Female Fans – Bitch Flicks

Unpopular Opinions in Film: A Critical Re-Examination of ‘Twilight’

My intent is not to claim that ‘Twilight’ is a perfect movie, but rather, I want to argue that it has more virtues than it is given credit for, and to point out that its dismissal is frequently based on pervasive sexist attitudes. I am not speaking for the other films in the series — all directed by men — but rather, the first film, which was written and directed by women (Melissa Rosenberg and Catherine Hardwicke, respectively), based on a novel written by a woman. There are many valid reasons why one may not enjoy ‘Twilight,’ but it is important to recognize that it is unfair and sexist to dismiss the film and its fans based on the fact that it is a romance told from a female perspective.

This guest post written by Angela Morrison appears as part of our theme week on Unpopular Opinions.

“He looks at you like… you’re something to eat,” says Mike Newton (Michael Welch) to his friend Bella Swan (Kristen Stewart), regarding her sparkly new beau, Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson). Mike’s comment serves as humorous dramatic irony, while also making it clear that Bella is desired by most of the men she comes in contact with. Mike’s simile is painfully, literally correct – Edward wants to drink Bella’s blood, and she knows it. Well, the foundation of any good relationship is honesty, right?

Catherine Hardwicke’s Twilight (2008), based on Stephenie Meyer’s wildly popular novel of the same name, deals with teenage romance, vampirism, female agency, and desire. In her brilliant article on Twilight fans, Tanya Erzen outlines exactly who likes the series and how they show their devotion. She writes: “There have certainly been fan crazes before, but what differentiates the Twilight phenomenon is that its fan base consists almost entirely of girls and women.” The specifics of these girls and women – race, class, sexual orientation, religion – is not clear, but one thing is for sure: overwhelming numbers of women are vocal about their passion for the tales of Bella and Edward.

There is an insidious trend in our North American society wherein anything beloved by women – specifically young women – is automatically dismissed. Twilight is frequently looked down upon by both film critics and casual moviegoers, including people who have not seen the film or read the books. Erzen smartly observes that “denigrating these female fans as rabid, obsessed, and hysterical is a favorite pastime for many media outlets.”

My intent is not to claim that Twilight is a perfect movie, but rather, I want to argue that it has more virtues than it is given credit for, and to point out that its dismissal is frequently based on pervasive sexist attitudes. I am not speaking for the other films in the series – all directed by men – but rather, the first film, which was written and directed by women (Melissa Rosenberg and Catherine Hardwicke, respectively), based on a novel written by a woman. There are many valid reasons why one may not enjoy Twilight, but it is important to recognize that it is unfair and sexist to dismiss the film and its fans based on the fact that it is a romance told from a female perspective.

I am personally not a fan of the Twilight books, as I do not connect with Meyers’ writing style. She has many good ideas, but they often do not come across clearly in her writing. Where the book fails, Hardwicke and Rosenberg are successful. Some of the cheesy lines make it into the movie (“You’re like my own personal brand of heroin…”), but it is so well-made that this is easily forgiven. Hardwicke has a strong authorial voice and presence, often focusing her films on young female protagonists experiencing strange and sometimes painful events. Both Twilight and Thirteen (2003) feature washed-out cinematography shot by Elliot Davis, and deal with teenage female protagonists living with a single parent. The similarities between the images and themes in these films represent a through-line across Hardwicke’s filmography. Twilight‘s icy grey-blue and deep green images beautifully portray the damp, rainy, sometimes mysterious setting of Forks, Washington.

Writers, such as Dr. Natalie Wilson, argue that Twilight upholds traditional gender roles, and romanticizes unhealthy behavior in romantic relationships. Twilight sends the message that a woman’s only purpose in life is to love and be loved by the man of her dreams. Bella loves Edward obsessively – towards the end of the first film, she stutters profusely when Edward suggests she spend some time with her mother, and says, “We can’t be apart” Edward is frequently cold and distant, and constantly tells her they shouldn’t be together – while at the same time, proclaiming his everlasting devotion to her. These mixed signals are confusing and painful for Bella, but readers/viewers interpret their relationship as transcendently romantic. Bella is willing to give up her life and her soul to become a vampire, so she can be with Edward forever. This all-encompassing, obsessive relationship is clearly unhealthy, and borders on being emotionally abusive. While I argue that Twilight has merits, it is also important for me to reiterate feminist critiques of its outdated gender roles and dangerous romanticization of heterosexual and heteronormative monogamy as the only option for women.

