November 18. Breaking Dawn Part 1. Forever is only the
Beginning. If this means nothing to you, you have managed to escape the
whirlwind of marketing and popularity surrounding the Twilight film series. I
just saw the trailer at my gym for the first time and some of the diversity of
people present around the room had stopped working out to watch. Others
sniggered. For major Twilight fans, or "Twi-hards" (see my other blogpost), this is a big deal. For educators, Edwards suggests it is an opportunity
to use an item of massively popular culture to unpack the many complicated
issues the films set up around gender and power relations especially as they
relate to looking and the gaze (2009).
In the article, Good Looks and Sex Symbols: The Power of the
Gaze and The Displacement of the Erotic in Twilight, Edwards sees the Twilight
films as a context to talk about how youth negotiate and become aware of looking
and being looked at and how this is represented in the fictional reality of
Twilight. Edwards plays on several meanings of the word “look”, also mentioning
the importance of taking on a certain “look” with regards to experimentation
with constructing an identity and forming and belonging to social groups which
are rigidly defined in the films (2009). Twilight fans adopt these looks in
costume play performance and in the construction of their online identities.
The Twilight films and books draw upon many traditions of the
gothic romance, for example the tension between desire and repulsion in the
construction of it’s main characters, a late teenage girl named Bella and a
vampire named Edward (Seltzer, 2008). However, Twilight recasts the vampire as “vampire-lite",
an attractive boy, more mature than his looks, who wants to protect his
girlfriend rather than a predator / prey relationship (Schiavo, 2008). In the
films, for the most part
The female lead, Bella on the other hand, is constantly portrayed
as relying on men, first her father, then Edward, then in Edward’s absence, upon
a third character, Jacob, before returning to Edward again. She is at once
victim and vulnerable in the space of high school and desiring, wanting to
attain Edward (Seltzer, 2008).
Watching the film is an opportunity to deconstruct the
director’s intention of our view into the world as we shift perspectives from
characters along with their shifting passive and active roles of desire /
objectification / prey. Edwards suggests this both as an opportunity to talk
about a feminist understanding of the idea of the objectifying masculine gaze
and the possibility it may shift as Bella takes an active role (2009). In the
first film, for example, Bella is set on becoming a vampire to be with Edward.
The film ends with Edward passively reclining in the grass with Bella looking
down over him wanting to become vampire, having carved a space for herself
saying “it’s my world too” (Godfrey, 2008).
The films and books have come under criticism from feminists
for making a romantic fantasy out of a young girl drawn into a violent and
controlling relationship with a much older man. (Housel, 2009). It has also
been attacked for encoding a message of abstinence from sex. Both Edward and
Bella long for intimacy but the male lead (vampire) keeps in check his
dangerous sexual appetite in order to protect the fragile female (Seltzer,
2008). When they finally do have (post-marital) sex in the fourth film, Edward seriously
injures Bella and gets her pregnant (Godfrey & Meyer, 2011). Housel
suggests the series give many bad messages about gender and relationships to
Twilight’s young female fans (2009).
Fans have responded to the controversy by forming their own
answers to the questions raised by the films. In an example of participatory
culture, the Twilight fan site, Bella and Edward, empowered its members to
contribute to the publication of a book, “Bella Should Have Dumped Edward”, a
compilation of their varied views to 31 questions. These ranged from analysing whether Bella is
strong or a “blank canvas” relying on Edward to whether the relationships
between Bella and Edward and Jacob are controlling as suggested above or
healthy (Pan, 2010).
In terms of popular culture, the Twilight films series can
also be contrasted with the contemporary television series, “True Blood” (Ball,
2008). True Blood also addresses themes of gender, sexuality and relationships
in a supernatural vampire world. It’s encoded messages about sexuality are
against homophobia, with vampires coming out of the closet and fights with
religious organisations who graffiti “God Hates Fangs” (Tyree, 2009). The
female lead in True Blood, Sookie, played by Anna Paquin is also a non-vampire
in love with a male vampire. Also, like Twilight, the vampire, Bill, positions
himself to protect her but she can clearly protect herself and in the first episode
it is she who saves him. Later, when she is being attacked, his vampire
qualities prevent him from protecting her (Ball, 2008). Another example of a
strong female lead is the Buffy the Vampire Slayer film and television series
which plays with the genre of predator and prey in gothic fiction (Whedon,
1992).
References
Ball, A. (Creator). (2008). True Blood [Television Series].
USA: HBO.
Godfrey, W. & Meyer, S. (Producer), & Condon, B.
(Director). (2011). The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 1 [Motion picture].
USA: Summit Entertainment.
Godfrey, W. (Producer), & Hardwicke, C. (Director).
(2008). Twilight [Motion picture]. USA: Summit Entertainment.
Housel, R. (2009). The Real Danger: Fact vs Fiction for Girls.
In Irwin, W., Housel, R. & Wisnewski, J. (Eds.) Twilight and Philosophy: Vampires, Vegetarians, and the Pursuit of
Immortality. ISBN 0470554126.
Pan, M. (2010). Bella Should Have Dumped Edward. Berkely, CA:
Ulysses Press
Seltzer, S, (2008). "Twilight": Sexual Longing in
an Abstinence-Only World. Retrieved from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sarah-seltzer/twilight-sexual-longing-i_b_117927.html
Schiavo, I. (2008, November 25). ‘Twilight’: Vampire lite, The Weekender. Retrieved from http://www.theweekender.com/
Tyree, J.M. (2009) Warm-Blooded: True Blood and Let the Right
One In Film Quarterly Vol. 63, No. 2 (Winter 2009), pp. 31-37
Whedon, J. (Writer) & Kuzui, F. (Director). (1992) Buffy
the Vampire Slayer [Motion Picture]. USA: Twentieth Century Fox Film
Corporation.
