By K. A. Laity
There were guys running around the San Diego Comic-Con with placards complaining that Twilight vampires had “ruined Comic-Con: vamps don’t sparkle, they groused."
A backlash at a pop phenom is no surprise, but the subtext is clearly gendered at what used to be the province of the hordes of comic book guys: No girls allowed! The hostility to women evidenced by the many “promotional” opportunities generally rises out of a callous appeal to the perceived target audience, but the Twilight hatred seems to have another lurking fear behind it.
Girl Power...
Yeah, I know, it’s a tired phrase. But there’s something more to the Twilight phenomenon than say, simply the Harry Potter fans or other similarly rabid fan bases. At the heart of it is a fan response that’s rooted in teen lust -- and at odds with the overt aim of the series.
It’s fairly well tread territory to suggest that author Stephanie Meyer’s book adheres faithfully to her church, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, popularly referred to as the Mormons, a group whose practices have often been the object of scrutiny if not outright derision and attack. Jokes about their special underwear and the embrace of polygamy among some branches have defined the public view of the church. For Meyer, though, the main thrust of these narratives has been lessons about abstinence.
But she can’t control the subconscious, neither her own nor others’ and that’s where the Twilight madness falls. Rather than the “sex will kill you” message that the novels seem to want to encourage, girls have found their own messages in the stories that fuel a wild desire the overt narrative cannot contain. You can hear it in the explosion of squeeing and shrieks that accompanied the showing of the trailer for the second Twilight film, which I experienced first hand at a screening of the latest Harry Potter film.
More importantly you can see it in the on-line discussions and ebullient fan fiction that stretches across the net like a virus. These honest expressions of desire trump any attempt to regulate the young fans’ reactions, just as similar passions in the past did, from Beatlemania to the Bay City Rollers, the New Kids and the Jonas Brothers.
It’s easy to see how Edward Cullen, particularly as embodied in the safely boyish Robert Pattinson in the films, offers a safe outlet for that young lust. What’s more interesting is the unbridled passion for Jacob Black, the werewolf played by Taylor Lautner.
While both are nominally “monsters” though tamed by the narrative of girl-centric adventures, the vamp remains the safely coded creature, focused on the mouth whereas the savagery of the werewolf is a much more physically comprehensive passion, to say nothing of its animal nature.
The young girls do eat him up.
Good luck fighting the power of teen lust. As Angela Carter noted in her re-examination of wolf tales, there’s no controlling the girl once she’s loosed the beast. It’s not Red Ridinghood who needs the protecting; it’s the grandmother who tried to keep encourage her dangerous innocence. But Red preferred the beast. It’s a girl’s prerogative.