Chapter 11: Complications

235 pages in...

This chapter is titled thusly because the word "complications" is mentioned numerous times in the span of its 17 pages, but a better title would be, "Bella's Boring Life with Edward as Her Official OFFICIAL Boyfriend." The chapter follows Bella for a full day and a half, hour by literal hour, as she and Edward explore their young relationship. The complications that arise are as follows:

1. While watching a movie in their science class, Bella realizes that being in a dark room with Edward makes her want desperately to "touch" him (i.e., jump his bones); the intensity of the feeling makes her very uncomfortable. (This scene is depicted TWICE in this chapter, on successive days, and nothing actually happens either time.)

2. Bella has a kind of argument with Mike about Edward in gym class, though it's really just Mike voicing a mildly negative opinion about Edward and Bella telling him to go fuck himself. "He looks at you..." Mike says, "like you're something to eat" (222, MEYER IS MASTER O' IRONY), Bella "choke[s] back...hysteria," and it's unclear to me if she's about to explode on Mike in anger or if she's about to burst out laughing...

3. Bella and Edward have a brief argument about Edward reading Bella's friends minds in order to spy on her. He apologizes for upsetting her, though notice he doesn't promise to not do it again, as she requests (223).

4. Bella briefly mentions that she knows her father wouldn't like the idea of her being into Edward, despite having voiced a positive opinion about the Cullens in previous chapters.

5. Since Bella asked Edward about his hunting habits, Edward claims that day two of their relationship will be "his turn," and so he goes about raking information from Bella in the most inorganic way possible: interrogating her relentlessly throughout the day, which makes her feel self-conscious and perpetually anxious about not being interesting enough. So, instead of her characters learning about each other by having enjoyable, engaging conversation, Meyer clearly got to this point in the story and realized that Edward didn't know anything about Bella, so he was damn well going to do this all at once, and immediately. Here is an example of just one of their many dead-solemn, riveting exchanges:

"'What's your favorite color?'
[Bella rolls her eyes at him!?] 'It changes from day to day.'
'What's your favorite color today?"
'Probably brown.'
'Brown?'
'Sure. Brown is warm. I miss brown. Everything that's supposed to be brown -- tree trunks, rocks, dirt -- is all covered up with squashy green stuff here.'
'You're right,' ... 'Brown is warm.'" (228)

Uuuuuggggggghhnnnnnnng. What a stupid conversation. He's enraptured, of course. I mean, you get the sense that Bella could fart in his face and he would still be enraptured. By evening, his questions have become a little less...stupid (once he gets all the important stuff out of the way, like Bella's favorite gemstone and the kinds of flowers she prefers), and they are talking on for hours. There's a strikingly beautiful paragraph on pg 232 in which Bella nostalgically describes the Arizona landscape, which is so nice that it doesn't belong in this novel. It's so nice that I won't write it down here for fear of finding things to nitpick about it.

6. Billy Black, Jacob's dad, shows up on the very last page of this chapter, and Bella can tell from his expression that he doesn't like Edward.

And that's that, though most markedly, this chapter, while being fraught with "complications," is inescapably, relentlessly and heartbreakingly dull. The structure, bloated with unimportant instances, cycles and repeats itself, and plot points are forever wandering off the edges of cliffs to die. And yet...

Well, we'll get to that in a second. I'm just going to jump into a different subject for a while and meet you all back later at the Twilight station.

WHAT'S WORKING?
Ready to go on a detour? Okay. Bear with me.

I saw two really fun movies this weekend which I would recommend to people who like fun movies: Kick-Ass and (for the younger more easily offended crowd) How to Train Your Dragon. Linked to the trailers if you don't know the premises of either of these movies (HTTYD was better than the trailer makes it seem).

I liked these movies immensely, but they both got me thinking about the roles that female characters play in mainstream film. The depictions of girls in KA and HTTYD didn't BOTHER me (not in the way Bella Swan does at least), but they did get me thinking, and thinking can be a pain sometimes, especially when I'm aware that other people would be yelling at me to just stop thinking and enjoy myself.

In KA, you have Hit-Girl, and in HTTYD, you have Astrid, both of whom are depicted as hyper-strong girls who can do everything the boys can do, and can do it better. Lady viking and dragon-killer-in-training Astrid is the love interest and foil to our protagonist. In previous eras, the girl in animated action movies was there for the male to rescue, but nay, Astrid needs no stinkin' rescuing, and in fact proves herself the best fighter in the village, excelling in all the traditionally masculine areas of using various weaponry with expert precision and enacting a lot of rage. Hit-Girl is something similar, a knife-flinging badass, calling her adversaries "cunts" and killing without mercy. And it's not uncommon to see movies depict female characters in this way, as sleeker, more competent versions of males (Wall-E and Kung Fu Panda come instantly to mind).

