Okay time out everybody out of the pool
Mar. 16th, 2011 10:49 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
crazyjaneAs I wrote some time ago, I have to study Twilight for English this semester. I'd already read that, and most of the second book, but hadn't been able to go on. Recently, for completeness' sake, I started reading a chapter-by-chapter review of all four books. The blogger, at least, has a decent grasp of the English language, so I figured I'd be saved from the torture of Stephenie Meyer's horrendously bad prose.
And then it got weirder ... and more misogynistic and racist ... and more grossly sexually perverted ... and even with the extensive quotes provided by the blogger, I couldn't believe it was as bad as he was saying. So I thought I'd look for myself.
I want to talk about Chapters 17 and 18 of Breaking Dawn, the final book. To borrow a phrase from the blogger, Mark:
HOLY JESUS FUCK WHAT THE HELL IS THIS SHITTERY WHAT WHAT THIS CANNOT BE HAPPENING
In these two chapters, we learn:
* that a werewolf 'imprints' on a female, and that female instantly becomes his soulmate for life, and that she has no choice about this but to 'belong' to him (actually, we learned a bit about that earlier, but this is where it gets really ugly). The age of said female doesn't actually matter, either ...
* that if this werewolf starts loitering around malls and playgrounds to find a 'soulmate', and people think that's weird, it's because there's something wrong with them, not because an adult man is staring lustfully at little girls on the swings ...
* that if a male vampire and a human woman have sex, she can be impregnated with a vampire baby that will literally kick her half to death and cause her to spout 'fountains of blood' when she goes into labour ...
* that said vampire baby has to be delivered via emergency Caesarean - but because the woman's womb has changed to become like vampire-skin (yes, I know), the only way to do this is to have the vampire daddy bite open her womb and pull out the baby ...
* that when the aforementioned werewolf sees the vampire baby, complete with its shiny white teeth, he realises that he is looking at his soulmate, and will now raise her from birth to become his perfect partner ...
* that, for a woman who apparently finds R-rated movies too 'gross' to watch, Meyer appears to have no trouble describing some of the most horrendously graphic scenes of violence I have ever read outside a splatterpunk novel ...
* and as if all of that isn't bad enough, it's underpinned by anti-abortion rhetoric, incessant misogyny, emotional and physical abuse (from both the werewolf and the 'true love' vampire) and the exultation of self-hatred and being willingly complicit in the complete loss of one's own freedom and mental health. That's without going into the homophobia, gender judgment (you're not a woman if you can't/won't have babies) and transphobia in the whole series.
I wish I were making this up.
I've often wondered how Meyer's dreadful, dreadful prose and tendency to ramble about nothing for chapters on end somehow escaped an editor's notice.
But dear gods, how the hell did this stuff get published in a series aimed at young women aged between about 16 and 25?!
I'm a huge fan of horror - it's one of my favourite genres - and in my time, I've read some pretty graphic stuff. The difference is, none of those books ever pretended to be anything other than adult novels, and always mentioned in the blurb about the content. None of those books tried to pass off as 'romantic' the kind of abuse that takes place in Meyer's books. And none of them tried to suggest that characters who engaged in such behaviour were 'normal', or that there was something wrong with treating a woman like an independent human being.
A review in The Guardian described Meyer's books as 'like a virus'.
Well, this is one infection I will never let near my daughters.
I've been careful not to circumscribe my kids' choice of reading matter. Sure, I've suggested things for them, and tried to show them some of the wonderful literature that's out there. This isn't an easy task, particularly since both girls read well above their age; finding age-appropriate books often involves spending a lot of time researching what's out there. Censorship, though? That's never been something with which I am comfortable.
But their friends are reading Meyer's books. These children are ten to twelve year old girls. They are reading the kind of horrific stuff I mentioned above. They are learning that 'romance' and 'love' for a woman is about accepting that you no longer have any autonomy ... that you are worthless without a man ... that sex is something that will hurt you and cause you to be punished (oh, did I mention that when they finally have sex, Edward the romantic vampire nearly ruptures Bella's cervix, and she apologises?) ... that a baby that will kill you is more important than you, because you are only a woman ... and that it's okay for a man more than twice your age to 'select' you as a child, and groom you to be his sexual partner.
