And the movie that I'm going to be talking about this week is...
I'm sure you're all so excited. My biggest problem with this movie, if I can be said to have only one, is the fact that stalking is glorified in this movie to the point of being the romantic "ideal". When Bella discovers Edward in her bedroom she isn't upset, but rather appears to be somewhat aroused, even when it is revealed that he has been watching her sleep for months.
Then there's the plot point where this older man (vampire, "cold one", whatever) has been choosing adolescents to form into perfect, eternal partnerships forever, in some sort of bizarre reimagining of the eternal bond of marriage into something even more ghoulish and frightening than the idea of having one and only one soul mate who can possibly complete you is already. It's unclear how much choice the children are given, and despite further life experience they remain subservient to him, as does his "wife" whom he apparently chose in the same process. I found this to be exactly what bell hooks talks about in FIFE, the women are not being given agency to determine their own sexual destinies, a fate made even more explicit by the metaphor of immortality and permanence, and the decisions about their partnerships are decided by "fate", as executed by an older white man who is explicitly put into a position of power over them. It's creepy stuff.
Even creepier is the saga of Bella's pregnancy (which crops up after the Twilight movie, but which will no doubt be brought to life in the subsequent films in all its brutal, horrifying glory) which highlights excellently the issues raised in Rowe-Finkbeiner's discussion of modern motherhood and reproductive rights. It's hard to compare having a half-vampire, super-quick-developing messiah of a daughter with every day motherhood but the question of when and if a girl should bear a child was something that struck me as a horrible, horrible oversight in the books. It was never even mentioned that she had any option other than to have the baby, even though it very literally killed her to bear it. The scene in which it is literally gnawed out of her body as she dies of the trauma is one of the most traumatizing things that I have ever read, up to and including accounts of rape survivors. That something that graphic can be considered perfectly acceptable fare for young adults (especially with the subtext that it was a good thing that she literally was beaten to death by her child while bearing it, and that that was the correct choice for her to have made) literally frightens me.
I could literally go on for another eight or nine paragraphs about things that are wrong with the book, the movie adaptation, and the rest of the series, but instead I will finish with this wonderful and uplifting tidbit: Catherine Hardwicke, who directed Twilight with a predominantly female crew on a fairly small budget and limited shooting schedule, was offered roughly the same budget and schedule to do New Moon, the sequel, despite Twilight's killer box office. She turned it down and it was subsequently given to a man, Chris Weitz, with a bigger budget and a longer filming schedule. Uplifting, huh?
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