Chapter 24: An Impasse

480 pages in...

Due to my complete inability to register numbers, which is a common trait among us English majors, I've failed to realize that Chapter 24 is the final OFFICIAL chapter in Twilight. And I was all like



But then I figured out that following Chapter 24 is a 19 page "epilogue," which Meyer has decided to sadistically spring on me. And I was like



Naw, I'm just kiddin ya'll. I love rolling around in garbage as much as anybody.

There will be two more entries to follow this one: the Epilogue, and my Overall Conclusion. Also, my more sophisticated friend and fellow MFA graduate over at Zac Rates the Universe has invited me to write a guest review of Twilight, which I would be honored to do, if he will still have me. So, catch an even more condensed version of my opinions if you are not completely worn out by them.

Moving on...

In this chapter, Bella wakes up in the hospital. Meyer's voyeurism is still there, most clearly evident on pg 460, when Edward mechanically rattles off ANOTHER recap of the injuries Bella sustained. and...I must say...the story that Edward & Co. come up with to explain how she got hurt is ludicrous, even by Twilight standards.

"'You fell down two flights of stairs and through a window.' [Edward] paused. 'You have to admit, it could happen.'" (459)

Oh, sure. She fell down one flight of stairs, got up from the landing, moved her broken body over to a second flight of stairs, and fell again. And this certainly accounts for the DISTINCT BITE MARK on her arm. Meyer must think medical people are completely retarded.

But Jesus. Who am I to question the logic of this novel this far into the game? Suck it up, girl. Just suck it up and plow through it.

"'How bad am I?'
"'You have a broken leg, four broken ribs, some cracks in your skull, bruises covering every inch of your skin, and you've lost a lot of blood. They gave you a few transfusions. I didn't like it -- it made you smell all wrong for a while.'" (460)

Okay, first...creeptastic. Secondly, nobody would SAY this to a person who'd just been seriously mangled, not in this way at least. This is totally Stephenie Meyer wallowing some more in Bella's martyrdom. It gets super played up as the chapter goes on, with Edward mentioning once again how Bella is LOVED by everyone (461), and that she is "[brave] to the point where it becomes insanity" (475). Bella consistently denies further pain medication ("See!" Meyer screams at us. "See how brave she is! She is brave because she doesn't want more pain medication!"), yet Bella herself MAKES SURE THAT WE KNOW how much pain she is in; every time she smiles or laughs or sighs, she mentions that her whole body aches. SHE IS A DARLING, SELFLESS LAMB AND ALL YA'LL ARE JEALOUS WHOREZZZ!

I know that some might find my issue with the descriptions of Bella's injuries unfounded -- "Well, OF COURSE Bella's in pain. She just withstood a vampire attack!" But please understand, it's not just the injuries themselves that make it voyeurism. Characters in stories may very well become badly injured as the result of horrific experiences; in fact, it starts to get problematic when characters are consistently in the midst of violence and come out with some cute little nick on their face (most spy movies exhibit this; see the most recent example: Salt). But the issue here is the way these injuries are described, the way that other characters obsess over them, and the way that Meyer herself obsesses over getting Bella into situations where she can bleed or break something. Mind, I wouldn't be pointing this out if there wasn't a pattern throughout the series. I haven't read all the books, but from summaries, it seems as though Meyer has brainstormed all the various situations in which Bella can spill her blood: Bella attempts life-endangering activities in New Moon, breaks her hand punching another character in Eclipse, and...I'm far more acquainted than I want to be with the horrific birthing scene in Breaking Dawn, when Meyer switches to Jacob's POV, so we get the full panoramic view. Here's a taste:

"Bella's body, streaming with red, started to twitch, jerking around in Rosalie's arms like she was being electrocuted. All the while, her face was blank--unconscious. It was the wild thrashing from inside the center of her body that moved her. As she convulsed, sharp snaps and cracks kept time with the spasms."

"[Rosalie's] hand [with a scalpel] came down on Bella's stomach, and vivid red spouted out from where she pierced the skin. It was like a bucket being turned over, a faucet twisted to full. Bella jerked, but didn't scream. She was still choking."

