eighties punk rocker. Sort of like Billy Idol without all the leather and different color hair. Real men don’t wear lipstick.
I guess one reason that this bothers me so much is that the heroine, Bella, is every father’s worst nightmare. She’s that smart, good girl who suddenly becomes obsessed with the dangerous boy. She throws everything else away in her desire to be near him. Nothing else matters. When she’s grounded by her Dad, she slips out and runs through menacing forests and jumps off cliffs. Her life has no meaning without Edward (or…for a short time, the hunky, shirtless, but also very dangerous Jacob).
Bella is definitely not the role model for an “independent, strong young woman with healthy self-esteem” that we parents wish for. She is a morose, delusional, morbidly selfish girl who finds her self-worth only through the man she loves. In a world without vampires and werewolves, she’d end up being the doormat of some brutish, semi-charismatic loudmouth, wearing long sleeves to hide the bruises and telling her family that she can’t leave him because he loves her so much.
Am I taking all of this too seriously? Yeah, probably. It’s just a silly set of books and movies. Surely teenage girls can separate the difference between a fictional character (who might be dangerous but is primarily honorable and sexy), and the hot guy at the next locker (who tells her how pretty she is, opens her car door, and threatens that if she really loved him, she’d prove it). That’s just the nature of romance, right?
Like most of my rants and arguments, this will likely fall on deaf ears. “Much ado about nothing,” will be the snickering answer, and I sincerely hope so. I hope my girls enjoy it for what it is and see it for what it isn’t. I pray that they understand that the real-life “Edwards” are not always so chivalrous, and the real-life “Jacobs” might not always be the rescuer, but the one they need rescuing from. I hope they don’t get blinded by pretty boys who somehow “sparkle” in the sun, but find someone who thinks and treats them like they hung the moon.
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