With the recent release of another installment of the “Twilight” saga, “Breaking Dawn: Part 1,” there are some things about the never-ending movie franchise that need to be said.
Let’s get this straight: We’ve got Team Edward and Team Jacob. Each of them represents a different ideal of love, as described by Mormons, teenage girls or the awkward 45-year-old mother of three that clearly has some issues she needs to sort out. They claim these two characters, the pale and rather obnoxious Edward (Robert Pattinson) and the dark, tall and handsome werewolf Jacob (Taylor Lautner) represent two different sides of what any self-respecting woman would want.
Amusingly, the characters that these fans base themselves around are both self-righteous, stubborn dicks in their own way — but I wouldn’t recommend you tell that to a “Twihard,” unless you’re looking forward to getting stabbed with whatever sharp object may be nearby at that particular moment.
Throughout the films and books, Edward and Jacob put Bella (the woman caught in the middle of this messed up love triangle, played by Kristen Stewart) through all sorts of ridiculous and unimaginable hell.
And what does she do? Smile, fall more deeply in love with both of them at varying points, and dream of the good things headed her way, even though she ends up getting her insides eaten out by her own vampire baby. Nice. (And we wonder why no one is on Team Bella.)
Full disclosure: I don’t care about how ridiculous the main storyline of the Twilight series is. I don’t mind the rampant release of pent-up sexual frustration through prose, and the absurd idea that any of this should be considered “modern classic” literature only bothers me to a point.
What does piss me off, however, is its portrayal of its female lead. No doubt she was meant to be understood as a strong woman capable of handling anything that came her way. From a male perspective though, she is a doormat. The ugly, beige doormat that gets covered in the mud rubbed off of everyone’s boots before they walk into the house.
If I was forced to date a woman as complacent and pathetically dependent on me as Bella is on Edward and Jacob, I’d pull a Herman Cain and entertain classy (supernatural) prostitutes with my spare time, just because it’s more interesting than her vanilla coffee creamer mentality of “whatever you want, I love you anyway.”
It’s downright depressing to see, as a male, that some women actually look up to this kind of life and hope for something similar.
It may just be the atrocities the film adaptations represent, but I’ve seen enough of “Twilight” to be nearly convinced all the progress feminism has made in the past few decades has been at least slightly damaged. The sheer number of young girls buying into this backward philosophy regarding love and relationships is downright offensive to me as a man.
I never thought I’d see the day when I’m standing up for feminists everywhere, but thanks to “Twilight,” I’m joining the cause.
A world where a make-believe vampire who treats his woman with not much more than jealous, adolescent sulking is billed as the “perfect man” is not a world in which I want to live.
— Joe Dusbabek is a senior studying linguistics and French. He can be reached at arts@wildcat.arizona.edu.