THESE BOOKS WILL NEVER GET NEAR MY CHILDREN IF I HAVE ANYTHING TO DO WITH IT.
These books should not be accessible to anyone under 18. Good grief, we packaged American Psycho in plastic to stop kids taking a look at it because it had graphic sex scenes and descriptions of murder. We banned the Little Red Book because it told teens about same-sex attraction, contraception and oral sex in non-judgmental terms. For that matter, we one banned Lady Chatterley's Lover because it contained descriptions of consensual sex between adults.
And yet we put Twilight and its sequels on the 'young adult' shelves in bookshops. We rate the movies PG-13. There is literally nothing to stop kids as young as my daughters getting their hands on them.
There are some books that shouldn't get near children, or young women. (I'm sure there are young men out there who have read them, but for the most part they're aimed squarely at girls.) I wouldn't consider it appropriate for my daughters to read Stephen King's It or Charlaine Harris' 'Southern Vampire' novels - and there wouldn't be many who'd disagree with me, I'm willing to bet.
And yet I've had mothers of my kids' friends tell me they think it's 'cute' that their daughter has a 'Bella Barbie' or that they own copies of the Twilight DVD. Seriously - what the fuck??
My girls have seen the first two movies, more's the pity. If I find out they've had access to the final two books or movies through their friends, or through the school, I will raise hell about it.
My daughters will be taught that they are strong, independent human beings who cannot be owned. They will learn that sex is a wonderful thing, to be taken seriously but enjoyed as natural and beautiful. They will learn that it is never all right for an adult to exploit or abuse them. They will learn that love is somthing that happens between equals.
And I will do my damnedest to teach them that when these things do not happen, it is a sign that something is seriously wrong and that they should protect themselves from the people who act in such abusive ways.
That's something they could never learn from Stephenie Meyer.
Argh, enough, I'm disgusted. I'm going to force myself to read the final chapters of the last book for completeness' sake.
Then I'm going to delete them all from my hard drive, and go hug my kids.
And then it got weirder ... and more misogynistic and racist ... and more grossly sexually perverted ... and even with the extensive quotes provided by the blogger, I couldn't believe it was as bad as he was saying. So I thought I'd look for myself.
I want to talk about Chapters 17 and 18 of Breaking Dawn, the final book. To borrow a phrase from the blogger, Mark:
HOLY JESUS FUCK WHAT THE HELL IS THIS SHITTERY WHAT WHAT THIS CANNOT BE HAPPENING
In these two chapters, we learn:
* that a werewolf 'imprints' on a female, and that female instantly becomes his soulmate for life, and that she has no choice about this but to 'belong' to him (actually, we learned a bit about that earlier, but this is where it gets really ugly). The age of said female doesn't actually matter, either ...
* that if this werewolf starts loitering around malls and playgrounds to find a 'soulmate', and people think that's weird, it's because there's something wrong with them, not because an adult man is staring lustfully at little girls on the swings ...
* that if a male vampire and a human woman have sex, she can be impregnated with a vampire baby that will literally kick her half to death and cause her to spout 'fountains of blood' when she goes into labour ...
* that said vampire baby has to be delivered via emergency Caesarean - but because the woman's womb has changed to become like vampire-skin (yes, I know), the only way to do this is to have the vampire daddy bite open her womb and pull out the baby ...
* that when the aforementioned werewolf sees the vampire baby, complete with its shiny white teeth, he realises that he is looking at his soulmate, and will now raise her from birth to become his perfect partner ...
* that, for a woman who apparently finds R-rated movies too 'gross' to watch, Meyer appears to have no trouble describing some of the most horrendously graphic scenes of violence I have ever read outside a splatterpunk novel ...
