Twilight: Are Edward and Bella Really Enough for Forever?

The mere mention of Twilight in an average group of over 25s will elicit eye-rolls and groans. "Oh please."

These Old Schoolers, moms and dads jaded by years of mortgages and soul-numbing cubicle life, exhausted late-night Huggies runs, rising car insurance premiums, sophisticated professionals whose literary "downtime" is claimed by the likes of Grisham and Chopra, reality-based pragmatists who read the Economist while reclining on high-thread-count bedding, soft jazz barely audible in the background, just don't get it.

Nor do their parents, aging Baby Boomers confronting the inevitable, in mirrors and doctor's offices; they, too have Forgotten.

All are victims of the tragi-comic phenomenon of Adult-Onset Amnesia, that near-universal syndrome that causes parents of adolescents to parrot to their teens the same absurdities about sex and drugs to which they themselves once nodded politely and snickered about once the 'rents backs were turned.

That same syndrome from which springs their unshakable faith that their kids do not have MySpace pages, because they have told them not to make one.

Twilight, to much of the Old School, is nothing more than the successor to High School Musical and Hannah Montana, what the kids are into these days, just as they were once into SpongeBob Square Pants, and (may all deities help us all) Barney the Dinosaur.

The last time, in my own memory, that 13-year old girls were this utterly and obsessed about something with such intensity and thoroughness, I was among them, and the thing that they - we - were obsessed with was four young men from England, who, in many ways, was every bit as inconceivable and far-fetched as any vampire, and who, against the cultural backdrop of that time, evoked the same exasperated groaning and dismissive eye-rolling as Bella and Edward do today.

Nearly a half-century later, libraries boast shelves of venerable tomes, thousands of pages ponderously penned by distinguished ologists on the fundamental and seismic change wrought upon everything from music to nearly the entire roster of the planet's cultures themselves, by those "mop top lads," as they were then called.

It was ridiculous, and egotistical, to think that I could affect anyone that strongly. It was impossible. And yet I couldn’t stop worrying that it was true.

Few parents of 13 year-old girls, and even fewer of their graying Boomer grannies would question the throne upon which history - and those 13-year old girls - have enshrined the Beatles, but it is with a mixture of amusement and something resembling mild alarm with which I observe my contemporaries who look into the eyes of these girls and fail to see the same Something with which their own eyes once gleamed.

At best, they are likely to offer props to Ms. Meyer for having been the cause of the first time their daughters exhibited such a passion for reading since they outgrew Harry Potter on about the 4th or 5th book.

At worst, of course, are those who, Adult-Onset Amnesia is enhanced by the fires of religious zeal, forbid their daughters to read the books, see the movie, or even think about such an evil thing as vampires, piety having expunged any memories of having ignored similar edicts of their own parents, as they hid their Beatles albums at the homes of friends, and kept their copies of Tiger Beat, with articles like "Ten Ways to Paul's Heart" under the mattress, to be taken out and read by flashlight, as they huddled in a tent of pink-ruffled coverlet, and spent reams of blue-ruled loose-leaf paper unlearning the Palmer method in order to make their Ps like Paul and their Gs like George.

The parade of various and opposing opinions notwithstanding, only history will decide the question of the "literary value" of Meyer's work. As was the case with the Beatles, it is Time who will render the final verdict on whether what she has written is Great Literature or merely a splash of pop fiction, but it is not too soon to acknowledge that in either case, what has proceeded from her work is a classic illustration of the principle of the sum being greater than its parts.

The movie may be a better example of this than the books. If one has not read the books, or at the very least, the Wikipedia article on the subject, the movie comes across as a story not fully told, more like a series of trailers for what one hopes might one day be a movie.

When viewed as a standalone cinematic work, the movie does not, in my opinion, deserve even a fraction of the analysis and attention it has received, and if it were not for the cultural tsunami born of the books, it would almost certainly have "gone straight to DVD," nor been considered worthy of so much as a keystroke by some of the very critics who have subjected it to the most minute dissections.

Probably the best thing about the movie involves the casting of Bella. Someone was shrewd enough to choose a relatively unknown actress, one styleable as "plain-looking," at least by Hollywood standards, which are already thoroughly enough embedded in hearts and minds of all generations so that one key element at least, is preserved.

Had Meyers painted her Bella as a beauty, or in modern parlance, a "hottie," it is unlikely that the story would have had the same effect. Obviously, Bella's ordinary appearance has importance in establishing the contrast with the unearthly beauty of Edward, thus gliding seamlessly into the fantasy of the unbeautiful girl, that she will win the heart of the hearthrob, and since most teen girls believe themselves to be unbeautiful whether they are or not, this touches the story itself with the magic wand of near-universality.

The "average" girl can identify with Bella as intimately, maybe even more so, than girls who are undeniably exceptional in one way or another. The Bella of the books is just intelligent enough to tell her story well while retaining accessibility, she is no genius, nor is she a box of rocks.

Though not presented to us as breath-taking either in physical beauty nor possessed of irresistible charm, she is nevertheless pursued by several boys, another common dream of the teenaged girl, who all too often finds herself in an environment populated by teenaged boys who in real life lack the social skills to express their interest with the same facility that they somehow find when they are characters in books.

