Twilight and other purloined morpheme packets –

I don’t like it when a word—especially one I have a special fondness for like, say, “lunch”—is hijacked by one particular group or circumstance, and fenced off so that I can’t use them they way I’ve always used them, the way they were made to be used. Like “gay.” Like “Dick.” This becomes especially problematic when you have friends who are married to each other whose names are (I am not making this up) Dick and Gaye.

And along comes twilight. I’m guessing not a whole lot of you know “Love’s Old Sweet Song,” but it’s one of my favorites, one my mother and father used to sing together on our way to Lake Arrowhead. In it is the sweet, poetic and calming word “twilight”—which was not meant to convey any sense of vampires, vapid sexual attraction, violence or edge. But in this day and age, I hate even to write the word in my title up there because of the baggage it’s acquired.

Lorena, you can skip this one—you and I have already talked it out.

The Book (that’s the variable)was introduced to me by a woman I’d had reason to respect. There she was, gushing – with shining eyes – about it. So, okay. I’m always up for a good read.

But then Chaz got ahold of it and read it first. I cannot use the word “gush” to describe her response—more like an eruption, a detonation. Hate, hate, hate. If she’d been a gnasher, that book would have ended up as cage liner. And then I talked to Rachel, who said the same things with just about the same chaotic energy. At that point, I figured I really was going to have to read it.

Besides, I’d already half promised I’d do a review.

Now let me say this before I start: I am a writer. Not a great writer. You don’t have to be great to be published. And anybody could turn anything I have to say about this back on my own stories. You are welcome to do that. Writing is not an exact science. A smart writer learns between books, deepens her understanding of craft and humanity. I’m into that. The one thing I have always held as sacred is the responsibility I have to my audience—especially my young audience. The way I see it, any public voice should enrich and wisen the world, not just harvest from it.

I could kick myself for not taking notes as I read. But then, I read it mostly in the bathroom. Honestly, there were so many things to write about—the ironies were almost worth the days and days of agony. I couldn’t wait to write it all up. I was going to be SOOOO witty.

Then Ginna sends me this link, and darned if this woman didn’t use up all my best material. Read this, but not till you finish me, please, because she’s really good.  And funny and ironic and exactly what i want to be when I grow up:

STOP. Don’t click it yet. My gosh.  At least finish the page first.

http://borrowedlight.blogspot.com/2008/07/why-i-think-twilight-sucks-and-other.html

So, here comes the opinion:

Ew. 

1) This kind of Penny Dreadful drivel is a blow to the vision of our First Fathers who considered intelligence and education to be fundamental to a free society. In other words, they expected us to use our brains, and probably hoped we’d rise above flatulence and burping as our primary source of entertainment. But back then, they taught kids Latin and Greek. Now we’re just glad if they’re READING.

Storytelling and structure. 135 pages of nothing but whining: a selfish, supercilious, downright boring little protagonist. Where I come from, you get rejection letters for letting one single empty, boring paragraph go by, and here, somebody’s making bank on THOUSANDS of empty paragraphs.

The sentence structure wasn’t that bad. At first. But then, you keep getting the same words thrown at you: topaz, alabaster, cold, uh-Uh-UH-LUST. You lose track of everything. “Oh, wait – didn’t she say this just like . . . did I put the book down and lose my place? No, wait – it says that here, too.  And fifty pages from here.”  Like sitting down to eat a 16 oz Twinkie (no disrespect to Wonder).

This is how I see it: the author’s skill is in setting up the situation and letting the reader fill in the awful blanks with her own fantasies. You know, like those office buildings people build so they can rent out the space by the hour to people who don’t have offices of their own. Cardboard standup characters you can move around in your head. MMMMMM.

2) And the serious part: of Good Report and Praiseworthy, this is surely not. In fact, this book – written by an LDS woman – is brimming with tacit lessons. Nasty, wrong, harmful lessons. Lies, in fact. She messes with the reader’s sense of right and wrong—and don’t you roll your eyes at me. The old expression “you are what you eat” is only too horribly true in terms of media consumption. Because media tinkers with concept, and concept is the building block of character, perspective – and eventually, of real time choices and action.

As I was talking to a good friend who’d really enjoyed the book, these little lines started forming between her eyebrows. “Yeah,” she said thoughtfully, “I realized that when my husband came around, I wanted to hide the book.” Her conclusion: the book had been a guilty pleasure, reminding her of all those little sexual twinges of teen-hood.

