This past Friday, my wife and I went to see The Twilight Saga: New Moon. I’m sure she would have preferred to go see it with one of her female friends who was equally fanatical as her, but I tried my best to be a good sport for her.
Ever since we saw the first Twilight movie on DVD my wife has been obsessed. She watched it several times and I decided to get her a boxed set of the books for Mother’s Day. Kinda like with Christianity, I don’t really like Twilight, but I’ll support her interest in it.
She praises author Stephanie Meyer and her Twilight series for its witty dialog and refreshing portrayal of innocent love. I despise the series for it’s morally reprehensible glorification of abusive relationships, archaic gender stereotypes, marginalization of minorities, materialism, and oversexualiziation of teenagers. In addition, I think it’s kinda dull.
My wife thinks I’m missing the point. She feels that my judgments about the series are unfair because the movie is an adaptation, so naturally they’d leave a lot of details out. They can’t possibly cover every critical important detail. She believes that if I’d just read the book, I’d understand it better and get the true message of the Twilight series.
To all you atheists out there, does this sound familiar? Ever hear something like this before?
That’s right! That’s what Christians say about the bible!
I just don’t understand the true love of Jesus (Edward) and if I read the bible (New Moon), I’d understand.
And as I’ve said to her, perhaps it’s not that I don’t understand enough. Perhaps it’s that I understand too much.
Or maybe our differing interest in the series has nothing to do with understanding at all, and has everything to do with worldview. More specifically, the worldview of Twilight is consistent with my wife’s worldview (and the worldview of Meyer’s target audience) and is inconsistent with my worldview. In psychology, we’d call this egosyntonic and egodystonic.
Egosyntonic: behaviors, values, feelings, which are in harmony with or acceptable to the needs and goals of the ego, or consistent with one’s ideal self-image. Egosyntonic disorders are hard to treat because patients often fail to see that there is anything wrong and deny any problems. Their symptoms fit in and seem to be accurate with how they perceive the world. Wikipedia provided anorexia nervosa as an example.
Egodystonic: behaviors (e.g., dreams, impulses, compulsions, desires, etc.) that are in conflict, or dissonant, with the needs and goals of the ego, or further, in conflict with a person’s ideal self-image. Egodystonic disorders like depression or anxiety, are much easier to treat because the symptoms are inconsistent with how they perceive the world. Sufferers can tell that something’s wrong.
I would argue that Twilight is egosyntonic with my wife’s (and the however many millions of people who love the series) self-image and worldview. Likewise, I would say that the reason why I detest Twilight so much is that it is egodystonic to my self-image and worldview.
Malasa Skeptic from Skepchick has the money quote:
Ew Moon: Why Twilight continues to hurt America…
“The messages behind Twilight? Be weak, let your man protect you. Be careful, don’t get him angry. If he hurts you, it’s your fault. Abuse is part of life. Accept it. If he really loves you, he’ll try not to hurt you but don’t be surprised if he does. You probably deserve it. You are nobody without your man, so don’t bother trying”
I find this absolutely repulsive. But then again, I’m not as handsome and as beautiful as Edward Cullen is portrayed. Edward is portrayed as a cultured, rich, sexy, devoted man (who is overprotective, bossy, manipulative and paternalistic).
The problem is that this is exactly what Meyer’s target audience wants (read: expects). Her fans expect that sexy and powerful men are kinda jerks, it’s consistent with how they feel the world works. They fully believe that the world is a dangerous place where they constantly have to be protected. They fully believe they should be pampered with gifts and luxury cars and have major decisions made for them.
To the guys out there who know women who are fans of the series, how many times have you heard someone say to you that all men should be like Edward? And what was your first thought?
“You want us to be sexy and rich and to fawn over you”. Well for most of us, we can fawn over women, but the sexy and rich parts may be permanently out of our realm.
When I say “target audience” what I really mean is women. Bland, flat, undefined Bella is a nice fictionsuit that women can slip into and live the story through. Most guys don’t identify with Edward, the hypersexy, hyperrich lead character. He’s too unrealistic and too majestic for us to relate.
Guys might be able to identify with Jacob, Bella’s unrequited love interest.
Or worse, we men identify with the humans. The inconsequential background players to which neither Bella, nor Meyer, nor the audience cares much for. And whose presence is simply to highlight how much more awesome the vampire world is.
Twilight egodystonic to me, and probably to men in general. I don’t get sucked into the drama and the rapture of it all because it’s either unrelatable to me in its entirety, or the things I can relate to are marginalized and devalued by the author and the audience.
I’d further argue then, that since Twilight is egodystonic, I am somewhat inoculated to the fantasy and can accurately see the story for what it is. Or more so, I can see what everyone else is so blind to.
If you’re a white, Christian, woman, who has ever dreamed of being noticed by the sexiest boy in highschool you may not notice certain things.
You may not notice the racist overtones in Meyer’s portrayal of vampires and werewolves. You may not bat an eye when Alice calls Jacob a “dog”, in the movie. You may feel it perfectly normal since he’s a werewolf. You may feel that the portrayal of pale (white) vampires as the civilized, cultured race and the brown (ethnic) werewolves as the naturalistic, earthly (savage) race as normal. Of course the werewolves wouldn’t have fancy houses, fancy cars, fancy clothes. Look at them!
You may not notice that only white people end up with white people. That the minorities all got paired up together.
You may not notice that the movie seems to treat clinical depression as a condition that can only be cured by getting together with another man. It’s totally natural for a woman to constantly do self-destructive things to get a man’s attention!
You may not notice that the movie seems to think that physical assaults from a man to a woman is normal, because he couldn’t “control himself” and deep down he genuinely “loves her”.
You may not find it unusual that everyone needs to be protected from everything. No one seems trustworthy enough to be able to take care of themselves.
You may not find it odd that everyone has such a hard time controlling themselves, that if they lose control or succumb to their primal urges, terrible things happen!
You may find it perfectly normal that Bella feels so unworthy of Edward’s love. He’s soooo perfect and all and we’re soooo flawed and unworthy. He’s kinda like Jesus that way. (When this came up in the towards movie, I actually turned to my wife and asked her “Is Edward supposed to be Jesus?)
Indeed. If you were Meyer’s target audience, all of this would seem normal.
But what if you’re not her target audience. What if you were, maybe an atheist, brown skinned, Chinese Jamaican, male, clinical therapist, who is trained in trauma and abuse? Maybe this stuff wouldn’t seem all that normal at all. Maybe it’d seem pretty disordered.
Maybe, as a person who’s spent his life overcoming the stereotypes and faulty beliefs that Meyer perpetuates, I can see through the dreaminess and see the stories for what they are: poorly written, repugnant drivel that seeks to glorify all of the maladaptive and dangerous aspects that an archaic, patriarchal, theocratic (Christian) worldview has to offer.
But why do I care so much? Once again, Skepchick says it best:
“The Twilight series is dangerous. Not because Bella is a brainless, empty, shell of a female character. I don’t have a problem with weak women in the movies. What bothers me is that this tripe is being sold not just as normal but as DESIRABLE. As something that women should aspire to.”
What struck me with all of this, why I was so eager to write this, was that the parallels to Christianity were astounding. Replace “Twilight” with “Bible”, “Bella” with “Christians”, “Edward” with “Jesus”, and “Jacob” with “Rational thought” and this post would be just as comprehensiblle.
My wife told me that Meyer, a Mormon, said that she never intended her books to be ”Christian” books. But you don’t have to explicitly say “Jesus is Lord” in the dialog for for the influences to come through. As an author, the universe you create often looks very similar to the universe you perceive.
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