Bella is frequently dismissed as weak and passive, but she is more interesting and complex than meets the eye. Brigit McCone at Bitch Flicks points out that Hardwicke’s camera privileges Bella’s point of view – the female gaze. Here, Edward is the spectacle to be looked at – he is an alluring, seductive vampire, and Bella spends a lot of time considering her desire for him. Edward takes off his shirt and reveals to Bella that his skin glitters in the sunlight, and she breathlessly tells him, “You’re beautiful.” The camera is with Bella in almost every scene, and the audience experiences things as Bella does. There are simply not many movies where female experiences are centered, especially not big-budget films like Twilight.

The film also features many female characters who support one another, such as Bella’s friends Jessica (Anna Kendrick) and Angela (Christian Serratos). Bella assures Angela she is a “strong, confident woman,” and urges her to subvert gender roles and ask Eric (Justin Chon) to the prom, instead of waiting for him to ask her. Edward’s sister Alice (Ashley Greene) immediately takes a liking to Bella, letting her know that she has seen the future, and they are going to be great friends. Bella also risks her life out of love and loyalty in order to try and save her mother from the violent vampire James (Cam Gigandet). Twilight not only centers individual female experience, but female friendship and support.

I previously outlined some of the ways in which Bella and Edward’s relationship is unhealthy, but what is particularly striking to me is how they get together in the first place. Bella is enchanted by Edward and his golden amber eyes in biology class, and does her best to strike up a friendship with him – she remains pleasant and engaged, even when he is incredibly rude to her. She slowly realizes that there is something different about him – something magical, possibly dangerous — and through her own research, pieces together that he is a vampire. She is active, not passive — she is the one that pursues him most of the time. Bella finds herself faced with creatures out of a horror movie, and instead of running away in fear, she bravely embraces and accepts them (particularly Edward). Edward can read everyone’s mind except Bella’s – this gives one the sense that she has hidden depth, and constantly leaves us questioning why she is not vulnerable to Edward’s probing vampire powers. Bella is open-minded, easily willing to accept that there is more to the world than meets the eye. She follows her heart, and does not shy away from her desires: she wants to be with Edward, so she pursues him. She doesn’t let Edward’s icy glares stop her from being friends with Jacob (Taylor Lautner), and conversely, she doesn’t let Jacob and his father convince her to stay away from Edward. She is played with vulnerability, wit, and quiet passion by the incredibly talented Kristen Stewart, an actress frequently criticized for not conforming to traditional ideas of femininity.

One of my favorite things about Meyers’ story is its core concept: a family of vampires living in the lush, chilly Pacific Northwest, where one of the vampires falls in love with a human. It is a romantic and interesting, if not particularly unique, take on the literary (and cinematic) vampire tradition. Catherine Hardwicke’s film is the strongest entry in the cinematic series, largely because of the way she privileges the female gaze and point of view. The film is visually beautiful — one can almost feel the cold, damp air of Forks – and it can be seen as part of a larger whole: Catherine Hardwicke’s cohesive filmography. The film is perfectly cast, and features strong performances from many women and people of color (Eric, Tyler, Angela, Jacob, Laurent, and Billy, to name a few). The film was wildly successful at the box office, despite being criticized and dismissed by people who do not take female-centric projects seriously.

Surely, there are ideological problems with Twilight, but it is worth taking a closer look at. There are complexities and subtleties within the film and its performances that are not visible on the surface. Erzen said it best when she noted that critics should “…begin taking the complicated practices and pleasures of female fans seriously.”

See also at Bitch Flicks:

Tanya Erzen’s ‘Fanpire’ Blog Tour: Fans of The Twilight Saga

YouTube Break: The Twilight Saga: An Interview with Dr. Natalie Wilson

Movie Review: The Twilight Saga: New Moon

Shishihokodan: Ice Prince/Wolf Rivalry as Female Madonna/Whore

Violence Against Indigenous Women: Fun, Sexy, and No Big Deal on the Big Screen

Angela Morrison is a queer Canadian cinephile and feminist, and she is Team Jacob. She has written for Bitch Flicks before and writes about film on her blog.

