Don’t Worry — Twilight Is Still Terrible

Good news!

Stephanie Meyer is writ­ing another book about VAMPIRES. Ima­gine that!

(Note: ima­gin­ing a Stephanie Meyer books in any way guar­an­tees that you’ve thought about it more than the author ever has.)

I’m sure, as a sane per­son, that you’re think­ing ‘Why? Weren’t four enough?’. Well unfor­tu­nately friends, four is never enough — espe­cially for someone who ran out of plot at around page twenty-five but kept on going for the remain­ing one thou­sand, six hun­dred and sev­enty five pages any­way. There can never be enough for that kind of person.

And it’s almost entirely cer­tain that there can never be enough of any­thing for the force known as the Teen­age Fan Mar­ket. As long as they can scream them­selves into pants wet­ting uncon­scious­ness over it or fatu­ously self-identify with it then they’re all for it. Just you try stop­ping them.

So more Twi­light it is. This time in the form of a free to down­load novella titled The Short Second Life of Bree Tan­ner.

You’re think­ing ‘Who?’, right?

Don’t worry — so was I, and I’ve (sadly) read the whole bloody saga.

(Note: someone needs to tell me how Twi­light actu­ally qual­i­fies as a saga. Seriously.)

Luck­ily for both you and I the exist­ence of such a thing as a Twi­light Wiki (I fuck­ing KNOW) makes it pos­sible to find out ‘what the hell’ almost instantaneously.

So Bree Tan­ner is a ‘new born VAMPIRE’ cre­ated by the ‘evil’ (though in my opin­ion per­fectly reas­on­able and like­able) Vic­toria dur­ing the course of the third novel as part of an ill-fated revenge plot to murder the fuck out of cent­ral char­ac­ter Bella Swan.

We all remem­ber Bella Swan right? Dull, dish water brown and more insipid than a whole moun­tain of very insipid things. A turbo twat who sac­ri­fices col­lege, an edu­ca­tion, an inde­pend­ent future and in the end, even her own human­ity to get teen preg­nant to a one hun­dred year old miso­gyn­ist creeper. That Bella Swan.

I’m sure we remem­ber her. It would be dif­fi­cult to for­get her given the pop­ular­ity of both the books and movies she fea­tures in.

Which brings me, in a round about fash­ion back to the point I began with — The Short Second Life of Bree Tan­ner, to be released online and in books stores on June 5th of this year.

It prom­ises to be — and I’m sure Meyer and the people who optioned the rights to her work would back me when I say this — A MUST HAVE, MUST READ EVENT THAT WILL ADD DEPTH AND UNDERSTANDING TO YOUR … UH … UNDERSTANDING, I GUESS, OF THE TWILIGHT UNIVERSE AND HOW MUCH VAMPIRES RULE … OR SOMETHING

Or to use less CAPSLOCK and sar­casm, it’s an extremely clever mar­ket­ing ploy.

This doesn’t take a huge work of effort or genius to work out — unless you hap­pen to fall into the mem­ber­ship cri­teria for the Twi­light fandom.

(Note: mem­ber­ship cri­teria for the Twi­light fan­dom con­sists of being a thir­teen to sev­en­teen year old girl, or, if you’re older then you have the men­tal age and capa­city of a thir­teen to sev­en­teen year old girl.)

All you have to do is take some time to think it over and even­tu­ally the real­isa­tion will dawn on you.

“Hmmmm…’, you’ll think, “…a new, free to read Twi­light novella about a char­ac­ter fea­tured in the third book of the series Eclipse … I won­der when that movie comes out…”.

You already, or course, know when the movie comes out, even if you don’t now the exact date. Exper­i­ence and healthy cyn­icism tells you when: twenty-three days after the release of The Short Second Life of Bree Tan­ner.

You know this because twenty-three days is the exact amount of time neces­sary for a Twi­light fan to read a novella, talk to their friends about how totally cool it was, know­ingly tell people who haven’t read it yet just “How much, you know, deeper it makes Break­ing Dawn ’cause it’s like, sad and junk”, and then get SUPER EXCITED about the movie which they will undoubtedly go to see six times in the theatre because Robert Pat­tison is so dreamy and not at all a poor square headed chump who should have run a mile the moment his agent men­tioned the role of Edward ‘Creeper’ Cul­len to him.

(Note: poor Robert Pat­tison. Dude got hit by a car because of those movies… but I digress. A lot.)

Who­ever came up with this idea is a bloody genius. Whether it was Meyer her­self, her pub­lisher, her pub­li­cist or the mar­ket­ing team at Sum­mit Enter­tain­ment or where-ever — who­ever it was, it was a masterstroke.

