Chapter 20: Impatience

422 pages in...

Soooo despondent. I go through stages reading this book. Sometimes I'm all excited and furious and fascinated, but more and more, I'm just bored. I'm getting numb to the bad prose, numb to the fact that nobody talks like that, numb to the horrendous pacing, numb to the misogynistic undercurrents. And this chapter was particularly difficult to slog through, because nothing happens. Again. At least in the past two chapters I managed to entertain myself by imagining the Benny Hill theme playing in the background.

Now...well. Now, I can't help but think that none of this shit would have happened if Bella had a sassy gay friend...

WHAT ARE YOU DOING BELLA. WHAT WHAT WHAT ARE YOU DOING.

I guess what makes this chapter all that much lamer though is that Bella isn't actually, um, DOING anything. She wakes up in a hotel room in Phoenix, and Meyer takes pains to describe the blankness of the hotel room, because I'm sure none of us know what hotel rooms look like. The entire chapter, with the exception of a few surprisingly lovely paragraphs that depict the Arizona landscape, takes place in this hotel room. Alice and Jasper sit around (Bella, at one point, refers to them as her "babysitters"[411]), Bella paces, Alice has some visions of a ballet studio, Bella and Edward whisper anxiously to each other over the phone about what James and "the female" (Evil vamp Victoria is never mentioned by name, which pisses me the fuck off) are doing.

Gotta say it, Edward and Bella's conversations are the most FUCKING ANNOYING JESUS. They still get to me after all this time. It's like sitting being stuck between two completely unlikeable people who do nothing but coo about to each other about how special they are.

"'I miss you,' I whispered.
'I know, Bella. Believe me, I know. It's like you've taken half my self away with you.' [LAME]
'Come and get it, then,' I challenged. [LAAAAAAAME]
'Soon, as soon as I possibly can. I will make you safe first.' His voice was hard. [THAT'S WHAT SHE SAID...oh...that doesn't really make sense...]
'I love you,' I reminded him.
'Could you believe that, despite everything I've put you through, I love you, too?' [DO YOU THINK THAT YOU ARE FUNNY]
'Yes, I can, actually.'
'I'm coming for you soon.'" [418]



TELL THEM SOOKIE STACKHOUSE.

Conversations between Bella and Alice in this chapter are much more lively and informative. In this chapter, I found myself no longer actively annoyed by Alice, though I don't necessarily like her either, since she still has that irritating deus ex machina superpower. I see her as acting as two things:

1. The cool, rich, beautiful best girlfriend that Meyer never had
2. A female stand-in for Bella to cling to while Edward isn't there

As far as relationships go, Bella's interplay with Alice seems much more equal and, at times, actually sweet. Alice ASKS Bella if she can come in before she enters a room, and she seems to respect her ability to handle difficult information, as when Bella asks how vampires become vampires, out of the blue and seemingly for no reason.

"'Edward doesn't want me to tell you that,' [Alice] said firmly, but I sensed she didn't agree.
'That's no fair. I think I have a right to know.'
'I know.'
I looked at her, waiting.
She sighed. 'He'll be extremely angry.'
'It's none of his business. This is between you and me...'" [413]

Eventually, Alice does tell Bella, in detail, about how difficult and painful a transformation is, not just because you have to introduce venom into a victim's blood stream, but because it's very hard for vampires to stop feeding once they start. (FORETHADOWING!!! DA-HYUCK!) But I do like how this is one of the few moments in Twilight where a man's judgment is audibly questioned and then defied, and it's demonstrated as being an okay idea. The story affords Alice some much-appreciated authority.

I can't help but see Alice as the femslash alternative to Twilight. If Edward and Bella don't work out and Bella decides to swing the other way, Alice will be there with open arms (because seriously, Jasper just kind of sits around like an accessory without a definitive role at all). But maybe that's just wishful thinking on my part. After all, Alice voices that she is only tender toward Bella because Bella has made Edward happy, because a woman can only like something if a man also likes it.

"It's been almost a century that Edward's been alone. You can't see the changes that we see, we who have been with him for so long. Do you think any of us want to look into his eyes for the next hundred years if he loses you?" (411)

Maybe the undercurrent to this statement is that Edward was a pissant, emo little bitch before Bella came along. (This. This. Edward obsessively scrapbooks away his pain. IT'S LONG BUT ITS SO GOOD)

WHAT'S WORKING: Essentially, this chapter is suspenseful because Meyer tells us there is suspense. People pace and whisper of the phone, and it's not a hundred percent clear what's going on, and though Bella is sitting around in a hotel room, the anxiety of the situation comes from her inability to do anything. Readers who relate to Bella probably also relate to this feeling of powerlessness. They probably also enjoyed her lame phone conversation with Edward.

Unfortunately, this chapter, for me, is another reminder of one of the biggest problems I have in this novel, which is that the narrative frequently forces Bella into situations in which she doesn't know what's going on and can't really do anything about it, all on the pretense that this is what's best for her. The BEST Bella can do to control her own fate is wheedle the people around her to give up information, which they do reluctantly and sparingly. For the most part, Bella is shoved into vehicles and held captive in sunless rooms while the vampires take care of her problems. James is off somewhere; the reader doesn't know where he is; he may or may not be headed in this direction. I suppose that's part of what makes him frightening, but for me, it's just another excuse for Bella to play a fragile damsel, and I'm simply irritated, and would like for James to burst through the window and eat her already.

I know how this turns out though. I know that Bella, in the next few pages, will be forced to make a decision, and I can only wait to see how Meyer represents that decision before I make my judgment of it.

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And also this:


Chapter 21 for next week.

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.

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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

This is just an observation...

I don't know how relevant this is, but it's something that has me in a perpetual state of astonishment. Twilight may have launched into the mainstream, but there are some REALLY SPECTACULAR SONGS on the soundtracks to those movies. I mean, there's some super trashy stuff on there too, but holy Jesus god! Beck?? BATS FOR LASHES!? Oh Christ, and Florence + the Machine. Wow. I do love a good epic, thunderous love song. EDWARD AND BELLA DO NOT DESERVE MUSIC OF THIS CALIBER. NO.

http://www.box.net/shared/static/1lsayxgh4c.mp3

Of course, you have to buy the whole damn album to get the good stuff, unless you download it illegally of course. And I would never do anything like that. Never. Nope. ::sidles off to Google::

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).

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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