"Another shattering crack inside her body, the loudest yet, so loud that we both froze in shock waiting for her answering shriek. Nothing. Her legs, which had been curled up in agony, now went limp, sprawling out in an unnatural way.
'Her spine,' [Edward] choked in horror."

What is read cannot be unread. You're welcome.

Setting aside the fact that I even spared you THE PART WHERE SOMEBODY CHEWS THROUGH A BABY'S AMNIOTIC SAC WITH HIS TEETH as well as THE BIT WITH THE PEDOPHILIA (see the wiki entry for "child grooming"), Meyer has admitted in public that this is her favorite scene in Breaking Dawn. Yeah. Stick that in your pipe and smoke it.

See, when a writer is filling her stories with this much tasteless violence toward one particular character, it makes me think she is getting something out of it. I mean, for like TEN PAGES she INDULGES EXPLICITLY in ripping Bella's body to shreds. I don't even...I mean...this is a published work of fiction. Why is this self-gratifying torture porn not rotting away in Meyer's sock drawer as it should be?

Anyway...sorry. I'm tirading. Also in this chapter:

• The first scene in which Bella's mother is present; the two characters share some tenderness before Renee breezes out of the room again and Bella forgets that she exists. ("You're the only thing it would hurt me to lose," Bella tells Edward on 474; see how thoughtful and selfless she is, considering everybody in her life above herself?)
• Edward makes Bella's heart monitor stop beeping by kissing her (retch)
• Bella literally hyperventilates when Edward merely suggests that they should part ways for her safety; she begs him to promise that he will never leave her
• Bella and Edward argue about Bella becoming a vampire (he puts his foot down about it)
  
• Some information about Alice that Meyer had to cram in at the last minute which is of little consequence to the rest of the plot (though I must admit, it was pleasurable to picture Alice having fun recreating the scene of Bella's "accident")

At the end of the chapter, Edward gets the nurse to administer pain medication to Bella without her consent, because she is TOO BRAVE to know what is good for her.

WHAT'S WORKING:The voyeurism stands out in my mind and really bothers me, if nobody else has noticed. I'm aware that many fans were turned off by the birthing scene in Breaking Dawn, but still many others ate it up. "Oh, the things that Bella has to go through...!" What, because Meyer constantly inflicts pain on her, I'm supposed to like her more? Psha. If anything, that just makes her more annoying.

Bella's freak-out when Edward threatens to leave is unsettling to me also. Twilight fans may see Bella's desperation as unwavering, romantic devotion, but to most intelligent people who haven't been sucked into the novel's indulgent bunghole, Bella's begging and crying reads as needy, selfish, and really just pathetic. Whenever Edward says, "I may leave you," Bella immediately becomes a helpless child, as though she is completely at his mercy, and him leaving her would rip her spine right out of her body (buckle your seatbelts, kids--this actually happens in New Moon). As often as she presents it, Meyer WANTS us to see Bella as helpless, and there are countless readers who see their helpless selves within this girl.

The shrinks call this a Cinderella complex, which stems from an innate fear of becoming independent. In dudes, it's called a Peter Pan complex. I mean, who wants to actually be an adult? Not Bella Swan, that's who.

I don't think it's an accident either that Edward is frozen as a seventeen-year-old boy, and Bella wants to be frozen at that age with him. Edward may talk all proper, but he is unburdened by the responsibilities of typical adults. He offers NOTHING for his community. He has no job to worry about. His fam is totes rich, so he doesn't worry about money. He has super strength, can read minds, and yet in this wealth of ability, his mindset is still that of an immature, angst-ridden teenager. In the Twilight world there is really nothing BAD about being a vampire, and I don't think Meyer would have it any other way. It would seem that her precious Bella, and Twilight's devoted readers, don't just fear a world without Edward; they fear a world in which they are responsible for themselves.

Is that too much? Am I going to far to make the assumption? I would like to dig a little deeper into this, but I'm really kind of tired, so I may have to save it for either the next entry or my final wrap-up. And I DID look up some fan responses to Bella's behavior, and whether or not they see her as a good role model. Some interesting findings, but they will wait until next week also.

