The Twilight Movies

My sister-in-law (a scholar of medieval romance) and my nieces are crazy about the Twilight books and movies, and my wife suggested we see both of them. So I did, and was quite impressed at how they managed to imbed the classic Gothic myths into the lives of modern young girls. Here is the rather prosaic story that underlies them. I do not mean to disparage them by uncovering this story, because I am genuinely impressed at how the author has given this story such epic resonance. That is part of what artists are supposed to do: "See infinity in a grain of sand and eternity in an hour". Here's the grain of sand that the author of these stories is working with. You'll have to see the movies, or read the first two books, to see what she has done with it so far.

1) The sensible thing to do is to date boys in your own social class. However, the kids in your social class are boring, partly because they're a lot like you, and partly because you seem to want something more than they want. Consequently, you are going to be attracted primarily to upper class boys with pale skin and high cheekbones, and secondarily to lower class boys with dark skin and big biceps.

2) The first movie dealt with the problems of being attracted to the upper class boys. Most of them will see you as food, to be chewed up and spit out for their temporary pleasure. The best you can hope for is a boy who will want to treat you this way, but loves you so much that he stops himself from doing so by shear force of will. His brother, however, will not have the will power that he has, so don't ever let him see parts of your body that are ordinarily covered. Your upper class boyfriend will protect you from his brother, but this will result in bad family tensions. Eventually you will want your upper class boyfriend to do the terrible thing that would destroy you, but he won't, no matter how much you beg him to, because he loves you too much. He believes that if he does this terrible thing, you will be damned for all eternity. You're willing to risk that, he's not.

3) If your upper class boyfriend leaves you (as he does in the second movie) you can turn to the lower class boy with brown skin and big biceps. He will not force himself on you, but he will do things like fix your motor cyle. Unfortunately, his friends travel in gangs that are bad tempered, dangerous and violent. Eventually he will join one of those gangs himself, because this kind of violence is in his genes. He realizes this, however, and so refuses to get emotionally involved with you, even though he loves you. He knows that other members of his gang have committed domestic violence against the women they love, and he is afraid he will do the same thing to you.

The good news is that the upper class boy eventually agrees to do the terrible thing that you both want him to do, but only if you agree to marry him. The bad news is that if you do this, the lower class boy will get very angry, and there's no telling what he'll do when he gets angry.

The one character I found myself identifying with was the girl's father. He loves his daughter deeply, but the only way he has ever learned to relate to women is romantically, and he knows that this is highly inappropriate in her case. Consequently, he keeps his distance from her, and expresses his feelings only in stiff formal utterances and the giving of carefully chosen gifts. This shows my age of course, as does the fact that the last time I saw Romeo and Juliet (performed by my own students) I couldn't identify with Romeo any more. Instead, I identified with Friar Lawrence, the childless scholar who finds himself surrounded by teenagers hopped up on hormones and existential angst, doing everything he can to stop them from killing themselves. I hope I have more success than he did. Perhaps watching movies like Twilight will help.