Tag: Twilight Saga

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.

Twilight

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.

Twilight

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.

Twilight

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.

Twilight

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.

Indigenous Women Week: The Roundup

Check out all of the posts from our Indigenous Women theme week here.

Indigenous Women Week Roundup

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

Over and over, violence against Indigenous women is made to titillate, built into narratives along with action, suspense, swashbuckling, and romance. Indigenous women become exotic props, and when we are identified with these dehumanized caricatures, it becomes easier to treat us inhumanely.

Imprint: Examining the Presence of Indigenous Representation in the Horror Genre by Danielle Miller

In the endless web of conundrums that Native peoples face, marginalization is a result of societal erasure, whether that be through stereotypes or the lack of representations all together. … With that in consideration, I seek to influence popular consciousness by analysis of horror through a Native woman’s lens. One endeavor of asserting Native presence is through my analysis of the Native thriller film, Imprint.

The Unvoiced Indigenous Feminism of Frida by Brigit McCone

Frida Kahlo’s sense of kyriarchy, in which the tension between Indigenous culture and European imperialism is a core aspect of her multi-faceted narratives of oppression and resistance, is simplified in Julie Taymor’s film Frida towards a more Euro-American feminism, focused on Kahlo’s struggle for artistic recognition and romantic fulfillment as a woman, to the exclusion of her ethnic struggle.

From Racist Stereotype to Fully Whitewashed: Tiger Lily Since 1904 by Amanda Morris

Whatever the other problems might be with this film (and they are many), my focus for this review is the character Tiger Lily, who was originally conceived as a racist stereotype by J.M. Barrie and who has had her Native identity completely erased in this latest iteration. Is this progress? I think not.

Older Than America: Cultural Genocide and Reparations by Laura Shamas

One female-helmed film that directly addresses the horrific psychological, cultural, and spiritual legacy of Native boarding schools on Indigenous families in the United States is Older Than America, a 2008 release, directed and produced by and starring Georgina Lightning, from a script by Lightning and Christine Kunewa Walker. … Rain’s journey is part of the collective story of her community and her tribe… When entire generations of youth are traumatized or killed by the church and state, what is the remedy? Older Than America looks for answers to this key question.

Tanya Tagaq Voices Inuit Womanhood in Nanook of the North by Brigit McCone

Director Robert Flaherty not only framed Inuit womanhood according to his fantasies of casual sensuality, but according to Euro-American patriarchal fantasy. His portrait of Inuit life is neatly divided between the woman’s role, limited to cleaning igloos and nursing infants, apparently immune to the frustrations of Euro-American women in that role, and the man’s role, leading the band, educating older children, and hunting.

The Cherokee Word for Water: The Wilma Mankiller Story by Amanda Morris

Wilma Pearl Mankiller became the first modern female Chief of the Cherokee Nation in 1985 after working with volunteers from the small rural community of Bell, Oklahoma to bring water to the town. The Cherokee Word for Water is the story of this extraordinary woman and leader whose activism on behalf of her community continues to resonate across the Cherokee Nation today.

Kumu Hina: Documentary on a Native Hawaiian Māhū (Transgender) Woman and Teaching the True Meaning of Aloha by Gabrielle Amato-Bailey

Kumu Hina is a portrait of one activist working to preserve Native rights, culture, and dignity in a time when Native Sovereignty is being made more visible by events like the efforts of Water Protectors to stop the Dakota Access Pipeline. Hinaleimoana Wong-Kalu draws a direct and explicit link between honoring her māhū identity and helping her people preserve their culture. Like the māhū of generations past, Wong-Kalu has taken on the responsibility of sharing sacred knowledge with the next generation. She wants to share with her students the true meaning of aloha which, to her, means giving them unconditional acceptance and respect.

The Problem With Disney’s Pocahontas by Shannon Rose

In Pocahontas, Disney missed an important opportunity to represent Indigenous women in a relatable, empowering way, and instead focused on commodifying their culture for mass-market appeal. … Pocahontas’ life only became a story worth telling when a white man became involved. She only became a princess when a white man recognized her as royalty. She only became the center of a Disney movie because white men realized they could profit off of her myth.

On Racism, Erasure, and Pan by Danika Kimball

Even less surprising is their casting choice, where they have once again whitewashed a Native American character, hiring Rooney Mara to play the part of Tiger Lily. Apparently, most Hollywood executives and casting directors live in a fictional land called Neverlearn. … There has been a long standing Hollywood cliche that states, the only color Hollywood executives see is green. This excuses the industry from their role in helping maintain white supremacist patriarchy because they are allowed to say, “We’re just giving the people what they want.”

Trespassed Lands, Transgressed Bodies: Horror, Rage, Rape, and Vengeance Within Indigenous Cinema by Ariel Smith

By forcing the subconscious fears of audiences to the surface, horror cinema evokes reactions psychologically and physically — that is its power. This power can serve and support uncensored Indigenous expression by allowing Indigenous filmmakers the opportunity to unleash dark, unsanitized allegorical representations of the abhorrent, repugnant, violent abomination that is colonization.

Lilo & Stitch, Moana, and Disney’s Representation of Indigenous Peoples by Emma Casley

Looking at Lilo & Stitch can provide a valuable lens in which to analyze the upcoming Moana, as well as other mainstream films attempting to represent Indigenous cultures. … Regardless of its individual merits, Lilo & Stitch is a moneymaking endeavor to benefit the Disney Company, which has not always had the best relationship (to say the least) with representing Indigenous cultures or respecting Indigenous peoples.

‘The Host’: Less Anti-Feminist Than ‘Twilight’, but Hardly a Sisterhood Manifesta

The Host posters

This guest post by Dr. Natalie Wilson is cross-posted with permission from Ms. Magazine.