* and as if all of that isn't bad enough, it's underpinned by anti-abortion rhetoric, incessant misogyny, emotional and physical abuse (from both the werewolf and the 'true love' vampire) and the exultation of self-hatred and being willingly complicit in the complete loss of one's own freedom and mental health. That's without going into the homophobia, gender judgment (you're not a woman if you can't/won't have babies) and transphobia in the whole series.
I wish I were making this up.
I've often wondered how Meyer's dreadful, dreadful prose and tendency to ramble about nothing for chapters on end somehow escaped an editor's notice.
But dear gods, how the hell did this stuff get published in a series aimed at young women aged between about 16 and 25?!
I'm a huge fan of horror - it's one of my favourite genres - and in my time, I've read some pretty graphic stuff. The difference is, none of those books ever pretended to be anything other than adult novels, and always mentioned in the blurb about the content. None of those books tried to pass off as 'romantic' the kind of abuse that takes place in Meyer's books. And none of them tried to suggest that characters who engaged in such behaviour were 'normal', or that there was something wrong with treating a woman like an independent human being.
A review in The Guardian described Meyer's books as 'like a virus'.
Well, this is one infection I will never let near my daughters.
I've been careful not to circumscribe my kids' choice of reading matter. Sure, I've suggested things for them, and tried to show them some of the wonderful literature that's out there. This isn't an easy task, particularly since both girls read well above their age; finding age-appropriate books often involves spending a lot of time researching what's out there. Censorship, though? That's never been something with which I am comfortable.
But their friends are reading Meyer's books. These children are ten to twelve year old girls. They are reading the kind of horrific stuff I mentioned above. They are learning that 'romance' and 'love' for a woman is about accepting that you no longer have any autonomy ... that you are worthless without a man ... that sex is something that will hurt you and cause you to be punished (oh, did I mention that when they finally have sex, Edward the romantic vampire nearly ruptures Bella's cervix, and she apologises?) ... that a baby that will kill you is more important than you, because you are only a woman ... and that it's okay for a man more than twice your age to 'select' you as a child, and groom you to be his sexual partner.
THESE BOOKS WILL NEVER GET NEAR MY CHILDREN IF I HAVE ANYTHING TO DO WITH IT.
These books should not be accessible to anyone under 18. Good grief, we packaged American Psycho in plastic to stop kids taking a look at it because it had graphic sex scenes and descriptions of murder. We banned the Little Red Book because it told teens about same-sex attraction, contraception and oral sex in non-judgmental terms. For that matter, we one banned Lady Chatterley's Lover because it contained descriptions of consensual sex between adults.
And yet we put Twilight and its sequels on the 'young adult' shelves in bookshops. We rate the movies PG-13. There is literally nothing to stop kids as young as my daughters getting their hands on them.
There are some books that shouldn't get near children, or young women. (I'm sure there are young men out there who have read them, but for the most part they're aimed squarely at girls.) I wouldn't consider it appropriate for my daughters to read Stephen King's It or Charlaine Harris' 'Southern Vampire' novels - and there wouldn't be many who'd disagree with me, I'm willing to bet.
And yet I've had mothers of my kids' friends tell me they think it's 'cute' that their daughter has a 'Bella Barbie' or that they own copies of the Twilight DVD. Seriously - what the fuck??
My girls have seen the first two movies, more's the pity. If I find out they've had access to the final two books or movies through their friends, or through the school, I will raise hell about it.
My daughters will be taught that they are strong, independent human beings who cannot be owned. They will learn that sex is a wonderful thing, to be taken seriously but enjoyed as natural and beautiful. They will learn that it is never all right for an adult to exploit or abuse them. They will learn that love is somthing that happens between equals.
And I will do my damnedest to teach them that when these things do not happen, it is a sign that something is seriously wrong and that they should protect themselves from the people who act in such abusive ways.
That's something they could never learn from Stephenie Meyer.
Argh, enough, I'm disgusted. I'm going to force myself to read the final chapters of the last book for completeness' sake.
Then I'm going to delete them all from my hard drive, and go hug my kids.
