Edward and Bella dance in "Twilight."
The sheer volume of second-rate vampire fiction that now populates the “teen reading” section at Barnes & Noble astounds me. It makes me wonder how Stephanie Meyer managed to hit upon the perfect combination of hormones, fantasy and reality to make her Twilight series such a runaway hit.
I’ll admit, I’m rather a late arrival to the whole phenomenon. Several friends asked me last year if I was reading the books, and my response was, “What’s Twilight?” But several weeks ago during a visit to my local money-saving movie machine, RedBox, the Twilight film was in stock so I decided to rent it and see what all the fuss was about.
Let’s get the obvious things out of the way. The movie’s stars, Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson are, indeed, swoonable figures. They portray their characters with a good dose of angst, lust, frustration and confusion, several main ingredients of any healthy teenager’s emotional diet.
Even though my husband and I giggled at the silliness of the movie as we watched, I’m ashamed to say that I spent several consecutive days afterward conducting obsessive Google searches for information about and pictures of Pattinson and Stewart. I also ordered a second-hand copy of the book from Amazon.
But why? I was a huge fan of the Anne Rice vampire mythology in high school. It was unique and counterculture and cool. By contrast, Twilight seemed like an ordinary girl-meets-tragically-handsome-vampire story.
Yeah, yeah, I get it. Everyone wants to be loved and the vampire tale is the perfect metaphor for forbidden love. Yadda, yadda.
The brilliant choice of Pattinson to portray the movie’s vampire heartthrob, Edward Cullen, notwithstanding, I can see why it’s such a hit with the teenage girls (and their mothers). Both the movie and the book reminded me of all that was wonderful and horrible about being sixteen years old.
I’ve read quite a few essays ripping apart Meyer and her books for the portrayal of Bella, the story’s heroine, as a sad sack, as a poor role model for girls, and as a clumsy door mat. From a girl’s perspective, Bella was me. Bella is every girl who doubts her physical abilities, her looks and her personality. This is why she is loved by teenagers, and grown women who used to be teenagers.
At nearly 500 pages, Twilight dragged on like the journals I used to keep in high school. This is not a bad thing. Bella gives an authentic blow-by-blow account that every teenage girl can relate to, with themes of fear, acceptance by peers, family and unshakable young love. When I had secret thoughts and feelings I could confide to not another living soul, I’d hash out every last detail in my journal. Though I’ve since shredded them, they were a transcription of my inner life, a dripping diatribe of parental resentment, lusty thoughts, secret hopes.
Everyone had an Edward. He’s that guy who was so cool and so untouchable, too good for all the girls and especially you, but somehow through the strange ways of the world he ended up beating a path to your door. It’s a phenomenon which the vexed and bothered teenage mind cannot comprehend rationally, and Meyer’s book describes it accurately.
As to reviewers’ charges that Edward and Bella’s relationship lacks substance, I simply submit this: rare is the adolescent couple who ever had a good reason for coming together. Teens fall in love—and in lust—with people who charm the eye. Critics, surely you were once be-pimpled and bewildered, extrapolating sidelong glances from your crush in math as an affirmation of passionate love and lifelong commitment.
The substance, regrettably, usually comes later.
If I do have a criticism, it’s that I was occasionally aware of Meyer-as-Bella, recalling her youth with the air of a woman many years older:
“Not the way a man might hesitate before he kissed a woman, to gauge her reaction, to see how he would be received,” Meyer writes during the infamous bedroom scene. “Perhaps he would hesitate to prolong the moment, that ideal moment of anticipation, sometimes better than the kiss itself.”
The hundreds of awkward third-person adjectives in her writing aside, I forgive Meyer for living vicariously through Bella. I forgive Bella all the times she trips, all the times she cries and weeps, her foot dragging and her ridiculous worshipful descriptions of Edward as an Adonis or as some mythic and marble Greek godling.
There was a time when nothing mattered to me so much as the smell and the touch of the boy I loved, and who loved me. Ah, that first kiss! At no other time in my life was a kiss so explosive or mind-melting as when I was fifteen.
And while Twilight makes me remember, I am also grateful for how it re-opens my eyes to the treasures present in my adult life: a devoted and loving husband, a beautiful son and a sound home.
So thanks, Stephanie Meyer, for recalling the awkward and heady days of adolescence. Thank you for giving girls everywhere a teenage boy hero who is noble, thinking first not with his pants, but of his ladylove’s best interests. Thank you for giving us girls-turned-women a glimpse through the window of our bygone days for a look at what we were, and the promise of a sweet and simple love.