I readily admit I did not read The Host. I couldn’t face it after immersing myself in all things Twilight while researching my book Seduced by Twilight. I started it, but less than 20 pages in I couldn’t stomach any more of Stephenie Meyer’s purple, flaccid prose. No, I agree with Nicki Gerlach—that “Meyer is not a particularly concise or elegant writer, never saying in one sentence what she could hammer at for three.”
As such, I went into the film of The Host with low expectations, presuming I would hate it and be bored to tears. I was prepared for a sappy ode to sparkly true love and immortal families. And while the narrative does indeed ultimately celebrate these things, it does so in a way far more engaging than its Twilight predecessor. This is largely due to a stronger lead—a fierce young Melanie Stryder (Saoirse Ronan), who resists the occupation by the alien known as Wanderer (later called Wanda). Early in the movie, after Wanderer is implanted into her neck, she informs her alien occupier through interior dialogue, “I’m still here. Don’t think this is yours. This body is mine.”
Max Irons as Jared and Saoirse Ronan as Melanie in The Host

While I would have been thrilled had this refusal of bodily occupation turned into a sci-fi version of “my body, my choice,” I am familiar enough with Meyer to know this would not be the case, despite her recent claims to being an uber-feminist. Yet while Melanie may not be more bell hooks than Bella Swan, she at least is not the passive sap that led us through thousands of pages and four films of not doing much more than ogling Edward the vampire in Twilight. No, Melanie jumps out of windows, steals cars, survives a trek through the dessert and fends off various humans and alien foes. Alas, she is, like Bella, anchored to the world of patriarchal heteronormativity and gender conformity via her positioning as nurturing sister to her younger brother Jamie, and love interest to first Jarad (Max Irons), then Ian (Jake Abel).
But I was pleasantly surprised when the film didn’t make me grimace through painful odes to abstinence or groan at a genuflection to the mighty power of patriarchs. Instead, I quite liked Melanie, a female character who could not only walk without tripping, seemed to have a mind of her own, chutzpah and, gasp, didn’t deny her sexual urges.
Meyer claimed she intended to “portray a positive relationship between the two women at the center of the story,” and, indeed, she does. Melanie fights Wanderer’s occupation of her body, but they ultimately become close allies, referring to each other as “sister” by film’s end. Is this the sisterhood manifesto Meyer’s recent “I am a feminist” claims suggest she supports? If so, it seems her brand of feminism involves women uniting in their love for men. Que feministe!
Saoirse Ronan in The Host

Admittedly, Melanie and Wanda also love one another by the end of the film, but they are still ultimately defined by their male love interests. (Ah, if only THEY could have become lovers, a la the fanfiction that has Bella  and Alice as the Twilight couple rather than Bella and Edward.)
Granted,  Melanie is far more of a Hermione type than a Bella one.  She is cognizant that the opening claim of the film that  “The Earth is at peace. There is no hunger. There is no violence. The environment is healed. Our world has never been more perfect” is false. When we first see her, she is fighting off the alien invaders of her planet and then willfully jumping from a window, choosing potential death over an alien-occupation of her body. (If only Bella had resisted wolf/vampire takeover with anything like such resistance!) But, alas, Melanie’s identity is also mired in a love triangle—well, more of a quadrangle, actually, wherein her reason to live is fueled not only by her filial love for her little brother but also romantic love for Jared/Ian.  This “unusually crowded romantic triangle—with four aching hearts but only three bodies to play for” (as CNN put it) results in a narrative that is less feminist utopia, more sci-fi romance.
While Melanie gets a feminist gold star for refusing to play the controlled virgin (in fact, she takes the sexual lead, insisting she and Jared should have sex given the apocalyptic alien invasion of the world), things become less copacetic when Wanda and Ian fall for each other—a narrative thread that makes the fight for body/self less between she and Wanderer and more of a question whether she “belongs” to Jared or Ian. While there are certainly queer possibilities in this love triangle of three bodies and four lovers, this is Meyer-world, so of course no such queery-ing happens. Instead, an alien who could have been genderless is decidedly feminized, and an inter-species romance that could have been queer/polyamorous is decidedly hetero-ized.
Movie still from The Host

In the scenes where the Wanda-occupied Melanie desires to kiss Ian, the internal dialogue delivered by Melanie has creepy undertones that smack of valuing only certain kinds of love. When Melanie tells Wanda “this is so wrong … you’re not even from the same planet…” she could just as readily be arguing against same-sex love and/or any romantic formations that do not accord with heterosexual monogamy.
Nevertheless, when Wanda informs Ian that even though “this body loves him” (meaning Melanie’s body) but “I also have feeling of my own,” there is the slightest suggestion that maybe, just maybe, hetero-monogomy is not the only option. Wanda, noting “this is very complicated,” can be read here as arguing for the possibility of polyamory/queer romance, while Melanie’s later insistence she and Wanda can both live in the one body similarly questions the notion of singular, fixed identity.
Regrettably, the ending of the film (spoiler alert!) fails to champion any such queer/feminist notions. No, instead of occupying the same body and loving both Jared and Ian, Wanda is implanted into another human body—a female one, of course—and one that is also white and traditionally attractive. You didn’t think this alien-human love could transcend gender or white privilege, did you? Of course not. This is Meyer-world, after all.
Chandler Canterbury as Jamie in The Host

Though The Host is more feminist-friendly than Twilight in ways, it is no feminist ode. Along the way to its happy-ever-after for the two central couples (Melanie and Jared and Wanda and Ian), it also takes some worrying forays into the violence-is-sexy meme and has undercurrents of pro-life messaging. In one scene, Wanda says “kiss me like you wanna get slapped,” and in others her discovery that the human holdouts are killing aliens can be read as a pro-life message wrapped in an alien invasion package— especially if we consider that some of the first words said of Melanie in the film are “this one wants to live.” Later, Wanda’s character continues this anti-abortion meme, telling the humans, after discovering embryo-sized aliens surrounded by blood on an operating table, “I can’t stay here, not with you slaughtering my family in the next room.”
Alas, while some laud “the significance of one of the most popular authors in the world standing up to say she’s a feminist,” I concur with Jezebel’s Madeleine Davis, who queries Meyer as follows: “If the world’s a better place when women are in charge, why not give them a little bit of agency between the covers of your books?” Admittedly, The Host gives female characters more agency than Twilight, but it is still mired (Meyer-ed?) in traditional romance, normative gender roles, hetero-monogamy as the happy ending and pro-life sentiment. It is more feminist-friendly than Twilight, but is that really a win for feminism when we have to argue the merit of stories that are not as rabidly anti-feminist as that four-book ode to patriarchal romance?

