Twilight of the Brain Cells

[oselle]

I used to believe that J.K. Rowling had sold her soul to Satan in return for the outlandish success of the Harry Potter franchise but no. No. I now know what it really looks like when someone sells their soul to Satan because that, my friends, is the only explanation for Twilight.

My attempt to read the book being stymied by fact that it felt like reading a very dull girl's Dear Diary entries, I watched the movie instead. I just...I'm sort of at a loss for words. Most other folks have already pointed out the incredibly anti-feminist helpless girl message and Edward's super-creepy stalker behavior that is supposed to be romantic, so I won't go into those horrors. Here are some of the lesser things that made my jaw drop, in no particular order:

1. Edward Cullen sparkles. He literally sparkles. When I'd see people joking about this I thought they meant he "sparkled" in the Mary-Sueish sparklepony metaphorical sense but no...he sparkles. Like diamond dust. But only when he's in direct sunlight. See, he takes Bella up "above the cloud cover" to reveal what "he really is" in the sun and I thought he was gonna be all gross and crispy and corpsey, right? But Bella'd love him anyway, right? But no...his shirt mysteriously undoes itself and he stands there SPARKLING. Later on he refers to himself as "a monster" and I was like...a monster of what? Glitter? Champagne bubbles? New-fallen snow? What the fuck, how could anyone read/see this and not burst out laughing? MAN, kudos to that editor for having the foresight to see that this would be a hit because I'd have chucked this manuscript in the "just for laughs" slush pile just from the sparkling alone.

2. What sort of vampires live in a house ENTIRELY MADE OF GLASS? The sparkly kind I guess.

3. I don't care how hard you hit a baseball, it's still an ordinary bat and an ordinary ball. It's not going to make a sound as loud as thunder even if the bat's being wielded by a vampire. SO STUPID.

4. Freakishly childlike vampirette Alice pirouettes through the school cafeteria and no one kicks her ass, throws anything at her or waits for her in the girls' bathroom to dunk her doe-eyed ballerina-wannabe head in a toilet. What planet is this school on?

5. In one of Bella's numerous mushy voiceovers, she whines about having to be the new girl starting school in the middle of the semester. Stupid me, I think this will be followed up by a scene of her having a rough time AS THE NEW GIRL STARTING SCHOOL IN THE MIDDLE OF THE SEMESTER. Although one kid does get off a crack about her wheels (I believe the searing insult was "Nice truck!"), within minutes -- I mean literally within minutes of walking in the door -- she appears to be the most popular girl in the school IN SPITE OF EXHIBITING NO CHARM, CHARISMA OR APPEAL WHATSOEVER. I guess when you've got pasty-faced twats dancing unmolested and unmocked around the cafeteria it's pretty hard to be an outcast at this school.

6. OH MY GOD if you were a vampire, decades or even centuries old, endowed with all sorts of superhuman abilities WOULD YOU WANT TO KEEP REPEATING HIGH SCHOOL OVER AND OVER AND OVER AND OVER?? These are the stupidest fucking vampires on the face of the earth! Can Eric Northman come up from Louisiana to grotesquely explode them or bury them alive or something? For God's sake, they're a disgrace to the whole race. Let's just drain them all and sell the blood to Lafayette Reynolds. He'll make better use of it.

7. OH MY GOD if you were a vampire, decades or even centuries old, endowed with all sorts of superhuman abilities WOULD YOU WANT TO LIVE WITH YOUR PARENTS???

8. OH MY GOD if you were a vampire, decades or even centuries old, endowed with all sorts of superhuman abilities WOULDN'T YOU THINK YOU'D HAVE FOUND MORE EXCITING THINGS TO DO BESIDES CLIMBING TREES AND CHASTELY SNIFFING YOUR GIRLFRIEND AND PLAYING BASEBALL IN THE RAIN???

9. "The lion fell in love with the lamb?!??!" Are you fucking kidding me?!? GAG!!

