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Twilight's Bella Is "The Sexual Aggressor"
Why All Female Superheroes Look the Same
San Francisco, 12:31 PM
Sat Dec 5
24 posts in the last 24 hours
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Twilight's Bella Is "The Sexual Aggressor" |
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11/26/09
I still like the books. They're cute. Nice to read when you feel like crap and don't want to think much. The movies? not so much.
11/25/09
But it's not about whether Bella is "passive" or not. In fact, the paradigm where a woman is allowed agency only so far as to be put down because of it can be a lot more problematic than her not having it at all. Bella doesn't need to be an ingenue to play into classic tropes about the need for women's sexuality to be controlled by men. Bella as the sexual aggressor and instigator can, in fact, play right into that.
But that's about as far as I'm going to go with it because... well, I don't think anyone's pretending Twilight is some kind of feminist manifesto except maybe Stephanie Meyer, and given what you can see flipping through television, it can see pretty tame in terms of any its problematic aspects.
11/25/09
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11/25/09
Christian heaven overtones. I know Meyer's been accused of pushing Mormon ideals through her books (however unknowingly), but this is the kind of thing that makes it clear.
11/25/09
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11/25/09
This is what gets me about Twilight. The story isn't bad. It has a lot of potential and it could, honestly, have been amazing in the hands of a decent writer. I mean what's not to love? Vampire/werewolf/human love triangle. Alternative lifestyle vampires vs. old school blood suckers. Native American werewolf tribe and ancient vampire gestapo. The pain of giving up the ebb and flow of life for the stasis of an unchanging eternity. A scheming vampire villain who is too smart to be caught easily but not quite smart enough to best our hero. Twilight has it all.
Unfortunately, Meyer is just so bad at actually saying what she's trying to say that the good is just hopelessly trapped in the dreck that is her writing. Maybe she'll get better at peeling away the fail with experience. I think Twilight was her first novel, if memory serves.
11/25/09
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11/25/09
#calendar
11/25/09
Bella's relationships with others are incredibly unhealthy; without someone (preferably male) to define who she is, she has nothing. She has no friends when Edward or Jacob are around, because they're her world. The banal world of friendship is a distant second to this idealized fiction of soulmates. Basing your world around one, very fallible person (even if he is a supernatural being) isn't the most well-adjusted attitude towards life. She doesn't want anything... unless it's her man. Family doesn't really define what Bella is looking for. She abandons her family without a qualm in order to essentially succumb to a death wish and stay young and pretty forever.
11/25/09
11/25/09
It's obvious that in both R&J and Twilight, the couples suffer from an extremely obsessive kind of love. Obsessive love is prevalent in literature of all kinds. Wuthering Heights is another example that comes to mind.
Clearly, Twilight is not in the same league as these famous works of literature. I just wanted to point out that this type of relationship is nothing new. Girls have been obsessed with these stories for generations!
11/25/09
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11/25/09
Like it or not, some things are just inherent to our gender--they are in our genes. Now, that doesn't mean I believe women should be confined to the kitchen and men are destined to lead or any such crap like that. What I mean is, I think Twilight acknowledges something basic and honest about human nature, or at least female nature (the males are much less realistic though)--females form strong attachments to the males they become attracted to and are more easily devastated when relationships are severed. It's just the way it is. There is a sound evolutionary reason for this, having to do with holding onto men to help raise and protect the offspring. Males, however, are genetically prone to spreading their seed far and wide.
Of course, recognizing this is true doesn't mean we must idealize it--that would be playing into the naturalistic fallacy. But by the same token we should recognize the limitations of our respective genders and not try to whitewash them.
11/25/09
11/25/09
As a woman AND a feminist, I actually agree with you. I vouch for the equality in rights and duty for both halves of the human population. Period.
I had a History teacher at University who was the scariest anti-male pseudo-fascist ultra-feminist ever. Amongst other bold and barmy assertions, she liked to repeat that the "supposed" differences between the male and female skeletons were all made-up, the result of some patriarchal state conspiracy.
Twilight certainly possesses the foundations of a great story, as a metaphor for genre exploration... Where it fails (I'm not even talking of the crappy style and tacky writing) is into providing with an actually credible heroine who would represent women at her age properly: struggling with their instincts and their curiosity and their fear, but eventually taking real choices in life, whatever those choices might be.
Submission or emancipation? That's not even important, because it would be part of the plot. What matters is that Meyer seems incapable to see further than the (mostly dubious) limitations of her heroine's gender.
This obvious message underlying Meyer's series, that not only doesn't a woman need to, but MUST not stand for herself, is to me the most shocking and ridiculous leap backwards into the Victorian fallacies that we could imagine.
It's a pure negation of all things feminist, because it simply doesn't take in account female nature, which might make a woman prone to wish for a sedentary, stable life with a single partner, but not by any means become a doormat.
PS: most women I know are actually allergic to long-term engagement, while men dream of a wife, kids & the white picket-fence. Is this Evolution, I wonder?
11/25/09
I am so, so tired of the feminist role model tripe. It's like somewhere along the way, women got this Role Model Index that we hold every other woman up to. If she's somewhere south of strong, independent sainthood, she's declared a bad role model and we all heap scorn upon her. We apply this RMI to females of all walks - celebrities, singers, politicians, working mothers, housewives, even our fictional women. It's like the scarlet letter of the 21st century. Not every female (whether, real or imagined) is going to be the perfect 2009 Feminist Role Model - but we'll slag any uppity bitch that dares to be less, since we're all perfect ourselves. Nobody tears a woman down like another woman.
