Twilight: The Breaking Dawn (Part 1!) Movie Review

Content Note: Infertility, Dangerous Pregnancy, Racism

OK, so a bunch of you might be aware that I made a big spectacle out of myself and saw Breaking Dawn over Thanksgiving weekend. And now it's time for the Very Serious Review. And note that I am not going to refer to the book at all because I think movies should stand on their own. Ready? Let's go!

In Which I Disagree With Everyone Else On Earth

I've now read about 873 reviews of Breaking Dawn The Movie (BDTM?) and pretty much all of them have said that the movie was too long, that it shouldn't have been broken into two parts, and that it's criminal to make a 2-hour long movie about a horny chick who wants to have sex with a hawt vampire.

I disagree.

I don't enjoy the Twilight series in the same way that, say, actual fans enjoy it. I don't like Edward, I don't like Jacob, and I don't particularly like Bella. I don't really care about what happens to any of them, and I certainly don't blame anyone else for not wanting to see this movie.

Having said that, if we are going to accept women and women's fantasies as just as valid and valuable as men's fantasies -- and I think we should -- then we also have to accept that a 2-hour movie about marriage and sex and childbirth and how these things are affected within a supernatural setting is a perfectly legitimate thing.

We don't get to say that Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone Movie is about the Human Experience because it covers childhood and school and making friends and eating yummy food at least as much as it does Evil and Death and Blowing Stuff Up but then turn around and sneer because another movie covers periods and sex and leg-shaving and sundry girl stuff in a supernatural setting. Because I'm a girl and I care a bit more about periods than I do about boarding school, and I can't be the only one. So there's that.

(Although, of course, if you hated the Harry Potter movies and also want to hate on Breaking Dawn, then I guess that's consistent. And, really, I'm not saying you can't hate Breaking Dawn! Hate it all you want, for whatever reason you want! I won't judge you! Honest! But I, personally, am not going to say that Breaking Dawn is a crap movie because "nothing happens" when I actually think a lot happens, it's just a lot of Not Blowing Stuff Up and more periods and childbirth and IVs and stuff.)

And, for the record, the first three Twilight movies had more vampires and Blowing Up Of The Stuff and I actually did think those were a bit too long and needed pruning shears. Breaking Dawn The Movie felt... about right. Or at least no longer than any other bloated Hollywood new release these days.

The Twitter helped, of course.

In Which I Spill Feminism All Over The Probably-Not-Very-Feminist Movie

For the record, I don't think Breaking Dawn The Movie was intended as a feminist movie. For the record, I think it has some very problematic elements. For the record, I cringed when the movie kept having Alice refer to "the fetus" so that Rosalie could gnash her teeth and yell "it's a baby!" (This happened at least twice.) For the record, I didn't enjoy Edward mentally bonding with Magic Vampire Baby in utero as though the baby would somehow magically know how to speak English at that point, or at least enough to convey love and goodness and purity and awesome Magic Vampire Babyness.

But here's the thing about being a feminist: you start seeing feminist messages in things that are marketed to women. And in Breaking Dawn The Movie, I saw a feature film about a woman being denied Choice in pretty much every aspect of her life until she finally dug in her heels and said screw you, this is my body. And... I'm not sure how I feel about that.

BDTM opens with Bella preparing for a wedding that she... doesn't want. She loves Edward and she wants to spend the rest of her life with him, and she wants him to turn her into a vampire so that they can masquerade at the same ages for the rest of eternity, but she doesn't want to be married right now. At first this seems like a contradiction -- she wants eternity, but not marriage? -- but it comes out that she's nervous about all the commotion and people and also the associated judging (because obviously only pregnant couples get married at eighteen!). OK. I get that. That feeling? Of wanting eternity but not a huge wedding? That feeling is totally valid.

But Edward won't turn her without a wedding, so Bella has to agree to the whole kit-and-kaboodle if she's going to have the future she wants. And naturally they can't have a small wedding because Alice wouldn't like that -- despite the fact that Alice could, you know, have her own wedding with Jasper -- so it's got to be as big as possible and Bella gets to be nervous and hyperventilating in front of the camera. And despite her obvious nervousness, no one -- least of all her long-suffering, packed-with-concerns father -- turns to her and says, "You don't have to do this. You have a choice." No one -- not Edward, not Alice, not Charlie -- actively offers Bella a Choice in the proceedings.

During the reception, Bella lets slip that she has made a Choice to try to have sex with Edward on their honeymoon, pre-vampirism, because she wants to experience pleasure as a human before she experiences the pain of turning and the blood-lust that follows. Jacob is furious because Bella's Choice is dangerous, but instead of trying to talk to her, he yells at her and grabs her arm and hurts her emotionally and physically. Jacob wants to take Bella's Choice away from her.

In their honeymoon suite, Edward and Bella have sex, and when she wakes up, Edward pushes her robe down to reveal light bruising on her arm and shoulder. Bella frowns deeply and meaningfully at the bruises, and it crosses her face that she is Not Happy About Them, but then she points out to Edward that (a) they knew this would be difficult and (b) they're doing pretty good all things considered. Edward refuses to listen to her, and refuses to discuss the point further: There will be No Sex Anymore.

Edward is very entitled to a say in this: no one should be expected to participate in sex that they aren't comfortable with. But Edward isn't discussing their sexual relationship; he's mandating it. There follows a montage where Bella does everything she can to seduce him and is openly more and more miserable and depressed, and still Edward refuses to even discuss alternatives with Bella. And this is a problem! Maybe Edward legitimately can't have PIV missionary sex with Bella, but that doesn't mean they have no recourse whatsoever on the sexual gratification front. And even if they didn't, he should still talk to her about it. But he won't, and in this very important aspect of every relationship, he robs her of a voice, and robs her of a Choice.

And then Bella is pregnant. And almost the first thing Edward says is "we're going to get that thing out of you."

He doesn't ask Bella what she wants. He doesn't even seem to consider that she might want something different from him. Edward believes the creature is evil; Bella has faith that the creature is good, or at least capable of good. At this point, neither really knows anything -- Bella's situation is utterly unique and unheard of. But Edward wants to have complete control over the situation. And, shockingly, Bella refuses to give him that control. Bella exercises her Choice.

BDTM has been criticized for portraying a woman intent against abortion despite the fact that her pregnancy is fatal, but this isn't quite true. Bella doesn't have an ectopic pregnancy; she has a Magic Vampire Baby pregnancy which is utterly unheard of. They don't really know if it's fatal or not -- they're flying totally blind. Furthermore, she has an actual plan that isn't just "carry baby to term; keel over dead". Bella plans to carry the baby as long as possible, have a C-section, and then be vampirized at the last minute. That way, she can have the baby plus her life. And she honestly seems to believe this will work; certainly she discusses the plan at length with Edward and Carlisle. And it's worth noting that Bella is right -- this is, in fact, precisely what happens in the end.

Bella is in danger, and she acknowledges that. She might die -- just as a great many women in normal pregnancy situations can die -- and she discusses that calmly with Edward. Edward makes the point that by robbing him of any say in the matter, she's potentially leaving him alone without her... and this is a Very Important Point. It's a point I'm glad he made. But in the end if two people can't be brought around to the same point of view, a decision has to be made. And I think that the person whose body is at stake is the person who should make the decision.

Being pro-choice means just that: it's about trusting women to make their own choices. It doesn't mean trusting women to make choices I approve of. If your doctor tells you there's an X% chance that your pregnancy will kill you and X turns out to be a number higher than I like, I totally reserve the right to privately think that maybe your choice is Not A Good Choice. But I will fight to make sure that you keep that right to make a choice because the validity of your choice is none of my business.

And now I'll wax personal for a minute. I am an infertile woman. I've spent a great deal of time and money trying to get pregnant, only to find out that, no, I can't. No babies for me. I'm okay with that. I have the life I want, the future I need, and the person I want to share it with.

But!

If I were suddenly pregnant tomorrow and there were a 10% chance the pregnancy might kill me, would I take that chance? What about a 20% chance or a 30% chance? What level of chance would be too high for me, and at what point would I say, no, the risk is too great, I'll get that abortion.

I honestly do not know. I'm not going to put a number on this hypothetical situation, because I can't know. But I would want that situation to be my choice. I send money to Planned Parenthood every year because I think everyone should have that choice. So while I may not appreciate Rosalie yelling at Alice about the difference between fetus and baby and vampire-demon-baby, I still appreciate that Bella is letting it wash over her because she clearly doesn't give a crap about the discussion. She's made her choice, and that's all that really matters to her.

Does that mean that I think Breaking Dawn The Movie is totes feminist? Not really. We've talked before that authors are not historians; they control their world, and they choose what to write. And writing up a scenario where a woman is in an incredibly dangerous and supernaturally strange pregnancy and refuses to hear word-one about abortion and is magically rewarded at the end with husband and baby and sparkly immortality for Winning The Game Of Patriarchy and Dying In Childbirth is rife with problematic issues. We will, in fact, discuss those issues at length over Breaking Dawn The Book, I'm sure.