-
-
-

Epilogue in the works. I can feel myself finally sailing into the Grey Havens.

Wish me luck,
Jenchilla

Chapter 19: Goodbyes

404 pages in...

Well, we've passed the 400 mark and Meyer is ratcheting up the tension by making things far more complicated than they need to be. We have now launched headlong into The Most Convoluted Escape Plan Ever, Part II.
Basically, Bella must be incredibly mean to her dad in order to make him think that she can't stand to be in Forks with him for another second. That way, she can take off with Alice and Jasper, and Edward will stay in town, so Charlie Swan will know he isn't involved and won't be suspicious. (If all of this sounds a little silly, don't worry; it's not you.)

This could have been an interesting situation in which Meyer opens up the more painful corners of Bella's relationship with her dad, delving maybe into her feelings of abandonment, or her anxiety about how the divorce forced her into an early adulthood. But no. That would be something to expect for more nuanced and intuitive writers. Meyer keeps everything in the shallow end:

"I can't do this anymore! I can't put down any more roots here! I don't want to end up trapped in this stupid, boring town like Mom! I'm not going to make teh same dumb mistakes she did. I hate it -- I can't stand here another minute!" (393)

And this:

'"Just let me go, Charlie.' I repeated my mother's last words as she'd walked out this same door so many years ago. I said them as angrily as I could manage, and I threw the door open. 'It didn't work out, okay? I really, really hate Forks!'" (394)

Chief Swan is, of course, devastated, because he adores Bella as much as everybody in this novel. And thankfully, Bella takes a moment to be upset about her cruel solution to the problem. But still, Edward's all like, "Oh, whatever. He'll get over it," and it infuriates me how dumb this book wants me to think Charlie Swan is, that he needs to be constantly duped and shoved around. There's even a weird kind of self-righteousness to this scene, as though, deep down, Meyer believes that Bella's speech was something that her father needed to hear.

But you know, what the hell ever. This book barely gives a shit about Charlie Swan, so why should I? Now we are running desperately back to the Cullen's place and Laurent is there to confirm what Edward perceived about James. He is after Bella and will not stop until he gets her. So the Cullens decide to try to "confuse Bella's scent" to get James going off in a different direction when she leaves town. Around here is where we get our very first line of dialogue from Rosalie, who says, after Edward orders her to trade clothes with Bella:

"Why should I?"..."What is she to me? Except a menace -- a danger you've chosen to inflict on all of us." (401)


Wait, is it...?

IS IT!?

YES! YES IT IS!


YES YES YES YES! SOMEONE IS THE VOICE OF REASON AGAINST EVERYBODY INEXPLICABLY LOVING THIS DETESTABLE TWAT -- oh, wait. Everybody just ignored her....

Neeevermind.

As though Meyer is afraid that some readers might actually take Rosalie seriously (completely silencing her and having the blond bitch pretty much shunned by everyone in the family isn't enough), we take another moment to have another character (Jasper this time) remind Bella that she actually is quite special, and that she is totally worth all this trouble, even though Jasper has known our heroine for less than two days. Cullens just Know Things about people.

"Jasper and I looked at each other. He stood across the length of the entryway from me...being careful.
'You're wrong, you know,' he said quietly.
'What?' I gasped.
'I can feel what you're feeling now -- and you are worth it.'
'I'm not,' I mumbled. 'If anything happens to them, it will be for nothing.'
'You're wrong,' he repeated, smiling kindly at me.'" (404)

It's SUPER IMPORTANT to remember that Bella's tragic flaw is a lack of self-knowledge. That is, she doesn't know how awesome she is, and therefore constantly needs to be reminded of it by Edward and a plethora of other characters, whom she generally rebuffs.

Off she goes to Phoenix, where this book's climax will take place, if it indeed has a climax.