The Capaldi Conundrum: How We Attack the Female Gaze

In any fandom based on visual media, fangirls are attacked because of the way the female gaze is misunderstood and misrepresented.

This guest post by Alyssa Franke appears as part of our theme week on The Female Gaze.

Fangirls everywhere face a common frustration. Call it what you like, there’s a name for almost every fandom — Marvel has the Chrises Conundrum, Sherlockians have the Cumberbatch Conundrum, Whovians have the Capaldi Conundrum. In any fandom based on visual media, fangirls are attacked because of the way the female gaze is misunderstood and misrepresented.

The female gaze is often assumed to be singularly focused on male objectification, to the exclusion of anything else. As a result, women are assumed to either be sexual beings who are present solely to gaze at male bodies, or intellectual beings capable of understanding and appreciating media. Unlike men, we are not allowed to be both at the same time.

Set aside, for the moment, the question about whether or not we can say that the female gaze really exists in franchises that are largely written, produced, and directed by men. At the very least, the creators of these franchises have attempted to appeal to what they believe is the female gaze — a presumed straight female audience — by objectifying their male leads.

Marvel hasn’t been shy about objectifying Chris Hemsworth’s body in his multiple on-screen appearances as Thor. His first solo movie featured several shirtless or partially clothed scenes, but by his second solo film we were upgraded to softly lit, lingering shots of Thor’s torso as he bathed. And Marvel didn’t tiptoe around the blatant objectification and who it was intended for. In a later scene, a woman deliberately falls onto Thor in a crowded subway car just to get a subtle feel of Thor’s chest. Thor is here for women to ogle, and he’s totally down for it.

The creators of Sherlock have also gleefully displayed Benedict Cumberbatch’s body for the enjoyment of his fangirls. Cumberbatch wasn’t deliberately objectified in the first season of Sherlock, though with his well-tailored suits and tight shirts, he certainly wasn’t being hidden away. But by the second season, he was being shamelessly objectified for the female audience. In a now infamous scene, Sherlock answers a summons to Buckingham Palace completely naked, wrapped only in a bed sheet. When he attempts to leave, his brother Mycroft steps on the edge of the sheet and pulls it down, giving women an eyeful of Cumberbatch’s torso and backside.

Doctor Who has been slightly more circumspect about appealing to the female gaze. Multiple female characters are shown gazing at or discussing the attractiveness of the various Doctors, but the men’s bodies themselves are rarely visually objectified for the viewer in the way female bodies are. Scenes with partial nudity are usually portrayed as slapstick or comedic scenes.

There are a few exceptions to this. In a special skit produced for a TV charity marathon, Matt Smith’s Doctor donates his wardrobe for charity. But he’s soon forced to hide behind his TARDIS as the viewers — presumably straight women — discover that pressing a button on their remotes will strip him of his clothing. The event is scripted and presented as a comedy, but women are actively shown objectifying Matt Smith’s body for their enjoyment. And in the first season of the new Doctor Who, Captain Jack, played by John Barrowman, has his clothes zapped away by two female-coded androids. Now naked in front of millions of television viewers, he flirtatiously tells the androids, “Ladies, your viewing figures just went up.”

Given the overall ratio of female objectification in media — and indeed, the ratio of female objectification in each of these franchises — the number of times men are objectified for a straight female audience is practically insignificant. But there’s an enormous disparity in the way male and female fans are treated when they react to this objectification.

Male fans can openly and loudly express their attraction to the female actors in a franchise without question. They can show their appreciation for moments where women are objectified without having their knowledge of a franchise questioned and tested. And their intellectual appreciation and understanding of a show is rarely challenged as a result. If anything, the recent surge of “sexposition” in high-brow TV shows seems to show that creators believe that appealing to the male gaze is necessary while delivering exposition and commentary.

Female fans do not have that same power, respect, or freedom.

In the Marvel Cinematic Universe, female fans are assumed to only watch the movies because of the attractiveness of the male actors. This attitude goes alongside a general suspicion that female fans of Marvel comics and the MCU are not “real” or “serious” fans, and female fans are often challenged to prove their knowledge of the extensive and convoluted history of those comic book characters.