I think there is room for stories about insecure girls like Bella because there are a lot of those out there. Not every story has to end, "... and then she left home, went to college, worked at NASA and was the first woman to reach Alpha Centauri!" It's okay for some stories to end with the heroine happy with a husband and her baby in a modest home. I see a lot of talk about how it's 'setting us back.' But that seems to imply that every woman who's happy with her husband and her baby in her modest home is an oppressed victim who should be demanding more.
Okay, I think I hit all the high points of my rant. Sorry about that. It's just been on my mind.
11/25/09
I agree with your basic point, which is that women in stories should be represented as real people, with all the flaws and strengths that come along with that. But it wouldn't hurt to have just a few stories with the plot you mention above. I've never read a story that ended that way, but clearly you have. Any recommendations for stories that have heroines who work at NASA and go to Alpha Centauri?
11/25/09
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I guess that says that quite a lot of the differences between men and women (especially the kind that comedians and entertainers tend to base their material on) are more a matter of socialization than something we are born with.
11/25/09
But it is Young Adult fiction, specifically aimed at impressionable girls. If I had a daughter, I'd certainly want to talk with her about the themes in these stories if she were reading them.
Specifically, the themes of obsessive love, sex associated with death or undeath, and attaining a state of static perfection (in death).
Those are unhealthy but attractive ideas to an teenage mind--I've gone through them myself, and while I suppose every teenager does, I also would want to help my children to have a healthier outlook on life.
11/25/09
To consider ourselves above biology is arrogant.
But that's humans for you.
11/25/09
She gets brutally destroyed because of it. I always wondered how many people who find that book "romantic" forgot completely about that character.
11/25/09
Can we give teen girls a little more credit here? I ate up VC Andrews as a young teen. Am I now (or have I ever been) yearning for some nice incest or horrifying rape? Good god no. The fiction I read in that time of my life was FULL of crappy role models, stalker boyfriends, obsessive love, and other such nonsenses that I in no way, shape, or form want in real life.
I also involved into a fairly confident, self-proclaimed feminist.
What we read CAN influence us, that's for sure, but sometimes we read things for fantasy, or morbid curiosity.
The problem, IMHO, is not that girls want these things but rather the Say Anything syndrome. I worry that because girls eat these stories up young boys will think, "well, that's what they want, right?" And go and reenact some of this crap not connecting that jut because it works in books/movies doesn't mean it does in real life.
11/26/09
11/26/09
Apparently, Bella loves Wuthering Heights, again, because of the "true love" in the book.
What does this mean? Meyer doesn't fucking understand literature, especially when it comes to books that were obviously about the fact that idealized romances don't exist.
11/26/09
I don't think the message is that you shouldn't stand up for yourself. Stephanie Meyer's really hung up on this idea of "true love," and I think that's what all of Bella's actions stem from.
Well, the actions that aren't guided by stupidity, anyway.
11/26/09
11/26/09
I'm a sucker for the good old "they hate each other first then get to know each other" story.
11/26/09
But I like to dream that someplace else, 100-something, obsessive, emoweirded sickos get arrested, possibly by firearm, whenever they get caught sneaking on poor girls' rooms at night. A punch in the face will do for daytime sneakery.
Next time I get bugged by a dumb drooling representative of the mankind, I shall make him a lecture on the Twilight syndrom.
11/26/09
BTW in no way shape or form do I think Meyer is a great writer. She's average at best and mostly got lucky by creating something that became such a phenomenon.
11/26/09
Similarly, Twilight is about a girl and the vampire who loves her because she smells so delicious. It's just a different kind of weird relationship.
11/26/09
@Heriloke: I'm with you. I've always preferred romances where the couple bicker a lot or loathe each other and then fall in love.
My favorite romantic comedy when I was 16 was 10 Things I Hate About You and I watched Empire Strikes Back for the Han/Leia love affair more than any of the other SW pics for it. Raiders of the Lost Ark was another favorite for similar Marian/Indy relationship.
11/26/09
Apologies. That book is one of my favorites and it really guts me that Myers seems to be pushing that the book is some big romance when it is the exact opposite. Pity the poor English teachers who are slamming their heads against their desks with the piles of gooey essays on "true love" they are forced to read now because of it.
Hell, we got in to the store Twilight-ish covers of that book with the note "Read Bella and Edward's favorite book!" stamped on the cover with new copy on the back making it seem like a sappy romance novel and it pissed the shit out of me.
[www.amazon.com]
11/27/09
whatever happened to balance? the idea that to each event there is a season?
11/27/09
11/27/09
Always acting this way, I don't think you get to grow up properly. It's simply childish.
Of course it's good have a family, if that is what you want. But perhaps we should think about growing up before we have kids. And becoming an adult implies you have lived a little, and got enough experience of live to provide future citizens of the world with at least some knowledge and good sense.
Now, all societies that consider individuals as only destined for marriage and procreation do tend to infantilize women - so they cannot teach their daughters, and their sons as well, to become respectful, egalitarian, wise people.
Wouldn't this "balance" require that we get to know ourselves, before we let obscurantist ideas of romance cloud our better judgement into believing that passion is enough to build a life upon?
(And that, was very pompous.)
11/28/09