But apart from appre­ci­at­ing the mar­ket­ing genius of it, why care? It’s just a book. It’s just stu­pid VAMPIRES. Who cares about VAMPIRES?

No-one but teen­age girls (and the emo­tion­ally crippled) right? So why bother writ­ing about it?

It’s not like impres­sion­able, vul­ner­able young women are being exposed to a large amount of ques­tion­able and poten­tially dan­ger­ous ideals and atti­tudes. It’s not like the Twi­light nov­els act­ively pro­mote abstin­ence based sex ed. and tol­er­a­tion of abus­ive relationships.

Wait. What?

You mean impres­sion­able young women are being exposed to these things? And the Twi­light books do pro­mote that stuff?

Well why didn’t you say so before?! Come on in! We’ve got so much to talk about!

If you’ve pre­vi­ously waded your way through my pre­vi­ous Twi­light rant then you’ll be famil­iar with a num­ber of my moral objec­tions to the series. You may, if you don’t feel like re-treading some argu­ments and expand­ing them a little fur­ther want to Skip to The End at this point.

If how­ever, you’re like me, and you could wail on dumb books from here until the end of the world and never once get tired of it then stick with me for the next little while. I will not let you down.

Stephanie Meyer, on some occa­sions, has been heard to make the grand claim that her nov­els, as they stand, are a study or mas­ter­work on a ‘woman’s right to choose’ as engendered by mod­ern wave fem­in­ism. The choices made by cent­ral char­ac­ter and fem­in­ist icon in the mak­ing Bella Swan about her future are her own to make.

The Twi­light Saga then, is a cel­eb­ra­tion of female empower­ment and there­fore a gift to young women.

Apart from when it’s not. Which is all the time.

In actual fact, in pen­ning the Twi­light Saga Meyer has com­mit­ted a crime akin to aggrav­ated assault against teen­age girls and their abil­ity to choose a future not filled with ter­rible choices.

On closer inspec­tion the real mes­sage con­veyed by the nov­els is noth­ing more than ‘There is always a magic bullet!’.

Any of your prob­lems — from acne to heart­break and back — can be solved, not by any human endeav­our or effort but by becom­ing a VAMPIRE (!).

Your friends are lame and just don’t under­stand you? Become a VAMPIRE!

Your par­ents are divorced and your rela­tion­ship with your father is a frac­tured mess? Become a VAMPIRE!

Your boy­friend is an older, pos­sess­ive creeper who sneaks into your room at night while you are not even dat­ing to watch you while you sleep and who, once you are dat­ing, tells you who you can and can’t hang out with? Become a VAMPIRE!

Your sex edu­ca­tion has either been entirely absent or entirely abstin­ence based (same thing) and now you’re teen preg­nant after your first sexual encounter? Become a VAMPIRE!

There is noth­ing in the world that being a VAMPIRE can­not fix. Work­ing on becom­ing a bet­ter, well roun­ded per­son with self-worth isn’t some­thing a mere human could pos­sibly do so why bother?

After all you’re already a unique and spe­cial flower wait­ing for your one true love to com­plete you and whisk you away to a glam­or­ous, super­nat­ural forever. It’s what you deserve! If only your parents/friends/teachers/THE WORLD under­stood, right?

Wrong.

All Meyer has done is col­lect a wealth of exper­i­ences com­mon to the teen­age girl (or emo­tion­ally crippled adult) and spewed them out, slap dash, willy nilly and haphaz­ardly around the place. The end res­ult is a series of nov­els, each worse than the last with which teen­agers can relate to but which ulti­mately have no value other than that.

The respons­ib­il­ity and oppor­tun­ity to reach out and inform young women with her writ­ing is utterly ignored in favour of encour­aging and rev­el­ling the in self-centred, fool­ish and unin­formed decisions of teen­age girls the world over.

The Twi­light Saga, at it’s heart is noth­ing other than a fantasy about how cool it would be to ignore all your prob­lems and the real world and marry a VAMPIRE. Fine. That’s o.k.

Let’s just not pre­tend it’s any­thing other than that.

I will admit that it may, argu­ably, be fem­in­ist — women, do after all have the right to be respec­ted in their decisions, no mat­ter what they are. There should be no hier­archy of what is a ‘bet­ter’ choice — becom­ing a career woman or a house­wife. Neither is ‘bet­ter’ than the other. Both are simply decisions made by indi­vidu­als about the their own futures and per­sonal hap­pi­ness in life. To each their own. No one woman is rep­res­ent­at­ive of all women and to act as if this were the case is back­wards look­ing, insult­ing and dumb.

It may there­fore be argued that the nov­els, although feebly and I sus­pect acci­dent­ally, touch on an import­ant and cur­rent debate ongo­ing within mod­ern fem­in­ist circles.