10. WORST. SOUNDTRACK. EVER.

11. WORST. LIGHTING. EVER. Why is everyone green?

12. WHY does James go after Bella? THIS MAKES NO SENSE AT ALL.

And finally...THE BONUS FEATURES OMG. Bonus features are always self-congratulatory and strokey and hyperbolic but christ on a cracker people. The dreadful music video? "Becoming Edward?" "Becoming Bella?" What? They didn't even have to glue on any latex ears, what's with the "becoming?" Kristin Stewart talking about how "strong" Bella is? WHAT?? Stephenie Meyer totally high on her own junk? WHAT!?!?

It's a prank. It's got to be a prank, the whole thing. A very sophisticated, elaborate and cynical punking that somehow turned into a worldwide phenomenon. Either that or the whole Satan thing. Take your pick.

Comments

[animotus.livejournal.com]

I used to believe that J.K. Rowling had sold her soul to Satan in return for the outlandish success of the Harry Potter franchise but no. No. I now know what it really looks like when someone sells their soul to Satan because that, my friends, is the only explanation for Twilight
Not only you notice things like Jensen's neck...you also say things like this and I could seriously marry you right now!!!!♥

[oselle.livejournal.com]

LOL a second income would be nice!

[ladymirth.livejournal.com]

The appeal of Harry Potter is mostly that it's the literary equivalent of playdough - it's not what the story or the characters are, it's what you can DO with them. Hence the fandom. But I agree, it IS rather severely over-hyped, although for the original target market of pre-teens, it's perfect.

Twilight. I take it you haven't read Cleolinda's hilarious recaps of the books? They were the reason I got to reading the damn things in the first place - and didn't regret it, because oh my god, I haven't read that much cracktastic lolariousness even in crack!fic and I've been in various fandoms for the past seven years. And the PARODIES and the wank and the Twatlighting - it's like God's gift to the internetz! HEE!

[oselle.livejournal.com]

But the Potter books really are unique or at least, they're derivative of so many different sources that Rowling took apart and put back together in her own way that that alone, that re-invention and world-building is what makes them interesting. I think Rowling's prose style is plodding and her characterizations kind of suck but there are an awful lot of things that she IS good at but here? There's none of that. Bella is a whiny drip. Edward is a bland creep. The vampires in general are boring and Meyer's interpretation of vampire lore makes no sense at all.

I'll check out that link but OMG -- how do you parody a parody!?

[claudia603.livejournal.com]

you gave me my first LOLZ of the day!! EXCELLENT!!!

[oselle.livejournal.com]

Glad to be of service!

[oxer12.livejournal.com]

I agree 100% with everything in your post, but #6 is what I wonder about most, too. Why the HELL would he stay in HIGH SCHOOL??? You almost wonder if Stephanie Meyer had ever even HEARD of vampires before she wrote these books.

I found myself watching the movie with a kind of dumb sense of disbelief as to just how bad it was. Like, "it couldn't possibly be this bad," and then something else even worse would happen. Like the sparkling. *sporks eyes out*

[oselle.livejournal.com]

There's so little new that you can do with vampires but Meyer managed to take a concept that's already been done to death and make it even more boring. I mean, the whole appeal of vampires is that they're supposed to be dark and sexy and dangerous but the Cullenses are NONE of those things. They're like the Brady Bunch...I honestly wouldn't be surprised if they had backyard sack-races in addition to their family baseball outings. And seriously -- not just Edward but ALL of the Cullen "kids" are in school. What do they do? Keep flunking junior year so that they can "blend in" by being in high school forever? Imagine taking algebra every year for ONE HUNDRED YEARS. OMG! Why does Edward even have to be in high school at all -- he's "seventeen." There's not even a legal reason for him to be there. He doesn't even have to be there for appearances sake. HE'S A GODDAMN VAMPIRE! HE CAN DO WHATEVER THE FUCK HE WANTS! GO WHERE HE WANTS! FUCK WHOM HE WANTS! And he's in science lab dissecting flatworms FOR A HUNDRED YEARS!?!? OMG IT IS ALL SO STUPID!!

