So anyway, this week it's time for some Shit I Hate. As I noted in my last post, there are 3 criteria for me to hate something -that it be unreasonably, excessively popular, morally objectionable or controversial, or just plain crap- and that a property required at least 2 of those 3 to earn my actual wrath (as opposed to my common apathy). Stephanie Meyer's Twilight hits the perfect trifecta of all three and as a result is probably the one modern pop-culture product that I loathe and despise above all others. My hatred for Twilight goes well beyond merely not liking it- to me it is a blight on the cultural landscape that needs to be smacked down and stamped out at every turn. That's why I'm actually bothering to post about it even though entire ESSAYS have been written both for and against it already.
Looking at my 3 criteria, the fact that Twilight sucks is arguably the LEAST of my problems with it. And yes, this is not a matter of opinion- anyone with any understanding of literature or quality writing can tell that the series is complete and utter tripe. Stephanie Meyer is a total hack and Twilight is barely above the level of the self-insert fanfiction written by teenage girls who failed english class (Meyer even admitted she based the entire series on a wet dream she had about being seduced by a gorgeous sparkly man in a sunlit meadow). It's supposed to be a romance, but the romantic leads, Edward Cullen and Bella Swan, have absolutely no chemistry whatsoever and very little personality. Bella is a Mary Sue of the highest order- she goes on about how clumsy she is and how she's not all that attractive in a poor attempt to mitigate this, but literally the entire goddamn plot revolves around her and everyone obsesses over her and loves her, despite the fact that she's honestly a total bitch (look at how she treats her family and human "friends" throughout the series) and as thick as pigshit. Edward is, to be completely blunt, a personality-deficient douchebag. Jacob was a likeable enough character, but Meyer realised that this was actually a problem (since he was only there to fill out the third side of the love triangle) so she changed tack and wrote him as a creepy borderline rapist who forces a kiss on Bella in order to make Edward look better and then hooked him up with a newborn baby girl. The plot is full of holes, Ass Pulls (the bullshit Meyer pulled to explain Bella's pregnancy is enough to make you hemmorhage from your eyes) and just plain bad writing. So yeah, Twilight sucks on any actual level of quality and if you think it doesn't then you're wrong. But like I said, this isn't my real problem with the series. After all, just because something sucks doesn't mean it's bereft of redeeming features, or can't have its moments, or even that you can't just enjoy it anyway, either because it's So Bad It's Good or simply that you actually WANT something mindless. There ain't no law saying that you can't like something that sucks.
But then there's my second problem with Twilight. Namely, that there is a massive and honestly psychotically rabid fanbase out there who will claim without the slightest trace of irony that Stephanie Meyer's "magnum opus" is unquestionably the greatest work of fiction in the history of mankind. Now keep in mind that, as I just pointed out, Twilight is rubbish. And yet it's getting this kind of critical response from the fans. I've known people who will proudly admit that the Twilight books are the only books they've ever read (undoubtably hyperbole as everyone reads books when they're growing up, if only in english class, but you know what they mean). I reserve a particular scorn for things that become massively popular while being crap on the basis that they can set depressing trends towards low-quality, high grabbing-power product which is all style and no substance, resulting in more of the same garbage. Right now, publishers will be out there looking for "the next Twilight" to publish and make oodles of money off, ignoring the fact that Twilight is garbage because MONEY! Encouraging this kind of shit results in an eventual watering down of the overall quality of whichever medium you apply it to- not only literature, but also movies, video games, bands, TV, whatever. I mentioned Sturgeons Law in my last post- that 90% of everything is crap, but the 10% that remains is the REALLY good stuff. So what do you suppose happens when it's the 90% of the crap which actually sells better than the 10% of quality? Yeah.
Also, it's just damn depressing to see how stupid so many girls can be made to look. I read a story once about a couple of teenage girls who went up to actor Robert Pattison and showed him the self-inflicted 'bite wounds' they'd made on their own throats, telling him "We did this for you." Um, thanks? Seriously, these girls cannot all be as stupid as this series is making them look.
Bob Chipman, a man for whom I have boundless respect, once wrote a column about why he thinks Twilight is so popular- basically because female readers simply aren't being given what they want, so if you offer them even something as crap as Twilight they'll seize on it desperately. Twilight went out into a virtual vacuum where anything that hit the right buttons -blank-slate protagonist for the reader to project herself onto, gorgeous immortal stalkers proclaiming eternal love- would be a sure-fire hit. So that at least explains the popularity, even if it doesn't really excuse it. Now, with Twilight dominating the female literaturescape, it'll be difficult for anything of genuine quality to make its mark without being compared to Twilight- and then a lot of preconceptions may result in a lot of genuinely good material not getting a fair go.
But the main reason I hate Twilight -and this is the one that takes me from a strong dislike to an outright loathing- is that the series is morally repulsive. A lot of people have already written on this (including Bob) and they're all right- Twilight is absolutely loaded with more Unfortunate Implications and Family-Unfriendly Messages than I can possibly summarise in a single blog post. At the core of the series is the idea that the perfect boyfriend is a moody, controlling, jealous, verbally and emotionally abusive stalker whose struggle to keep himself from hurting his girlfriend is seen as an attractive trait. By absolutely any definition, Edward and Bella's "relationship" is sick, twisted and abusive and yet because of the series aforementioned absurd popularity it's being idealized. That's why I hate Twilight more than pretty much any other product of modern culture- because it promotes ideas and messages that are blatantly harmful and its undemanding fanbase just eats it up. Word of advice, girls: if you meet a brooding, attractive boy who is insulting and abusive to you but obsesses over you to the point of stalking you, steer well clear of him. He's not a vampire. He's just an asshole.
And that isn't even getting into the painfully heavy-handed abstinence message (and the fact that the choice about when to "do it" is completely in Edward's hands, not Bella's), the outright disgusting implications of werewolf 'imprinting' (short version: when the guy falls in love with a girl- that's it, they're together forever, regardless of whether she likes him or not, whether she already has someone else she loves or whether she's blatantly underage), or the borderline pedophiliac implications of the end of the series. It's revolting, and that's what makes the fangirl assertions that it's "the greatest thing EVER" cause me to weep tears of blood.
Hating Twilight has gone beyond being cool and has reached the stage where it's old and unfashionable. As well, even a lot of haters think that the level of hate the series has attracted has gone too far. But it's not as if I ever hated on the series because it was "cool" to do so. I hate this series and oppose it wherever I see it because it should be hated. It isn't hated enough. While I wouldn't ascribe any impure motives to Stephanie Meyer herself (while she lacks any real talent and has some unpleasant beliefs about a woman's place in a relationship, I doubt she's doing anything malevolently) Twilight is, purely and simply, a minor modern evil. Let it be crap for all I care, let it be unreasonably popular to the extent that it chokes out far more deserving properties. But for the love of god, we can't afford to tolerate people taking its inherent messages seriously or it could give rise to an entire generation of starry-eyed, prettyboy-idolising domestic abuse victims.
Am I being hysterical? Possibly. Hell, even probably. But as far as I'm concerned this is a real problem. Sure, as far as social problems go it's seriously small-fry. But that's no reason to tolerate it. Besides, someone needs to tell those "Twilight moms" they're seriously creepy.
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