WHAT'S WORKING: At this point, I feel like there's no need for me to point out the appeal of a self-insert character who does nothing, and yet stands at the center of a great, masculine ruckus. A whole clan of supernatural beings have rallied together to protect Bella simply because she happens to be there. She's unhappy about this, of course, feeling guilty about putting them in danger (though they seem rather invincible, so I'm not 100% convinced they're actually IN any danger; Bella seems more worried that they will have to relocate on her account). Nonetheless, I can totally feel Stephanie Meyer's glee as she writes this stuff. The only character who even questions protecting Bella with her life gets instantly shut down and disrespected. For girls reading this novel who connect with Bella, it is a further manifestation of a supreme desire: yes, they ARE the center of the universe. Other people, like Charlie Swan, don't matter one wink. And Bella's human friends haven't been mentioned for hundreds of pages.

I don't see much else I can add to this chapter than I didn't say about the last one, which was rather similar. I do have something else to add in regards to what Twilight may be counteracting in media. Movies that feature a male character, like Zach Braff in Garden State, often have a female counterpart, like Natalie Portman, who has no real concerns of her own aside from "fixing" the dude's depression and getting him to, like, embrace life or something. (See: manic pixie dream girl) Edward Cullen is no less like an Objectified Relationship Toolbox, designed to protect, serve, adore, make decisions for, and forever inflate the ego of his One True Love. But audiences are more accepting of the fanciful depiction of the relationship in Garden State, which did very well to my knowledge, and which I myself liked the first time I saw it. (Granted, it did have a little more going on in it.)

I know I compare Twilight to popular movies a lot, which maybe isn't fair. I guess I just see it as being on that same brain-popcorn wavelength. But just so that everybody in the world knows, these complaints I have about a lack of attention to the female psyche extend their tentacles into contemporary fiction as well. I mean the big boys. I mean Pulitzer prizewinning big boys.

This article. Read it. Granted, the kind of people reading Cormac McCarthy probably are NOT going to be reading Twilight. Just a guess. But there are interesting points to be made.

I don't want people to misunderstand and get mad, though. It's not my desire that people stop reading books by men or about men, and I don't intend to say, nor do I think this article intends to say, that a story is worthless if it doesn't have a female character in it. The reason people write articles like these is not to say that men are worthless. It's to point out that the scales are tilted in a particular direction, because you have overly-lauded writers like Cormac McCarthy who throw up their hands and say that women are simply "too difficult" to write in a way that makes them seem like genuine human beings. We're just too mysterious. We're like a mythical creature whose inner workings can never be fully understood. As someone in the comment section of this article pointed out, McCarthy has no problem writing about cannibals or murderers, and yet women, whom I'm going to assume he comes into contact with pretty much every day, are simply too scary to deal with.

To any dudes out there, imagine what it might feel like to watch a movie or read a book and realize to yourself, "Heeeeey. Wait a minute. There are absolutely NO men in this story."

The more I broaden my scope, the more I start to wonder if blaming Stephanie Meyer and her hoards of fans for indulging in something is the wrong way to go about it. After all, if story-writers treated their female characters with more complexity, I have a feeling Twilight would not even exist, or if it did, its fans wouldn't defend it to such a violent degree. But Twilight stands as a bastion of light against stories that constantly ask of women to be these quirky, sexy, witty, ass-kicking, mysterious creatures. This is why fans of Bella Swan say they like her because she is "real," they like her because she is "weak." She is those things, and she is still the glorious focal point of it all.

-
-
-
Chapter 20: Impatience for next week. ...That title does not bode well for me. Impatience, like I will be more impatient in this coming chapter than in previous chapters? Bad omens, everyone. Bad, bad bad.

Wish me luck,
Jenchilla

Chapter 18: The Hunt

389 pages in...

My apologies for another late post. No real excuse for it other than laziness, and being super absorbed by the newest episodes of True Blood. Btw, who else saw this awesomeness?

What I find so great about this is that it was most likely Snoop Dogg's idea. I seriously doubt the creators of True Blood APPROACHED him and asked him to make something for the show. Rather, I think he was sitting on his couch Sunday night thinking, "Mm, yeah. Sookie Stackhouse," then went down to the studio like, "Hey, I made this for ya'll. Use it."

So anyway, moving on.

A PLOT HAS ARRIVED IN TWILIGHT!!! And when I say plot, I mean a genuine obstacle that has arrived due to actions of prominent characters, which requires an immediate solution. Sort of anyway. It's the closest we're going to get.