But having said that, I don't think that Breaking Dawn The Movie is anti-choice. Or, maybe, I don't think it has to be read that way. I think it can be read as a woman saying look, this is a very strange situation and in the absence of any knowledge one way or another, here is the plan I want to follow. And then... her choice is slowly respected over the course of the movie. Most especially, her choice is eventually respected by Edward and Jacob, the two men who habitually have run rough-shod over her choices throughout this entire series.

Breaking Dawn The Movie is about Bella putting her foot down and saying, no, this is MY choice and then being right while Edward and Jacob were wrong all along. And I'm kind of okay with that a little.

In Which I Note That This Movie Is Incredibly Racist

Oh my god, there are so many things wrong with this movie in terms of race. Why did all 873 of the reviews focus on girl stuff and anti-choice and not mention that this movie is marinated in white privilege and racism? Where do I start?

Let's start with the housekeepers. The Cullens own this island, you see, because they are nauseatingly rich, but they can't be expected to do their own housework, so they hire some local People of Color to take care of the house while they're away. And the housekeepers -- a man and a woman... who are maybe married? -- pretty much know exactly what the Cullens are because c'mon, they sparkle in the sunlight.

So the Woman of Color has totally figured out that Edward is a vampire-demon-creature, but she's not worried for herself, or at least not so worried that she doesn't take a job cleaning his house. (Which is probably not a positive statement about poverty on the Cullen Family Island.) But despite the fact that she's pretty blase about her own safety, she panics and objects when she sees Bella because the pretty white girl is in danger.

Seriously? I guess it's... nice... that the housekeeper has such a big heart, but she has no idea who Bella is, or whether or not Bella is here of her own volition (she is) and fully understanding what can happen to her (she does). It's sort of this strange Noble Savage trope where the local native will grudgingly take on the dangerous job of cleaning the Vampire's home and laundering his sheets, but she'll risk everything to speak up on behalf of the pretty white girl.

And dang but she's got good eyes to be able to tell at a glance that Bella is human. Why are the Cullens able to pass as human, again?

But then... Bella gets pregnant. And Edward and Carlisle have a tense phone conversation that is basically how is this possible, I don't know, get home quick. And Edward immediately disappears 'round the bedroom door and hauls the housekeeper back in to see Bella because -- and this is almost a direct quote -- "Her people have legends. She might know about this sort of thing."

What.

Edward and Carlisle have spent 100 years researching vampires, being that they are highly motivated to research their own kind. But they've never heard of a human-vampire hybrid because this is a totally new situation. But Random Housekeeper Woman, she will know! Why? Because she has dark skin. And this is really the definition of racism within characterization: the idea that because a person is a non-white race, they automatically have a shared culture of exotic myths and legends. And these legends are mostly about white people.

Later, when Edward was chartering a private plane and talking to a non-white person while doing so, I imagine he was asking the same thing all over again. "I notice you're not white. Do you have any legends about white women giving birth to human-vampire hybrids? No? Well, worth a shot."

But probably the worst part of the film is the depiction of the Quileutes a.k.a. The Local Werewolf Tribe.

Now, I realize there's a strong and proud tradition of making werewolf communities act like dogs. They have alpha males and pack leaders and Very Strict Rules and they settle arguments with brawls. I'm pretty sure that S. Meyer didn't come up with that herself.

But! There is also a common and Very Problematic tradition of doing the same thing to People of Color, and making them animalistic beasts who react passionately to everything and don't use logic or calm indoor voices. And I refuse to believe that no one on this film didn't think for a single second that having a group of People of Color behaving in primitive, uncivilized, violent ways in stark counterpoint to the White People Next Door who are all calm and logical and Spock-like was maybe Not A Good Idea.

Just about every time a werewolf is on screen, there is Race Fail. Jacob is hot-tempered and passionate and yells at Bella and grabs her arms and yanks her around while Edward is cool and logical and quietly protects Bella from her hot-tempered suitor. When Jacob passionately argues to the tribe that they need to intervene to save Bella, there is chest thumping and discussions of Who Is The Leader Here instead of logical arguments or rational thought.

Later in the movie, Jacob enters the Cullen house to see Bella and finds the family in distress. Bella is pregnant and dangerously ill. Alice and Edward want to abort the pregnancy; Rosalie does not. The family discusses the matter calmly and coolly and without raised voices or tempers. Pretty much the very next scene, juxtaposed with this one, is the werewolf community running passionately through the woods, biting and snapping and tearing at one another as they argue how to respond to the situation. There is yelling and emotional arguments and growling and brawling because This Is How Decisions Are Made. And all this is totally, completely, utterly problematic because it sets up the White Vampires as civilized and honorable and the Dark Werewolves as savage and violent.

When Jacob warns Carlisle that the werewolves are coming to attack, Carlisle nods sagely and announces that the vampires will not be the first to draw blood. "We will not break the treaty," he says nobly. "In Sam's mind, it's already been broken," Jacob urges. "But not in ours," Esme says primly. The White People will hold their end of the bargain, even if it costs their lives to the angry and violent Dark People.

This? Should not be hard to see. I don't know if S. Meyer wrote it this way, and I don't care. There are a million ways to portray this better, and Hollywood is nothing if not willing to edit the intellectual property it buys. The werewolves have a point: they think that Bella's baby will destroy Forks... somehow. It doesn't make sense, but the writers could have made it make sense. Instead they just went with Violent and Irrational Dark People are violent and irrational. Arrrrrgh.

Really, the pinnacle of Race Fail for me was near the end when the wolves have the Cullens cornered and Jacob tears out of the house in full wolf form and lands, snarling, to defend the Cullens. He's communicating to the wolves that he's imprinted on Reneesmee, which should make her off limits because the tribe respects imprinting to the point that it's their most absolute law that imprintees cannot be attacked, but despite the fact that we've had several scenes of wolves "talking" to us, the viewer, in this scene, we receive everything second-hand from Edward, who is reading Jacob's mind.

Yes. In the pivotal scene where a Dark Man defends the White People from the other Dark People, all the words and interactions of the Dark People are muted to us and instead filtered to the viewer through the White Spokesperson. Because that's how Dark Peoples' culture should be sampled, according to Hollywood: through White Eyes.

In Which I Run Out Of Steam And Sum Everything Up

Breaking Dawn The Movie.
Movie about girl subjects in a supernatural setting. Perfectly valid; great if you like that sort of thing.
Movie about female choice in a pregnancy plot. Problematic, but can be viewed as choice-positive.
Movie about noble housekeeping savages and violent neighbor savages. MAJOR RACE FAIL.

136 comments:

Nathaniel said...

Here's the thing for me personally: If a movie is about relationships and tough choices and weddings, what some have labeled "girl stuff," then I have to give a shit about the characters in order for it too work. When I wish everyone would DIAF onscreen then we have a problem.

Ana Mardoll said...

Oh, sure. But I think that's going to be a personal subjective thing. Some people really like Bella and Edward and Jacob. For me, I would rather see a relationship movie between Luna from Harry Potter and Heimdal from Thor. And -- if we MUST have a love triangle -- Violet from A Series of Unfortunate Events. But that's just my personal subjective preference. :)

Kit Whitfield said...

It's sort of this strange Noble Savage trope where the local native will grudgingly take on the dangerous job of cleaning the Vampire's home and laundering his sheets, but she'll risk everything to speak up on behalf of the pretty white girl.

I suppose you could argue that she thinks that a sexual relationship with a vampire is more dangerous than a professional one ... but that skates over the fact that even if the housekeeper is a middle-aged or elderly woman and we assume that Edward's not attracted to women his own age, there must be some young and pretty women on the island, and even if Edward and the lads aren't attracted to any of them, you'd think the housekeeper would at least consider it possible. It's kind of casting white and brown people as two separate species that wouldn't be expected to interbreed.

Will Wildman said...

I'm a little fuzzy on the exact nature of the island - I originally assumed that it was a small, private island that is not inhabited by any humans unless the Cullens and/or their staff are present. Is it larger with a permanent population that just usually avoids the Cullen estate?

Kit Whitfield said...

We will not break the treaty," he says nobly. "In Sam's mind, it's already been broken," Jacob urges. "But not in ours," Esme says primly. The White People will hold their end of the bargain, even if it costs their lives to the angry and violent Dark People.

...Yeah. Because historically, white people have never broken their treaties with Native American people, and the genocide wasn't our fault at all. Yeah. I'm sure that's right.

--

I didn't enjoy Edward mentally bonding with Magic Vampire Baby in utero as though the baby would somehow magically know how to speak English at that point, or at least enough to convey love and goodness and purity and awesome Magic Vampire Babyness.

I can buy that a mind-reader would be able to read non-verbal emotions, given a foetus of sufficient development. What discomfits me is the idea that the father would essentially usurp the mother's role as person closest to the unborn child. I mean, I'm all in favour of father-child bonding and was always saying, 'Here, feel, he's moving!' and my husband read to my pregnant stomach and all the rest of it, but seriously, there are limits. Let's not forget who's getting the backache here. If I have to spend nine months with a human being sitting on my bladder, I refuse to renounce the role of primary human contact for said human being. That Classical idea that women are just the carrying-case and it's men who provide a baby with selfhood and identity? That was not correct.

