I would like to state for the record that this is not my analysis of Twilight, but an edited version of that of a contemporary, SuperMechaGodzilla, whose tutelage has had a profound impact on my literary work.
Yes it's about rape; the rape stuff is barely even subtext. Vampires have been a rape metaphor since before Bram Stoker. It's the implementation that makes Twilight a refreshingly atypical horror picture. Twilight owns because Movie Bella subdues and pussy-whips the rapist via her own, even more intense psychoses. In a conventional film, that's where the story would end. In Twilight, it is only the second act of the first volume of Edward's ongoing sissification. Bella is the most unsettling monster in the whole series, while Edward is a pathetic wretch like Klaus Kinski in Herzog's Nosferatu.
Bella has an lesbian Oedipus problem where she hates her absentee father and sees her mother (who divorced to live a life of adventure dating a pro baseball player) as the best possible role model. Commanding Edward (who, notably, has superhuman baseball skill) is her path towards psychosexual freedom. As an aspect of this, she feels constrained by her youth, physical weakness and relative lower-class status. Vampirism is escapism and empowerment.
This is not really a case of nerd-empowerment like "You're a wizard, Harry!", because Bella never has a moment's doubt that she's superior or at least equal to everyone around her. The unreadable brain thing is what places her at an intellectual level above what Edward can understand. You get the impression that if Edward could read her thoughts about him, he'd get the fuck outta there. This is just the logical extreme of Bella's characterization as a jaded sociopath/genius (while also hinting that she literally has a mental problem of some sort). Her super-blood doesn't seem to grant her any real genetic advantage or anything. It basically just represents that, despite Edward's age, this is his first experience with True Love, which causes him to act like a virgin who got his first erection (compounding the whole emasculation thing).
The duality of this is pretty overt though: Ed wants her body but fears her mind.
What kind of person would keep coming back to high-school year after year for decades? Obviously, a person with severe mental and emotional problems. Edward acts exactly like a psycho who'd undergone the Ludovico treatment, and the school is an aspect of his forcible civilization and self-punishment. He knows he's a rapist and a killer, so he places himself in a life of bland drudgery, to prevent him from snapping. But compare his pathetic suburban lifestyle with that of the wild vampires who are truly free. The movie wants him to snap, and so does Bella. The most important part of the movie is that Bella wants to be a vampire too - becoming, effectively, a female rapist. She already has the killer mentality, but not the physical strength. That's why she can only, so far, dominate Edward using emotional manipulation and mind-games.
Edward is 'sexy' because he's non-threatening. And the reason he's non-threatening, despite all his strength and repressed evil, is because Bella is even more evil - so evil that he's a lil kitten by comparison. Anyone watching the movie would tell you Edward is ridiculous. He tries to scare her away by showing that he's sparkly! The movie takes Bella's POV, and she's unimpressed. Just like we are.
Like consider the vampire at the end of the film: he's clearly scary-evil, despite being the bad rapist Edward supposedly is (not to mention the gang of bros harassing Bella earlier in the film). There's something about Edward that makes him more appealing, and I think I've identified the bulk of it.
See, I don't follow the claims that Edward is the abusive one. I mean, he is a creep, but he's also portrayed as impotent and pathetic. The part where he's spending all night staring at her is creepy, but also onanistic; he's held back by all kinds of shame and guilt. Basically he's too much of a weakling to actually be abusive. Bella is depicted as too smart to to see him as a threat, and actually eggs him on. She's pushing him outside his comfort zone for her own gratification, and without much apparent concern for his psychological well-being. He's like, "Oh, stay back, I'm so dark and I might ravish you. Please, let me escape into the woods where I can do you no harm." and she's like "Haha, you fag." Bella is consistently more abusive, which gives her the upper hand.