In this chapter:

1. Rival vampires shown up, the first antagonists we have encountered aside from Lauren (remember Lauren? Don't feel too sad if you don't. She was so very obviously somebody that Meyer didn't like in high school.) and maybe Rosalie, who STILL HASN'T HAD A SINGLE LINE OF DIALOGUE
   
2. One of the rival vampires, James, is a "tracker" according to Edward, and he will not stop until he has Bella for a snack
3. Edward freaks the fuck out and throws a tantrum, forcing Bella into the jeep and proceeding to drive her far away from Forks against her will
   
4. Alice does something that briefly makes her adore me a little.

The vampires that show up are Laurent, "the most beautiful" (376), olive-toned and "with the slightest of French accents" (377) (he is the leader, and the only one of the three with dialogue), fiery-haired Victoria, and James, who has "regular features" and is "nondescript" (376). We know these characters are of dubious morality because they are not dressed as sharp as the Cullens and are not quite as attractive, and their eyes are "burgundy" instead of gold, like the vegetarian Cullen clan.

Meyer likes to play up tension rather than have things actually happen. I kind of appreciated Laurent, who is, for the most part, painfully cordial, though his dialogue is punctuated with creepy one-liners like "We just ate outside of Seattle," leaving readers to imagine the worst. When James catches Bella's scent and crouches toward her, Laurent promises that they won't hurt her(378) though he doesn't come off the page as the most trustworthy soul ever. He is surprised and curious, rather than threatened, to see vampires hanging out with a human.

As for the other two villains, they are not particularly developed, but we'll see what Meyer does with James in later chapters.

So after this non-event of a meeting, Edward is suddenly carting Bella back to the jeep, Alice and Emmett with him. They force her in and strap her down without explanation and ignore her when she demands one. We find out later that the pivotal discovery has taken place by Edward reading James' mind and "just knowing" that "Tracking is [James'] passion, his obsession" (382), and there will be no way to stop him until he gets Bella. Because that is exactly what this novel needs. Somebody else who is completely obsessed with Bella.

Whether or not you accept Edward's freak-out, controlling behavior depends entirely on how much you trust his judgment. The book wants us to believe that the situation has suddenly become extremely dangerous, that Edward is 100% correct about James, and that the hissy fit is warranted. This goes back to one of the biggest problems I have with the novel, which is that Bella is barely an active player in any of this. This entire James event came about simply because Bella just happened to be standing in a field smelling good, and while she does get to see some vampires snarling at each other, actual UNDERSTANDING of the situation is a privilege that only Edward has, being able to read mind. Bella reacts solely to what Edward and the Cullens tell her, since she's physically incapable of judging the full situation for herself.

To Meyer's credit, much of this chapter focuses on Bella stepping up and holding her own among vampires that are a great deal stronger and more informed than she is. The entire plan-forming conversation is 8 pgs long, so I can't cite it, but it basically goes something like this:

Alice: Let's calm down and think about this rationally.
Edward: THERE IS NO OTHER FUCKING OPTION!!!11!!11one
Emmett: If they attack us, there's only three of them. We can fend them off easy.
Edward: THERE IS NO OTHER FUCKING OPTION!!!11!!11one
Bella: Take me back to my house! Charlie's gonna lose his shit!
Edward: Ignored.
Emmett: We need to take Bella back to her house.
Edward: THERE IS NO OTHER FUCKING OPTION!!!11!!11one
Bella: But, but I haz a idea!
Edward: Ignored.
Alice: Let's listen to Bella's idea.
Edward: *sighs* FINE.

It's good that Emmett and Alice are acting as voices of reason to the overly-passionate Edward, though Emmett seems most excited about bashing someone's head in. In the end, Bella's plan is only a convoluted version of Edward's plan: he wants to cart her out of town, and she wants to go and see her father before she gets carted out of town. In the end, Bella is going to say something to Charlie so that it doesn't seem like she's being kidnapped, Alice and Jasper are going to drive Bella to Phoenix, for some reason, while the rest of the Cullen clan stays behind to protect Bella's father, because apparently two Cullens in Phoenix can protect Bella better than seven Cullens in Forks.

