subscribeThe argument: Bella is no Buffy, to her detriment.
Friday December 5, 2008
I found this article yesterday on an author’s blog and I absolutely agree with the article (and the author’s sentiment, though I won’t link back out of courtesy to the author’s post’s request). The article’s author makes a terrific, and alarming, point about the potentially dangerous and potent message of the Twilight books by Stephenie Meyer. (I emphasize potentially. Not every reader will read them this way, nor should they, but the message is there, to be seen.) [A warning, dear readers: spoilers for the Twilight series will abound.]
As the article states:
If only Meyer had taken Buffy as her template. If only she had used that groundbreaking series as her foundation and built on it. If only there was a Whedonesque intelligence and modern, feminist sensibility informing Twilight and its successors. If only.
What you have instead in Meyer’s work is a depressingly retrograde, deeply anti-feminist, borderline misogynistic novel that drains its heroine of life and vitality as surely as if a vampire had sunk his teeth into her and leaves her a bloodless cipher while the story happens around her. Edward tells her she is “so interesting … fascinating”, but the reader looks in vain for his evidence.
(A disclaimer: I absolutely love Buffy and Joss Whedon; go rent Season 1 of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Go. Now.)
After reading that, my first thought was, Oh, thank God someone just came out and said it in a respectable newspaper. We passionate, obscure bloggers can only do so much.
To stumble-upon-ers: I am a writer and lover of books about kick-ass girls who do things, who save their worlds, who break stereotypes and shatter tradition. I wrote a whole thesis on this. I am fervently critical and passionate about this. When I read a book in the genre I love that praises the passive female protagonist — or rather, praises her for being special when she is not — I get mad. Had the books been written from Edward’s perspective, or in third person, one could probably argue that poor Bella is not so much the protagonist — the one who makes the action happen… because she’s not — but rather the Female Love Interest, or Designated Love Interest to the more vibrant Edward. It’s so much his story. She reacts to him. In New Moon, when Bella is mostly on her own for the book with Edward’s decision to take a break, she isn’t alone. No. She finds a new male on to whom she can latch — Jacob. It’s not so much her story as the story of the dependent relationships she forms.
It’s Bella who is our narrator, Bella who is our guide into this fantasy world. But rather than guide is in and stake out her own space within it, she gets subsumed within it and dissolved by it, replaced with a character who is only a shadow of a strong, independent female; a shadow of the woman Edward keeps insisting she is. Meyer tells us how wonderful Bella is. She never shows us. Poor Bella loses herself in her relationship with Edward.
Granted, Bella has moments. Those moments are what kept me clawingly optimistic throughout my reading of the series. Whenever the plot pulled my hopes down, I clawed out of that hollow of despair and said, “No. Bella will eventually Kick Ass. She has to prove she’s Awesome. After all, why else would both Jacob and Edward love her so much? She has to be Awesome.” But that moment never came — not really. When it kind of did — in a subversive, (passive) way in Breaking Dawn (Bella’s shield) — I was disappointed. Bella doesn’t determine her own destiny, like some fantasy protagonists. She isn’t faced with a destiny she didn’t chose and proves she can brave it and make the best of it, like others. She’s not a fantasy hero or even a heroine. She’s a tragic gothic stereotype of a heroine who, rather than dying spectacularly, just keeps on living.
Here’s another disclaimer: I am engaged to be married. I will be married in March to my soulmate, a man for whom I would do anything and who would do anything for me. I am not some crazy feminist writer/blogger who loves Women Who Do Things and say that women can’t do things with men hanging attached to them. Of course women can do things while in love, while in relationships — any kind of relationship with any one, for that matter. Women can be independent and be committed at the same time. Isn’t that the trait the media most praises in a successful career mother? The woman who is able to balance kids, husband, job, personal life? She is the ideal to which we women in western society are supposed to ascribe, to shoot for. (Which, in itself, is still sad; that women are still seen to have “complete” lives only when surrounded by that nuclear stereotype, regardless of her personal sense of completeness or fulfillment with her own life, whatever or whomever it may entail.)
And then there’s Bella. When she finally finds the balance, she’s not Bella at all, she’s some thirtysomething analogue whom we don’t recognize from the “normal” teenage girl she once was. One could argue Bella changes and grows throughout the series. I argue, rather, that she inconsistently fluxes between melodramatic anxiety and passivity until she transforms into someone who is most certainly not an organic incarnation of a grown-up Bella but rather a forced shell of who we’re told she is based on roles she is given — wife, mother, vampire… non-human being.
What’s interesting, in the context of me speaking about this on this blog, is the thought that’s occurred to me that criticizing books on this blog while being an author myself is a little… well, iffy? But I suppose the other way to look at it is this: If I met Stephenie Meyer in real life, and she asked me, “What is your honest opinion of my books?” I would, frankly, be honest. I immediately and superficially enjoyed her books — I did — but they left me unsettled. The more reflecting and discussing I’ve done, the more unsettled I’ve become. I am still unsettled, even more so after letting Breaking Dawn sink in. (My enthusiasm was so short-lived.) I won’t be able to re-read them. I know that. Having read them as a happily-in-a-relationship twentysomething, not a depressed 17-year-old bemoaning her lack of love life — oh, how those years changed me — I have a completely different view. Reading those books as a mother, I’d feel different yet again. I suppose the ultimate beauty of a blog is that you don’t have to read it or agree with what I say, but hopefully my point of view might have given you a new view from which to consider while forming your own.
