March 30, 2009

So someone asked me, "read any good books, lately?" and in the spirit of affable smalltalk, it was inappropriate to start waving my arms and talking in escalating volume and speed about how mad my most recent read made me. Instead I typed it as an essay for the book readers I know: This is a rant about the book Twilight. I couldn’t put the book down while I was reading it, but when I finished the 500 pages, I was nauseated and frustrated and humiliated. This is the story of those feelings.

Personal Background: I am a firm believer that good story telling is a pure art – and transcends culture, time, and even audience. For the purposes of this rant, I will focus on the fact that good story telling can also be found in books that are intended for younger audiences – where from there may be omission of adult themes and selection of vocabulary that is age appropriate. Yes, I thoroughly enjoyed Harry Potter.

Book Background: Twilight is the story of a teenage girl (Bella Swann) who moves to live with her father in the small, rural town of Forks, WA. There is the normal afterschoolspecial themes of fitting in as the new girl at the Highschool, making friends, meeting boys. The huge twist is that the boy that Bella falls head-over heels for (Edward Cullen) happens to be a Vampire (insert theramin noises). Twist on the twist – this coven of vampires attempts to live off the blood of other animals rather than Humans… but rather than whet your appetite with more details, here are my concerns:

I. Twilight blatently perpetuates certain teen romance stereotypes (which will continue to befuddle teenage boys and serve as an obstacle to mature relationships with timely and effective communication about expectations and behavior… HA! Like I know about that either):
a) Girls should compete with each other for the attention of the most desirable boy;
b) Looks are the key criteria for teenage crushes;
c) Get mad and/or pouty to get your way, or at least shift the balance in the relationship;
d) Prom is the most important thing that can possibly happen.

II. At least in ‘Lost Boys,’ the coven hung out at the amusment park to meet high school girls. In Twilight, the vampires who are between 100 and sixty years old like to attend high school. As with most good vampire stories there are other interesting (and some annoying) twists on the Vampire Myth SPOILER ALERT:
a) Vampires actually sparkle in the light, which would make them obvious, that is why they prefer overcast or dark;
b) As part of vampirism, other personal skills/attributes are heightened – where they can (in no particular order): read minds, predict the future, or influence situations;
c) Vampires don’t sleep in coffins – in fact, they don’t sleep at all;
d) There is no flying or turning into bats… but there is super fast running, strength, and super-duper reflexes;
e) Vampires can wear crosses, endure stakes through the heart, and drink holy water. The way to kill one is to cut him/her into thousands of little pieces and burn the pieces.

III. In addition to frustrating me by having pages and pages of the two of them staring into each other’s eyes – teenage longing... The use of the perpetual debate between Edward and Bella about A) him being overwhelmingly tempted to bite Bella and taste her sweet sweet blood or; B) her begging him to bite her and turn her into a vampire so she can be with him for eternity…. I GET IT… him piercing her unspoiled beauty... sexual frustration. Tortuous tantric teases tend to turn taste into turbidity.

IV. And… FINALLY…. Between all the teen romance, there is a little bit of drama. SPOILER ALERT… a coven of less-enlightened vampires travels through Forks, and Bella is forced to flee because her sweet sweet blood is irresistible to … aww, nevermind. Don’t worry about it because after three chapters of build-up, when Edward’s coven comes to the rescue, Bella passes out and we never find out what happened! The closest thing to action (of any sort) in this book is when the vampires play baseball. (Seriously!?) Instead the author uses the next couple chapters to plant seeds for drama in the future books of the series.

Oops, I forgot to preface all this by a) watch out for my excessive use of elipses, colons, parenthetical notation, and b) NERDALERT!