No one stops to consider actually discussing things with Laurent or James, because apparently Edward already knows that this is an impossibility. Whatever. Nobody ever discusses anything reasonably in this novel anyway.

As Edward is saying goodbye to Bella, he is extra douchy: "If you let anything happen to yourself -- anything at all -- I'm holding you personally responsible. Do you understand?" (388)

What, is that supposed to be cute? Is it supposed to be funny? The book seems to want us to see Edward as being serious here, but...really. What does that say about him? "I put you in this situation by stalking you and being otherwise completely irresistible, and yet it is YOUR fault for smelling good and making other vampires want to eat you"? What a stand-up fellow Edward is.

But the best part of this chapter takes place at the very end, when Edward doubts Alice's abilities.

"'Can you handle this?' he asked.
And graceful little Alice pulled back her lips in a horrific grimace and let loose with a guttural snarl that had me cowering against the seat in terror." (389)

I enjoyed this moment, because I didn't quite expect it, and I've been waiting for a while now for Alice to do something unexpected, since so many fans like her. It is a rare moment for females in this novel to display anything other than mediocre passive-aggression (like our sweet-smelling Pretty Bird), and it shows me that there may be some hope for Meyer's women yet.

WHAT'S WORKING: Bella has long since officially fit the bill as a genuine Mary Sue, but one element was missing: a villain who is unreasonably and insurmountably obsessed with killing her. Meyer seems to like for Bella to be the victim, and victimized in a way that makes her desired, and desired simply for existing, not because she actually, like, DOES anything. I feel like I've talked about this to death, but it's consistent with the fantasy: Bella is a blank slate of a girl, wanted by all, good or evil, and if anyone doesn't want her, it is out of jealousy. We of course see the valiant way in which Rosalie argues the case against Bella Swan, with Meyer not giving her a single line of dialogue so far (I'm PISSED about that, ya'll!).

However, this chapter does mark a moment in which Bella stands up for herself, makes her voice known and, sort of, has her way. Only time will tell if Edward really does hold Bella accountable for getting herself hurt.

I still think that a character like Bella is counteracting the female characters that appear in mainstream media. I found this article, "Why Strong Female Characters Are Bad For Women," which talks about Transformers having Megan Fox play a character that is a super sexy mechanic who ends up the love interest for weasely Shia Lebouf or however you spell his name. It's of course played to a male audience, who identify with weasely Shia Lebouf and would prefer to believe that Megan Fox has no desires of her own beyond fixing your car and sticking her ass out. The article goes into detail about how Hollywood responded to feminists saying "We want more strong female characters, less damsels in distress," and got it completely wrong. Though, what feminists probably SHOULD have said was "We want more DEVELOPED female characters. We want BETTER female characters." For example, in mainstream movies (excluding chick flicks, though most chick flicks avoid this as well) you rarely ever see women who have problems that aren't men, who want things other than men (or babies), or who have genuine inner lives beyond men. To my knowledge, there is NO female counterpart to mopey, male characters with white middle class malaise in cinema, no female version of Zach Braff in Garden State (the closest we get is maybe miserable rich girl Kate Winslet in Titanic).

If you think I'm going off on a feminist rant, I am, but that doesn't make these observations any less factual. If you doubt me, artist Alison Bechdel brought this issue up in her comic Dykes to Watch Out For. A movie only passes the Bechdel test if:

1. It features two female characters
2. The two female characters have a conversation together
3. That isn't about a man or men

You will be ASTONISHED at the percentage of Hollywood movies that pass this test. It is SLIM, my friends. SLIM. And I'm not saying this because I want an army of people working around the clock to make movies that feature only women and exclude men completely. I'm saying it to point out that, in media, the thoughts and desires of men get attended to in a way that the thoughts and desires of women do not. Whether or not your care about that is hardly the issue. But it's still true.