But, strangely enough, I am glad these books exist. I am glad I read them.
I am sad about their ridiculous popularity, but I am a firm believer in the idea that dialogue is that which expands our minds and enables us to grow as human beings. Without two (or more) sides to any view or argument, where would the growth be? Without different opinions, what kind of people would we be?
I suppose, ultimately, what I’m hoping for is for more novels and stories (for children and young adults, especially) from the Kick Ass Woman (or strong, assertive young woman or girl) point of view. I want more books that show women doing anything and everything men can do — and have done — in both real life and in existing literature of every genre. I want female characters in fantasy that display the same depth, complexity, assertiveness, and power of many male protagonists in fantasy.
Some authors have and are succeeding at this in certain subgenres of fantasy (Robin McKinley, Tamora Pierce, Garth Nix, Shannon Hale, Patricia Briggs, Jeaniene Frost); some have partial yet luadable success (Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials). Some books featuring male protagonists have casts of female characters with terrific complexity and depth (Jim Butcher, Sherwood Smith, Robin Hobb, George R. R. Martin) and some with female protagonists have surprised and pleased me with the journeys of those protagonists (Trudi Canavan). We have to keep going, though. That’s why I write, that’s why I’ve always wanted to write.
As I’ve said, this also means novels featuring male main characters/ protagonists/ heroes with co- and supporting female characters who are equal to their male counterparts in complexity, emotion, and range of possibility. This is starting to happen more and more frequently; however the waif/weak/incompetent female love interest still exists, though, as supposed counterpart to her brave, heroic, and intelligent male protagonist. Why does this happen in fantasy? Think of the successful marriages you know: those couples are not fractionally as imbalanced and mis-matched as quite a few fantasy couples tend to be. Fantasy characters deserve to be as real as any real person, as any good, realistic character in any other genre.
Parents should get involved and responsible in this discussion, as well, for the sake of their young readers (in terms of children’s and YA literature). They should recognize which books contain which messages and be able to respond intelligently and with good information to the questions curious kids and teens will inevitably ask in response to books that provoke such thought. Regardless of the book, its characters, or its message, if it provokes serious intellectual conversation, I think that’s a terrific and laudable thing.
Breaking Dawn by Stephenie Meyer
Tuesday September 16, 2008
Reading the day away hurts the brain.
I just finished Breaking Dawn. Gasp. I’m still on hold for it from the library… which I should go cancel. My friend lent me her friend’s copy — haha — and so I devoured that between last night and this morning (while managing, might I add, to get a full night’s sleep). I’ve got an awful lot to say on it but in the interests of spoilers, I won’t say it all here.
I suppose I liked it. Some parts of it I somewhat hated. Some I said “Finally!” about. Overall, I think I am “bleh” about it.
Actually I think I would have preferred Books 2 and 3 to be a heck of a lot shorter and sweeter and this book to be tidier, and then just, you know, have that. Or, well, maybe Book 1 shorter, too. I think they’re just awfully long and filled with lots of stuff that doesn’t need to be there. Efficiency of language and all of that. It would have been an excellent trilogy. If the POV had been different I would have liked it more, too. I grew to dislike the first person the longer the series went on as Meyer seemed to have more and more trouble keeping a rein on her writing style to keep it within the bounds of the perspective she chose… I mean, she even switches perspectives (at the end of 3 and a part of 4) and that’s just… not… well, I just didn’t like it. Write it in third person if you can’t contain it in one, I think. I’ve read some really, really successful first persons that play up on the inherent tunnel-vision-ness of the first person POV by which Meyer kept seeming stifled. Or be more consistent in the POV switches. I’ve read successful chapter-switching first person POV novels, and those are great if a bit complicated when done well. Oh, well.
I’m going to go spoiler lite and speak in (annoying) generalities for the rest of this, but as a general warning, stop reading if you don’t want any surprises spoiled.
I liked Bella’s character a heck of a lot more in Book 4. But that’s also because she changed significantly (which I incidentally didn’t like; if Bella in Book 4 was the only Bella, it would have been great. But I’ll get into that later.) The change wasn’t a gradual thing, like it should have been. I didn’t like the sudden, sharp shift in personality. It made sense given what happened — I doubt Meyer could have done it differently and had it still be convincing without reworking some of the plot or timeline, at least — but I didn’t like how weak Bella’s personality was all along, leading to this. Book 2 Bella is a miserable nuisance. Book 3 is all… oy. Better but still not ideal. She’s more authentically teenagerish in Book 3, though. I get that she’s not a modern heroine, she’s a throwback to the nineteenth century’s gothic heroine period (has Meyer read any of those early nineteenth century gothic novels? Did she expect any of her teenaged readers to have read them?) and maybe a bit of Austen. (The man-must-save-me-from-my-circumstances Austen, not the strong-willed, self-determined woman Austen; I don’t believe Bella had Elizabeth’s Bennett’s fire. Maybe something of Anne Elliot’s moping. Actually, some of that, yes, I see that. But probably only because I’m throwing Anne onto a Book 2/3 Bella and seeing if it might stick. It might.) Anyway.
