{"id":4122,"date":"2010-11-07T07:35:28","date_gmt":"2010-11-07T14:35:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/josemarquez.com\/xsml\/?p=4122"},"modified":"2010-11-07T07:35:28","modified_gmt":"2010-11-07T14:35:28","slug":"not-all-fairy-tales-are-equal-my-problem-with-twilight","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.josemarquez.com\/etc\/2010\/11\/07\/not-all-fairy-tales-are-equal-my-problem-with-twilight\/","title":{"rendered":"Not all fairy tales are equal: my problem with Twilight."},"content":{"rendered":"

Ana liked it.* I thought it was bordering on the absurd. A wish fulfillment scenario made for viewers with a very different set of concerns can feel like a fugue state. Interesting but alien. I got the same feeling of otherness from watching a Neon Genesis Evangelion<\/a> movie and suspect the experience is not uncommon. <\/p>\n

However, fairy tales can be made meaningful across life stages. Not just by inserting parallel storylines and\/or peppering the dialogue with allusions but rather through a protagonist who is unsure, insecure, challenged, in flux. (Think Spirited Away<\/a> along with every other Bildungsroman<\/a>, no matter the gender, racial or class barriers to be overcome.)<\/p>\n

In Twilight, the movie, Bella is a closed set of possibilities. Even her needs and anxieties are seamless: she desires to be desired and nothing else. If anything, she is the monster. (And I hoped at some point it would be revealed she was the true vampire.) <\/p>\n

Rather than portraying a coming of age and thus challenging its viewers, Twilight presents an early adolescent’s fantasy of adulthood, allowing its viewers to postpone the most difficult question of all: who am I? what am I?<\/p>\n

(A counterfactual: what if Twilight had been an X-Men<\/a> spin-off? Instead of the awful Wolverine, we might have spent some time with a young woman who tames the supernatural. Instead of “Will I meet Mr. Right?” the hero could have wondered: “If I’m the superior being, why don’t they like me?”)<\/p>\n

As for the wish being fulfilled: Ana points out, “Who doesn’t want to marry up?” Cool family, cool house, cool cars. But where Sense and Sensibility<\/a> exploits class mobility to lay bare the cruelty of Victorian-era patriarchy, Twilight happily submits its hero to gendered norms as the price for her fulfillment. <\/p>\n

In a scene where Bella runs away from home, her boyfriend, a considerably older gentleman, helpfully suggests: “Let me drive.” It would be a fitting alternate title.<\/p>\n

*Ana likes it because it inverts the traditional vampire narrative, making the bad guys into the good guys. I think other recent vampire stories like Buffy the Vampire Slayer<\/a> or Let The Right One In<\/a> do that inversion much better without coddling their teen audiences. <\/p>\n

Ana retorts that it’s not coddling but a necessary sexual education tool to teach young girls that rape is not the only possible outcome of heterosexual congress. I think we’re in check on that one.<\/p>\n

<\/param><\/param><\/param><\/embed><\/object><\/p>\n

Dev\u00f3rame Otra Vez<\/a> (Devour me again)<\/small><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ana liked it.* I thought it was bordering on the absurd. A wish fulfillment scenario made for viewers with a very different set of concerns can feel like a fugue state. Interesting but alien. I got the same feeling of otherness from watching a Neon Genesis Evangelion movie and suspect the experience is not uncommon….<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[10],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.josemarquez.com\/etc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4122"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.josemarquez.com\/etc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.josemarquez.com\/etc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.josemarquez.com\/etc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.josemarquez.com\/etc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4122"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.josemarquez.com\/etc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4122\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.josemarquez.com\/etc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4122"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.josemarquez.com\/etc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4122"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.josemarquez.com\/etc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4122"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}