I think Twilight still fails the Bechel test (if there are any featured conversations between girls in which Bella isn't talking or thinking about Edward, I've forgotten about them). But, like I've said before, Twilight is INTERESTED in Bella's inner life. It focuses on her thoughts and desires with a seriousness that most media doesn't. Girls are drinking Bella up 1) because the book has Bella thinking and feeling things that they themselves think and feel, and 2) because the book is pretty much 100% supportive of Bella's feelings. It never judges her, and she gets the man without having to change herself.

That is all for this week.

-
-
-

Now that things are actually happening in this book, I am a little less despondent! Next thing you know, I will be seeing myself in Bella, and her love will become my love, and I will see and understand the beauty of her relationship with Edward Cullen! And then I will remember that I like my significant others to have heartbeats, and to respect my personal space, and to cook me spinach alfredo pasta. LET'S SEE YOU COOK A MEAL WHEN YOU CAN'T TASTE IT, YOU PASTY ASSHOLE.

Wish me luck,
Jenchilla

Chapter 12: Balancing

259 pages in...

This will be a shorter post. On top of feeling hopelessly lazy this week, I also think I should save my energy for next week, as this chapter is clearly a build-up to Chapter 13: Confessions, in which Edward exposes himself to Bella.

No....ya'll...get your minds out of the gutter. This was written by a Mormon.

Edward reveals to Bella what happens to him in the sunlight, and while this might spoil it for anyone who has maybe heard the term "sparkly vampire" in passing and think it's a euphemism or a metaphor, the vampires in the Twilight universe do literally glitter, as opposed to bursting into flames, when the sun hits them.

I've been nervous about this since starting Twilight, though I was recently talking to a friend of mine who had read the book, and who assured me that the sparkling scene "isn't that bad." And considering the ideological inconsistencies I've run into so far, I think that sparkly vampires may be among the least of Twilight's problems.

In this chapter:

• Jacob hangs around in scene just long enough to remind us that he is a somewhat likable character whose sole purpose is to be doormat for Bella.
• Bella angsts that Billy Black (Jacob's dad) will tell her father that she's dating Edward. (This is a really big deal, for some reason, even though Charlie Swan doesn't know that Edward is a vampire and also thinks so highly of the Cullens that he goes on tangents to defend them.)
• Edward (this is implied, but it's the only solution that makes sense) breaks into Bella's house and rummages through a pile of her dirty laundry to find her car keys. Uh-unnnhg. Ung. *hork*
  
• There's some unnecessary plotting and scheming in order to plan Bella and Edward's trip to some obscure five-mile trail in the mountains. Totally NOT a murdering rapist u gais.
• Bella takes "unnecessary cold medicine" (251) to help herself sleep the night before her day trip with Edward, which is something she's never done and behavior that she "normally wouldn't condone" (252). (This is extremely funny to me. Because you could pretty much replace the name "Edward" with the word "heroin" and tell the same story here.)
  
• Bella and Edward bicker.
  
• Edward does things that...that likable guys just DON'T DO. Like, just before Edward and Bella go on their five-mile hike, Bella comes around the side of the truck and sees that Edward has deliberately removed his jacket and unbuttoned his shirt to expose the "perfect musculature" (256) of his chest. I read this as the Mormon equivalent of a guy stripping down to his whitey tighties and lying across your bed with a rose in his teeth.
  
• Meyer elevates the prose tremendously toward the end of this chapter, describing the Pacific Northwestern woods as though she totally forgot they were there. Oh, we are about to commit ourselves to some serious sparklemotion. Yes we are.

This week, I think all I'm going to do is address the discomfort that I feel hanging around with Bella and Edward. For me...it's like having your histrionic female friend and her meatheaded boyfriend driving you around town for a weekend, and all they do is fluctuate between pining breathlessly and snapping at one another. It's very confusing to me, because this book keeps asking me to believe that Bella and Edward are meant for each other; as soon as Edward appears before Bella, she is filled with comfort and security and pleasure. Observe what happens when Edward shows up to drive her to the undisclosed hiking trail:

"I flew to the door; I had a little trouble with the simple dead bolt, but I yanked the door open at last, and there he was. All the agitation dissolved as soon as I looked at his face, calm taking its place. I breathed a sight of relief -- yesterday's fears seemed foolish with him here." (253)