Amaryllis said...

if we are going to accept women and women's fantasies as just as valid and valuable as men's fantasies -- and I think we should -- then we also have to accept that a 2-hour movie about marriage and sex and childbirth and how these things are affected within a supernatural setting is a perfectly legitimate thing.

Yes indeed.

To cross fandoms a bit, I recall reading a comment about the Vorkosigan series to the effect that the earlier books were about important stuff on which hung the fate of planets, but from A Civil Campaign on, they were "just" about people's feelings.

And I thought, yes, that book was a cheerful romance. And yet, under the romantical shenanigans there were questions on which hung the fate of Barrayar: will it be a society where women have control over their reproductive lives? Where women have sexual agency and financial independence? Where children have rights? Where biology is not destiny? Or, for that matter, where the Old Guard isn't allowed to keep running things its own way with backroom deals and back-alley knives?

It all seemed important to me, even if nothing got blown up.

Amarie: Why *now* of all times ?

Better late than never? But you raise good points.

It's been said that the early Christian Virgin Martyrs were standing up for their right to determine their own lives and control their own bodies in the only way available to them. But surely Bella has other options.

I just see it more as ‘Frack you all, I’m going to be the ultimate martyr because that’s Just What Women Are’.
Why now, definitely rather than "kind of"? Because now she can exercise the choice to be a mother. And if women are martyrs, mothers-- that is, Perfect Mothers-- even more so. (If I see one more teenage girl claim Gianna Molla as her role model, I'm going to start throwing things.)

(Not that Gianna didn't have a right to make the choice she did: but I'd like to see young women looking for opportunities that don't involve dying in childbirth.)

Charity Brighton said...

I think that was the problem for me too. The movie wasn't weak because it focused on "women and women's fantasies" or was about "marriage and sex and childbirth and how these things are affected within a supernatural setting" -- there are a lot (a lot!) of stories like that and most of them don't use that as an excuse not to do a good job.

The movie was bad because it took a very, very weak love triangle (if one of the two suitors clearly doesn't stand a chance, take out the love triangle! It's not required!), laid it over a paper-thin plot, and stretched it out into two movies for no reason. It's even more obnoxious than the Harry Potter 2-part finale since at least the plot of that book was effectively divided in half -- here it feels like 2/3rds of the book's material is in the 1st part and I have no idea how they're going to make the second part two hours long without wasting time or adding stuff.

That being said, it was probably my favorite Twilight movie because of the marriage and childbirth stuff. It was the first time in the series that the plot actually was engaging and the relationship between Edward and Bella seemed believable to me. Bella telling Jacob about her plan to become a vampire and standing firm on it was a really good scene. I disagreed with her decision, but at least she made one, and no one assaulted her as a result! Not something I would brag about in any other franchise but in this one... well, it's still better than the previous ones!

Ana Mardoll said...

Will, I'm confused as well. The Twilight Wiki seems to indicate that the Cullens own the *entire island* (and that it's a "tiny" island), but that there is also an "indigenous population". I do not know how this works, precisely.

http://twilightsaga.wikia.com/wiki/Isle_Esme

Ana Mardoll said...

Amarie, I think there's an extremely good case for a "pro-martyr" stance in the books, especially when you add into the fact that just about everyone in the books are "dead" in the "heart not beating sense" and pretty much the entire series is about when and how Bella will die.

(I will say that I kind of appreciate her going off to save her mother in the first book, if only because I get the strong impression that none of the Cullens would think twice about letting Renee die, as long as Edward's True Love is protected.)

Ana Mardoll said...

...Yeah. Because historically, white people have never broken their treaties with Native American people, and the genocide wasn't our fault at all. Yeah. I'm sure that's right.

Seriously, there is no W-T-F loud enough for what was going through my head during that scene.

Ana Mardoll said...

(Not that Gianna didn't have a right to make the choice she did: but I'd like to see young women looking for opportunities that don't involve dying in childbirth.)

Hear, hear.

Although, we come back to the chicken-and-egg problem of patriarchy, really. To cross threads with Slactivist, Dying In Childbirth is something that our culture values as noble; Feeding Your Child is something that is seen as disgusting, indulgent, and abusive. It's a bit tricky to navigate cultural values that you have no control over. *sigh*

graylor said...

While I was watching this last night, I found myself becoming annoyed with the magicly reappearing werewolf clothes, until I realized that the logic fail there was preventing even worse race fail. They may be animalistic, untrustworthy, superstitous natives, but, by god, they aren't wandering around the woods being all that and naked, too. Way to set a low bar, Hollywood.

Regarding Bella's pregnancy, I'm of several minds about it. Yes, she stood up to Edward and at least a portion of his family. (Did Jasper/Emmet/Esme have opinions here?) She made a choice and did so openly, without being passive-aggressive or deceptive. When she called Rosalie from the car, I half expected Bella to make a break for it somehow, but, instead, she just refused to follow Edward's command. Maybe it was a sign she was maturing at last? She goes from standing barefoot, staring at her honeymoon bed, looking like a rather lost little girl, to holding fast to her decisions and making sensible alliances within her new family.

Then again, Bella has been seriously depressed through the first two books, at least (I haven't read the others yet). TW: suicidal ideation, depression.

Vg pregnvayl ybbxf yvxr Oryyn unf ng yrnfg fhopbafpvbhf fhvpvqny hetrf. Gur zber qnatrebhf Rqjneq cebirf gb or, gur zber fur jnagf uvz. Naq abj, vs fur pna trg guebhtu gur jrqqvat, fur pna unir qrngu crefbavsvrq, jvgu jubz fur pna unir cbgragvnyyl yrguny frk. Guvf qbrf abg jbex nppbeqvat gb fhopbafpvbhf cyna: nyy fur trgf ner n srj oehvfrf, juvpu, tvira Oryyn'f pyhzfvarff, ner cebonoyl yrff frirer guna fbzr fur'f tvira urefrys bire gur lrnef. Gura gur fgnxrf ernyyl pbzr ubzr gb Rqjneq naq ur ershfrf gb cynl gur tnzr nal zber. Oryyn zvtug or rkphfrq sbe jbaqrevat nobhg uvf vagragvbaf gb inzc ure tvira uvf ernpgvba gb zreryl oehfvat ure. Jbhyq fur unir gb nethr uvz vagb vg ntnva? Jbhyq fur rira unir gur raretl gb qb fb?

Naq gura fur gheaf hc certanag. Sebz n qrngu-frrxvat CBI, vg'f jva-jva. Qvr va puvyqovegu (yrnivat n yrtnpl? znxvat n fgngrzrag nobhg yvsr? tvivat Rqjneq n "aba-synjrq" cvrpr bs urefrys?) naq or qrnq sbe ernyf, erfgvat rnfl va ure tenir ng ynfg, be qvr, or inzcrq, naq orpbzr synjyrff urefrys. Fur'f abg fb zhpu pubbfvat gb tvir yvsr nf pubbfvat qrngu--ohg fvapr fur'f orra pbafvfgragyl pubbfvat qrngu sbe gur jubyr frevrf, guvf fubhyqa'g or fhecevfvat. Nyy fur unf gb qb vf fvg onpx naq yrg angher gnxr vgf pbhefr bapr fur znxrf n fvatyr uneq naq snfg qrpvfvba gung fur unf Ebfnyvr gb rasbepr.

Jonathan Pelikan said...

I really loved the recent discussion about fantasy and all that. My wife and I have both been writing a variety of smutty stuff on our online communities for, oh, years now and it's been a lot of fun realizing that in porn women enjoy, people fuck too. in a lot of different and interesting ways. I guess that's what offended me about Twilight so much:

To Wife: "Shit, it's not that it's a 'girl's fantasy'; it's that I have literally written far better, and certainly less troubling, stuff for free than this celebrity author has been cranking out and earning lots of moneys for. If you want that sort of stuff, better options exist!"

I will very rarely claim to be a superior writer to any other person, especially one who has demonstrated cultural and economic success, but shit.

(Also, I agree completely that a series can turn from space marines and explosions to feelings. Or, ideally, have both in them. Novel One is going to be about our military intervention in a planetary civil war on a distant alien world, and then Novel Two is probably going to be about the leading couple getting together as they help rebuild the war-torn world and build a life amongst its inhabitants.)

(yes, 'is going' and 'probably' because they aren't really written yet. At least SMeyers put down words to pages in a decent volume.)

chris the cynic said...

Imagine how different it would have been if that had been called out. The reason they're not going to break this one treaty is that they've seen treaty after treaty after treaty broken by their side, they've seen the consequences of those violations. They can't do much about that, but right here, right now, just this one fucking time, they're going to make sure that they follow their end to the letter and the spirit 100%.

Really, given some of their ages, they should have a lot of emotional baggage. There should be at least a few things where they swore, "Never Again."

