I don't think I'm inside my own mind today... There's a storm brewing that's causing a rift in the ocean so powerful it could almost push the earth off of its electromagnetic balance. There are power players on both sides of the war with all kinds of influence. Adults, teenagers, maybe even children. There's a rejuvenation in it, it's re-launched what was once a niche fiction genre into a zone of popularity that it possibly never enjoyed. What I'm referring to is Twilight, and Vampires. And as far as I'm concerned, you love it, or you're dead to me. (kidding of course, but really, love it or hate it)
I've made my views of Twilight impossibly clear. That book series bastardized vampires, yet they're as popular as they've ever been. Before Twilight, the most popular thing to be associated with vampires was arguably "Buffy: The Vampire Slayer" and really, that was only because we felt like getting cock blocked by Sarah Michelle Gellar week after week. So where did it all of a sudden come from? You've got the shows Vampire Diaries and True Blood Vampires are on the forefront of popular culture, in the face of everyone in a way they've never been.
What was once a mockingly meek fictional foray is now a legitimate force of imagination. Even though the formula has always been dreadfully linear. You've got a girl, you've got a vampire, for one reason or another, they can't get together no matter how much they may want to (In the case of true blood, sure, they fuck, but there's still all this drama...) People are intrigued by romance, even if its in the case of a lovestruck girl, and a beast of the night experiencing feelings he has not felt for hundreds of years.
I love True Blood. There's something about it, maybe it's the fact that it reminds me so much of Buffy: The Vampire Slayer. Sure, she's not a slayer in that sense but its the relationship of the bubbly blond in love with the tall dark and handsome vampire. The mysterious stranger that she doesn't understand yet she feels as if she has the ability to shatter whatever barrier he's using to hide himself from her. I don't give a shit about Sookie, or Bill. I like the characters that surround the main characters. Its the side-plots of that show that make it interesting, so much so to the point that I'm interested in reading Charlane Harris' series of Sookie Stackhouse novels.
I'm confident those novels would be a lot more interesting and entertaining than Stephanie Meyer's drivel, which has somehow managed to captivate the imaginations of millions of teenaged girls, girls who's opinions I would not be likely to value one way or the other to begin with. I've read about the novels and I've researched Twilight enough to know its nothing that I want anything to do with. Its engrossed our popular culture to the point that even though I want to avoid it, I can't.
I can't go to work without hearing about Twilight, or seeing a Magazine about Twilight, or reading a issue of Time magazine without encountering an article about the magesty of Twilight and the story of its oh so humble upbringings. Without hearing about how my co-worker's going to go see New Moon again, even though she's slightly embarrassed to be such a fan of Twilight to begin with. I've started referring to these people as "Twilighters" because, clearly, if you're one of them you're not one of us. (Somebody who doesn't want anything to do with the bullshit.)
Stephen King equated reading Twilight to reading about Stephanie Meyers sexual fantasies put on paper. That is something that's kind of disturbing to me. I don't think that teenagers should be exempt from sexuality because they're thinking about it more than we are, and if they want to be exposed to it, they will be. While christian groups ignorantly parade around Twilight as a book that's a 'great example for girls' because of how the main characters will not just dive into... whatever it is that they share or want to share. They, as they so often chose to do, ignore the finer details of what the book is about while applauding one solitary (and from what I've gathered, minute) aspect of the novel.
Whatever drives Twilight Fans, that same force repels me. I don't care to know whatever it may be that makes Twilight accessible, not only because I find Twilight disgustingly stupid, but because I know there's BETTER Vampire fiction out there. Vampires have been and still are one of the things that I've been on the fence of. Growing up with Anne Rice's Interview with the Vampire bullshit really waned me off of Vampires from an early age.