So here we have our heroine so excited, desperate, because she hasn't seen her man in like eight hours. And he shows up and it's like the seas have parted, and she's filled with joy and wonder. And yet...these two characters constantly slip in and out of being extremely somber, passive aggressive, and pissy with one another (Edward is described as having a "martyred expression" (253) when Bella insists that she drive; he gives Bella "a dirty look" when she insists that he put on his seatbelt). On the drive, they exchange barbs over the danger of Edward being alone with Bella, because this subject has not been run into the ground already, and Bella, when she sees Edward with his shirt open, realizes "with a piercing stab of despair" that he is "too perfect" (256). "There was no way this godlike creature could be meant for me." Oh, and Meyer plays this up big time. It reaches a point where Bella deliberately tries not to look at Edward because "his beauty pierce[s] [her] through with sadness" (257) every time.

So Edward is always either angry with Bella or feels the need to assert his superiority by being condescending, and Bella, while she may experience a temporary euphoria every time she sees Edward, eventually finds herself whipped into a heightened state of agitation and insecurity by being around him. Totes not healthy. And it doesn't look like very much fun either...

Maybe the troubled relationship stems from the fact that Edward and Bella are two people who never really seem to enjoy anything, and when they do it's totally over the top. Or maybe Meyer realized that the action of the novel (i.e., the plot) was lacking, and so she plumbed her memory of those hazy, daydreamy hours in English class over at Brigham Young University, recalling that stories generally utilize conflict, and so she manufactured internal conflicts and treated them with the sincerity you would treat a nuclear holocaust.

Pretty much all conflict is internal in this novel (with the exception of events like Tyler's van's assassination attempt). The Catcher in the Rye utilizes internal conflict in a similar way (for the record, Bella Swan IS more annoying than Holden Caulfield), and this is probably why book reviewers go on about how Twilight is as much a coming-of-age-novel as it is a fantasy novel. Though I should say that just because a story has internal conflict as opposed to external conflict, it doesn't mean that the conflict is valid, or even that it makes sense. Bella MANUFACTURES her fear that her father will find out about Edward being her boyfriend; from what we've read so far, there's no reason for her to hide this information from him. Bella MANUFACTURES her insecurities as well, as Edward keeps repeating how wonderful and special she is, and yet we still see her moaning to herself and metaphorically curling up into a worthless ball of worthlessness, because Stephanie Meyer clearly believes that humility and self-loathing are one in the same. "I'm Bella Swan! I have low self-esteem, and therefore I am a good and humble person!"

Bella Swan. It is not a conflict that your boyfriend is too pretty. Just like caring-too-much and being-incredibly-beautiful-but-not-knowing-it are not valid character flaws.

WHAT'S WORKING? Would it be too tacky to say that "low self-esteem" is required to identify with a character like Bella? Mm, probably. But I already kind of said it.

It's a stereotype (but kind of a truth too) that some women degrade themselves in the hopes that someone will overhear their self-deprecation and contradict them. If you ever hang out with large groups of straight, mainstream women, you can observe this, though I don't think it's typical for females to admit aloud that they're fishing for compliments, or that their most desirable man is one who constantly corrects them when they complain about their imaginary flaws. Bella is portrayed as being sincerely down on herself, and yet also clearly better than everybody around her, as Edward is constantly pointing out.

When you look at Bella as a insert for the reader, the situation becomes ideal; readers observe: "I feel those things that she feels, or at least I've said aloud that I feel those things, and this girl, who is very much like me, is getting back the response that I wish I could experience." The conflicts may be manufactured, but it feels valid to readers who have experienced genuine or simulated feelings about boys, or themselves, or their fathers, etc. The hyper-passionate feelings, even the negative ones, described in Twilight don't have to be logical or even plausible in order be valid, and I think this is something that majorly resonates with readers who can picture themselves as this small, clumsy, weak, but secretly special girl.

The intensity of that connection, I have a feeling, might negate the discomfort that I myself feel in hanging around with Bella and Edward in this clearly unpleasant, clearly dysfunctional relationship.

-
-
-

Chapter 13 for next week. I need to stock up on wine.

Wish me luck,
Jenchilla

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).

-
-
-

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