-

On the books being pro-martyr, this is the third paragraph of Twilight:
Surely it was a good way to die, in the place of someone else, someone I loved. Noble, even. That ought to count for something.

The books, from the very beginning, are about a willingness to die. A willingness to die based on bad information never double checked and benefiting no one, if I understand the context correctly. (Renee had not been kidnapped, if Bella had done any reasonable amount of checking she wouldn't have been in that situation and would have known that it was not, in fact, in anyone's place that she went bravely off to die.)

For that matter, before the original text of the book even starts Twilight opens with a quote saying that when you eat of the fruit you shall surely die, and Meyer, on her website, said that she sees Bella as having gotten just that fruit. Twilight is, from the first words you read, about Bella surely dying, and then when you get to the text itself, it becomes about her willingness to die.

Bella and death are closely linked from page one (well, if we're counting the bible quote it's actually the page before page one.) Whether it's her for mother or her child, she's completely ready to die.

I think I'd feel better about that if there were something in the text that made me think that willingness was out of a concern for others rather than a lack of concern for herself. Then again, I haven't made it all that far yet, maybe there will be something that does just that.

Ana Mardoll said...

Chris, I like your comment so much. It really is such a shame that the Cullens' potential for history is so wasted.

Throwing this out here, just because: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martyr_complex

I've never heard of it before and no idea how reputable any studies done on it are. The Wiki page is pretty slim. Anyone know of this?

hapax said...

Haven't seen the movie, so I can't comment on the presentation there, but I must say that the pregnancy section of BREAKING DAWN was my very favorite part of the whole series. I kept saying the whole time I was reading it, "Yes. That's it. EXACTLY like that." I was so darned thrilled to read a fictional depiction of pregnancy as miserable and life-sapping and horrible instead of beautiful and revitalizing and glowy, and those that love you best simply don't understand why you're so determined to go through with it anyway. (Or in my case, even went back for seconds!)

So this was the only time I personally related to Bella, almost down to the details. (It didn't hurt that most of this section was told through Jacob's p.o.v., since though he is a jerk, he has a highly entertaining fictional voice).

In re the treaty -- the Cullens can be as smug and self-righteous as they like, but they *DID* break the treaty. (At least in the book version). The treaty specifically said that "No more new vampires were to be created, and no-one was to be killed"; and the Cullens a) planned to vamp Bella, b) created a new "vampire" in her hybrid child, and c) were going to either kill her or vamp her as an outcome of the pregnancy.

The Quileutes have every reason to consider the Cullens to have reneged on their side of the deal.

SoberFilmCritic said...

I always try to see the best in movies, but sometimes films are just so crappy that they're downright nightmarish. In my first official review of a Twilight film, I wanted to give a decent review. I wanted to be nice and not piss off those diehard Twilight fans, but the temptation to trash this crappy film is just too great. The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 1 has quickly become one of those nightmarishly horrible films for me, and I'm going to tell you exactly why. For more of my thoughts on Breaking Dawn, check out my review at http://bit.ly/srXy6s

Amarie said...

To Amaryllis:

Yes…thank you. It’s that deeply religious subtext that just makes me gnash my teeth. Because *no one seems to see it*. Or if they *do* see it, then *no one seems to want to discuss it because That’s Just The Way It Is*. And I just don’t understand a God that ‘loves you’, but says that women-

*shuts the hell up and puts on ‘I Respect Religion Face’*


To Ana:

Oh, thank GODDESS that you’re not mad at me!!! D:

I read your ENTIRE post and I swear I struggled very, very hard to come up with a way that I could agree with you! But I just…see it as ‘YAY! Here’s another way to say Bella needs to die!’ So, for me, it kind of descends from a Pro-Choice or Pro-Life message and into that Pro-Female Martyr.

Now…let’s say things were different. Let’s say that Bella outright (and politely, of course) told all her suitors, ‘No. I don’t want to go to the dance with you and I’d prefer that you’d leave me alone. Please and thank you.’ And let’s say that Bella stood up to Edward the F.I.R.S.T time he acted like an ass****.

Then…we’d have a balance. We’d have a protagonist that stands up for herself when she has a *right* to stand up for herself…not just when she’s going to get hurt and *certainly* not when she’s going to die. *Then* I could root for Breaking Dawn being Pro-Choice. *Then* I could be convinced that Bella actually loves her child and not this Golden Opportunity to die the Ultimate Death of a Female. *Then* I’d be proud to be a current fan.

…But we don’t get that balance and therefore, I can’t root for this. Forgive, Ana? : (


To Chris:

As usual, you are Awesome Sauce at saying what’s on my mind in a better way. *hugs*

Kit Whitfield said...

The Twilight Wiki seems to indicate that the Cullens own the *entire island* (and that it's a "small" island), but that there is also an "indigenous population". I do not know how this works, precisely.

Best guess? It's a former colony that they bought from a white person who was descended from the original conquerors, and the 'indigenous population' didn't get a say.

Either that or the island's owned by local royalty and the current king is a sell-out, or else has non-Western standards of ownership and sees no reason not to take some money in exchange for letting the Cullens use the land too. But if that were the case, you'd expect the local aristos to be at least some kind of feature of life there.

--

I'm with hapax in thinking it's good, from a mother's perspective, to have some portrayals of pregnancy as an ordeal rather than The Most Wonderful Experience In The World. I love my son, but being pregnant was basically like being ill for the best part of a year; I got prettier hair, but pregnancy wasn't fun, and it's nice to see that acknowledged.

Mind you, I haven't read the book. But pregnancy is a major experience, and frankly the only other work I can think of that treats it as a subject in itself is Rosemary's Baby.

Kit Whitfield said...

TW: childrearing controveries, racism


Edward and Carlisle have spent 100 years researching vampires, being that they are highly motivated to research their own kind. But they've never heard of a human-vampire hybrid because this is a totally new situation. But Random Housekeeper Woman, she will know! Why? Because she has dark skin.

When you consider that Edward and Carlisle have presumably been visiting the island during that time, the fact that it never occurred to them to ask the locals about their legends before is curious. Probably it's just a way of fudging some plot explanation, but the effect is to animalise people of colour again. Or at least, sort of. When the white men are doing research out of curiosity, it's an intellectual business, and obviously you don't listen to the natives' chitter-chatter when you're doing serious research. All they have is legends, and you're interested in facts.

When it comes to the physical, female business of pregnancy, though, suddenly facts and science and all those male preserves fly out the window. Now you need Noble Savages.

Which rather reminds me of just how often fads about childbirth, breastfeeding, weaning and babystuffingeneral like to use phrases like 'Women in the Third World do it!' and 'We've been doing this for millions of years!' - conflating Noble Savages in contemporary and historical settings. There's a trend for feeding babies unmashed food at the moment, for instance, and advocates like to say that Western society overcomplicates things with baby food - from which we can assume, perhaps, that it only ever occurred to white people to look at a vegetable and think, 'Hey, let's mash this thing!' And don't even get me started on Hypnobirthing.

Fashions about Natural Methods very often invoke non-white culture to back up pseudo-science. I think we're seeing a variant of it here. To be a true earth mother, you need to identify yourself with the earth, with non-intellectual physicality. With brown people.

...Yeah. I'm prepared to defend a lot of Twilight, but it is indefensibly racist.

Ana Mardoll said...

Oh, Amarie! *hugs* I don't think I could ever be mad at you and CERTAINLY not because you didn't like the Breaking Dawn movie. Ha. :)

I had not considered what you put forward extremely well: that Bella only stands up for her choice when the act of standing up for herself also puts her life in danger. Possibly this is a reflection on a society that prizes martyred women over confident women, which is REALLY messed up, so I completely understand saying WHOA NOT FOR ME. It's a great point and I'm thrilled you made it, because I missed that particular FedEx arrow. :D

I do think it's sad that in terms of "movies that present pregnancy as not fun" and "movies that deal with the OPTION of abortion" (let alone HAVING one, because that narrows the field even more) we have so few movies to pick from. I liked, for example, Juno, but I would have liked it more if they hadn't breezed past the abortion option so quickly. :(

Ana Mardoll said...

...Yeah. I'm prepared to defend a lot of Twilight, but it is indefensibly racist.

This. And the worst part is, I really do not think this should be that hard for the movie makers to see. I am not super-sensitive to racism and white privilege having as I do quite a bit of white privilege myself. But I was facepalming so much in the movie, and I'm frankly kind of astonished that so many reviews have focused on the "anti-choice" messages and the "boring romance" stuff and not so much on the really astonishing front-and-center race issues that are all over the place in this movie.

Makes me think I saw a different movie than everyone else or something. o.O

Ana Mardoll said...

And another thing I totally forgot to add to all this is that the character of Leah is so problematic. (She's a wolf in Jacob's pack.) Jacob is a complete jerk to her pretty much the entire movie, while the Cullen family are incredibly close-knit even when they disagree. (Rosalie and Alice, for example, disagree strongly on the pregnancy, but still cuddle Bella and help her pick out names.)