And yet, these movies are not about Astrid or Hit-Girl. HTTYD is about Hiccup, who is smart, curious and innovative but also bumbling and kind of pitiful. It's his job in to teach Astrid and the rest of his village the value of learning and understanding as opposed to mindlessly killing things. And we like this guy, our social underdog, and we appreciate it when he educates Astrid, who has until now met all of the village's manly standards in order to gain acceptance . With Hit-Girl, it's a bit more complicated, because I found myself sitting in the theater thinking, "Not only is this girl more awesome than the protagonist, she's just a better CHARACTER. She has a better backstory and a better motive. And yet the movie is about THAT DORKY GUY OVER THERE." And alas, it's the title character who gets to fire the killing shot.

Of course, people may argue with me saying that movies about superheroes and dragons have to be marketed to males, and therefore they require a relatable male protagonist. But this is a trend that spans across gender neutral media as well. ALL Pixar movies have male protagonists, as does the Harry Potter series (written by a woman!), as do most cartoons, TV shows, and books targeted at both boys and girls. There are exceptions, of course--The Golden Compass, A Wrinkle in Time, Coraline, etc--but that's what they are. Exceptions. The default, looking at the bigger picture, is a male protagonist, coupled with a "strong" female character who demonstrates some overbearing feature that gets toned down throughout the course of the plot, be it strength, smarts, assertiveness or really fanatical rule-following (I'm lookin' at you Hermione Granger). Also, story points that are traditionally considered important to females (Romance is the big one) become anecdotes with little bearing on the central plot.

These aren't so much complaints as they are simply curious observations. As a young woman writing fantasy genre fiction, I've seen myself doing this. The protagonist of the novel I'm working on right now is male, though the story also takes detours into the P.o.V of his female counterpart/love interest. (I've also noticed that among the stories submitted to workshop in my supposedly ultra-liberal writing program, you're far more likely to see women writing from the point of view of men than men writing from the point of view of women. That's not to say that the latter never happens, just that it's the exception, not the rule.)

You might be wondering what this has to do with Twilight, unless you've done some thinking for yourself and don't need me to explain it. I read Twilight as the female counterpart to the bumbling, relatable dude with the super-competent love-interest sidekick, though instead of the protagonist having to understand and take responsibility for herself (as is generally required of male characters), the man takes responsibility for her, and instead of romance being an anecdote to the plot, it effectively IS the plot.

Meyer has claimed on her website that she sees Bella Swan as a feminist role model, but maybe a more accurate thing to say would be that Bella is a response to someone like Hit-Girl, a character who seems to imply that, to be awesome, girls should kick as much ass as possible. Bella, passive as she is, raises no real bar for girls; to be her requires little effort. The story asks us to look at Bella and see ourselves, someone inherently and inexplicably special (though she doesn't know it yet). The plot is dull and plodding in the way that your life is dull and plodding, though Bella's life, unlike yours, is punctuated with unforeseeable wonder and peril that extends far beyond her control. Awesome things, like Edward, fall into her lap without her having to do very much.

So in response to these competent, powerful female characters whose inner lives are secondary to those of the male protagonist, we have Bella Swan, who is small and somewhat powerless, but whose thoughts and feelings are treated with import and sincerity (because Twilight, if it does anything, accepts and validates every thought that Bella has). It's a kind of attention that the movies I mentioned previously don't give to female characters, and it's obviously a kind of attention that female audiences are craving. They see Bella as themselves in the same way males see themselves in underdog protagonists like Kick-Ass and Hiccup.

But the reason that Twilight doesn't extend past its particular audience is because Bella just doesn't appeal to people who can't see themselves AS her. She's passive, boring, whiny, constantly allows someone else to make decisions for her, and she's pretty much a social drip. What's interesting is that, if movies with male protagonists were to celebrate passivity to the level that Twilight celebrates it, the male characters would be unacceptable to their audience.

So why is Bella acceptable to girls? The answer I have right now: Twilight fans, for some reason, societal or another, feel threatened by the idea of making choices and taking action, and so it's an encouragement to see a character whose active role is limited, but whose emotions are treated with the weight of a world war, and who essentially gets everything wants (or at least everything the reader wants for her).

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I might get back to the usual dissection-like structure next week. This was just something I had on my mind lately. Chapter 12 coming up.

Wish me luck!
Jenchilla