[mews1945.livejournal.com]

I rented Twilight because I was pretty sure I didn't want to own it. At first, I was just bored. It was all so dull and simplistic and Mary-Sueish. Okay, I realize it's supposed to appeal to teenager girls, but it's frigging insulting to think most teenage girls will like this drivel. I fast-forwarded some of it. Then, when they got to Edward's home and family, I slowed down to watch, and started to snicker, and when we finally see Edward in all his sparkly glory, I guffawed.

I confess, I couldn't be bothered to really watch the rest of it, so I fast-forwarded again, until it got to the "action" scenes. They even managed to make those boring. So I'm one person who doesn't give a rat's ass about the next movie, or book.

[oselle.livejournal.com]

I can see why teens and pre-teens would be into this but there aren't enough of them to turn this into such a phenomenon. I've seen grown women reading this on the subway...the other day I saw a man who looked like he was in his early 40s reading it in Spanish. It's appeal is not just multi-generational, it's gone multi-cultural! There's a woman in my office who got our IT manager to hack a website where she could download and print a leaked excerpt of the next book and then told me the next day that she was up unitl three in the morning reading it and how I HAD to get into Twilight because it was SO GOOD. God knows I understand the appeal of escapism and fantasy but this is so infuriatingly BORING and STUPID that it's not even fun...unless your idea of fun is hollering, "OH MY GOD THIS IS SO STUPID!" at the top of your lungs.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

I always think these books have to be better than I think they are. Yet everytime someone talks about them, they appear to be worse.

[oselle.livejournal.com]

I actually thought the movie would be kind of entertaining because with the right cast and special effects you can still make a fun movie out of a bad book. But I think in this case they were either too faithful to the books or the source material was just so terrible that it wasn't possible to get something good out of it. I just...I don't understand the fanatical popularity of this at all. I don't even get why Stewart and Pattinson are such hot tabloid fodder because God...I mean they don't exactly light up the screen together and even in their bonus feature interviews they seem bored and sullen and about as charismatic as a couple of mushrooms.

[ariadnes-string.livejournal.com]

*nodding vigorously in agreement to every part of your take on the Twilight movie, especially the glitter*

There are things that drive me nuts about the Harry Potter 'verse, and I mostly know it through reading the books out loud to my oldest, and listening to the amazing Jim Dale audio-recordings on long car trips. But boy is it fun to read aloud and listen to.

That was the crime of the Twilight movie: NO FUN.

[oselle.livejournal.com]

I know, no fun...everyone's such a whiny sad sack!

[pearlette.livejournal.com]

*is amused*

I read the first book and that was enough. Didn't bother with the movie.

Yes, Twilight makes Potter look like Shakespeare. :D

[oselle.livejournal.com]

Bizarrely enough, I find myself now wanting to read the book. I understand it's even worse than the movie!

[pearlette.livejournal.com]

Yes, everyone says that. :D

And it is. :D

[elanorgardner.livejournal.com]

Amen and amen. But then again, Sarah Palin WAS a candidate for VP of the US. And...

Nevermind, I don't want to depress myself further...

;)

[oselle.livejournal.com]

I'm starting to believe that the inexplicable mass popularity of mediocre fare like Twilight and the mainstream acceptance of the right-wing freakshow have something in common. Are they putting lead in the drinking water or something?

[elanorgardner.livejournal.com]

Now see what you did? You made me think about the cocktail of antidepressants/mood altering drugs/hormones/psychotics that we are all peeing away that gets, eventually, back into the water we drink. It's no WONDER we are spinning out of control ...

:(

;)

[sixth-queen.livejournal.com]

No knowing anything about this travesty, except for the manufactured real-life romance between the two kids (they're engaged now ) --- I have the dumbest question of all. How are these vampires able to walk around in daylight?