The whole plot of Book 4 was sort of, well, unsurprising. I guessed every leg of it a few hundred pages before it occurred, and when it did, I was still shocked that I was right, because when I’d made those predictions to myself, I said, “Wouldn’t that be hilariously ironic? Because that would make this book long! And look how long it is!” And it happened. And I was… bitter? Annoyed that I figured it all out? For one of the predictions I actually thought to myself, “Too bad it’s going to turn out in Way A, because Way B would totally make things crazy! If that were to happen, then this and this and this could happen… But Way A is totally going to happen so there’s no use in further speculation.” And guess what. Way B happened. My speculation was correct. I was shocked because I had never thought Meyer would… do that. I do personally love figuring out the plot of books but… but… there were no surprises. None. Even the swooping-in-at-the-last-minute moment at the end was unsurprising. I was sort of “Sigh.” I suppose not every author can pull a fast one on me. I love it when they do, though.
But really, was I expecting this book to be amazing? No. I was expecting it to be just on the wrong side of tolerable. I am surprised that it was better than tolerable. Enjoyable, diverting. Fun. Was it because Meyer finally embraced more fantasy than she had ever used? Probably. She took risks and ran with them, trusting we’d follow. I think in doing so she lost some readers, those who followed her books for the love story and not the fantasy. (Though if they survived the werewolf revelation, I am surprised to think that they wouldn’t be able to survive anything. Vampires are one thing; shape-shifting can be something else entirely, but what came in Book 4 is no more shocking, really, than anything else — fantasy-wise. It was shocking for other reasons, which I can get into at another time.) And I was surprised too that I was in the vampire camp so firmly from Book 1. I am so often in the werewolf/shifter camp that I was surprised when Book 3 came down to it, forcing me to ally with Edward or Jacob, that I was unhesitatingly Edward.
And so anti-Bella. Really, I was fed up with her by the end of Book 3. The choice, ugh. Maybe I was more irritated with the marketing? Maybe. I am glad she was redeemed in part in Book 4 but in doing so she really wasn’t Bella. I mean, I can’t name it precisely. I think I felt condescension toward Bella in Books 2 and 3. The vast majority of my female friends and acquaintances are stronger women, plain and simple, than Bella was. I’m talking strength of character, of purpose, of will. You can’t feel so “meh” about a character for so long and then immediately cheer with her and enjoy her without stopping and thinking, “Wait. This is not the same character.” The changes she went through were abrupt and rough and told to me (ugh, telling versus showing) and I don’t think Meyer convinced me of why Bella changed except for the excuse of the new balances of power. She spends so much time on really strange moments and details but not enough time, space on the page, on this change of Bella’s that is so unbelievably crucial to the plot. I mean, if my life with the man of my dreams shifted that abruptly for the same reason tomorrow, my personality would not change that much in a few days and I can say that with absolute certainty. I know my loyalties and heart would change and grow appropriately, but I would not suddenly become a different person. Change takes time that Meyers did not make me feel I was living through with Bella emotionally. Additionally Meyer made it seem like Bella’s character jumped from 18 to 35, from self-conscious to ferociously self-assured, and I’m supposed to believe that easily, just like that. I don’t think so. She changed Bella too falsely, too rapidly, given what had transpired so recently in book time, in Books 2 and 3. If the change had been gradual, from the start of the series to the end of it, I would have bought it. But Bella was so eighteen years old in Book 3. Devil’s Advocate: I realize the events of the first half of Breaking Dawn were so earth-shattering, so life-altering that Bella really does have to change. But Meyer failed to convince me of the emotion, of the grounded-in-reality-truth of that change from Character A to Character B.
Other writers have done it and blown me away. To use a few fantasy examples from other authors whose books could be classified as “coming of age” or “young adult”: Robin McKinley’s Deerskin does it shockingly well. Heart-breakingly well. Lissar changes completely while retaining her sense of self and I believe every moment of it because of how grounded in raw emotion and power her experiences are. McKinley’s Aerin in The Hero and the Crown has a similar forged-in-the-fires-of-hell life-changing experience, and she changes because of it, too. I mean, hell, one of the best character changes ever has to be Frodo’s in The Lord of the Rings. Harrowing experiences over approximately the same time frame as Bella’s (actually Bella’s is more, I believe) and he is irrevocably altered in a gut-wrenching, proud, and really profound way. (Robin Hobb’s Malta in her Liveship Traders Trilogy is another character who changes sharply and realistically, as is Fitz in the Farseer and Tawny Man trilogies, though his change is over the course of years.) Bella’s change didn’t hit me like that at all. It didn’t feel real.
Getting more and more spoiler-ific here, I thought the events and moments in the series were certainly enough to have moved Bella to discover that sort of power of character on her own but Meyer made Bella’s humanity such a handicap, made being a vampire so perfect and desirable, it’s so hard to compare it. I don’t know how I feel about humanity being a handicap. How being painted as utterly frail and breakable and not… well, in any other way, is any way… relatable? I mean, we are breakable, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen humans painted that way in a fantasy series with supernatural characters. Humans are so much more than that. But then again, her vampires are so human — she doesn’t make them very different — I suppose I can see why she would malign humanity so much when her vampires are that unrealistically cool. In a way, that’s one thing I profoundly do not enjoy about the series. Bella cannot embrace herself as who she is, she has to become someone else — something not entirely human — to finally love herself. I don’t know how that settles with me. The analogy is imperfect, of course, to real life — as all fantasy should be imperfect, not one for one, analogies to real life — but even so. It’s discomfiting.
