Dec 21, 2008 10:00 AM
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San Francisco, 4:34 AM
Wed Feb 10
25 posts in the last 24 hours
Never mind the movie, are Twilight novels turning today's children into sex-crazed tweenagers? That's the claim made by one LA Times writer, but we're unconvinced that the books are that depraved... or even that good.
The LA Times' Sonja Bolle is the concerned Los Angelino in question:
Much as I like the novels — and I devoured all of them happily — I'm appalled to find that a sizable number of the 25 million copies now in print are going into the hands of 10-year-olds. Why would parents whose children are not yet obsessed with sex encourage their kids to read books that are one long, bodice-ripping romance?
Considering that the Twilight books are really just one long lesson about the value of waiting until you're married to have sex which will then get you pregnant but don't you think about an abortion because it's a sin, it may be somewhat surprising to see Bolle get so hot under the collar about the prospect of kids being lead down the wrong path by these books, but she has an explanation:
[J]ust because the lovers don't have sex in the first three books doesn't make the story appropriate for younger kids; inherent in the pleasure of restraint is the longing for sex. And that's just the first three books. In the fourth book, by contrast, the lovers have tons of sex. First, they marry, of course, and produce a fetching baby. But the fourth book answers the burning question about what vampires do with all their free time, since they don't sleep. It turns out that married vampires have a lot of sex.
Maybe the issue isn't with Twilight, or 10-year-olds, but with Bolle herself:
When is it OK to read "Twilight"? When you can't stop thinking about sex. When the idea of romance produces a physical reaction in your body. When a story of a caress withheld for hundreds of pages leaves you breathless and weak-kneed — not bored and skimming for the next action scene.
Firstly, she's making Twilight seem much better than it is. Secondly, am I really the only person who read that and thought that maybe Bolle is a little too melodramatic in general about... well, everything to do with sex? The problem may not be that children are being corrupted, but that mountains are being made out of molehills everywhere.
Why 'Twilight' isn't for everybody [LA Times]
Send an email to Graeme McMillan, the author of this post, at graeme@io9.com.
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