Natalie Wilson, PhD is a literature and women’s studies scholar, blogger, and author. She teaches at Cal State San Marcos and specializes in areas of gender studies, feminism, feminist theory, girl studies, militarism, body studies, boy culture and masculinity, contemporary literature, and popular culture. She is author of the blogs Professor, what if …? and Seduced by Twilight. She is a proud feminist mom of two feminist kids (one daughter, one son) and is an admitted pop-culture junkie. Her favorite food is chocolate.

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

 
This guest post by Tanya Erzen is part of a blog tour to promote the release of her newest book, Fanpire: The Twilight Saga and the Women Who Love It, which you can purchase at the Beacon Press website. Other blogs participating in the tour include Women and Hollywood, Feminism and Religion, Fangtastic Books, and Everyday Sociology.
Even though Breaking Dawn Part 2, the long-awaited final film of the Twilight series, premieres on November 16 in Los Angeles, devoted fans will begin camping out for days and weeks ahead of time. They’ll sleep in tents and shuffle through interminable lines in a grimy parking lot, all for the fleeting glimpse of a Twilight celebrity on the black carpet. After all, this is the age of mundane celebrity: everyone wants to be one and be close to one. Fan sites like the Twilight Lexicon and HisGoldenEyes will roam the premiere, hoping to obtain the coveted interview with stars like Robert Pattinson or Kellan Lutz. In the fan firmament, these sites reign near the top of the hierarchy, where they have access to insider gossip, corporate giveaways, and visits to film sets.
The massive fan demand to be at the film premiere as the Twilight juggernaut reaches its crescendo has prompted Summit Entertainment to almost double the numbers they will accommodate at “fan camp.” Mothers and daughters, groups of girls and contingents of TwilightMoms, traveling from afar to the tent city will feel the elation of being among other captivated fans. After days together, they’ll be bonded to legions of others with the same aspirations, embarking upon a kind of public happiness absent from their daily lives. There have certainly been fan crazes before, but what differentiates the Twilight phenomenon is that its fan base consists almost entirely of women and girls.
Denigrating these female fans as rabid, obsessed and hysterical is a favorite pastime for many media outlets. The specter of hundreds of stargazing women, clamoring for a glimpse of actors, evokes snarky bewilderment among pundits. Descriptions of fans typically include comments about unbridled fanaticism and the ear-piercing shrieks of thousands of girls.
At one Comic-Con, the longstanding convention that is a lure for, mainly, male fans of comics, science fiction, and fantasy, Twilight fans camped out on sidewalks for days to attend the actors’ panel. The invasion of female fans into the Comic-Con stronghold sparked a backlash. A few disgruntled male attendees sported signs that read, “Twilight Ruined Comic-Con,” and one baffled online commentator at Rotten Tomatoes wrote, “Fan boy culture’s hold on the Con was hijacked by a vampire romance, of all things.”
Applying adjectives like “screeching” and “stalking” to female fans, commentators imply that Twilight fans should just get a life. Older women, especially, are a favorite target. They’re “stalker moms,” pitiable addicts, and negligent parents. Details magazine mocked them for reverting back to adolescent folly: “It’s not uncommon to hear them break into unprompted gasps, giggles, and squeals.” The implication is that these women just need to get a life instead of spending all their time obsessing about a frivolous interspecies romance.
It is unsurprising that critics deride a phenomenon that attracts mainly women, to all extents labeling it as an instance of mass hysteria. The misogyny lurking here is obvious. One has to wonder why, for example, equally zealous fantasy-football players or sci-fi geeks, many of whom happen to be male, do not endure the same disdain.
The refrains go something like this: the books are poorly written and riddled with cliches, the people who like them must be dupes of the patriarchy or simply burdened with bad taste. These screeds overlook what makes the series compelling for millions of women and girls. In my time with Twilight fans around the world—from the occasional forum participant and those who watched the films fifty times to the person who corralled her entire office into choosing Team Edward or Team Jacob—I have found they also spoke of how the fanpire transformed their everyday lives, not as mere escapism but as a vehicle for connecting with others and forging new identities beyond that of Mormon mother or ordinary teen.
At conventions and premieres, thousands of girls and women discard their cares about boys and men to bond in aerobics and self-defense classes and dance together at elaborate Twilight-themed vampire balls. Married women in the group TwilightMoms temporarily abandon domestic responsibilities for convivial sleepovers where they simultaneously bemoan the absence of spicy sex and intimacy in their marriages and reassure themselves that heterosexual marriage is the only way to envision their lives. Three generations of families bond with each other over their enchantment with the books, attending book releases, conventions and tours of Forks. None of these fans care if Comic-Con is no longer teeming solely with men wearing alien and superhero costumes, nor do they need or want rescuing from the scorn they receive for their fanaticism.
At the same time the fanpire encompasses authentic ways to belong and connect to others, the ceaseless commercialization of Twilight means that for many fans, ravenous consumption of all things Twilight is the main way to retain their feelings of enchantment. When they begin to feel Post-Saga Depression (PSD), what fans call the blue feeling that descends after finishing the books and realizing there is no actual Edward, there are Edward and Bella Barbie dolls, calendars, video games, graphic novels, and fangs readily available in the vast, bazaar-like atmosphere online or at some conventions. Everything on display at official conventions is based on spinoff marketing, celebrity endorsement, and steering fans to other movies that feature the Twilight actors.
Even while critics continue to disparage the fans, they remain a key concern of Summit and other brands eager to exploit their earnings potential. Tent city is now a Summit-sponsored event, designed to harness fan’s buying power. A fan once described the fanpire as an army storming bookstores, conventions, and movie theaters. Twilight-lovers want the ineffable high to last as long as possible, and the corporate sponsors of these events are certainly delighted to oblige. Creation Entertainment knows that the danger for fans arises when, without another book to read, life begins to feel barren. The swoon-inducing possibility of celebrity proximity and the desire for the next Twilight product sustain fans in the months of drought between a new film or significant fanpire gossip.
Critics scoff at Twilight fans, and then they wonder why Fifty Shades of Grey, originally a smut Twilight fan fiction story, is a national bestseller. It’s time that they began taking the complicated practices and pleasures of female fans seriously. The corporate marketers certainly are.
———-