I sit uneasy with a message that in order to be able to love and be proud of yourself have to both find someone else to complete you and to fundamentally change (in essence, your genetics) in the process.
But of course, cynics will say that about any kind of all-consuming love, or that lots of life-changing events seriously alter the people they happen to. I’ve been asked to my face why I need Bryan to love, cherish, and marry me, when I have to sacrifice my single, individual self to become the us that comprises us? And it is a sacrifice to become an us. You are no longer your own entity in a couple. You are who you become together. You can change and grow and become wiser together. But… I’m also still irrevocably myself. Bumbling faults and all. Gah. It’s such a web of tangled thoughts, that. I could discuss that for a long time.
There are a lot of aspects of the book I’d want to discuss more but in the interests of remaining vague, I won’t. You can talk to me about it, if you like.
I suppose that’s how I think of the Twilight Saga. It’s good, it’s fun; it has its moments of utterly asinine melodrama that make me want to cry with frustration, and it has its moments of beautiful, really adorable romance. It also is pretty good with action and politics; its characters are varied, intriguing, and engrossing. I was without a doubt constantly engaged with the book. Will I buy the series and read it again and again like I do many others? No. It just wasn’t worth it. But I am glad I have read it.
Romance novels & Twilight ranting
Tuesday July 22, 2008
I’ve read three books lately: Walk on the Wild Side by Christine Warren, and A Hunger Like No Other and No Rest For the Wicked by Kresley Cole. (The titles. I KNOW. Oy.) They’re all three legitimate romance novels and I’m a bit embarrassed to say I really enjoyed them. You get past the gratuitous “generous curves” and “intense arousal” descriptions and, well, the plots are good and the characters fun and well-drawn. I probably liked Cole’s better, but only because it’s a new world with new supernatural rules and I really liked them. (I was a little bit like, “Valkyrie?! Awesome!!”) They actually reminded me a lot of Sherrilyn Kenyon’s Dark-Hunter books, but in a way that Kenyon’s books can be a bit kitschy and a little, well, full of themselves, Cole’s were sort of pure adrenaline. The Dark-Hunter plots are not as thick as Cole’s plots were (though the thinner plots probably help keep the series moving forward at its ridiculous rate of perpetuation) and Kenyon’s are a lot more predictable. Lots of stuff goes on in Cole’s books apart from the romance. (Yay for actual, really awesome world building and creative fantasy! Kenyon only gets bonus points for every fourth or so book; a few are re-reads for me, the others, um, not so much. And that’s what I judge a book by — it’s re-read-able-ness.) And the romance aspect is a lot more complicated than in Kenyon’s. (The girls don’t give it up right away. Yay!) The men all being 6′5″ and well-muscled, though? If that’s how it is across the genre… I suppose I will have to deal with their lack of handsome male protagonists who stand at a normal height. Sigh. (Then again, I suppose most women don’t read romance novels to see normal men described in vigorous detail, eh?)
Whoa, parenthetical commentary much? Sorry. Eh. Um.
(Tangent: Acheron comes out next month. So. Frickin’. Excited. I never said I wasn’t a Sherrilyn Kenyon fan…)
It’s funny. I know I’ll never write romance but I do enjoy reading it (so long as it’s paranormal romance; even in the romance genre I need genre to keep me interested). Sometimes when I’m reading regular fantasy, though — for an adult audience — I do wish there was a bit more than, like, a chaste kiss going on. Or, like, “and then they had sex, and it was amazing.” I mean, movies tend to have more than chaste kisses going on, for Pete’s sake, when it matters. (Granted I’m only all for any romantic stuff if it fits in the plot. Gratuitious sex scenes need not be added for me, thanks.) Bitten by Kelley Armstrong is a good example, actually: more than chaste kisses but it’s not the plot’s focus, though those scenes are integral to the plot’s development in terms of the characters’ developments and emotion. In Bitten, Armstrong just basically makes the intimate scenes as descriptive as any other scene — it’s just another scene. But every scene in that book matters. Strolling through downtown Toronto on a business lunch break, running through a thick forest as a wolf, discovering a dead body half-buried under a bridge… And I appreciate the novel because of that. Her scenes also have really good pithy descriptions and are full of action, and none of the wonky romance language. (Sometimes the vocabulary in a romance novel has me rolling my eyes or laughing — like, really? Really? You used that adjective and adverb combination? Really? Whenever things fit stereotypes, I laugh.)