It can­not how­ever be argued that the choices por­trayed in the nov­els are at all sane.

Encour­aging a teen­age girl to believe she knows bet­ter than every­one else on the planet about her abus­ive, unequal rela­tion­ship, and that ‘Hang the con­sequences! TRUE LUV IS 4EVA’ is func­tion­ally retarded.

Couch­ing teen preg­nancy within the bounds of mar­riage does not a happy end­ing make.

If you’re preach­ing abstin­ence — and Meyer is — why not preach about it last­ing into your mid to late twen­ties so that your prot­ag­on­ist can actu­ally have her own life between leav­ing high school and motherhood?

If not, why not preach safe sex?

Set­ting all this aside how­ever I can­not, and will not, claim that the Twi­light Saga is entirely worth­less: it makes idiot kids happy, which is nice. Every­one deserves to be happy. It intro­duces and encour­ages read­ing in young adults (hope­fully) func­tion­ing like a gate­way drug to more and bet­ter books. Increased lit­er­acy is both cool and a good thing.

And above all else they serve to high­light the con­cerns of young women. This is invaluable.

Some­where inside the mess of plot, abuse of the Eng­lish lan­guage and sick­en­ing middle ages wish ful­fil­ment is a bright and shiny ker­nel of truth.

Some­where beneath the sur­face of the truly ter­rible jour­ney into the under­belly of the soul that is the Twi­light saga is the con­densed exper­i­ence of the adoles­cent female, who, at the centre of things seems only to yearn for some­thing more than all of … this.

Poor girl.

Who knows what Meyer could have done for young women if only her powers of empathy with them had been used for good instead of crip­pling mundanity.

Sadly, in real­ity any sequel or exten­sion to the Twi­light fran­chise (because that is what it is now), such as the ill-fated Mid­night Sun or the soon to be released Short After­life of Bree Tan­ner will prob­ably con­tinue this trend of dis­ap­point­ment and the prac­tice of act­ively short chan­ging its reader base.

Wouldn’t it be nice though, if some­thing else were to hap­pen instead? Wouldn’t it be great if say, a more real­istic or bal­anced sequel were to appear?

What if it went, for argu­ments sake, a little like this:

…Eight years on from the con­clu­sion of Eclipse Bella and Edward’s child Renes­mee has grown up and fled the nest of the Cullen’s idyllic cabin in the woods in a fit of dis­gust at her mother’s child­like obses­sion with her father and her dam­aging lack of self-respect. She has stopped shav­ing her armpits, eat­ing meat and humans and wear­ing or using animal products and has begun attend­ing an Ivy League school where she is cur­rently read­ing Enlgish Lit­er­at­ure and Women’s Studies.

Mean­while all is not as per­fect as it seems within the happy mar­ital home — it tran­spires that Bella is the worst kind of needy super­nat­ural shrew. She never sleeps, as VAMPIRES has no need to and is a twenty-four seven ball and chain, attached firmly to her hus­band. The same hus­band who is hav­ing prob­lems of his own…

Edward, you see has dis­covered his mis­take — his real attrac­tion to Bella came not from being bon­ded soul mates, but from the excite­ment of their fraught and dan­ger­ous rela­tion­ship. Hav­ing con­fused love with situ­ational lust and sub­sequently impreg­nat­ing Bella before trans­form­ing her into a VAMPIRE he has removed both her human­ity — her only redeem­able fea­ture — and his desire for her. Con­sequently he’s been step­ping out on her with younger, mor­tal col­lege aged girls in an effort to relive the tor­rid excite­ment of times past…

The rest of the novel would be a care­fully bal­anced story of betrayal, retri­bu­tion and ulti­mately per­sonal growth and redemp­tion as Renes­mee, Bella and Edward are forced to deal with their issues and rela­tion­ships like real, grown up people.

Or rocks fall and every­body dies. The End.

That’s the only new Twi­light novel I want to read. I don’t care about poor old Bree Tan­ner and her short and almost assuredly self-absorbed little life. I want to the story of after forever after — the cau­tion­ary tale of how one comes to terms with the stu­pid decisions set in stone by the mis­takes you made when you were younger.

I want an aspect of realism.

i want a nod to the respons­ib­il­ity Meyer should feel to her own char­ac­ters and to the mil­lions of young women who have con­trib­uted to mak­ing her who and what she is today.

I want Bella to die in a fire.

How­ever, we do not often get what we want.

But we can dream…

(Note: all char­ac­ters men­tioned in the above post are the cre­ation and “intel­lec­tual” prop­erty of Stephanie Meyer. Thank Christ.)