Tanya Erzen is an associate professor of comparative religious studies at Ohio State University. Her work has appeared in the Nation, the Boston Globe, and the Washington Post. She is the author of Straight to Jesus: Sexual and Christian Conversions in the Ex-Gay Movement, which won the Gustave O. Arlt Award and the Ruth Benedict Prize. She is a recipient of a National Endowment for the Humanities fellowship and a visiting scholar at the Simpson Center for the Humanities at the University of Washington. She lives in Seattle.

Guest Writer Wednesday: Going Broke Chasing Boys: Why Disney Ditched Princesses and Spent $300 Million on ‘John Carter’

This is a guest post from Scott Mendelson. Originally published at Mendelson’s Memos.
If you’ve seen the trailer for the upcoming John Carter, you know that not only does it not look like it cost $300 million, but it so painfully feels like a Mad Libs male-driven fantasy blockbuster that it borders on parody. It’s no secret that Disney thinks it has a boy problem. One of the reasons it bought Marvel two years ago was to build up a slate of boy-friendly franchises. And the last two years have seen an almost embarrassing attempt to fashion boy-friendly franchises (Prince of Persia, Tron: Legacy, The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, I Am Number Four, Fright Night, and Real Steel), only half of which were even as successful as their alleged flop The Princess and the Frog (which obviously grossed ‘just’ $267 million on a $105 million budget because it starred a character with a vagina). We can only ponder the reasons why Disney decided to outright state that they were never going to make another fairy-tale princess cartoon again, even after Tangled became their most successful non-Pixar toon since The Lion King, but I’m pretty sure Disney won’t be making such statements about boy-centric fantasy franchises anytime soon.
Now we have John Carter, which allegedly cost $300 million (if not more). It’s being released in March, where only one film (to be fair, Disney’s Alice In Wonderland) has ever even grossed $300 million. Hell, in all of January-through April, there have been just five $200 million grossers (The Passion of the Christ, Alice In Wonderland, How to Train Your Dragon, 300, and Fast Five). So you have yet another film that basically has to shatter all records regarding its release date in order to merely break even. But that’s okay, thinks Disney, because John Carter is a manly science fiction spectacle so it is surely worth risking the bank. Disney is so desperate to not only chase the young male demos that is willing to risk alienating the young female demos that has netted it billions of dollars over the many decades. What they fail to realize is that the success of the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise (especially the first three films) was rooted in telling a story that crossed gender lines. All-told, the original trilogy actually revolved around Keira Knightley’s character, and her journey from daughter of privilege to outlaw pirate. I Am Number Four is a perfect example of this clear misunderstanding. Disney and Dreamworks decided to cash in on Twilight by making a variation told from the point of view of the super-powered teen boy, a story which turned the ‘Bella’ character into just another stock love interest to be sidelined for the third act.
If you look at Disney’s future slate, with the arguable exception of Pixar’s Brave (the first Pixar film to feature a girl, a warrior princess no less), they have almost no female-driven movies between now and 2014. Oh wait, I’m sorry…they ARE releasing Beauty and the Beast and The Little Mermaid in 3D over the next two years. My mistake. I may complain about the frenzy of upcoming live-action fairy tale adaptations, but at least those are big-budget movies centering around a female protagonist. It would seem that Disney, as a corporation, genuinely places less value on the female audience than the male audience. Money is money, and sweaty bills from girls should be just as green as bills from boys. Yet Disney apparently so disdains its core audience (young girls) that it not only has stopped chasing them (in the knowledge that they will buy princess merchandise anyway) but has risked untold millions on the most generic possible new franchise, with no star power and little to distinguish itself from a hundred other such films, purely because ‘it’s a boy movie’. In a way, Disney has become just like the Democratic Party, risking alienation of their base because they know that the young girls (and their parents) won’t really ever jump ship.
Scott Mendelson is, by hobby, a freelance film critic/pundit who specializes in box office analysis. He blogs primarily at Mendelson’s Memos while syndicating at The Huffington Post and Valley Scene Magazine. He lives in Woodland Hills, CA with his wife and two young kids where he works in a field totally unrelated to his BA in Film Theory/Criticism from Wright State University.

Guest Writer Wednesday: Fairy Tales and Female Sexuality

This guest post by Sarah Seltzer originally appeared at RH Reality Check. 

Don’t go out into the woods. Beware ugly older women bearing strange gifts. Only a princely kiss can resurrect you.

The anti-feminist messages in fairy tales, both in their classic forms from the tales of Grimm, Anderson and Perrault, and their sanitized Disneyfied versions, abound. Heroines are frequently passive, resisting even Disney’s “spunkification” and lose their voices or fall into slumbers. They are rescued by princes or kindly huntsmen. Evil befalls them during puberty. Many fairy tales that have permeated the collective unconsciousness are known for these misogynist tropes and particularly for their warnings about female sexuality and its existence as both a threat and as threatened.

Red Riding Hood, which has just been remade into a (by all accounts mediocre) Twilight-esque tale of a dangerous teen love triangle by Catherine Hardwicke, draws on one of the more symbolically rich of these stories. As Hardwicke herself said, “When you have problems when you’re five years old, it’s just like ‘Red Riding Hood.’ ‘I’m scared to go in the woods’…Later on, when you’re 12 or 13, you really notice the sexual implications. The wolf is in bed, inviting her into bed. You start reading it on a different level, once you hit that sexual awakening.”