It’s a fine line for me, I suppose, the “sex scene” business in a book. And in YA Fiction, it’s an even finer line. Yes, some teenagers have sex, yes some abstain until college or marriage or what have you — but you see a very interesting sort of reflection of that reality in YA fantasy that makes it seem as polarized as I’ve made it sound. For the most part, I’ve seen, it’s sex or no sex. Kiss or all-the-way “and they had sex.” Fantasy is a reflection of our reality placed within a fantastic background. It stands to reason that all aspects of a teen’s reality should sort of make their way into a well-written novel, if there is a legitimate place for it. For teens, it’s not just sex or no sex. There’s a hell of a lot of confusing, angsty middle ground. And there’s so much drama associated with it, ripe for the novelizing. Rarely do I see teen novels — in the fantasy category, mind you — that actually make use of that middle ground when the need arises. It’s sort of an all-or-nothing thing, and that confuses me. (i.e. Right before the climax, or at the very end of the denouement, the characters either kiss or they do it.) For example, you have Tamora Pierce’s Trickster’s Choice/Trickster’s Queen with Aliane actually, well, having sex, and then Shannon Hale’s The Goose Girl’s Princess Isi being all, well, chaste in an utterly Princess-like fashion. Both characters are approximately the same age — seventeen to eighteen, ish — but that sort of polarity (and you’ll see more of what I mean if you’ve read those particular novels) is what I’m talking about. Admittedly, for Isi it fits her culture and character, but I was a little put out by Aliane’s sort of, well, what happened there. (Those aren’t my favorite Pierce books, and that’s one of the big reasons why.) It seemed sort of added.
For my books, my characters’ sexual activities (or complete lack thereof) are based on a wide combination of factors, just as any person’s sexual activities are. In what I write, as in reality, there are situations and characters who will and do experience the plenty, the lack, the good, the painful, the awkward, the embarrassing, the misunderstood. Et cetera. I’m not planning on purposefully including or not including anything unless it fits. And I both like/hate the pre-climax/end-of-denouement kiss/sex thing. I mean, you either need the bolstering before you go to battle or you get the reward once you’ve survived — it’s an overarching fantasy thing, not just YA. But in real life you have bumbling flirtation, awkward kissing, betrayed lovers, stuff that’s a heck of a lot more complex than just the pre-battle bolstering or post-battle reward.
This whole discussion brings me around in some ways to Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight Saga and its beating-around-the-bush with teens, sex, love, commitment, and marriage. (I won’t actually reveal the plots here but I do plan to get into it, so watch out.) Oy. I have and can go on and on and on about this. Bella is presented as a stereotypical (and in a lot, a lot of ways uninterestingly stereotypical) teenager. But she and Edward have nothing short of a ridiculously, unusually atypical relationship with its attenuating circumstances involving physical, well, involvement. Edward and Bella, for lack of a better way to say it, can’t get jiggy (cough, 1997, cough) — or, for that matter, even a little carried away — without consequences. Jacob throws a wrench into the chaste machine in his own way in book two (and by wrench I mean some repressed-hormone-tongue-action) and by the third book, it’s all a bunch of non-real confusing relationship-y stuff. How’s a normal girl supposed to look at that fantasy plot (admittedly involving werewolves and vampires but ultimately still about teenagers) and apply it as a mirror to her reality? (Believe me, if you’ve read these books, you’ll see what I mean; you’re probably hopelessly confused otherwise.)
So my biggest criticism with these books is mostly the fact that I have trouble reconciling Bella’s predicament with anything any normal teenager would face in her own reality. The choice between two different guys’ loves is one thing — unusual in and of itself outside of a Hollywood script; and Bella is still, by the third book, relatively unremarkable, mind you, despite Meyer’s failed attempts to prove otherwise — which makes the whole Bella / Edward / Jacob quandary even more complex. If Bella were a hero/heroine worthy of their adoration I would put this whole argument aside. Entirely. But she’s not. She’s just… well. As far as I can tell she is The Right Girl at the Right Time, and barring any Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix-like bombs (after-the-fact prophecies), I am not convinced she’s very special. Plus, the issues that arise when discussing anything involving teens and sex arise in an even more mature format here between Bella, Edward, and Jacob — sex, marriage, children, immortality versus mortality, even potential suicide! (Romeo and Juliet, gag a little) — and make Bella’s choice a bit, well, unreal.
Or, well, EMO. EMO EMO EMO EMO. All she’s missing is the black eyeliner and My Chemical Romance on repeat on iTunes.
Cough. Um. Yes. Moving on and circling back.
Fantasy is not unreal fiction. Fantasy holds a warped mirror to reality to better highlight issues, ideas, and characters through a fantastic lens, enabling an author certain storytelling freedoms. But ultimately fantasy, like any genre, is still rooted irrevocably in our reality and as such still needs to feel real. And I want — I really do — to feel like I’m in Bella’s shoes. But I can’t. By the end of that third book things have gone so far out of my own spectrum of understanding and experience that I cannot even really enjoy it anymore. That said, I know others do enjoy it — others not as flippin’ critical as myself, and I know I am critical — but I wonder just how many feel absolutely rivetedly connected to Bella and her CHOICE. Because really. Really? Who has that choice? Who can even symphathize enough with Bella to the degree to feel riveted by that choice? Evidently a heck of a lot of teenagers. And it makes me so confused. I am not that far out of my teens. Is this what teenagers think is hopelessly romantic? Is Meyers warping the romantic dreams of teenagers by hinting that this could happen to any average girl? It makes me wonder if she is. And if she is, it makes me wonder and worry a little about the elements on the table for discussion in these books — sex, marriage, children, immortality versus mortality, even potential suicide, as I said.