I actually prefer Twilight a good deal over Buffy, mainly because Whedon feels the need to masculinize his heroines' victories and present them as empowered due to some arbitrary supernatural gift. Plus she's a freakin goody two-shoes. Bella doesn't need to stab dudes with phallic objects in order to win the day (which is, unfortunately, what leads people to call her character passive). And her capacity for 'evil' is remarkable when it comes to humanizing her character. Twilight doesn't judge her transgressions; she's just allowed to be flawed.
Folks can't appreciate an epic match of emotional gamesmanship because they feel simultaneously superior-to and confounded-by the women who 'get' the dynamics at play here. The Twilight fanbase's identification with Bella in her dominance over Edward is a mirror to the folks who cheer Jason in the Friday The 13th films. In one, you see a remorseless monster attack dumb people. In the other, you see a remorseless person attack a dumb monster. The makers of the Friday films already realized this dynamic was at play, which is why we have Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood - unofficially known as Jason Versus Carrie. It must register, at least subconsciously, since obviously fans love seeing Edward all tormented by their hero Bella. Also, I very much doubt that the fans want to be raped by big scary Edward. To say that the fans are simply dumb women who don't know what's good for them strikes me as deeply misogynist. "Myers could never have even accidentally thought of such a complex story, and even if she did, the fans are too dumb to see it!" This is another thing that people incorrectly see as a flaw because they're approaching the film as a flighty and innocuous rom-com. People will dismiss the film as a Mormon housewife's perverted erotica, to which I reply: hell yes.
The "death by sunlight" thing was invented to represent that vampires are unholy/unnatural. The sun is 'god', casting judgment on their sinful behavior. But twilight is not judgmental; it's amoral. 'God' approves of vampirism. He spares them, makes them sparkly, as that whole rape/murder thing is apparently the highest form of human expression. Society is what represses Edward, not the laws of nature. The characters are constantly compared to animals and Edward is the lion: king of the jungle.
Bella sees the sparkles as beautiful not because they're sparkly, but because they represent Ed's untapped potential as a killer. Edward is 'boring' because he's basically Superman - but like Superman, he does have interesting weaknesses. They're psychological weaknesses, and Bella's a sort of Kryptonite. In other words, y'all are Edwards in real life. Sparkly.
Yes it's about rape; the rape stuff is barely even subtext. Vampires have been a rape metaphor since before Bram Stoker. It's the implementation that makes Twilight a refreshingly atypical horror picture. Twilight owns because Movie Bella subdues and pussy-whips the rapist via her own, even more intense psychoses. In a conventional film, that's where the story would end. In Twilight, it is only the second act of the first volume of Edward's ongoing sissification. Bella is the most unsettling monster in the whole series, while Edward is a pathetic wretch like Klaus Kinski in Herzog's Nosferatu.
Bella has an lesbian Oedipus problem where she hates her absentee father and sees her mother (who divorced to live a life of adventure dating a pro baseball player) as the best possible role model. Commanding Edward (who, notably, has superhuman baseball skill) is her path towards psychosexual freedom. As an aspect of this, she feels constrained by her youth, physical weakness and relative lower-class status. Vampirism is escapism and empowerment.
This is not really a case of nerd-empowerment like "You're a wizard, Harry!", because Bella never has a moment's doubt that she's superior or at least equal to everyone around her. The unreadable brain thing is what places her at an intellectual level above what Edward can understand. You get the impression that if Edward could read her thoughts about him, he'd get the fuck outta there. This is just the logical extreme of Bella's characterization as a jaded sociopath/genius (while also hinting that she literally has a mental problem of some sort). Her super-blood doesn't seem to grant her any real genetic advantage or anything. It basically just represents that, despite Edward's age, this is his first experience with True Love, which causes him to act like a virgin who got his first erection (compounding the whole emasculation thing).
The duality of this is pretty overt though: Ed wants her body but fears her mind.