So... basically the "native" people are also sexist jerks who prize female traditional gender roles (which Leah doesnt' embody, through no fault of her own) over their own flesh-and-blood family. Maybe it's more complicated than that in the book, but that's what I got from the movie, and that's really distressing to me. Especially since, as with the treaty above, that framing -- White People egalitarian; Dark People sexist -- has quite a few real world history examples in stark contradiction.

GeniusLemur said...

A series CAN "turn from space marines and explosions to feelings," but it does tend to involve breaking a promise to the reader. A reader who read the first book (or the first three books) and got/wanted an intense war experience is probably going to be surprised and dissatisfied with a novel where Sgt. Granite goes home on leave and rebuilds his marriage.

GeniusLemur said...

Actually, good authors ARE historians, in a sense. I've been told many times that you know you're a good writer when your characters start standing up for themselves and doing things you didn't intend. At that point, you're following them more than controlling them.

I've heard other writers express frustration that their characters won't behave the way they want them too, but I doubt S. Meyer ever had that problem.

Silver Adept said...

Sounds like the movie is following the track of the books pretty well - small flashes of "ooh, that's okay" or "this could have been better" wrapped in large amounts of various manners of FAIL.

The "white people good, dark people bad" was probably played up to be a contrast to support the non-existent love triangle, but yikes, they've run right into it.

Although, that makes me think - since Isabella is behaving like a girl in the Time That Never Was for most of the movies and the books, and the Cullens are from a Time That Supposedly Was, perhaps there's a field that extends from the Cullens that rewrites modern society with all its complications into this marionette display?

Because...Jasper? (If so, then Jasper's far stronger and scarier than we thought.)

Dav said...

The reviews I read did boggle over the racism, but then they were all pretty much sources I like to read, so the correlation isn't that surprising. But yeah, I would have thought that at least they'd have someone on set, or in the writer's room, or at least in the editing booth to say "Soooo, here's the scale of racist movie premises. Here's where you are, on par with the Jungle Book's implication that people of color are apes that want to be men. Let's see if we can improve this a bit."

TW: abortion/miscarriage stuff

I'm still troubled by the choice Bella makes, because this is usually the only choice ever made on-screen. If the writers want to write out a baby, there's a miscarriage. If a woman starts out wanting an abortion, 90% of the time, she changes her mind. 9.9% of the time she has a miscarriage and blames herself. (I hope this isn't actually true, but it is what I feel like I see.) It's like the evil/crazy lesbian trope - there's nothing wrong with having an evil/crazy lesbian in your movie/book/TV show, but it means something different when pretty much every lesbian in any media representation ever is either evil or crazy.

That doesn't mean I don't support Bella's choice, but I'm not sure I support the set-up.

Amarie said...

To Ana:

*cooes happily and hugs you back* Whew! Thank goodness!

And I agree with you; we’d rather have women suffering in silence and getting themselves killed with that suffering (or, going one better and killing themselves…yay for New Moon!) than have women actively standing up for their right to *live*. And live *well*.

OH!!! And on a side note, I take all of my finals next week. And my last one is on Thursday (December 15th). So I’m going to post/comment SO much that all you blogging people are going to get SICK of me! Nyahahahaa! >:D


To Kit:

*runs up to you and hugs you, squealing* :D :D :D :D :D

Kit, if I may…

Do you think that the racism in Twilight ties very, very strongly into the religious subtext? Because I know that “Brown People Are Cursed With The Mark of Cain” is in *former* Mormon mythology, but…sometimes I wonder…

Or, do you think it’s just bad/lazy writing on Mrs. Meyer’s part? At least, in terms of lack of awareness of what’s on the page…?

I feel that I, personally, really couldn’t commit that much on it (even though I have) because I’m dark skinned myself. And therefore, I feel I’m…too close to it, if that’s the right phrase? Can you or anyone else give an intellectual/objective perspective on it, perhaps…?

bekabot said...

"And another thing I totally forgot to add to all this (I ran out of steam) is that the character of Leah is so problematic. (She's a wolf in Jacob's pack.) Jacob is a complete jerk to her pretty much the entire movie..."

Jacob is a better man than Edward, but Leah is a better man than Jacob. So true.

Ana Mardoll said...

Here's where you are, on par with the Jungle Book's implication that people of color are apes that want to be men.

I hadn't heard this before. I... feel kind of bad saying I don't immediately see it? Then, too, I wasn't really able to see a problem with The Lion King, at least not in the "the lions are white, the hyenas are black" sense, so it's possible that I'm just blind to animal movies in general. I thought King Louie and the apes were supposed to be... just plain apes?

Ana Mardoll said...

because this is usually the only choice ever made on-screen.

Absolutely, and it makes me so frustrated. There's even a "convenient miscarriage" trope on TV Tropes to avoid showing positive abortions. Grr.

My NaNo novel -- the novel that NaNo led me to instead of the one I started with -- is going to have a positive abortion in it. Yay. :)

Will Wildman said...

I've been told many times that you know you're a good writer when your characters start standing up for themselves and doing things you didn't intend. At that point, you're following them more than controlling them.

I've heard other writers express frustration that their characters won't behave the way they want them too, but I doubt S. Meyer ever had that problem.


Meyer actually went on at length about how she didn't want Edward to leave in New Moon and yet he insisted on doing so anyway. Assuming she's not lying, she's very much in the 'my characters work independently of me' style.

I don't at all believe that this is an automatic mark of a good writer, of course, because everyone has their own style and the only mark of a good writer is that they produce good writing.

Do you think that the racism in Twilight ties very, very strongly into the religious subtext? Because I know that “Brown People Are Cursed With The Mark of Cain” is in *former* Mormon mythology, but…sometimes I wonder…

I can't claim huge insight here, but the two are at least interwoven - one of the things Mark (of Mark Reads) pointed out was that more than once, when we see Jacob and pals hanging out in human form, they're noted to be drinking a lot of soda, which ties into the position of caffeine in LDS theology - it's not entirely unlike having them all constantly drinking beer all the time, but less blatant.

Ana Mardoll said...

Meyer actually went on at length about how she didn't want Edward to leave in New Moon and yet he insisted on doing so anyway. Assuming she's not lying, she's very much in the 'my characters work independently of me' style.

I'm going to write a whole post on this, but I might as well mention that I have an interview with S. Meyer explaining that the entire reason that Jacob was invented was because "Edward couldn't say, "I am a vampire.""

So instead of having Bella do research on her own, or have her overhear a conversation by the Cullens, or accidentally see Edward's wrist sparkle in the sunlight, she created a "local native" who would have a legend of the white Cullen vampires and would share said legend to Bella after Bella deliberately flirts with him to get information.

Saying that one 'had' to do that to propel the story is not, in my opinion, an excuse. I'm well aware of the concept of "living characters" and I think there's a place for it in writing, but there's also a point where you say "OK, that method of connecting A to B is not acceptable, so I have to find another way."

BrokenBell said...

Oh, Leah. She's the one character I feel any real amount of empathy for, and she's treated with such contempt. Not just by Jacob and everyone, but the text itself seemed to be against her. The whole series is full of terrible things, but for me, Leah was the saddest part of the entire thing. The world of Twilight is just unremittingly horrible to her, and... I don't know, maybe I'm forgetting things, but I don't remember ever getting the sense that we were supposed to feel any real amount of sympathy for her. So terrible.

Loquat said...

I wasn't really able to see a problem with The Lion King, at least not in the "the lions are white, the hyenas are black" sense

Wait, the lions are supposed to be white? I always thought the allegory was that lions were hard-working black people trying to live right, and the hyenas were the gangstas who turn formerly good black neighborhoods into violent ghettos, and the only "white" characters were the two comic sidekicks who normally just chill out being slobs and have no connection to the lion community.

Ana Mardoll said...

[tw: animal violence]

We just watched a National Geographic -- an old one, part of the collection they had on sale awhile back -- on hyenas and it was REALLY fascinating. Funny enough, the hyenas often kill their own food and the LIONS steal it. So Disney got that wrong. But the hyenas also practice fratricide and hold to the Highlander theory of sibling rivalry -- there can be only one. *shivers* It was a really graphic NG movie -- interesting how they've gotten a lot more censored over time. Not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing.

bekabot said...

"Oh, Leah. She's the one character I feel any real amount of empathy for, and she's treated with such contempt."

Yes, and she's one of the few characters in the series who is even capable of acting like an adult. Jacob is capable of acting like a grown-up too, but he doesn't always deign to do it. Case in point: in Breaking Dawn (this happens in both the book and the movie, I believe) when Leah joins her brother and abandons Sam's pack to stand with Jacob, Jacob snoots that he doesn't want her around. Leah is hurt, understandably, but she replies equably that in order to be a member of his pack she doesn't have to like him, she just has to be able to follow him, upon which Jacob reluctantly acquiesces.* What she's actually saying is that she's not going to let her feelings override her brain (IOW take offense at Jacob's childishness and huff off) and she's also implying that she'd appreciate the same courtesy from Jacob (not that she gets it). Because, as Leah knows, Jacob badly needs allies. He's not really in a position to tell her and her brother to go to hell. If he's going to be the leader of anything, let alone a werewolf pack, he's going to have to think like a leader: i.e. accept the help that offers itself, and not turn down followers just b/c they're not people he'd prefer to roast marshmallows with on the beach.