It’s not even that, per se. It’s also to do with Meyers’ inconsistency — though it may also be her attempt to display a teenager’s wide-ranging, ever-changing emotions and feelings and beliefs.
I wonder if these teenagers have read Jane Austen. (Talk about consistently chaste and lovely stuff. Ah, Austen.)
I’m getting really worked up about this!
So.
Let me pose a spoiler-filled scenario to myself, non-fantasy, and let me see if I can wrap my head around this. So let’s say Bella’s choice is not between a century-old vampire who looks 17 — Edward — and a Native American werewolf who really is 16 — Jacob. Rather it’s between a sensitive, handsome, book-loving, science guy who’s an expert in martial arts, but he has had a disease preventing him from being able to father children — let’s call him Sedward. Sedward wants to wait until marriage to have sex, and he’s promising a happy, un-divorce-able eternity together with him and his loving (but strange) family. In the other corner we have a 6′5″ football player with a love of motorcycles but with a surprising intellect and winsome smile — let’s call him Racob. Racob is perfectly healthy in the testicular sense. Racob is much younger and more immature than Sedward but he’s got that much in common with Bella, who’s more around Racob’s age. Bella’s dad loves Racob and is cooler to Sedward, but he wants Bella to be happy. Both boys are Bella’s type, in their own way, and she’s torn between her older, more persisting love with Sedward, whom she believes to be her soulmate, and her fiery, sudden passion for Racob, who is vociferously offering her the moment, contrasting with Sedward’s promise of eternity. See the quandary? Now, see, I’ve made the situation somewhat human. BUT. What girl is really going to have that choice — at eighteen, no less? For “Sedward” Bella would give up college, give up a normal life, but for “Racob” she would give up Sedward. And then there’s the whole sex thing. She can’t have sex with Sedward — gah, Edward, until marriage with him, as per his deal, at which point he’ll turn her. She wants to be turned Oh So Badly. Then there’s Jacob with his hot mouth (ugh) and muscle-y physique and his “but you can have my babies, Bella” ridiculousness — THEY ARE TEENAGERS, COUGH — and his hatred of Edward. Jacob’s a hell of a lot more immature than Edward.(Jacob cannot see that he too is a monster as Edward is, being a werewolf himself, whereas Edward is consistently The Bigger Man and is much more, well, frickin’ mature. Though he is a LOT older than he looks.)
So that’s the LONG — or the short, depending on whether or not you really believe that’s all I have to say on the matter, cough — of why I am so quasi-excited/not excited for Breaking Dawn. Because really. The book’s plot more or less revolves around Bella’s choice and such. And I hope to goodness she chooses Edward for my own sanity. And I’m shocked by that actually because I’m almost always in the “Have the werewolf babies!” camp. (Yes, it’s come up a few times across the genre. Yes, I am usually anti-vampire. Yes, werewolves are usually awesome.) But the way Meyer has characterized them… I mean, she characterizes them as a part-gang, part-football team, part-frat house. I can see the appeal to a teenager but really…? Really? Frick, REALLY!?
Obviously I have no opinion on the matter.
EDIT: Read my rant on Breaking Dawn here.
Upcoming movies: the hype, the adrenaline, and the potential disappoinments…
Thursday July 3, 2008
I’m probably — strike that, I am — behind the times when it comes to the news and hype surrounding the upcoming film Twilight, based on Stephenie Meyer’s novel. For instance, I learned today that its release date is in December, where I had originally (read: in February) heard August. So, good. Um. Yeah. Also, I found this clip by browsing Twilight’s IMDB page. So, I sort of want to complain about how, um, not exciting that scene looks… but. (Spoiler: It’s the climactic scene. CLIMACTIC. Why did they use that as the spoiler scene? Why?)
That scene just ruins pretty much the entire movie for me. Because now, I’m not interested in it beyond mild curiosity appeased through a Netflix rental. Wow. Monumentally sad. But the funny thing is — like when Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone was made into a monumentally awful movie back in 1999 — people will flock to it, because it’s the first movie adaptation of a bestselling book series. And because people will flock, the producers will have incentive to make the sequels, which means they have the potentiality to get better. (Azkaban continues to be an excellent movie, and the fourth and fifth Potter films really surprised me. The screenplays are still not the best adaptations — though five’s was pretty decent — but the direction and acting have steadily and happily improved.) I hope so. I also hope that the director’s vision is a little more artistic in some of the more interesting early scenes than it was in that particular scene, which was nothing more interesting than an episode of Charmed. Though with the plot being what it is, it’s a character-driven story, so a lot falls on the actors’ shoulders, too, so it’s not fair for me to criticize that scene without having “gotten into it” by seeing the whole movie first. I suppose. But I’m not going to say “That clip has enthralled me even more and I can’t wait to see it!” because that’s not true. If anything that press has turned me off from the film unlike all of the press around The Dark Knight, which makes me salivate. (Perhaps Christian Bale is more my type than Robert Pattinson, anyway.) Gah, look at me trying to be fair and hold off judgment until later. But it’s… it’s… so… hard!