So I posed this question: “Would it bother you—handing your daughter written material in which a nice LDS author assures her that:

1) Teenagers really do know better than their parents, especially when it comes to love. So

2) It’s okay to lie to your parents. It’s really okay just not to inform them about certain things, but it’s also okay to drop in the occasional actual straight-ahead lie. If it’s for love.

3) It’s totally okay to hide a boy in your bedroom. And to fake getting ready for bed so that your father won’t get a clue. Especially easy to pull off when he feels guilty about your family situation and is bending over backward to trust you.

4) Anybody who might blow your cover is a creep and a villain, and everybody on your side should hope they lose.

5) It’s also totally okay to let the boy stay over-night, because boys that YOU love are so honorable, they can totally control themselves. After all, it’s the you inside they love, even when you smell like roast beef to them. Boys can spend an entire night holding you without even putting their hands in the wrong places – for love.

6) Somehow, you will never be injured, riding in a car with a boy who drives too fast.

7) It’s perfectly normal for older men to fall madly, deeply in love with teenagers. Happens all the time. It’s real. No, really it is. Or does a 100 year old male person who is still in high school count as a boy?

8 ) Bad boys are just misunderstood. If you love them enough, they will turn out to be Just Great. And they’ll never take advantage of you. And they’re just bad enough, they can really, really protect you from all the evil out there. (Just don’t tell your stupid, boring parents.)

9) You can be just as negative and unkind to everybody as you want and be completely a klutz (never mind the dance lessons), but the sexiest, most wonderful boy in the world will see through all that and love you.

10) But most important of all: you can lie and hide and pretend and sneak around because NOTHING BAD will ever, EVER happen to you. Love will protect you from reality. And a man who is loved can never do you any harm. Especially if you love him so much that you just stop caring about your own life. It’ll all work out.

Yeah. I want my daughter to learn all of those lessons. Plus these:

1) You can be a member of a serious church and still make millions and millions of dollars just by telling stories that are in complete opposition to what the church is trying to teach its youth. Yay!

2) Reading things like this really, really can make your life better and your brain stronger. Yay!

3) In My Best Friend’s Wedding, the most sensible, kind, stable and dependable character was the single, homosexual guy. And isn’t that always the way, though? In this book, the only “functional” family is the Vampire family. Yay!! Normal families – like with moms and dads, even who stay together? Boring. Kids really need to find something more interesting and compelling and inspiring. Something with edge. Something to substitute for their own boring fam. YAY!

4) Even though a guy has lived for over 100 years – and is still, somehow, in High School (yeah, and I spent 600 pages wondering why the heck somebody hadn’t noticed that he’d been in the year book about 98 times over the years) – he can feel totally intellectually and emotionally satisfied by making conquest of an adolescent girl. Even a girl who has nothing remotely merciful to say about even one of her schoolmates – who are all obviously totally beneath her in understanding, maturity and interestingness. Wow. I know I’d just LOVE dating a sixteen year old boy.

Aside from things I can’t get around, like – am I supposed to buy marble-cold skin as attractive and exciting? Cold lips? Didn’t Romeo have cold lips at one point—and didn’t Juliet find that at least mildly disturbing? And what is so fine about your skin glittering in the light? As if that’s part of vampire lore. Like reading minds is part of it – NOT. Is this guy’s real super power gargantuan pheromones?

And here is the crux of things: this story is a badly told “Tam Lin,” one of the class of tales that “Beauty and the Beast” belongs to. It’s an ancient motif that women can’t resist: the innocent woman meets the Bad Man. He may be disfigured, he may be enchanted, he may simply be a monster of whatever kind. But only she can sense the pain and frustrated good inside of him. And he doesn’t eat/beat her, and doesn’t die of boredom in her innocent, not-close-to-edgy company. Instead, he finds himself attracted to HER. Because he, too can see inside souls.

In “Tam Linn,” he is a prisoner of the Faery Queen, and if his girl wants to save him, she must, on a certain night, grab him and hold on to him no matter what he turns into. Which she does. He’s a bear, a snake, a ravening wolf, a fire – but she faithfully holds on, not letting any of that touch her – until the enchantment is broken, and what she finally holds in her arms is the great, innocent, loving hearted young man she ALWAYS KNEW HE WOULD BE.

In “Beauty,” the woman tames the beast, saves him, comforts his loneliness – and in some unlikely, miraculous way, she is the Only One he could ever love, which crowns her with that ultimate glowing halo of desirability.