This is a fine observation on Leah's part, yet neither the text nor Jacob ever gives her credit for it. Instead, both the text and Jacob go on and on about what a drag Leah is. But during the time when the action of the text is taking place, Leah is fighting a very deep grief; as deep, perhaps, as Bella's was when Edward walked out on her.** (Except that Bella doesn't have to cope, day after day, with having to watch Edward enchanted under the sway of a rival.) Both the text of New Moon and the people around Bella are respectful of Bella's pain — maybe too respectful, since months pass before one of Bella's high school pals suggests that Bella isn't acting in a healthy way and should get out more. But Leah's feelings for Sam are supposed to be disposable; they're in the way and merit no consideration. One of the things that honestly disturbs me about this series is the number of times it provides convincing accounts of actual injustices and then approves of the injustices. Heartbreak and pain are just what secondary characters get (this applies to Jacob as well as to Leah); they're what spear-carriers deserve for intruding themselves into the important concerns of real people. Primary characters get heartbreak and pain too, since without the angst there wouldn't be a plot, but their heartbreak is heartbreak which matters. The pain experienced by secondary characters is presented as the unfortunate byproduct which gets churned out when things arrange themselves for the best (and this is just a dark-versus-pale thing, because that's the way the text treats Charlie too).

bekabot said...

"....(and this is just a dark-versus-pale thing, because that's the way the text treats Charlie too)."

I meant: (and this is not just a dark-versus-pale thing, because that's the way the text treats Charlie too)...

Plus:

*I'm not trying to quote or cite anything exactly here; but I think I'm accurate in a over-all way.

**Lots of people don't like it when Edward ditches Bella but I'm willing to give him credit for the correct intentions, much as I don't like him. If Edward had stayed away from Bella longer Bella might have been able to stay alive.

Typos are the bane of my existence.

Dav said...

I thought King Louie and the apes were supposed to be... just plain apes?

Sure, but just because racist intent wasn't in the production doesn't prevent racist implications.

Ana Mardoll said...

Well, I mean, I understand that, but I don't see the FedEx arrow, I'm afraid. It's not your job to educate me, but if you wanted to share why the implications are racist, I'd welcome the opportunity to learn. Otherwise, I can do the work myself, which is probably what I should do in the first place. I apologize. :)

bekabot said...

"I Wanna Be Like You" is the tune with which the very pale Bella serenades the even paler Cullens from about the middle of Twilight up till nearly halfway through Breaking Dawn. The audition doesn't stop until after the original Bella has died and has been replaced with a vampire copy.

Ana Mardoll said...

[Mel Brooks] Boy, when you die at Caesar's Palace, you REALLY DIE at Caesar's Palace. [/Mel Brooks]

Ana Mardoll said...

@bekabot, yes, that scene is in the movie, and it drove me nuts too. I'm not really sure that the movie is trying to drive home that Jacob is a jerk or not, but that's the take-away for me in that scene -- that he's so immature and childish that Leah would make a better pack leader than he at that point. *sigh*

Dav said...

No need to apologize, and normally I try not to bring up stuff I don't have the strength to defend, but I'm just not sure I'm up to it today. The skeleton of it involves a convergence of associations (jazz, especially scatting, which at least in the community I grew up in carries a fairly specifically African American connotation, apes [with the racist history of comparing people of color to animals and especially apes], the idea that those without civilization are not truly men and that those that aren't recognized as fully human are "scoundrels" for seeking admission, and so forth) - and all these are converging at a time when the civil rights movement is heating up and the first African American justice is elected to the Supreme Court.

I wish I had a good go-to essay on hand, because I've read a couple of them, but I can't dig one up.

Ana Mardoll said...

I understand. Spoons are spoons. I was just surprised because I'd heard that Louis Prima was cast over Louis Armstrong specifically because Disney didn't want to ask a black man to voice an ape, so I was a little surprised that the movie was still FedEx arrowy. I'll do some googling and see if I can come back with anything. Thank you. :)

Ana Mardoll said...

Oh, and adding: and Disney -- as I'm sure you already know -- has had HUGE problems with racism in their movies, so it's not like it wouldn't surprise me that the Jungle Book had similar issues. There's a very strong pattern, after all, so I hope that didn't sound like I was ZOMG NOT DISNEY. More ZOMG LEARNING OPPORTUNITY FOR ANA but it occurs to me that's not immediately obvious in what I've written here. *embarrassed*

chris the cynic said...

Jerry Jenkins also holds to the discovery theory of authorship. For example, he doesn't decide to kill off a character, he simply finds the character dead which conveniently happens when the character no longer has a purpose to serve.) Of course, Jerry Jenkins also types up books at a rate of 20 pages a day, which puts him at producing a book in 20 days, so I'm not sure he leaves himself time to do much more than that kind of stream of consciousness stuff.

The fact that Meyer created Jacob specifically to tell Bella something implies to me that she's not taking a historian of the imagination approach to writing. She's got a strong enough sense of the characters to know what they won't do*, but she's still taking enough control that she's deciding that Jacob's entire purpose should be to tell someone who is very white (Bella describes herself as albino) about people who are even whiter.

She didn't discover that Jacob's tribe's legends were about vampires and Edward's family, she invented Jacob and the legends because she wanted something to convey the information and thought a local Native tribe would do just the trick.


* Does anyone else find it interesting that examples of Edward asserting his character to Meyer both involve Edward breaking his word? He won't say, "I'm a vampire," even though he promised to say just that. He will leave without giving a heads up even though he swore that he'd never do that again. Meyer conceives Edward as an oath-breaker even when she wants him to keep his word.

She can't make him, because if there's one thing not even his author can make Edward do, it's keep his word to Bella. He might do a lot of things, but apparently treating Bella with respect isn't one of them.

-

I know of Leah only via incidental things I have read on the wiki, but already I feel sorry for her and want her life to be better. Everything I read makes me think the entire universe is out to get her.

-

There was, once upon a time, a theory that only women could be infertile. If hazy memories from high school are correct a group of Ancient Roman priests were able to exploit this belief in order to have sex with the wives of infertile men once a year and be called miracle workers for it rather than be punished for taking part in adultery. That's just a random aside.

The main point I have in bringing up this belief is that in Twilight it is true. Vampires aren't infertile, only female vampires are infertile. Werewolves aren't infertile, only female werewolves are infertile. That's just ... it's not ... what the fuck Meyer?

-

Maybe I'm remembering wrong, but wasn't King Louis played by a white Italian guy who basically played himself? (Sort of like how in Fern Gully Robin Williams isn't so much playing a bat as he is playing Robin Williams.) If it sounds like white guy, and it acts like a white guy and it moves like a white guy and it looks like an ape, I personally do not fully understand where the people of color come in. I'm not saying that they don't or that it isn't racist, I just don't understand.

sekushinonyanko said...

There is some truth to some of that, though. Brown people have been having babies as long as white people have, and if they hadn't figured out to do some significant amounts of surviving it then they'd have died out or at least dwindled. The idea that white male patriarchal doctors are the only people that know anything about birthing babies is a bit absurd, and it doesn't take an Earth Mama to see that. Sure, there is a lot to be gained from more modern, Western practices, particularly in cases where there are complications, but that doesn't mean that a male doctor that knows of birthing only from textbooks and clinical situations is definitely a better bet than a doula or midwife that's had children herself and learned and seen a lot with her own two eyes.

Ana Mardoll said...

Maybe I'm remembering wrong, but wasn't King Louis played by a white Italian guy who basically played himself?

From what I can find online, King Louis was originally slated to be played by Louis Armstrong (famous black jazz musician), but Disney recognized that would be problematic, so they contracted Louis Prima, who was a white (Sicilian) man.

"King Louie is a fictional orangutan who kidnaps Mowgli in Disney's 1967 animated musical adaptation of The Jungle Book. He is voiced by Louis Prima in the film and therefore has his same mannerisms." -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_Louie

"His singing and playing showed that he absorbed many of the same influences as his fellow Crescent City musician, Louis Armstrong, particularly in his hoarse voice and scat singing." -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Prima

So... rather than cast a black man as an ape, they got a white man whose musical act was heavily influenced by said black man. I'm not sure if that makes it better or worse or what. (I'm also wondering how much it would have mattered if Disney hadn't had a demonstrably bad track record on race issues -- they may have just run well and truly out of benefits of the doubt by "The Jungle Book". It may come down to a YMMV issue for a lot of people?)

Ana Mardoll said...

I know of Leah only via incidental things I have read on the wiki, but already I feel sorry for her and want her life to be better. Everything I read makes me think the entire universe is out to get her.

I feel the same way, and additionally feel like there is a slogan opportunity here. Team Leah?

cjmr said...