In other news, Hancock opens this weekend. Well, yesterday, actually. I’m interested, I have to admit. Interested for more than one reason. Will Smith does good films. Will Smith always tops the box office. Will Smith has owned Independence Day weekend since the film Independence Day, and it’s a fact that he’s probably the most bankable actor in Hollywood. I’m curious about this film not only because it’s a superhero action film, and you know I’m a sucker for those, but because it’s a Will Smith film, and its plot is unusual. From the trailer I’d guess it’s not amazing — they have pretty much revealed the ENTIRE plot across two or three trailers — but it’s at least worth an eventual rental. Entertainment Weekly usually has the number on a film (so does the NY Times, but they liked it, ish, but then again it was Manohla Dargis and not A. O. Scott, who I like better for reviewing the scifi/fantasy/action films) and they don’t seem to like it all that much. Curiouser and curiouser.
An article I was reading the other day further interested me, linking Will Smith with Scientology through a school he and Jada are funding, and by extension, questioning his motives in making a film like Hancock which — so the article espoused — has themes of Scientology in it. (I’d link it but I cannot for the life of me find the article again.)
Furthermore, another article actually features and quotes a professor from Carnegie Mellon who is somewhat famous for being a debunker of Scientology by saying,
But critics contend that the school is not being honest about its links to Scientology. David S. Touretzky, a professor of computer science at Carnegie Mellon University, created a website that dissects study technology and asserts that it is Scientology religion disguised as education.
Touretzky said many phrases and concepts on the school’s website are specific to Scientology. For example, the school lists a “Director of Qualifications” and another teacher who is an assistant in the “Qual” department. The “Qual,” said Touretzky, is where people who have completed a Scientology counseling, or “auditing,” session or a course in the Church of Scientology are tested by a qualifications teacher.
“There is no reputable educator anywhere who endorses [study technology],” said Touretzky, a critic of Scientology. “What happens is that children are inculcated with Scientology jargon and are led to regard L.R. Hubbard as an authority figure. They are laying the groundwork for later bringing people into Scientology.”
Fascinating stuff, eh? I think the whole “cult of Scientology” thing is interesting. I like to watch it fom afar with mild interest because come on, a religion based on the teachings of a science fiction author? You have to know I’d be interested, at least academically, in people’s reactions to that.
So it’ll be an interesting two weeks until The Dark Knight comes to sweep us away from the dreariness of not having an amazing film since Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. (For the record, I LOVED Iron Man — Robert Downey, Jr. was amazing; The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian was great; and Indy totally made my decade. I felt like a kid in a candy store. It was like I was seeing Star Wars Episode I all over again, minus the terrible-ness of parts of that film — cough, Jake Lloyd, cough.) Aaron Eckhart looks amazing as Harvey Dent and I’m a big Maggie Gyllenhaal fan — so happy they replaced Katie Holmes. So. Excited. For. More. Christian. Bale. As. Batman. AND HEATH LEDGER AS THE JOKER! The trailer sent shivers down my spine. I can’t wait. Can’t wait. Can’t wait!
FYI, Breaking Dawn will be huge. In case you were as out-of-the-loop as I was.
Wednesday July 2, 2008
I was thinking today that a whole bunch of series I’ve been reading have new installments coming out (isn’t that always the case) and I have been trying to keep track so I know roughly when to put in a request with the library. Usually the library doesn’t get a copy of the book until just before or just after the book is released. That’s not the case with books with serious hype surrounding them. Apparently — this I just learned, casual fan, me — Breaking Dawn by Stephanie Meyer, which comes out on August 2nd, is the fourth and final installment in the Twilight Saga. Final. So. Bella makes the big choice, I suppose. (Spoiler: I’m 100% Edward, but that’s me; and I usually go for Weres>Vamps, too. Honestly, it’s Edward>Jacob, character-wise. I’m just an Edward fan. ANYWAY.)
So as I was thinking this — also encouraged by the signs in the Barnes and Noble storefronts saying, “PRE-ORDER STEPHANIE MEYER’S BREAKING DAWN TODAY!” — I decided to check up on the NYPL website, to see if they had it listed as request-able yet. I’d checked a while ago and nada, and after all, I am a month early. So I went and looked. Wham! Request-able! Yay! So I requested it. Here’s what came up after I put through the request:
| BREAKING DAWN | |
| by MEYER, STEPHENIE | |
| LITTLE BROWN & CO | |
| Reservable Copies: 142 Number of Holds: 338 | |
| Date Placed: 07/02/2008 | |
Can I get a, “OMIGOD RIDICULOUS!” please? I suppose this is like, the new Harry Potter for teenage girls… I mean, they’re good books, don’t get me wrong but… wow. I’m a little surprised. I mean, this exact thing happened with Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, but I was already buying that so I don’t remember quite how many hundreds of requests there were. At least twice as many as there are copies. Is this Harry Potter fervor, displaced onto a new source? The books are good but — like Harry Potter — much better fantasy exists in the world… though admittedly it’s not all geared at teenagers. (I smell a tangent; I’ll stop now.)
And there’s still a month left for people to get on the requesting bandwagon before the books actually ship out from the library. I wonder if any will actually touch the shelves?
Where did this month go already?
Monday December 10, 2007
At least it’s only the 10th of December. If it was next Monday the 17th already I might have to strangle Father Time because that’s just not funny. I still have loads of presents to buy (ugh, or even think about buying; I hate buying presents when I have no idea what to get for someone) and I still need to figure out precisely what I’m doing this month concerning Christmas & family. (Okay — stopping myself from whining…now.)