Charles Perrault, who popularized the “Little Red Riding Hood” story, made it pretty clear from the outset that the “wolf” is a seducer, and the story a metaphor for women staying away from sex.

From this story one learns that children, especially young lasses, pretty, courteous and well-bred, do very wrong to listen to strangers, And it is not an unheard thing if the Wolf is thereby provided with his dinner. I say Wolf, for all wolves are not of the same sort; there is one kind with an amenable disposition—neither noisy, nor hateful, nor angry, but tame, obliging and gentle, following the young maids in the streets, even into their homes. Alas! Who does not know that these gentle wolves are of all such creatures the most dangerous!

It’s quite explicit, isn’t it?

Susan Brownmiller goes even further in her seminal book Against Our Will, writing that “little Red Riding Hood is a parable of rape,” with the main character an utterly passive victim. The story serves as a warning to girls about the menace in the woods and is an early indicator of “rape culture.”

Indeed, as Paul Harris of the Guardian wrote in an article about Hollywood’s resurgent interest in fairy-stories, “Beneath the magical surface of a fairytale, with its castles and princesses, often lurk ideas around sexuality, the dangers of growing up and leaving home, relationships between children and parents, and the threat that adult strangers can pose.” And in particular, he notes, there’s a “conservative” streak about female sexuality in these stories which is one of the reasons they continue to get resurrected, retold and deconstructed.

Along with Red Riding Hood, archetypical tales like Beauty and the Beast, Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty and Bluebeard’s Castle all share concerns about female sexuality. In Beauty and the Beast, the chaste beauty can tame the male beast—even when she’s imprisoned against her will. In Sleeping Beauty a bitter old fairy punishes the heroine with slumber when she pricks her finger, a symbol for menstruation (as is Red Riding Hood’s cloak). In Snow White the lovely young queen also pricks her finger, becomes sexual and has a child. Then suddenly she “dies” and is replaced by a wicked queen, a witch. Every day this queen gets a talk from her mirror who feeds on her jealousy and her obsession with her youth and beauty until she feels compelled to kill the younger, more beautiful and more sexually alluring young woman. Both Snow White and Sleeping Beauty require resurrection by a man. Similar symbolism is at work in The Little Mermaid, in which a young woman, besotted by a handsome prince, goes to an older witch and exchanges her soul for a pair of legs that hurt her to use and even make her bleed.

Still, ever since there have been fairy tales, there has been feminist re-appropriation of fairy tales. As with the myths around creatures like vampires and werewolves which sometimes intersect with fairy tales, the moral of the story often shifts with the mores of the time. From Anne Sexton’s twisted fairy tale poems to Angela Carter’s brilliant stories to the new tumblr meme which turns Disney heroines into glasses-wearing, irony-spouting hipsters, fairy tales have been fertile ground for re-imaginings and inversions.

As Catherine Orenstein wrote in Ms. magazine about the re-appropriation of Red Riding Hood:

Storytellers from the women’s movement and beyond also reclaimed the heroine from male-dominated literary tradition, recasting her as the physical or sexual aggressor and questioning the machismo of the wolf. In the 1984 movie The Company of Wolves, inspired by playwright Angela Carter, the heroine claims a libido equal to that of her lascivious stalker and becomes a wolf herself. In the Internet tale “Red Riding Hood Redux,” the heroine unloads a 9mm Beretta into the wolf and, as tufts of wolf fur waft down, sends the hunter off to a self-help group, White Male Oppressors Anonymous.

Orenstein went to the origins of the “Riding Hood” myth and discovered that in its original incarnations, the heroine is much less passive and more of a trickster who ends up outwitting the wolf without the aid of any huntsman. She is just one of many writers who devote an entire book to analyzing Red Riding Hood from a gendered lens, while Carter is one of many artists to re-write the story with an entirely new agenda.

Fairy tales will always be with us, whether being sugarcoated and Disneyfied or fed to us as subversive fare. Feminists should continue to embrace the retelling and transformation of these tales as part of our ritual for contending with the myths and tropes of patriarchy. Even if Catherine Hardwicke sexualizes the story in a muddled way, she’s taking part in a proud tradition.

—–

Sarah Seltzer is an RH Reality Check staff writer and resident pop culture expert based in New York City. She’s an Associate Editor at AlterNet and her work has been published in The Washington Post, Publishers Weekly, and the LA Times and on the websites of The Nation, The Christian Science Monitor, The Wall Street Journal and Jezebel. She formerly taught English in a Bronx public school.

Sunday Recap

It was a short week due to the holiday, but here’s a recap of last week’s posts. Don’t miss the Animated Children’s Films series, which begins tomorrow (Monday)!
The controversy surrounding the film may have superseded the film itself–which is beautifully shot, heartbreaking, and even darkly comedic at times. Fire contains so many elements that I love in film: strong female characters, an exploration of complex issues that is never oversimplified and that never leads to individuals being labeled good or evil (although they certainly behave in good and/or evil ways), and immersion into a culture that isn’t entirely familiar to me. Speaking to a Western audience, Mehta has stated that one of her goals in filmmaking is to “demystify India,” its culture and its traditions. Fire complicates our understanding of a traditional patriarchal culture, and throws into sharp relief the ways these traditions impact women in particular.
Maybe I’m not old-fashioned; maybe I’m stupid for continuing to tune in to programming that doesn’t give a damn whether I watch or not. Or, even worse, maybe they’re just assuming they have “female viewers” (because we’re a silly monolith) because, you know, OMG Pretty Dresses.

There’s something else, though, that I can’t not notice about the NYT article: In the entire 1,187-word article, only about 200 words (3 paragraphs) were devoted to one of the highest honors and most controversial moments of the night: Oprah Winfrey winning the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award. She’s the first Black woman to win the award (Quincy Jones won in 1995, the only Black man to win it), yet her win has been called “boneheaded” and “a shameless bid for a ratings boost,” largely because her contributions to the film industry are seen by insiders as lacking.

