Apparently (and I can’t provide a link to the actual release, so know knows in what context this was spoken), the Vatican has come out against the current ‘Tween’ (and older) sensation of ‘Twilight.’   For those of you living under a rock, the basic premise of this three part series is:

  • Boy meets girl
  • Girl likes boy
  • Boy avoids girl because boy has sudden urge to suck on girls neck and drink her blood
  • Turns out boy is a vampire
  • Boy and girl must beat all number of odds to be together (including vampire councils and the ‘other love interest’ – a werewolf – who is so manly he threatens to kill himself if girl does not kiss him)
  • Boy and girl live happily ever after.

Preeetty sure this plot has been repeated in several if not hundreds of ways over the years, but I think I prefer Shakespeare’s variation on this the most.  At any rate, if you want a simple plot line to sum it up with I’d offer this one:

Dawsons Creek on crack, except everyone is a vampire, werewolf or emo.

Another opinion is this, offered by a Vatican spokesperson:

The film, above, contained “an explosive mix” of good-looking protagonists dabbling in the supernatural, said Monsignor Franco Perazzolo of the Vatican’s Pontifical Council for Culture. The film’s occult imagery represented a “moral void more dangerous than any deviant message”, he said.

(I take issue with this.  The characters are not at all good looking. Has he even seen the movie??)  But seriously, the first response to this will most likely be ‘oh the Vatican over0-reacting about everything, wants us all to be prudes who only read the bible etc etc…”   But the question is a deeper one; Twilight is a very prominent book and movie series and like it or not, we are influenced by values in our society.

Is Twilight the sort of book that promotes healthy values and relationships?  If it doesn’t should we be promoting it or perhaps more importantly should we let children read it?

I take a slightly pragmatic approach to this. I don’t think you will be able to stop your 13 year old daughter from reading this book if she really really wants to.  And perhaps we shouldn’t; after all you cannot ‘protect’ children from the ‘outside world’ but rather help them to filter it through their own moral compass. Hopefully what you can do is ask your kids questions about the book, the characters motives and behaviours to make them think deeply about the issues set forth.  They can still enjoy it, sure, but it also means you are teaching them to think critically and deeply about issues presented in media.

A friend of mine offered these pearls of wisdom over this issue:

“Vatican hates Twilight” could more accurately be described as  “Vatican Official thinks Twilight a bad idea” which is not the same thing.

It’s the same as the Harry Potter incident–someone writes to the Pope saying they don’t like Harry and he writes back saying “It’s good to be careful about what your kids are reading” and suddenly the headline is “Pope hates Harry Potter”.

As for the statement, I don’t think Twilight is morally empty. Morally problematic, sure, yes it is. Stephanie Meyer is a Mormon, it’s not news we don’t like their theology of things like procreation. But then, Philip Pullman and Harry Potter are both at times morally problematic as well. That’s why you don’t let five year olds read them.

Beautiful.

But what, you might ask, is my issue with these books?  From a woman’s perspective I think they promote a pretty terrible ideal of relationships and more specifically, being the female within those relationships. They feed on that 13-16 year old angst which pathologically hungers for that obsessive intense love that makes you go kill yourself (or in Bella’s case, sit for months looking out her window and waking up screaming at night) if you loose it.  How do I know? I’ve been there. I know what it is like to be in that age and I know PRECISELY why this series is so attractive. I also know the pain of ‘love lost’ (although I think it can be different with young teenagers; lust and obsessiveness seem to replace true love) and how terrible that can make one feel. And yes it can indeed go on for months. But there are healthy and unhealthy ways to deal with that and this book seems to glorify the latter.   And the female lead seems so passive aggressive and easily led; sure a male has a role of leadership in any relationship but puh-lease. Woman, this is a prime example of how NOT to be in a relationship.

A second example in the second book (and this is based on a review, not my own reading of it. I couldn’t get through another one) is the half wolf/half man’s character (also in love with Bella) who threatens to kill himself if she doesn’t kiss him.  Wow. What a great way to get love. Wait a minute; that is NOT true love, and to put it forward as part of love is pretty terrible.

And finally.  I just don’t get the big deal with Edward whats his name (the male lead in the film series and the book).  Ok, the guy can act, and he is probably a really nice guy in real life.  But the character he plays is so entirely 2-D and predictable that I could probably get the same experience if I were to date a really pale and slightly good looking dishcloth.

Give me Elizabeth Bennet any day

Advertisement