No matter how boorish, how self-centered and shallow she may be – how clumsy, how bad-haired, how charmless, judgmental and whining – any female who reads this book knows she’s GOT to be better than Bella – and look what Bella got: the undying (yes the pun is deliberate) love of a misunderstood, pathetically honorable, lonely bad boy who has waited a hundred years to give his cold and lifeless heart to somebody who smells like dinner.

Women refuse to give this story up. They cup it in their hands, breath life into it, shield it from the winds of truth. Why? Because it’s SO romantic.

In real life, women who believe in this concept often end up pregnant outside of marriage, beaten inside and out of marriage, left abandoned with children, browbeaten, controlled, afraid – beaten down to nothing. Caged, ruined. Oh, yes – once in a while the tale will be true – just often enough that every woman will just KNOW that she is that one in a million, and her love will win.

Don’t you hope your daughter is that brave?

And aren’t you glad an LDS woman is teaching her to be that brave?

 

My sister sent me this just today:

“I just had lunch with a good friend of mine who works for Scholastic and had done so for years and years. She told me that the 4th Twilight book was the first book that Scholastic [which is not the publisher, but THE bookseller to young people] has ever pulled from their list of available books. She said that they felt that the book was far too ……graphic for them to carry. Evidently she claims that she never wrote those books for children to read so she wasn’t concerned with trying to make sure they were child friendly.

Scholastic knows that kids read those books and they do carry the 1st three but drew the line at the fourth. They never received a copy early for preview but assumed that it would be OK like the first three so they had the fourth in all of their advertising for this school year. They had to pull it all and redo…..very expensive for Scholastic. I think she can’t ever plan on them considering one of her books again.”

And this is the series that parents are buying for their daughters, the series that young women and old women are so eager to get their hands on, they stay up till midnight to grad their copy, fresh off the presses. Wow. But then, it was ONLY the 4th that was so bad. Like, the other three weren’t written out of the same brain with the same perspectives?

Of course there is a difference between what you write for children and what you write for adults. But the difference should not be in quality of craft or in the core ethics and morals that keep humanity from imploding. The difference is that some situations are more appropriate for people of more experienced life. Not because they can “handle” absurd and destructive behavior, but because their days are concerned with conflicts that are outside of a child’s venue.

Here are a few quotes from a facebook group populated by high school kids:

[Thread title: Drunk Editor: [general SIC]

Where do people get off that Twilight is actually good writing. I read on chapter and honestly, it was as if Ms Myers couldn’t find a thesaurus. She used the same adjective, smoldering, about 4 dozen times! Either the publisher didn’t have any other words on their presses, the thesaurus was thrown out the window, or the editor was drunk. The later is the most likely.

amen to that! I tried to read it. I got about halfway and just couldn’t stand it anymore. It’s not exactly shoddy writing, but the redundant verbosity of the generic literature of Stephenie Meyer deeply saddened me. The mystery of why some people actually like this long-drawn out and boring scrawl of a story is still unsolved.

Not only is Ms. Meyer’s prose poor, her characterization is what made me shudder after each page. I forced myself through the first and second in order to get a better stand in defending my opinion, and I think I’ve gotten it pretty well down. She was so obsessed with creating the perfect man that she completely forgot about her main character, who I swear is schizophrenic; she is in no way relatable and is constantly whining about something or other. Edward himself is the biggest fop who ever got smeared into literature. He has created unrealistic expectations for boys who want to attract stupid, air-headed thirteen year-old girls.

Another thing I’ve been wondering about: why is it that people STILL read them when they’ve admitted that it’s a book to be read when you have no ounce of brain power? I don’t get it. They admit that the book’s pornographic; they say that it’s rather stupid; they all will tell me that they’ve read far better books? Why?! (Mind you, these are select few. Most of the fans are really brainless OMG!@!!!!! EdWARED CUllLENSSSS!!!!! <3<3<3<3!!!!!! and all that jazz.)

Is will power shrinking or something? Do people just need their soft-core porn? It’s sickening.]
———— 0 ————

That last question is worthy of consideration.

Did you know that television execs have been known to refer to their potential audiences as “trailer trash”? They mean you and me. We qualify because we’re watching the stuff they put out. They know that they aren’t offering art to us. They’re offering simple minded stories driven by sex and adventure for the most part, humor that isn’t amazing or witty or complex. They are simply grinding out what will make them money.

Media people don’t care about you. They don’t care how stupid they make you over time. They don’t care about your life – what will happen to you if you buy what they trot out to entertain you, or if their stories encourage you to behavior that results in broken marriage, teen pregnancy, violence. They don’t care if you’re hurt, if you ache with disappointment and regret, if your brains dry up and blow away – as long as they get your money.