At the very least, it’s important to discuss Twilight because it’s the First Franchise Film Series Ever to directly target teen girls, and we should probably look at what that means for the future of films made for young women, especially since the Twilight Saga has been overwhelmingly successful at the box office. Luckily, I found an amazing interview with Dr. Natalie Wilson, who points out some major problems with the Twilight Saga, and who blogs for one of my favorite sites, Professor, What If …?
In this post-feminist world, where there is definitely no concern about the emotional health of teenage girls and bullying is not a problem and misogyny is FOR SURE a thing of the past, where no one uses “girl” or “schoolgirl” as an insult, where no one accuses anyone of throwing like a girl or crying like a schoolgirl, and companies would never do something like conflate a teenage girl with mayhem, where teenage girls are all totally secure in their worth as full and equal beings and their humanity is never diminished by objectification or exploitation or marginalization or myriad narratives that daily communicate you are less than, in this amazing new world where feminism has been rendered moot, this is obviously a perfect show that is super funny.
The beauty of Ron’s character is that he’s manly enough to go for powerful women, as has been clearly established in previous episodes. And his interest in the women’s studies professor (who was talking about the oppressive nature of society) is completely believable given his libertarian beliefs. It doesn’t hurt that the actor who plays Swanson is unabashedly manly himself (read the interview with Nick Offerman) and that he’s married to Megan Mullaly, who is hella funny. I love that the character, the writing, and the directing came together so organically to create such greatness.

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

Breaking Dawn, Part 1 opened in theaters last Friday, November 18th. I mainly know this because my sister, a self-professed “Twi-Hard” talked about it nonstop for about two weeks. She also went to the midnight showing. I’ve seen all the previous films in the series and wrote about New Moon awhile ago, and I’m well aware of the feminist criticism of both the novels and the films. I personally find the films fairly nuanced (don’t judge), and I think they invite many different, more complex readings than they’re often given. However, I’d say the series is pretty antifeminist overall. I suppose I’m most bothered by the disgusting, misogynist reaction to the fans of the Twilight Saga (who are mostly young women), and the disgusting, misogynist (and homophobic) reaction to Edward as a sparkly (read: totally, like, gay dude) vampire–as opposed to a super awesome killer vampire who, you know, doesn’t sparkle. And it isn’t surprising that it’s mostly young dudes who lambast girls and women all over the net for loving Twilight, yet it’s perfectly acceptable for them to male bond over the horrible franchise that is Transformers (and to simultaneously ogle Megan Fox’s ass, of course). This is all for another post about The Rise of the Fangirl, though, which I will write one day. At the very least, it’s important to discuss Twilight because it’s the First Franchise Film Series Ever to directly target teen girls, and we should probably look at what that means for the future of films made for young women, especially since the Twilight Saga has been overwhelmingly successful at the box office. Luckily, I found an amazing interview with Dr. Natalie Wilson, who points out some major problems with the Twilight Saga, and who blogs for one of my favorite sites, Professor, What If …?

This post is dedicated to my sister, Heather, who needs to understand that the Twilight Saga is kind of bullshit. I included a transcript in case the video doesn’t play. Enjoy!

Dr. Jenn: This year for Halloween, we’re going to discuss a pop culture phenomenon about vampires: the Twilight Saga. And I actually personally don’t know a lot about Twilight, but we have a local San Diego professor who knows a ton about this–and specifically a lot about bringing a feminist perspective to analyzing this book and movie series. Today we have Natalie Wilson, who’s a professor of Women’s Studies and Literature at Cal State, San Marcos, specializing in pop culture, feminism … and has a particular interest in sexuality, monstrosity, and the body. She blogs for Ms., Girl With Pen, and Womanist Musings, as well as her own blog, and had two books that came out this year: Seduced by Twilight and Theorizing Twilight. Good to have you on the show. So I know that you do a lot of teaching, writing, and research around women’s equality, and that you tie it to a study of popular culture. How do you do that?
Dr. Wilson: Right. Well, I think oftentimes popular culture is written of as just entertainment, as if it doesn’t matter. But actually popular culture is sort of a huge barometer of what’s going on in our society. So I like to think of studying popular culture as sort of taking the pulse of society. And when you look at popular culture, you can tell how healthy or unhealthy some of our views are. And as a women’s studies professor I’m particularly interested in gender and sexuality, and that is what sort of spurred my interest in writing about the Twilight Saga, because it’s a huge cultural phenomenon, and I feel like it sends some rather problematic messages about gender and sexuality.
Dr. Jenn: And I know you’ve even taught a class about this, a college semester long class about it. Okay, so what would you say the Twilight Saga says about gender, women’s sexuality, and sexual health?

Dr. Wilson: Right. Well, in terms of gender, I would say it’s rather regressive, very traditional roles of gender. For females, you’re supposed to first fall in love, then you’re supposed to get married—no sex before marriage—and as soon as you get married, you should have a child. And you should also give up college because you know, you can’t go to college and be a mother; that would be impossible. So, very sort of regressive ideas in terms of femininity and the female role, really marriage and motherhood. And then in terms of masculinity, the males that are held up in the series as the desirable males are very controlling, almost hypermasculine, very strong, very muscular, very domineering, and very possessive and controlling and even violent toward the females in the series.

Dr. Jenn: And that’s what I was going to ask. I know there seems to be a connection between violence and sexuality, so what have you found around that?

Dr. Wilson: In terms of sexuality, the series is often called “abstinence porn.” It kind of drips with sex, but no sex ever really happens, so there’s desire around sex, but you’re not supposed to have sex before marriage, so there’s a definite abstinence message. And in particular, the female of the series, Bella, is held up as the one that’s responsible for not getting the males too excited, and she’s sort of the policer of chastity.

Dr. Jenn: So the responsibility is put on her.

Dr. Wilson: Yes, the responsibility is put on her. The other thing is that there’s this equation with sex and death—because she’s attracted to a vampire and a werewolf, both of who are supernaturally strong, and could kill her very easily. So the idea is if you turn them on, or you get too involved, your life is at risk. So there’s this equation with sex equaling death for females.