*is confused*

Are the werewolves in Twilight patriarchal?

Ana Mardoll said...

I'm not sure -- I haven't gotten through the entire series yet. They are "wolfish" in the "has an alpha pack leader" sense, but apparently (per bekabot above) they do sometimes have female pack leaders. Of course, being a female werewolf is incredibly rare and additionally means you're infertile and also you can't imprint on anyone (I think). So it's definitely a system where being a male is preferable according to the world building.

Ana Mardoll said...

nobody likes Leah; she can't command the loyalty of her packmates and she knows it. Nobody would pledge allegiance to her cause.

Funnily enough, don't they all hate her because she can't stop mooning over her True Love? Which is... basically what Jacob is doing ALL THE TIME? Ah, New Moon and Eclipse are going to be such fun to deconstruct.

Rikalous said...

I remember from Book the Third (that's Eclipse, right?) that one of Leah's complaints was that being plugged into the pack hivemind with lovestruck Jacob was giving her erotic dreams of Bella. So I figure that in-universe, there's a double standard from the pack because, heterosexual males that they are, they're more comfortable with dreaming of Bella than of Sam.

bekabot said...

What I meant is that in RL once in a while a female wolf leads a pack. (It seems to have more to do with the pack rank of the individual animal than with the gender of the individual animal.) I was generalizing from real wolves to fictional shapeshifters who happen to take the form of wolves, (which, you're right, isn't a safe thing to do) then hypothesizing that if real female wolves can lead packs, hypothetical wolfy female Quileutes might be able to lead packs. But, as you probably can tell, I really don't know.

The Twilight-verse for the most part has this issue sewn up in the sense that ordinarily (to the extent that 'ordinarily' exists in the Twilight-verse) there are no female werewolves and therefore the question never comes up. Nevertheless, for reasons best known to herself, S. Meyer chose to create Leah, and out of that decision confusion was born. (I forget what particular form of hand-waving Meyer used to explain Leah. My favorite theory, which I read on this blog, is that Leah is an androgen-insensitive male who has developed as female. I feel guilty for liking that idea though, b/c it has the effect of defeminizing Leah even more.)

Rikalous said...

TW: animal violence

When a male lion takes over a pride, he kills off any cubs the former male sired. So Scar is actually more merciful than a real-life lion.

TW endeth
------
Regardless of what you think the Lion King lions and hyenas represent, the villain's Sinister Plan involves integration, which ruins the nation. Oh, and the pro-integration villain is a hypocrite interested only in his own advancement. Poor orcy hyenas.

Brin Bellway said...

bekabot: My favorite theory, which I read on this blog, is that Leah is an androgen-insensitive male who has developed as female. I feel guilty for liking that idea though, b/c it has the effect of defeminizing Leah even more.

As I see it, she's still female whether she has a Y chromosome or not. But then, I'm biased: the androgen-insensitivity theory was my idea. (I was thinking of it as something that could have been done with a couple minor tweaks, but wasn't. Though with the variety of ways human bodies can develop, there might well be ways of getting both a Y chromosome and a functioning uterus*. I'm not sure.) It's just defeminising enough to give androgen-insensitive!Leah her angst quota.

*She used to menstruate, so the usual form of complete androgen insensitivity doesn't apply (they don't have ovaries). Maybe there's rarer forms?

Ana Mardoll said...

Regardless of what you think the Lion King lions and hyenas represent, the villain's Sinister Plan involves integration, which ruins the nation.

Huh. I hadn't looked at it that way before. I always thought the problem wasn't integration but over-farming a finite resource in a sort of Tragedy of the Commons sort of way. And with a dash of Bad Ruler Equals Bad Harvest, what with the rains not coming until the Mustafa-Simba line is restored.

'Course, I also thought the hyenas were supposed to represent Nazis, after all the goose-stepping in the Villain Song. Really, the movie seemed all over the map, symbols-wise.

That's a really crummy FedEx arrow, though, the anti-integration angle. :(

Ana Mardoll said...

f course, Jerry Jenkins also types up books at a rate of 20 pages a day, which puts him at producing a book in 20 days, so I'm not sure he leaves himself time to do much more than that kind of stream of consciousness stuff.

It's like his WHOLE LIFE is NaNoWriMo. *cold shivers*

Steph said...

I don't think this was intentional, but adding to the pro-choice interpretation of the movie, apparently Reneesme doesn't have any mind for Edward to read until quite late in the pregnancy.

Other things I noticed--
--If the baby was male, they were going to name it Edward Jacob. Why not be consistent and go with "Charlisle"?
--Alice is such a jerk. You're wearing those shoes whether you want to or not, Bella, I don't care if high heels are uncomfortable and downright dangerous for you. No, you don't get any say in how big the ceremony is. What, you think your wedding is all about YOU?

Steph said...

Also, I kind of liked the honeymoon scenes, I think because they didn't really talk, so it didn't even have to be Edward and Bella. You could just pretend that Lisa from Zathura was having a romantic moonlight skinny dip with Cedric Diggory. It was kind of sweet.
(Ditto on the wondering why, if Bella getting hurt/killed was such a huge danger, they didn't just take turns making each other happy? It's like it was missionary PIV or nothing.)

Cupcakedoll said...

I can't get past the whole, "these conveniently close brown people will have legends that just happen to apply to our current situation." The racism factor is really bad but everyone already said intelligent things about that and I have nothing to add but the implausibility factor is bugging me.

So I present: slightly plausible legend:
"Back in my great-grandmother's time a woman came fleeing the... well... your people, pardon Master Edward.* The family that owned the island before yours, they were the same sort. They threw her out when she got in the family way. Great-granny hid her in the basement and tried to care for her but she got sicker and sicker. The doctor had to give her blood--we had a real doctor, European trained, came over with the missionaries. His name's in the big Bible that used to be in the church now it's in the museum where the damp won't rot the pages further. Oh yes, sorry, the baby. Was a demon-child. Killed the mother, bit its way right from her womb and began to eat her flesh. The midwife ran and brought the doctor, he found the child unbreathing in its mother's corpse. They boarded up the basement and moved out of that house soon as they could."

Makes sense, appropriate demonbaby bloodyness, and contains a heads-up that Carlisle should start sneaking equipment home from the hospital 'cause Bella's going to need serious medical attention.

*servant-speak added for fictional effect, not actual racism. Come to think of it I wonder how these servants would talk to a master who could kill them and drink their blood, but has sworn not to so they're probably safe, but still he COULD but they're not supposed to KNOW he could so they shouldn't be acting too terrified and also they live alone on the island most of the time so they're comfortable on their home turf but still... I'm glad I'm not a servant to vegetarian vampires, but writing one might be interesting.

Mime_Paradox said...

Re: The Jungle Book: Now I'm wondering where TaleSpin fits into all this.

For those who never saw it, it's an early-nineties animated series that re-contextualized several Jungle Book characters as citizens of interbellum America in standard antropomorphic 'verse with no homo sapiens to be found. Baloo is turned into a stock sitcom character of Unprofessional Slob With a Big Heart who's also an ace pilot; Shere Khan is now a mixture of the 90's Lex Luthor and Lord Vetinari; and Louie (who is voiced by the white Jim Cummings) is the owner of a Pacific Island-themed club/hotel and the island it's located on. It's a fun series with a cool setup, but there's a lot of underlying culture fail, and I wonder how much of it is new and how much comes from Jungle Book leftovers.

Bayley G said...

...Apparently, in the books, Leah's shifting killed her father. I'd honestly forgotten that; it's mentioned so little. The movies removed it altogether. I was reminded of this when I went to do a blog post about Leah based on some of the comments here: http://yamikuronue.wordpress.com/2011/12/12/the-problem-of-leah/

Bayley G said...

Oh yeah, on Lion King: The sequel does a good job of pointing out the innate racism in having the villain lion be much darker than any of the generic or hero lions. Though I'm not a fan of having my childhood heroes painted as racists for no reason, thankyouverymuch.

I saw the film as more class warfare than racism: Scar promised his followers enough food to live on and they all followed him to the ends of the earth. It's like Occupy the Savannah or something. But of course he's evil because... he's trying to overthrow the monarchy, which sucks for the prince. Oh yeah, and he's an inept ruler, but we knew he was a villain before then. He's inept because he's a contemptuous man who refuses to listen to advice and he's that because he's the villain and he's the villain because he wants to get rid of the king. So it's problematic all the way down

Ana Mardoll said...

I spent all evening thinking about Jungle Book, and I think I can see it now. (Not that that suddenly validates the FedEx arrow, or anything. Just that I'm slightly more educated now.)

I think for me, the privilege blinders come in to play in that I have very little background in music history so I neither recognized that "I Wanna Be Like You" is jazz and scat any more than the other songs in the movie, and even if I had, I didn't immediately put together the African American association with jazz. (The Jungle Book, wiki tells me, was made in 1967 which was Very Much Before My Time, so I came to it with a lot of ignorance on my part.)

