Three thoughts after watching Twilight for the first time the other night.
1. Okay, I get that suspension of disbelief is important in a vampire movie, and that there’s a long tradition of pale-faced vampires, and that this does take place in the sun-deprived northwest, but for the love of God, will someone get these vampires some spray-on tanner? I mean, doesn’t anyone notice that the town’s head doctor looks like Bob Dylan in the Rolling Thunder Review? Or that the “dreamy” mysterious high school boy everyone wishes they could talk to just stepped off stage at a Cure concert, 1985? I guess if you aren’t suspicious about a family that moves into town, lives in a weird house off on their own where the like-aged kids date each other, and misses every single sunny day at school, you aren’t going to be thrown off by the fact that they look like fu@king mimes too.
2. The level of exasperation in the dialog is just, uh, jeez–exasperating. How angsty are these teenagers? Even the most simple conversations are peppered with exasperated exhales, sighs, stutters, and perplexed intonation. A conversation about the weather takes on the anxiety levels of a conversation about wanting to borrow someone’s kidney. A typical scene goes something like this:
Dreamy Kid who Looks Like a Mime (DKLLM): So, uh, what do you think about the, uh, weather here?
Angsty Teenage Girl (ATA): You (exasperated exhale) are asking me (perplexed accent on me), about the, uh, (perplexed stutter), weather? (exasperated facial contortion).
DKLLM: I (nervous laugh), uh, guess I (nervous exhale), am (sulky moody stare off into space).
ATA: (exasperated exhale) So, like, uh (more perplexed facial tics), you missed class yesterday? (strangely inflected as if this were a question).
DKLLM: Yeah (angst filled fist clench, matched by ATA exasperated exhale and then a disgusted snort).
The above exchange takes 45 minutes to complete.
3. On a personal note, teaching a college freshman composition class, I had a student write about this movie. The student’s thesis was something like: This is a super awesome movie about true love. Trying to get some more depth out of the analysis, I asked this student, who had written in their paper that the main character must abstain from his lust for his girlfriend’s blood which he craves like a drug, if there wasn’t perhaps a secondary moral message here. After all, two hot-blooded teenage lovers, one with an insatiable craving for the others blood, but he must abstain from this unbearable temptation and continue with their almost completely non-physical relationship. The student looked at me as if I had just suggested Santa Clause was a child molester, insisting that the most critical analysis one could make is that Twilight is a really awesome movie about true love and also vampires and oh man is it so awesome. But having seen the movie now, it couldn’t be more about teenage abstinence if the Jonas Brothers came out at the end and said, “And the best part about it was, they waited.” I mean, the ATG is on the verge of letting the DKLLM take her blood on PROM NIGHT, of all things, when at the last minute they agree to wait. Come-on! It’s not like I’m the only one who sees this connection either. If only there was such thing as a retroactive C-.
ADDED SIDE NOTE: This also reminds me, for no particular reason, that in the midst of so many abstinence/give your baby up for adoption teenage stories, we are still waiting for the definitive coming-of-age, romantic teenage comedy about abortion.
Tags: review