What kind of person would keep coming back to high-school year after year for decades? Obviously, a person with severe mental and emotional problems. Edward acts exactly like a psycho who'd undergone the Ludovico treatment, and the school is an aspect of his forcible civilization and self-punishment. He knows he's a rapist and a killer, so he places himself in a life of bland drudgery, to prevent him from snapping. But compare his pathetic suburban lifestyle with that of the wild vampires who are truly free. The movie wants him to snap, and so does Bella. The most important part of the movie is that Bella wants to be a vampire too - becoming, effectively, a female rapist. She already has the killer mentality, but not the physical strength. That's why she can only, so far, dominate Edward using emotional manipulation and mind-games.
Edward is 'sexy' because he's non-threatening. And the reason he's non-threatening, despite all his strength and repressed evil, is because Bella is even more evil - so evil that he's a lil kitten by comparison. Anyone watching the movie would tell you Edward is ridiculous. He tries to scare her away by showing that he's sparkly! The movie takes Bella's POV, and she's unimpressed. Just like we are.
Like consider the vampire at the end of the film: he's clearly scary-evil, despite being the bad rapist Edward supposedly is (not to mention the gang of bros harassing Bella earlier in the film). There's something about Edward that makes him more appealing, and I think I've identified the bulk of it.
See, I don't follow the claims that Edward is the abusive one. I mean, he is a creep, but he's also portrayed as impotent and pathetic. The part where he's spending all night staring at her is creepy, but also onanistic; he's held back by all kinds of shame and guilt. Basically he's too much of a weakling to actually be abusive. Bella is depicted as too smart to to see him as a threat, and actually eggs him on. She's pushing him outside his comfort zone for her own gratification, and without much apparent concern for his psychological well-being. He's like, "Oh, stay back, I'm so dark and I might ravish you. Please, let me escape into the woods where I can do you no harm." and she's like "Haha, you fag." Bella is consistently more abusive, which gives her the upper hand.
I actually prefer Twilight a good deal over Buffy, mainly because Whedon feels the need to masculinize his heroines' victories and present them as empowered due to some arbitrary supernatural gift. Plus she's a freakin goody two-shoes. Bella doesn't need to stab dudes with phallic objects in order to win the day (which is, unfortunately, what leads people to call her character passive). And her capacity for 'evil' is remarkable when it comes to humanizing her character. Twilight doesn't judge her transgressions; she's just allowed to be flawed.
Folks can't appreciate an epic match of emotional gamesmanship because they feel simultaneously superior-to and confounded-by the women who 'get' the dynamics at play here. The Twilight fanbase's identification with Bella in her dominance over Edward is a mirror to the folks who cheer Jason in the Friday The 13th films. In one, you see a remorseless monster attack dumb people. In the other, you see a remorseless person attack a dumb monster. The makers of the Friday films already realized this dynamic was at play, which is why we have Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood - unofficially known as Jason Versus Carrie. It must register, at least subconsciously, since obviously fans love seeing Edward all tormented by their hero Bella. Also, I very much doubt that the fans want to be raped by big scary Edward. To say that the fans are simply dumb women who don't know what's good for them strikes me as deeply misogynist. "Myers could never have even accidentally thought of such a complex story, and even if she did, the fans are too dumb to see it!" This is another thing that people incorrectly see as a flaw because they're approaching the film as a flighty and innocuous rom-com. People will dismiss the film as a Mormon housewife's perverted erotica, to which I reply: hell yes.
The "death by sunlight" thing was invented to represent that vampires are unholy/unnatural. The sun is 'god', casting judgment on their sinful behavior. But twilight is not judgmental; it's amoral. 'God' approves of vampirism. He spares them, makes them sparkly, as that whole rape/murder thing is apparently the highest form of human expression. Society is what represses Edward, not the laws of nature. The characters are constantly compared to animals and Edward is the lion: king of the jungle.
Bella sees the sparkles as beautiful not because they're sparkly, but because they represent Ed's untapped potential as a killer. Edward is 'boring' because he's basically Superman - but like Superman, he does have interesting weaknesses. They're psychological weaknesses, and Bella's a sort of Kryptonite. In other words, y'all are Edwards in real life. Sparkly.
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