Cynical of the Twilight books for their pre-teen target audience and resulting exploitation of young girl idealism, I scoffed last year when my newly found college friends told me they were huge fans of the series. Insisting that I would love the stories if I read them I eventually accepted their challenge and to my embarrassment and surprise I found they were right.
Though the poor writing constantly ticked me off, the hopeless romantic in me was ultimately won over and I read each book within 24 hours. The Romeo and Juliet-esque love story of all consuming love between these two teens pulled me in and never let go. My reaction was similar to the first movie of the series, Twilight.
I was completely unimpressed with the movie itself; from the bad acting, awkward moments and unrealistically intense love between Bella and Edward. Despite its obvious flaws, however, I left the theater positively giddy over Edward and fantasizing at having a boyfriend like that.
Upon viewing the second installment of the series, New Moon, I had a comparable experience. Once the initial excitement from the movie wore off, I realized the movie was pretty bad and I only liked it because it played on my own stereotypically female weakness for love stories. This exploitation pervades the books and the movies and is the sole reason that either have been so successful — the fantastical almost Cinderella like story of an average girl stumbling into wonderfully unreal situations and living “happily ever after” with her “Prince Charming” Edward.
To be blunt though, the whole thing is porn for girls. Bella is utterly ignorable in her basically average appearance and personality, leaving the focus free to be the eye candy of Jacob and Edward and their assumption of the roles as perfect boyfriends. Both are sensitive, romantic, incredibly attractive and most importantly are head over heels in love with Bella. New Moon’s reliance on Jacob’s amazing physique to hold interest is undeniable as the plot certainly leaves something to be desired. Twilight’s ability to hit on and exploit young girl’s emotions in the tender scenes between Edward and Bella is exchanged for more fighting scenes and awkward moments in New Moon. The sensitivity and naivety that Twilight almost captured could have been seriously utilized in New Moon to its advantage.
The film pretty much requires a familiarity with the first film, if not with the entire book series. I can only imagine what the long awkward pauses and Bella’s nonsensical behavior would have been like to endure without some prior insight. Beautiful beach scenes and other cinematographic moments were at times note worthy but overall left something to be desired.
Bella’s complete dependence on Edward’s love, while meant to be romantic, is really just pathetic. Granted at the end Edward is shown to be just as helpless without her, but the whole thing would probably make women’s rights advocates like Elizabeth Cady Stanton roll over in their graves. Jacob is the only thing that seems to help Bella deal with her loss, and that is by playing the macho man by fixing Bella’s bike. Perhaps this could be seen as a metaphor for trying to fix Bella’s broken heart. Subtly in the plot is also an unbending stance against premarital sex and a rebuke of female expression of sexuality. If Bella attempts anything too racy with Edward her life is at stake by rendering him out of control and thus risking a slip in his control over biting her. Bella’s request in the first movie to “kiss me” is met with Edward ending things before they went too far — how realistic…
Thus the movie is successful for all the wrong reasons and it really makes me sad, but I found myself reeled in just like the rest. Such idealistic portrayals of romance belong amongst the fairy tale creatures they include in Twilight; New Moon. Hopefully the next two movies will hit a bit more closely to reality and a little less on stereotypes.