It wasn't until I (embarrassingly enough) got into LARP and White Wolf's World of Darkness role playing game that I learned of a world of Vampires that could actually be cool. A world where Vampires didn't just live in society, secretly, among humans (and other elements of the supernatural) but they might just well run the society that we took for granted. The influence of Vampires was everywhere. That's why I like True Blood, it takes the sensibilities of Vampire society that I found so intriguing about that world of darkness. That Vampires aren't agents of love, they see people as fodder, much like people see cats or dogs. Except without that aspect of domestication. Maybe more pointedly, how people see beef or chicken, its just another notch on the food chain. Vampires look at humans disgustingly as a source of food. They're pathetic and utterly replaceable. To hold feelings for a human isn't just embarrassing, it's borderline shameful.
True Blood presents a type of Vampire that I can find realistic, and enjoyable. They're dark, they're evil, they're greedy, they are everything I've ever enjoyed about vampires. Sure they can have feelings but they really don't want to even admit it. To be a 'mainstreamer' as they're called in True Blood, is a downright disgrace. Enough to alienate you from your entire vampire brethren. Vampires are public knowledge (which is a twist that I'm welcome to see) and trying to become accepted by humanity. Maybe it's a power play, maybe it's something more. Something deeper. The main vampire, Bill, is an enigmatic, thousands year old civil war veteran who has lost everything, and yet is intrigued enough by Sookie to turn his back on the Vampiric traditions he's been accustomed to for so long. Their bastardized romance is so ridiculous, yet believable. I can believe this Vampire would be capable of feeling something other than pure evil. (which, I've admitted in the past as bullshit and I still think its a bit hokey)
So, you Twilighters, you can keep your sparkly, bastardized, pathetic "vampires" and you can be happy about it. I'm happy for you. I hope you and twilight are really happy together and much like christians and their religion, KEEP IT TO YOURSELF. I don't give a fuck. I'm happy for you, just don't spew your pathetic venom onto me. I'll keep with my True Blood, my Buffy: The Vampire Slayer, my Blade. Vampires will continue to be in the "meh" category, for me if they aren't super-powered heroes in oddly coloured costumes it won't really do anything for me. Batman could kick the shit out of Robert Pattinson any day of the week.
- PEACE
3 comments:
I'm not hating Twilight per-se sure the plot is so threadbare that to bring the movie up to feature length, so many pregnant pauses are injected that it's no wonder the movie will have 4 sequels, and the social message basically shits on a century of feminism... but that's not the point.
Overall it's just princess fantasy. The ordinary girl made to feel extraordinary by being validated by a man. To hate that is to hate the reality of the world I live in, and to do that is to become as emo and hopeless as every other antisocial elitist geek who would rather stand by his principles than get layed.
So I don't blame you for your opinion, it's certainly valid, but ultimately it's what women like. To realize this is to understand that women are not these enigmatic creatures of mystery, just humans with boobs and emotions and a life-threatening amount of estrogen coursing through their veins. This understanding is to the benefit of the penis and the propagation of the species.
So don't look at twilight as a story, look at it as a tool. A tool to get into women's pants - no, not the 13 year-old teenagers, that's sick. Let the 13 year old boys go after them - but your girlfriends, your wives, your hot coworkers, and your sexy barristas, ALL OF THEM adore Twilight just like they crave dark chocolate, and acting around them like it's a little guilty pleasure of your own is a pathway to their heart (among other things).
So don't bother critiquing it like a movie. Critique it as a sex-tool, like cosmos, jello shots, dark chocolate, and caveman grunting.
As for True Blood... I'm right there with you.
Holy hell, where on earth did you pick up the idea that all women adore Twilight?
First of all, I have to agree with the above comment, not all women like twilight. My fiancee has never forgiven me for taking her to see the first film (which I needed to see for English 480, urban fantasy). I wrote a presentation about how Bella was an anti-feminist character, and about half the female population of the class instantly supported me. The other half wanted to burn me in effigy. So if you think acting like Twilight is the shit will instantly get you laid, it won't. Maybe 50-50 in older women.
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