New Moan

First off, if you are a Twilight series fan, I suggest you do not continue reading. Or mabe you should, so you can help me with a few things, as I would explain later.

Long before I began seeing people everywhere holding these Stephenie Meyer volumes the way students carry their textbooks, I’ve been contemplating if I should begin reading them (1) because National Bookstore is littered with these eye-catching black things; (2) it seems to be well on the way to reaching the Harry Potter popularity meter; (3) it does look interesting, to say the least. My main concern then is that I do not want to shell out money because I was quite broke, but now I wonder if I had indeed begun reading them before all the hype took off, would I probably have been a Twi-hard?

It’s almost unfair and pretentious of me to call myself a Twi-hater (which I have admittedly done so in a few number of occassions now) because I did not spend time really reading the books, even if my sister have copies lying around our house. By the time I realized that people I know are now reading this stuff and are anticipating the movies, I’m already disillusioned/enlightened by the negative reviews I’ve read. So I said I didn’t read the books. Here’s what I did: (1) I read all positive and all negative reviews I can find; (2) I read hundreds of passages and quotes from the series at goodreads; (3) I watched the first film.

From watching the first movie, I think I got the appeal. It’s a love story. People love those; I know I do.  It’s not a great film by any means, but one that’s very watchable on a few levels. And although I first found Robert Pattison’s (or Edward Cullen’s) hair ridiculous, watching a few interviews with him convinced me he’s quite a sensible young man. Kristen Stewart seems like a strong character in real life, too, that’s why I wonder why she was cast as Bella Swan. Now here begins the bad part. Have your humidifier filters ready.

My main beef with the entire concept is that I do not agree that this love story is something that young people should wish for themselves, metaphorically speaking even. Well, there’s the “teen chastity” message that some people may see as a good thing, but I tend to side with those who saw the Bella/Edward relationship as dysfunctional. Here’s why. I’m copying a portion of one reader review, which I think said it  (i.e., the consensus of the bad reviews) most eloquently:

But then we must consider the problem of Bella: whiny, needy, and sullen, blindly devoting herself to a partner that constantly patronizes, criticizes, and subjugates her only for him to leave so she can spend the next 8 months in a state of emotional vacancy so acute that she forgets everything else in her life that a girl can be happy about. Bella is only complete–and she says this herself–when her man is by her side. And apparently, according to Meyer at least, this is ok. It’s ok to create a character so bereft of purpose, self-assurance, and identity that she can’t live without a relationship based on nothing substantial, just beauty, lust, and exoticism.  - Scott

I’m all for escapism and fluffy but fun stuff. This doesn’t look fun to me at all. I like a nice love triangle but not with a girl who pines for someone so bad she’ll place herself in dangerous situations just so he’ll save her and then bond with the other boy while she’s at it. Granted, Edward and Jacob may both be so hard to resist (I’ve read that if you go see New Moon, your money would be worth spent just seeing Taylor Lautner’s abs and pecs). I prefer a strong heroine, or at least someone who is not so blinded she’d want to be turned into a vampire just because there’s one who is so beautiful and also thinks that she smells good. I also wonder, in my current line of thinking, if I’m Bella and I’m in front of this uber pretty albeit undead boy, hearing him say these words to me will probably reduce me to tears. ROTFL tears, that is (and I still dare to call myself a hopeless romantic):

Before you Bella my life was like a moonless night. Very dark, but there were stars - points of light and reason. …. And then you shot across my sky like a meteor. Suddenly everything was on fire; there was brilliance, there was beauty. When you were gone, when the meteor had fallen over the horizon, everything went black. Nothing had changed, but my eyes were blinded by the light. I couldn’t see the stars anymore. And there was no reason for anything. 

He’s a hundred plus years old, so I’ll forgive his bad dialogue but this made me appreciate J.K. Rowling infinitely more for excellently writing a series that encouraged people of all ages to read (and they should).

Now if you got this far, here’s my request. If you loved Twilight, can you tell me if my quoted review is wrong and too harsh? Is there anything in the books that doesn’t deserve the criticism it got? It’s probably just the case that I’m outside of its target audience, but I’ll probably watch New Moon anyway, for the curiosity factor, when I can already download a good copy, err I mean when the DVD is out.

Update (11/22): I realized I was making generalizations on the entire series, and more on the books, not the current movie New Moon as my post title might suggest. I don’t want to rain on people’s parade but for the sake of argument, here’s something to think about.