Things accomplished this past weekend:
We saw The Golden Compass on Saturday! It was terrific, or at least I think so. (SPOILER ALERT. If you’ve read the book and you’re curious about the movie, this won’t really give anything away.) The film was generally well-adapted, though its flow was a little clunky at times. It was terrifically well-acted though by all, though the choice of Ian McKellen’s voice for Iorek Byrnison sort of threw me a little consistently. I kept going, “Where’s Gandalf?! Where?!” and naturally he’s not in this film. Dakota Blue Richards (Lyra) was phenomenally good playing such a fiesty character and I enjoyed that they kept true to her gutsyness throughout. The ending was good — they cut it off right before the scene with Asriel, Coulter, and the gang with Cittagaze in the sky beyond — but despite that it ended well, full of anticipation. Lyra says, in regards to the aleithometer, “It says we’re bringing my father exactly what he needs,” and Bryan and I giggled a little. Oh, that book. It’s so marvelous. But the scene with crossing over will be a lot better to start of The Subtle Knife, though, assuming that movie gets made (I haven’t started Googling New Line’s decision yet — they said they were not going to start production on it until they heard the outcome of the box office). I hope they make it! Will Parry is probably my favorite character in the series. I can’t wait to see who they cast for him.
Now! On to other events of the weekend. We watched Junebug last night (Amy Adams’ Oscar-nominated performance was really worthy of that nod though the movie itself was a little odd) and I spent a large part of Friday through yesterday reading both New Moon and Eclipse, both by Stephenie Meyer. Having read both, I think New Moon, oddly enough, was the best of the series so far. Eclipse left an odd feeling in my mouth, so to speak. (SPOILER: I get very anxious when the main character professes undying love for Character A then realizes she’s also in love with Character B and there’s kissing all around. I get all loyal to the first relationship and I’m very anti-switching-things-up. That, and I don’t like how Jacob treats her opinions — he makes a lot of assumptions that not even Edward made in the beginning; he’s so stubborn he doesn’t hear her. He loves her, yeah we get it, but she loves Edward more so let’s move on. I really just want to see her married to Edward already. I am hoping Meyer doesn’t drag out the Edward versus Jacob for too long. Really. It’s been long enough with the delaying of Bella changing over, I’m just not in the mood to keep waiting for whether or not Jacob’s going to do something insane (because that’s what she’s setting it up to be, what with the epilogue and Jacob running amok. Is he running to stop the wedding? I really hope not… Really. This is why I can’t love these books — it comes down to their being series instead of, well, a tightly wrapped story. If it’d been a simple trilogy… or one novel, it’d be better. But now that it’s going to keep going… I enjoy the characters and situations — New Moon was decent; the Italians won me over, really they did. — but I can’t like the dragging-the-plot-on-for-thousands-of-pages part. COME ON. END IT ALREADY. But depending on how it ends is how I’ll feel about the whole series, I know it.) Me, opinionated? Never!
The one non-spoiler thing that these Meyer books have gotten me thinking about is first person narration. McKinley’s been doing it too lately — with Sunshine, with Dragonhaven – and she’s certainly not the only one. The Mercy Thompson series by Patricia Briggs is written in first person (though the Hurog books were written in third) and that intimacy is interesting; it allows for a lot of casual observations that in third person must be much more carefully inserted to feel organic (and I obsess about the organic). I’m still clinging to third person in my own [fantasy] works at the moment because I have this obsessive need to make all of my voices sound completely distinct (and if they were in 1st person that makes writing three or four books at once, as I’m sort of doing, a lot closer to intellectually impossible — ouch, the brain hurts just thinking of that) and considering my books all star different heroes and at times switch perspectives (though I’d ditch that if I were doing a first person narrative voice, naturally) I keep forcing myself to keep it in third for my own sanity. Even so my narrative styles vary really widely — my language and the way I tell the story moves with the minds of the main characters even when it’s in third person (because even with third person it’s very omniscient and I don’t have a ‘narrator’ character) so it’s a lot more intimate than, say, John Dickinson’s The Cup of the World, which is styled completely differently (more on a deliberate echo of romantic/medieval styles and therefore more detached and focused on language and idiom). At times I think I get much too academic about my creative work. I think I need to stop reading so much and start writing a heck of a lot.
In regards to that: I had a long talk with Bryan yesterday regarding writing, schedules, deadlines, and getting my creative work back on track. He’s said he’ll be happy to bug me about deadlines if that will encourage me to actually work as opposed to sitting around and being lazy; he’ll do whatever it takes if I need him to be there for me. He even said if I finish Story A and realize that’s not the best one to start sending queries about, he has absolutely no problem with waiting for me to work on Story B or C to get that ready. He’s really completely and totally focused on making me simply work, first of all — everything else will come. He knows what I have is good and I know what I have is good, it’s just a matter of me not being lazy about getting it from brain to Word document — because really, that’s what the issue is. The whole brain-to-Word document transition is really just a long process of me getting hand cramps and butt cramps and all of that. He’s completely and totally supportive of me so long as I promise to slog away at the computer (and tolerate the cramps). So I’ve promised. And I am being good; even just blogging gets my fingers moving and gets me in the writing frame of mind. As to that, I go to be a good writing girl.
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