And with this book and its sequels, you can bet this publisher is no different than the rest of these media jerks. They want your money, and they don’t care what they do to you as long as they get it.

With men, pornography is obvious: they look at pictures and films of naked, big chested women who magically want nothing but sex from them. That is male fantasy. You can recognize the vector; you can say, “Put down that magazine (DVD, whatever) because it’s evil.” And you know it is, because you can see the pictures in one second and tell.

So what constitutes pornography? To me, it’s anything that manipulates the brain, targeting fantasies that manipulate brain chemistry, yielding physiological responses that have not been worked for honestly, earned by deeds and devotion and sacrifice, and certainly not tied to any personal future responsibility. They give people the gift of lust when they are safely(?) alone. It hinges on sexuality, but you could make a case that advertisements for hair replacement and high class sedans may qualify.

With women, the turn on is in the words. I could write a thousand sentences that’d have the power to ignite brain chem in a sexual manner. But I won’t. Because it’s too darn easy, for one thing. You don’t even have to be poetic. You just use the right three words and suggest the rest.

And I won’t do it because it’s an evil, counterproductive, damaging thing to do to people—especially when the audience is so willing, and so unaware of what you are doing to them. I remember this boy who was dating a sweet, innocent but hot friend of mine in college. They were making out, and he pulled back, asking her, “Would you even know if I was taking advantage of you?” I have to laugh. She always wore a wig that gave her this tremendous hair she did not actually have. She could have asked him the same question.

But I digress. Women get turned on by language. Not usually by visuals. They can sit there with a book full of words that looks like any other book full of words – and nobody recognizes it as pornography because there are no pictures. And as men’s pornography is evil because it’s actually a drug that changes their chemistry, so women’s pornography takes minds away from reality, from the work-a-day truth of laundry and school and taking care of kids and doing chores and promises them some kind of supernal love that will save them from all fear, all insecurity, all discomfort. Mother’s little helper? Not really, because mother has to live in reality.  And the truth?  Little vacations in brain chemistry get a little more permanent every time you take them.

Will power is no different now than it ever was. We just have more temptation lying around, free. People don’t need porn, but they want escape. They want life to be good. They want to be frightened by scary things, all the time knowing that things will turn out all right in the end. So they go to movies and read stories that are complete fantasy – and I mean by that, promising them consequences that don’t match the reality of life – so they can feel a catharsis (is that like mental orgasm?) and for a moment, believe that all life will be really glowing and triumphant in the end.

The fans are, in short, getting a nice little guilty buzz out of the book, and they like it, and nobody, including Deseret Book, seems to get it that what’s happening here is deeply unhealthy.

Wind up:

The protagonist talks about that old truck her father gave her somewhere in the first—I don’t know— five hundred pages. The truck becomes a metaphor for me for the entire story: that solid old truck, she notes, may not be fancy, but it’ll sure keep her safe in case of an accident.

Right. Well, a big rigid steel bodied vehicle is about the most dangerous thing you could drive. In an impact, the rigid body absorbs none of the force. Instead, it passes all the force right into the cab, and it’s the soft body inside that ends up absorbing all of it. What I’m saying is that 1) the author has not bothered to inform herself about the truth of the physics here, and passes on a romantic and dangerous folk truth which she probably believes and 2) she promises safety where there is really great potential for increased harm.

Like I say, the BorrowedLight blogger is a WHOLE lot funnier than I am on this subject. Sorry. This just seems to engage the chaperone in me.

One of her commenters said, “What really bothers me about this whole Twilight thing is that people are falling in love with bad writing. The characters are one-note, it’s all terribly predictable, and it’s STUPID.?

Can the church say, “AMEN???” And yet millions of these things fly off the shelf.  And millions of “good” LDS women are devouring it.  And right now, at this moment, I find myself asking, “Why is that?”  I think I’m afraid of the answer.

To be honest, this mess is no worse than the bodice rippers out there.  What makes it so pernicious is that it’s being served up as YA, and it’s written by a woman who, being LDS, should have way more class and way more sense.  This statement shouldn’t take a thing away from what I’ve said above.  Women should be smarter than this.  Than this and all its ilk.

If you want an actual English Teacher’s exegesis on the use of syntax and structure of dialogue, I can serve. But don’t ask if you don’t need it. I’d have to open that book again, and really? I’ve got so many better things to do.