Dr. Jenn: Yikes. What about in terms of, like, the importance of how these messages are showing up … because I know if you look at our rates of STDs and pregnancy compared to other countries, there’s a big difference. Can you speak to that?

Dr. Wilson: Yeah. I think one of the things that happens with sexuality in the novel is there’s lots of desire, but there’s no serious conversations around sex. And there’s, you know, “you will be damned if you have sex” or “you will die,” but there’s nothing about contraception or sexual health or what a healthy relationship is; in fact, Edward is quite abusive. On their first night, their first honeymoon night, Bella ends up black and blue the morning after because he’s so strong, and he’s holding onto her so tightly. And this is framed as very hot and exciting rather than as some sort of sexual violence.

Dr. Jenn: And didn’t one of them black out … is that right? … Or didn’t have memories of that?

Dr. Wilson: Right. She wakes up, and she’s in this post-coital euphoria; meanwhile, she’s completely black and blue and supposedly doesn’t realize that she’s black and blue until she looks in the mirror. And then when she looks in the mirror, she calls the bruises decorations, and that they are, you know, him decorating her with his love. So this sort of blurring of sexuality and violence and sex being dangerous … and then what you were saying about STIs and teen pregnancies: it is a series that’s hugely popular with teens and young people, and there’s no emphasis on, you know, that these types of violent relationships are unhealthy. In fact, they’re held up as desirable. There’s never a discussion of contraception. And she does end up pregnant, of course, the night of the honeymoon.

Dr. Jenn: Her first time?

Dr. Wilson: Yeah, her first time. And then that is framed as, you know, the happy ending. Like, the marriage and her becoming a mother are framed as the happy ending.

Dr. Jenn: You’ve said a lot already that’s very impactful. Anything else that you can speak to … what you think … how this impacts the teenagers that are fans of this?

Dr. Wilson: I think an important thing to point out is that it’s had a huge cross-generational impact, so even though teens are a huge part of the fandom, it’s also very popular among twenty and thirty year olds. And there’s the Twilight moms, so it’s really had a pretty big cultural impact. One of the things you might’ve heard of is the tendency to have a team, like, you’re Team Edward or you’re Team Jacob. And that has sort of spilled out into other … I mean, vampire shows, but also other shows as well–like True Blood, there’s Team Eric or Team Bill. And if you notice, all the teams are male. So it’s this very old idea of male as the sexual aggressor; they’re the one who’s in competition for women—very hypermasculine—and then women are held up as, you know, they can be the fans, or they’re literally sort of the objects that the men are fighting over. So it seems to me in terms of it spreading out into popular culture, it’s going backwards and sort of regressing to older ideas about sexuality where the male was supposed to be the aggressor and the female was supposed to be the passive, you know … And of course, very heteronormative, and very … married, monogamous sex is the only type that’s allowed. And there’s this sort of hypermasculine … the bodies of the males in the films as well as in the books–super muscular, super strong. So those are bodies that are often associated with being violent, and in the saga, they are violent; but it’s held up as, “he just couldn’t help himself,” either he was so turned on that he couldn’t help hurting me, or he loves me so much that he became violent and became jealous. And with the rates of, you mentioned, STIs and teen pregnancy, the United States also has the highest rates of teen sexual violence. So it’s kind of saying that teen sexual violence, “it’s just because he loves me so much” or that it’s actually romantic rather than problematic.

Dr. Jenn: Oh my gosh. Thank you. That was a ton of information. Give a hand here for Natalie Wilson. Wow. And if you want to find Natalie online, you can visit Seduced by Twilight.

Bitch Flicks’ Weekly Picks

Film Corner! Review of Delhi Belly from Shakesville 

The Hermione Granger Series: Feminist Criticism of Feminist Criticism from The Funny Feminist 

Stop With the Twi-Hate Already (Thoughts on Comic-Con and Twilight Boycotting) from Seduced By Twilight

Girls on Film: Comic Con’s Push for Geeks, Heroines, and Women-Driven Discussion from Movies.com

Arranged: Life in Left Field from Dancing with Pain

Marilyn Monroe Sculpture Puts the Wind Up Chicago Art Critics from Guardian UK

Without Men: All About Men at the Expense of Latinas from Wonderinginlove 

Sigourney Weaver: “Every Woman Has a Secret Action Heroine in Her” from Jezebel

A Brief Oral History of Melissa McCarthy’s Huge Bridesmaids Performance from GQ

Lucille Ball Hitting the Comic Stands in August! from BUST Magazine

Five Feminisms from Women’s Football from Feminema

Share links of what you’ve been reading!

Movie Review: The Twilight Saga: New Moon

The Twilight Saga: New Moon. Starring Kristen Stewart, Taylor Lautner, Robert Pattinson, and Billy Burke. Written by Melissa Rosenberg (screenplay) and Stephenie Meyer (novel). Directed by Chris Weitz.

Critics have rightly argued that Twilight gives off a certain metaphor for teen abstinence vibe. Edward desires Bella so much that he refuses to let himself lose control with her. So, the audience gets a couple of scenes of passionate, intense kissing before the two melodramatically pull away from each other and decide to spoon innocently on the bed instead. If they decide to fornicate, after all, Bella could easily end up wounded by Edward’s thrusting vamp-strength or sucked completely dry. Of her blood. By Edward, her lover, who would of course be entirely unable to stop himself from sucking.

(For those of you unfamiliar, the Cullens, who are Edward’s vampire family, only drink the blood of animals to survive, even though they prefer human blood. The other, evil vampires in the movie, murder humans at will. Tsk, tsk.)

Twilight portrayed Bella as the passive object of vamp-Edward’s desire, who needed constant saving by him, from other vamps and from other men and from runaway cars, and who couldn’t make any decisions on her own throughout most of the movie. It shifts a little in the end, when Bella runs off to save her mother, ignoring the advice of the vampires who want to protect her. But by becoming an active subject in that scene, she’s punished, ultimately finding herself in a situation where Edward must save her yet again, literally by sucking poison from her blood.