Bella's appeal is a sort of mini-mystery itself, a sort of appetizer motif that foreshadows the main course, we never quite understand why all these boys are immediately smitten with this more or less unremarkable girl, though it is natural to the plot that they would be, so that we can see that Bella does not choose Edward either by default or out of desperation. She has plenty of interaction with other boys, plenty of options, but she and Edward are the proverbial star-crossed lovers, obliged to try and obliged to fail to argue themselves out of their love at first sight, their Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon-grade Love Before Time destiny.

Whether as an unavoidable result of her own background and faith tradition, or a conscious effort to widen her market and perhaps appease the conservative devout sector with a nod to the small but vocal and highly media-visible segment of teens who at leat claim to abstain from physical intimacy, Meyer's young couple do not consumate their love.

In fact, when compared to either other movies or real life, there is scant physical contact of any kind between them. In the movie, the major "love scene" consists of an aerial shot of the two lying side by side in a field, not touching each other at all.

Though probably intended to symbolize the trans-human, supra-biological nature of the relationship, necessitated by Edward's vampire status, the less chaste of imagination, are free, of course, to imagine that this is a post-coital moment, they have simply fallen temporarily away from each other, spent, to catch their breaths before going again. Edward is, after all, seventeen.

The ologists will naturally have their say, and many have already been having large doses of it, in a vain attempt to explain just what it is about this particular story of teen love that has touched and awakened in so many young hearts the elusive butterfly of romantic ideal.

Throughout history, it has been women who have been the docents of culture, as well as the (sometimes hidden) authors of it. It is, after all, mothers who tend to be the ones who teach their children the songs, tell them the stories, show them the folkways, of the tribe.

Once in a great while, events occur which will shape and form and alter forever the hearts and minds, the attitudes, opinions and beliefs, of 13 year-old girls, events which will, consciously or unconsciously affect the way they see themselves, relationships, and the world they live in, as well as the spiritual realm, which includes romance, in which they would like to live.

Meyer's story of the Great Love shared by the benign teen vampire and his ordinary teen girlfriend manages to push every known button (and probably some unknown ones) in the developing heart of the adolescent human female, and this pushing will change the course of culture in ways that we cannot yet know, any more than we could know, in 1965, that elevators of the future would feature blurry thousand-and-one-strings versions of "I Want to Hold Your Hand" or that revered and ivied old institutions of higher learning would offer the same credit for courses on the musicology of Lennon and McCartney as those that explored the work of Mozart.

Should teen boys resignedly drop heads into hands of despair, sick with the realization that they will never be able to come near the Romance Bar set forever by Edward Cullen in the hearts of the girls who will one day become women they wish to marry?

Hasn’t anyone ever told you? Life isn’t fair.

Or will it be the girls themselves who are one day sadly obliged to settle for a dream deferred?


Or will it go the other way, and re-awaken the spirit of romance that has, in recent decades, become somewhat frayed, with both men and women alike, even in cultures where choosing one's own spouse has long been the norm, increasingly tending to view the decision as one to be made with head, not heart, with as more of an eye toward the fiscal than the visceral, the prime rate accorded a higher priority than the primordial?

That’s the beautiful thing about being human. Things change.

As they complete their various rites of passage and through the doors of adolescence into young adulthood, will the supernatural element of the story affect the attitudes, opinions and beliefs of today's young Twilight fans in the area of religious tolerance? Might we not engage in similar speculations on that particular topic with regard to the Harry Potter novels, certainly a cultural phenomenon in its own right? (We might, but here we are edging dangerously close to a Whole Nother Rant on a much broader topic, and which I will doubtless feel compelled to commit, but not today).

If so, when one considers the "interesting times" in which we live, the implications could be profound. Lives, it is tempting to speculate, could be saved.

That’s how it’s supposed to happen. How it should happen.

Or not. Many a former peace-loving Beatle fan is today as avid enthusiast of invasion and atrocity as key industries could hope for, even those who have a decided preference for foods whose labels contain the word "Organic."

These elemental cultural phenomena do change hearts, they do, in their own way, change the world, but there are limits. They do not, for example, completely negate every other cultural influence, at least not much past college.

Why, then, should I or anyone else suggest that "Twilight," as cultural event is of any more importance, particularly lasting importance, than "High School Musical" or "Hannah Montana?"

Especially when we are in such early days that we cannot even offer an accurate projection of revenues. Will Stephenie Meyer give J.K. Rowling a run for her money crown? Will the inevitable movie version of "New Moon" be the exception to the rule that movie sequels are never as good as their predecessors? That rule applied in this case is a prospect in this case especially dismal to contemplate.

If their underestimation of the books as the First Literary Love of a generation is cause for mocking those of my own afflicted with Adult Onset Amnesia (and clearly it is!) then it also behooves me to temper my jeers with proof that I am not a sufferer myself, of selective perception if not amnesia, once again recalling those snowy-haired Beatle-lovin' atrocity fans.

And I’m going to get old

I believe that we can say that Twilight will have a lasting effect on culture, on attitudes, opinions and beliefs of the generation that today variously enjoys and suffers through its tweens, but what effect and to what extent that will be is still a very large question mark.

Equally unanswerable is why I or anyone else who is not a 13 year-old girl finds the subject so fascinating as to accord it so much musing and pontificating.


I suppose that unlike vampires, as humans we are somehow compelled to attempt to explain the unexplainable, to draw back veils that reveal only more veils, to put our fingers on the pin upon which angels dance.