Twilight

After tearing through every book in the Twilight series as fast as I could get my hands on it, I found myself wondering what I liked about them and the answer was more complex than I realized. I mean, the books are bad. They are extremely trashy and fairly predictable. From any realistic point of view, they ought to be utter crap. And yet I read them feverishly, even re-reading some of the juicier bits. Even though they may not be artfully crafted masterpieces of words, Stephenie Meyer must be delivering something that I as a reader crave in order to get that response. I've thought about it a little and I have an idea, but the whole thing is still a little fuzzy, and nothing clears up fuzz like a good blogging, so here goes.

I think the most important part of Twilight's appeal is Bella and what she has. She has a hot, rich, obsessively dedicated boyfriend whose entire existence is wrapped up in her every thought. Let's not forget how strong and competent this boyfriend is and his many talents. Then she has a second powerful boy with another overwhelming love of her. She is also intelligent (the facts don't really support this because she's pretty stupid most of the time, but she is portrayed as such through Meyer's descriptions) and knows more than anyone else around her about what's really going on (she sees things others don't notice at all and figures out enough to be suspicious even without inexplicable car accidents). Furthermore, she is mysterious and unfathomable to Edward in a way that no one else is. She is also tough, albeit in a very specific way. She doesn't complain at all- she suffers fairly frequently over the course of the book, but it's never that big of a deal to her. Her own problems are always less important to her than the problems of others in her life. So she is actually very strong because nothing can affect her, and many horrible things try. It is only for the sake of others that she ever worries. Even though she is often described as frail and prone to accidents, the important part that subtly underlies it all is that she can endure pretty much anything, thus making her one of the strongest characters. Edward does his share of enduring also, but it's pretty much always for her sake. The power and control goes back to her in the end. Of course this sends a pretty clear (and pretty distressing) message about appropriate outlets for feminine strength (we're the best at taking it with a smile while our men deal with the actual threats), but the fact remains that her strength is played up quite a bit and when the reader associates with Bella, they associate with this strong aspect of her.

It's really very important for Bella to have some aspect of her that is strong. Otherwise she really would be pathetic. She is constantly getting into trouble and having to be rescued. But that's part of the appeal as well. Everyone wants to be taken care of. Everyone wants someone looking out for them and making sure no harm befalls them. It's especially nice when the people looking out for you are superpowered. There isn't a much better rush than testing the limits of your strength and finding that you're tougher than whatever would try to hurt you. Meyer keeps coming up with bigger and bigger threats so as to showcase just how powerful Bella's protectors are. Starting with the first book, her threats begin with mundane car accidents, a trivial thing for Edward to protect her from. Then we move on bigger game and have the threat be another vampire, which her protectors (yes her protectors multiply at every stage- by this point the has the whole Cullen family and not just Edward) vanquish without too much difficulty. Then she moves on to a new set of protectors, a pack of werewolves who protect her pretty handily from Laurent (another single vampire) and Victoria, also just one vampire, but a pretty cunning one gunning for her head alone and not just wanton violence. Then a couple of her old protectors keep her safe from an organization of super vampires (albeit through smooth talking rather than force). *Warning- now entering book three spoilers!* We have to keep raising the bar to push Bella's tolerance for danger even farther, so next we face off against a vampire army, one with super strong vampires as well. We also discover that one of her protectors is stronger than we realized since Jasper has his army background. As her threats expand, so do her defenders. Before the Cullens and werewolves were separate protectors and now we get to see them joining their might together (for her sake of course) and allowing them to easily win with no casualties. Every threat in this universe is huge, but each one is overcome without any cost whatsoever- not one casualty. Well there was one injury in book 3, but since everyone has healing out the wazoo, it's more of a way to showcase everyone's worrying and less of an actual loss. Meyer may be predictable, but there is talent there, to make meaningless threat after meaningless threat actually come off as worrisome to the reader. *(I don't think there are any explicit book 4 spoilers below, but Steven might want to stop reading just in case. I make some guesses about things beyond book 4, which kind of tells you a little about how it ends.)* Too many more of these books and people would start to get wise. You really have to kill off a character every once in a while to have threats mean anything, but these books aren't about actual loss or sadness. Bella has only desirable things. The whole series falls apart if she has to deal with any real loss or sadness beyond her usual emo whininess. No one wants to live vicariously through someone actually dealing with real problems and their ramifications. If the series kept going I imagine we'd see a werewolf no one really cares about get played up a bunch and then killed off. Perhaps Seth. He's come into his own a little in book 4 and it's just too sad to kill off Leah. Besides it would be tainted with people feeling kind of happy she was gone. Seth would get a true heroes death with all the somber memorial needed. Bella would mourn for a while of course, but we wouldn't waste too many words on it. And it would probably bring everyone closer together somehow. I'm guessing he'd take the bullet for a vampire that we actually care about. But enough supposition. The series could stand to have a little more finality, but I don't think that's coming any time too soon. Meyer will take a break and bathe in her money for a little while and then maybe we'll start up the series again a century or two in the future when they deal with Volturi once and for all. If that book ever does come to exist, it will be the crappy bastard child of all the rest. All that juicy romance is more or less finalized by this point, which was really what the series was about all along. The action is more about highlighting that romance, providing a backdrop where we can see through their concern how much everyone cares about everyone else. I say enough supposition, but then there I go again. Well, it is about rambling after all.

