I came across a meme recently that shows just how pathetic Bella (the female protagonist of the Twilight series) is when compared to other contemporary heroines:
(click to enlarge) Clearly, the meme shares the rather widely accepted view: 'there's not much to be learned from Twilight.' This sentiment can be seen all across the internet, with memes like the "Still a better love story than Twilight" being made as jokes all the time. But, while there is plenty of humorous disapproval for the series online, there are millions of young people in the real world who are actual passionate fans -- for one, I worry about those young girls who have idolized Bella and now think it is justifiable to function in society as over-emotional, depressed messes.
All this got me thinking about the influence that a series like Twilight can have on our society -- especially when its target audience is made up of the easily-influenced -- and I was reminded of Samuel Johnson's ideas of the responsibilities of literature.
During the time of the Neo-classical period, it was Samuel Johnson’s opinion that literature should be crafted with the intent of guiding the impressionable youth. According to Johnson, literature’s shift towards a more realistic depiction of the human interactions of the world made it the responsibility of the writer to be not only well-taught in “that learning which is to be gained in books,” but also in “that experience which can never be attained by solitary diligence,” an accurate understanding of the living, interacting world. An author – especially a novelist – was expected to know how relationships and emotions functioned, to understand how society operated, and to put in writing, almost as a guide, the unwritten rules of the world so that an audience of mostly teens and preteens might be able to grasp at reality and be more prepared for life. Surely, the Twilight series is no guide to real life in this sense.
So then how might Johnson see a novel like Twilight, where the main character, Bella, a character who a young female reader is almost certainly set up to identify with, acts recklessly in order to gain the attention of a boy she likes, even becoming suicidal because of her loss of her romantic lover? Certainly, he'd be on the side of the meme-makers, but I think Johnson would take things a bit more seriously, perhaps labeling the series as dangerous to young girls rather than just poking fun at its pathetic lack of heroism.
What do you think? Would you consider Twilight dangerous literature?
I would like to say that it's too shitty to be harmful, but clearly that is not the case considering the popularity of the books and the movies. As someone who has read the books, I must confirm that many readers and viewers reactions to these stories are pretty disturbing. I've heard many girls (and grown women) gush about the elements of the stories they find to be romantic.
ReplyDeleteI think it's good that the stories, and the character of Bella in particular, are chastised so much in popular culture because that backlash is the only counter to the people who hold up these stories as "romantic."
And I think you are absolutely right to say that Bella is meant to be someone with whom young girls can identify; Stephenie Meyer has so much as said so. But if young girls really are identifying with (and they seem to be) this pathetic girl (who by the way is in many ways even more pathetic in the books than the movies), I wouldn't necessarily say that's harmful, just a little sad and perhaps revealing of all of our sometimes-pathetic tendencies.
I'm inclined to believe that most people, even if they (for god knows what reason) find the series to be romantic, will not go out and do anything drastic as a result. I don't think Twilight is going to lead to Bella-emulating suicides or adolescent marriages.
I do, however, see how being led to believe that Bella is someone to admire could be quite harmful for a young girl, which is, again, why I think Twilight has lost much of its potential bite as a result of all the chastising.
But to really answer this question, we'd have to look further back at "heroines" like Shakespeare's Juliet and how being presented overly-romantic characters as these can affect a young girl's conception of her place in the world. (But at least in Romeo and Juliet both the male and female character are stupid). And that would take a lot more space than we have. So let me end now with saying, thanks for this post.
(I may have contradicted myself and rambled in this response, which can be blamed on it being 2:30 in the morning.)