Female fans of Sherlock have faced similar attitudes. The popular caricature of Sherlock’s fanbase, repeated ad nauseam on the internet and by the media, portrays the show’s fans as crazy Benedict Cumberbatch fangirls. And sure, many female fans do find Cumberbatch attractive. But he is not the sole reason that the vast majority of fans are watching Sherlock. Female fans are also watching for the witty writing, compelling mysteries, and the plethora of other amazingly talented actors called upon to play these classic roles.

Even within the larger Sherlock Holmes fan community, female fans tend to be dismissed based on the assumption that they are exclusively fans of Cumberbatch’s Sherlock and are ignorant of the larger Holmes canon. This is often accompanied by the misogynistic assumption that they are only watching Sherlock to ogle Cumberbatch.

In one particularly notable incident, Phillip Shreffler, a member of the Baker Street Irregulars literary society and former editor of the Baker Street Journal, wrote an article denouncing modern “fans” (a term he uses derisively) of Sherlock Holmes and praising instead the “elite devotees” who meet his accepted level of serious appreciation for the Sherlock Holmes canon. But his screed particularly targeted young female fans of Cumberbatch’s Sherlock, and he specifically singled out the Baker Street Babes podcast, which is composed entirely of women. Ironically, the Babes are devoted to discussing every incarnation of the Holmes story. It was Shreffler who assumed that young women would only be interested in Sherlock Holmes to watch Cumberbatch.

And then we have the Capaldi Conundrum. When it was announced that Peter Capaldi was being cast as the next Doctor, a particularly malicious glee began to seep through some parts of the Doctor Who fandom. At 55 years old, Peter Capaldi was breaking the trend of younger, more conventionally attractive men being cast as the Doctor. And some fans became to wonder if an older Doctor would “drive away” female fangirls.

To these fans, young female fans were interlopers in the Doctor Who fandom. They weren’t real or serious fans that were dedicated to the show or its history. They were just silly little fangirls sucked into watching the latest Doctors because the actors playing them were young and cute. They assumed Peter Capaldi’s casting as the Twelfth Doctor would drive fangirls away from where they didn’t belong. Accusations that female fans only watched Doctor Who to ogle its male actors appeared side-by-side with accusations that female fans weren’t “real” Doctor Who fans.

When most men try to imagine why women watch visual media — when they try to conceive of what the female gaze might be like — they tend to assume women are focused on viewing men as sexual objects. In its most benign form, this assumption results in male writers, directors, and producers creating scenes where men present themselves as passive sexual objects. For which we thank them.

But in it’s most misogynistic form, this assumption portrays the female gaze as something shallow and infantile. If a character is portrayed by an attractive actor, that must be the only reason why women like that character. If a franchise moves into a visual medium or is suddenly filled with attractive actors, that must be the only reason why women decide to become fans of that franchise. Within this mindset, women are assumed to have no interest in the story or its thematic elements. We are assumed to have no deeper intellectual appreciation for that franchise.

These dismissive attitudes put female fans in a bind. Because while we can and do have a deeper interest in and appreciation for a franchise beyond its male actors, many of us are interested in ogling hot guys.

I can be interested in Chris Evans’ ass and still want to examine the way the Captain America franchise examines the current American conflict over the lengths we should go to ensure security. I can watch the gif of a sheet being pulled off of Benedict Cumberbatch’s torso on repeat for hours and still examine the way Sherlock interprets the Holmes canon for a modern audience. And I can stare at gifs of David Tennant’s hair for days and still want to spend the next week marathoning episodes of Jon Pertwee’s and Peter Capaldi’s Doctors.

We need media that employs the female gaze — we need media that is written, directed, and produced by women for an audience of women. We need media that puts women at the center of the narrative and presents them as sexual beings rather than sexual objects. But more than that, we need to treat female viewers with the same respect we treat male viewers. We need to treat them as beings capable of intellectually and emotionally appreciating a piece of media while simultaneously being capable of appreciating Captain America’s ass.

God bless America.

Alyssa Franke is the author of Whovian Feminism, where she analyzes Doctor Who from a feminist perspective. You can find her on Twitter @WhovianFeminism.