But New Moon! How did you make me like you? It makes no sense—Bella still ends up in constant need of boy-saving, and she loses her freaking mind for months when Edward breaks up with her, which is not melodramatically showcased at all I swear, ha, by her constant nighttime screaming fits that force even her dad to run to her rescue. For the most part, Bella seems powerless, at the mercy of Edward, at the mercy of her nightmares, and eventually, at the mercy of the evil vampires who want to kill her (as punishment for Edward, who killed a vampire in Twilight).

So why did I find myself finally turning into an uber-fangirl as I watched? Because this time, the film is, dare I say … complicated.

Enter Jacob, Bella’s good friend who just happens to be a werewolf and who just happens to have the most incredible abs I’ve seen since Brad Pitt in Fight Club and who just happens to walk around with his shirt off constantly. And let’s remember the early scene in the school parking lot, where Bella watched as Edward walked toward her in exaggerated slow-motion, hair and button-down shirt blowing wistfully in the breeze, the camera steadied on him as Bella and me and fangirls across the country, yes, I’m going to say it, swoon. And then I started to wonder, “Is Bella entirely powerless?”

Not necessarily.

Because what strikes me most about the men in the Twilight saga is their desire to be looked at by Bella, which (fangirls everywhere unite!) positions Bella as the active subject (the gazer) and the men as passive objects (the gazed at). In the first film, Edward removes his shirt in the sunlight, revealing his twinkling vampire skin, and, upon seeing it, Bella says, “You’re beautiful.” She uses those words again in New Moon, this time with Jacob. When he says something along the lines of, “Why are you looking at me?” She responds with, “You’re sorta beautiful.”

Interestingly, (fangirls everywhere unite!) this direct physical objectification of women doesn’t exist in either movie—for instance, we don’t get traditional scenes of scantily clad girl-vamps trying to seduce men who they eventually eat (played as girl-power when it’s really just male fantasy).

But Bella isn’t without self-scrutiny. In the opening scene of the film, Bella dreams of herself as an old woman with Edward still at her side. That scene reveals an important plotline: fear of aging. Bella sees herself through the eyes of Edward (and therefore, men in general). She sees herself getting older while he stays young and twinkly-beautiful. She says, “You won’t want me when I’m a grandmother.” These feelings stem from living in a society that devalues aging women, and I like that the film explores the issue. Edward’s response? “You obviously don’t understand my feelings for you, Bella.”

Okay, so this is a total fangirl fantasy, right? I mean, a beautiful man loving you for what’s on the inside? I mean, honestly, we’re smarter than that, right? Right?! (Am I kidding?)

Still, in New Moon, even though Bella performs reckless acts, like jumping off a cliff and wrecking a motorcycle, just so faux-Edward will magically appear in some wavy fog-mist to male-dominate and tell her it’s dangerous, she still performs reckless acts. She makes decisions. She risks her life. For love! Ha. Of course, the fact that Edward can no longer save her—he isn’t physically there for real—means Jacob must step in. He does nice things … like taking off his shirt to reveal his Brad Pitt in Fight Club abs and to coincidentally wipe the blood from her forehead. He turns into a werewolf and saves her from one of the bad vamps. He performs CPR. Oh Jacob!

But then, after all this constant being saved by vampire-men and wolf-men, something amazing happens. Bella saves Edward. And even after she saves him, she saves him again, by convincing the Lead Evil Vampire God or Whatever to kill her instead of Edward. He doesn’t kill Bella, of course, because he becomes interested in—check out this awesomeness—her immunity to vampire powers. That’s right: the vampire mind readers can’t read Bella’s mind and the Dakota Fanning vampire can’t inflict mystical pain on Bella just by looking at her. It’s like Bella’s a vamp’s version of a superhero!

Look, is the film flawed? Yes.

The objectification of the men, for instance, also becomes an objectification of The Other (vampire/werewolf). Bella wants Edward to turn her into a vampire so they can be together forever but also because she doesn’t want to age (i.e. become undesirable). Bella can’t function when Edward leaves her, and she risks hurting herself just to get a glimpse of him again. Edward is 106 years old and she’s 18—would that work if the genders were reversed? And, when Edward agrees to turn Bella into a vampire, he insists that they marry first, which plays an awful lot like some creepy, conservative, let’s-get-married-before-I-take-your-virginity nonsense, creating that metaphor for teen abstinence vibe again.

But Bella isn’t a one-dimensional character anymore. In New Moon, she’s much more fleshed out, and perhaps most importantly, she doesn’t have to take her clothes off or perform a certain kind of femininity to get the boy. Edward falls for her because he finds her intriguing: he can’t read her thoughts (see True Blood), and he’s drawn to her because she smells delicious, sex metaphor? Jacob falls in love with Bella after they spend significant time together; it’s not some love-at-first-sight fantasy where he sees Bella, and the camera pans from her feet all the way up her legs and finally to her face where she either smiles coyly or looks down shyly.

As Dana Stevens writes in her review of New Moon:

The feminist in me wishes a lot of things. But say what you will about the Twilight films; they take female desire as seriously as a grad student from the early ’90s. The whole overcooked vampire vs. werewolf mythology (which also involves packs of shirtless wolf-boys and a sort of vampire Pope, played with camp glee by Michael Sheen) is, in essence, an excuse to place the viewer in Bella’s Timberland boots: torn between two flesh-eating monsters, feelin’ like a fool. Haters may construe Bella as a passive victim eager to be served up as vampire meat, but she’s the subject of this love story, not its object; she’s the lover while Edward and Jacob are her diametrically opposed beloveds, one hot-blooded (Jacob runs a constant body temperature of 108 degrees), the other pale and cold as stone.

Be sure to check out the Salon article, “Could New Moon Be a Feminist Triumph?” where Kate Harding argues that the movie’s box office gross could be a game-changer for the future of women in film.