*No more spoilers!*

Let's backtrack a little to the things Bella has: strength (of a sort), high desirability, hotties fighting over her tooth and nail, a sexy, rich, powerful boyfriend who would do anything in his power to keep her safe and happy, ... well that's most of it, though there's a little more too. But basically, she is blessed with all the things average people desire. This plays a big role in tapping into the readers' fantasies, but another key part of the appeal is Bella's treatment of all these things: she doesn't want them or realize they exist for the most part. She doesn't want a protector to put themselves in danger over her. This helps showcase her dubious strength. She can handle the danger (you know, because she's tough and all), but not the thought of losing a loved one. Fair enough really. That would be real loss and she's not exactly equipped to deal with that. Neither is the reader. We read these books to go to a happy, unrealistic place. If all of a sudden the characters had to deal with real pain it would leave a pretty unsavory taste in our mouths. But back to what she doesn't want- she's the object of desire of basically every guy in the school (at least every one that warrants a name), but not only does she not want to date them, she wishes they weren't even interested at all. Now that is the ultimate rejection right there. Not only am I too good to date you, I'm too good to even want to deal with your attraction. Of course as the reader, we love the idea of people falling over themselves to ask us out. Even in a happy relationship like I am, it would at the very least be flattering. We all want what Bella has, but we're often don't want to appear that we want it. For example, a lot of women (and perhaps some men as well, though I can't speak for them as much), want to get married and have a beautiful over the top wedding where they are the center of everyone's attention. Of course, you don't want to bring that up so much. You don't want to be one of those women- the ones who are desperate to be married because they can't stand to be alone and barely even care who it's with as long as someone will take them. It's basically the female version of the nice guy tm. It's not really appropriate to be thinking about marriage before there's a guy involved (you'll be that woman), but a lot of women do. The whole idea of marriage is pretty appealing to a lot of people. To be frank, I never thought about it that much, but now that I've gone through a wedding and actually have had to think about it, I can really see the appeal. It was pretty wonderful, all told. Everyone wants to have a wonderful moment like that. So we wish for it, but we have to be secret about it so we don't look like a desperate harpy. Bella has marriage thrust upon her, and she actively doesn't want it, so she definitely doesn't suffer from just-get-me-hitched-no-matter-what syndrome. But she still gets to experience it, an over the top excessive version of it, I might add. She gets all the secret desires we want without looking like she wants it. We get to enjoy all these things without having to admit that we want them. Because she's uncomfortable or miserable, we're able to mask our secret joy at the way things have played out. She has a million protectors going out of their way to keep her safe and protected. Everyone wants that. But you can't really ask someone to sacrifice for you. Well, sure you can, but then you're a burden. You don't want to be a burden dragging them down. And quite frankly, Bella is the biggest burden literature has seen in years, but because everyone is volunteering to go out of their way, despite her repeated requests for them not to, she can't really be held to blame. Everyone wants to be protected, but no one wants to be a burden or to feel weak. Bella gets all the benefits of protection without having to feel weak because she dislikes the protection and tries to avoid it, often trying to escape or somehow shield her protectors (usually she shields them emotionally somehow by not expressing how much pain she's in- which she can totally handle because she's tough). So while Bella gives us that feeling of being protected while shielding us from the negative associations of weakness or burden by trying to avoid being protected. So we, as the reader, get it all- protection without weakness.

This is what makes Twilight so successful. It has a main character who has everything people secretly want and feel guilty about wanting. She's got a rich handsome boyfriend, which she says she wishes he wasn't rich or hot so that it would even the playing field between them. So score for the reader- a rich, hot, devoted boyfriend who lavishes them with gifts and we don't have to feel guilty about being a gold digger or shallow, even as we appreciate these things, because these aren't the reasons they're together. We completely eradicate the guilt because these desirable things are seen as negatives by Bella that she'd do without if she could. That's where the desires of the writer differs from the desires of the characters. Meyer wants Bella to have all of these things that all people secretly want. Moreover, Meyer wants her to *not* want them because everybody feels a little guilty about all of those desires and feels like they shouldn't want them, so they want a character who doesn't and yet still has all these wonderful things fall at her feet.

So that is the primary appeal of Twilight. There are other layers of appeal where it's fun to poke holes in Stephenie Meyer's bad writing or to laugh at how silly or predictable most of it is or where you get to see crazy hot people (half of them topless) during the Twilight movies, but that's the real reason the book have sucked in so many people. Most of the other stuff where it's fun to make fun of Twilight is really just to mask that it struck a chord. Making fun of it is certainly fun too, but I generally don't go out of my way to watch bad things just to make fun of them. Really bad things may attain some level of cult following, but they never get as popular as Twilight. We're in it for the guilt free romance. As long as that gets across, it doesn't really matter how crappy the writing is or how unrealistic the situations are. It'll still hit home. And make Stephenie Meyer millions of dollars.