So, yeah, making a very community of apes that are jazz singers and musicians when jazz is associated strongly with African Americans, and (apparently) writing the role for a famous black jazz musician before then deciding to just-in-case go with a white musician who was heavily influenced by same... yeah. FedEx arrows. (And the lyrics don't help, now that I'm looking from a different perspective.)

I think my initial "wait what??" reaction, for me, was less out of a need to defend TJB -- which is not one of my favorites, and Disney does have an abysmal record on race issues -- but more just... sad that something that had seemed innocent to me before now seems rife with (intended or not) Unfortunate Implications). That's a shame in a "why must the world be this way" kind of sense.

In a perfect world, you should be able to haze jazz-singing apes voiced by a famous black musician, and the fact that you can't in THIS world without Unfortunate Implications is not a good thing. It means we live in a crappy world. Which I already knew, but it's rough being reminded of that sometimes. :(

Ana Mardoll said...

Shakesville has noted, with regards to the Occupy movement, that unless a movement is EXPLICITLY anti-racism, anti-sexism, anti-classism, etc., then the movement isn't staging a revolution, but rather a change in management.

I somehow doubt Disney meant for that message, though. :P

This excellent conversation makes me think I need to write a Pros and Cons of Disney movies series of posts...

depizan said...

Hm, the underlying cultural fail of TaleSpin mostly seemed - to me - to come from it's 30s adventure movie setting. But I've seen The Jungle Book once, a long time ago, so there could be leftover fail as well.

And there could well be FedEx arrows I missed.

hapax said...

I saw the film as more class warfare than racism

Am I the only one who saw THE LION KING as a straight-up re-telling of HAMLET recast with African savannah animals, song-and-dance numbers, and an extremely improbable happy ending?

Of course, there's no Laertes character, so the climactic duel has to be with Claudius instead.

Will Wildman said...

But of course he's evil because... he's trying to overthrow the monarchy, which sucks for the prince. Oh yeah, and he's an inept ruler, but we knew he was a villain before then. He's inept because he's a contemptuous man who refuses to listen to advice and he's that because he's the villain and he's the villain because he wants to get rid of the king.

I thought the point was that Scar was unbalancing the Circle of Life - he gets the hyenas on side with promises of 'endless meat' and then pushes for overhunting, gluttonously wiping out or driving off all the other animals. (The drought is more obviously straight-up Fisher King stuff, particularly since it only starts to rain as Simba claims leadership. The bit about him being the dark lion is of course all over the Unfortunate Implications.)

Insofar as Lion King is about 'knowing your place', I thought it was more 'know your place in the ecosystem'. The rest of the stuff is boilerplate bildungsroman/return-of-the-king with all the problems that normally accompany such a story.

Ana Mardoll said...

No, you're not: I nearly mentioned Hamlet in a previous post, but was befuddled when I could identify no Laertes or Ophelia. (Nala seems like an ill fit to me.)

Nor can I really find a Horatio unless that's supposed to be the meerkat. In which case, poor Horatio.

Ana Mardoll said...

Which raises another question: in The Lion King As Hamlet perspective, does that make Polonius the bird? If so, he's the most sympathetic Polonius ever, I think.

Will Wildman said...

Am I the only one who saw THE LION KING as a straight-up re-telling of HAMLET recast with African savannah animals, song-and-dance numbers, and an extremely improbable happy ending?

Well, my main problem is that Hamlet doesn't have anyone as awesome as Rafiki. (Shakespeare becomes way cooler if you picture everyone as mystic martial-artist mandrills. On a related note, I have a theatre company concept and I'm looking for venture capitalists.)

Ana Mardoll said...

Will, I thought that too, but I figured that was the correction of the Shakespearean Flaw necessary to prevent the movie being a tragedy. I mean, if Hamlet had had Rafiki around, then the whole thing would have ended a lot better, I think.

*stick-whack* GO FIX THINGS, HAMLET. *lol*

Dav said...

sad that something that had seemed innocent to me before now seems rife with (intended or not) Unfortunate Implications).

Yeah, it's a particularly vicious pay it forward. I think there are just some things that can't be washed clean of connotations. I find these jolts particularly disturbing in childhood stuff, and it's one reason I'm afraid to go back and revisit some of the stuff I loved, because I never know what I'm going to turn up, between my dodgy memory and privilege blindness. (It's more or less the experience of the early Narnia unpacking posts - oh, childhood memories, how much imaginary content they contain.)

I think Hamlet really needs the dimension where Hamlet is in the court - I don't think the situation is nearly as interesting when Hamlet basically goes off to the coast of France for awhile, gets down with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, and then finally shows up for the showdown.

Kit Whitfield said...

Me talking about The Lion King a while ago ...http://kitwhitfield.blogspot.com/2007/12/disneys-politics.html

I think it's interesting to compare it with Bambi, which is as much an influence on it as Hamlet. But (as I say at greater length in the post), what really stands out is that Bambi is definitely smaller than the world he inhabits: he encounters other animals mostly as an equal rather than receiving fealty from animals he eats; the weather dictates his life rather than his life dictating the weather; his 'princehood' is much closer to meritocracy than Simba's; he's also far less in need of a thick ear throughout his childhood.

Bayley G said...

Lion King is obviously inspired by Hamlet, but you can have multiple layers of meaning in a work ;P

The Circle of Life doesn't really fix the issue, though. Scar's evil because he unbalanced the Circle by taking the underprivileged, starving Hyenas and giving them enough food, causing there not to be enough for the lions. Obviously to keep things "in balance", the poor have to starve....

Of course that's only valid if you're reading talking, sentient animals as an allegory for people. As an allegory for animals, the main issue is that the hyenas are meant to be scavengers while the lions are build as predators; they expend a lot of energy to bring down game and thus require a higher caloric intake. The hyenas appear to be starving because they bred beyond their means (possibly because of Scar?); a few more years of famine and their numbers will be back in balance, able to survive on the scraps the lionesses leave behind. So in essence they're welfare recipients surviving on the tax dollars of-- no, bad Bay! This paragraph is meant to be about pure animal facts!

>.> I can't help it. I just love Jeremy Irons. That's basically why I adore the movie in the first place. Add that to my penchant for sympathetic villains and you get political nonsense from a children's cartoon.

Launcifer said...

You know what? This conversation about The Lion King* is making me think how much more I would have enjoyed the play if the eponymous Prince had said "Bugger this for a lark" and gone off to England to have fun with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern instead. In fact, The Lion King isn't Hamlet, it's Rosencrantz and Gildenstern Don't Die (And Hamlet comes too!). That's my line and I'm sticking to it.

Also, I was reading through the tweetings metapost for the film, remembered Michael Sheen was in it, and then spent a good ten minutes imagining how much more interesting the story would have been if there was a secret cabal of vampires run by Brian Clough, Tony Blair and Sir David Frost. Damn, now I'm imagining a code-swap "friendly" where the whatever they're called have to play baseball and the Cullens play football against some vampire version of Derby County/Nottingham Forest. Then again, that'd probably end up as some sparkly version of Shaolin Soccer.


* Funnily enough I know a chap who tried to sue Disney because it turned out that he'd sent them a treatment (possibly a short story, for reasons that would totally escape me. My memory's hazy on the details) for something that looked suspiciously like The Lion King and then never got anything for it.

Ana Mardoll said...

Kit, as much as I loved your post, I loved even more the discussion as to whether the suffragette sash on the kite was making suffrage a child's toy or hoisting it over the park as a meaningful advertisement.

Kind of encompasses the whole emotional problem with FedEx arrows. The work can contain BOTH, but it's usually hard for people to see both views as valid. See also Twilight, I guess, and everything else on earth.

Ana Mardoll said...

So in essence they're welfare recipients surviving on the tax dollars of-- no, bad Bay! This paragraph is meant to be about pure animal facts!

LOL. Further impeded by the problem that (a) Scar should have killed all the cubs (including Nala?) and replaced Mufasa's children with his own, and (b) hyenas actually DO catch a lot of their own food and lions actually DO scavenge from hyenas frequently, and (c) hyenas practice fratricide so I'm not sure they even CAN over-breed, and (d) all the hyenas should have been drawn with pseudo-penis appendages. (THANK YOU, NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC.)

http://beta.blockbuster.com/movies/national-geographic-eternal-enemies-lions-and-hyenas.html

(Major Trigger Warning on that movie, if anyone decides to rent it. It's seriously violent.)

Bayley G said...

I love hyenas solely because the females have just as much right go prance about shouting "suck my dick" when they're pissed off as the males.

Nothing else about them resonates with me, just that.

Will Wildman said...

The Circle of Life doesn't really fix the issue, though. Scar's evil because he unbalanced the Circle by taking the underprivileged, starving Hyenas and giving them enough food, causing there not to be enough for the lions. Obviously to keep things "in balance", the poor have to starve....

It's not clear to me that the hyenas are starving; the only reference to such is in Scar's promises to them, and - well, if we're trusting campaign ads by people who really shouldn't be in power, Rick Perry would like you to know how persecuted Christians are in the United States. It is clear that the hyenas are geographically excluded and possibly ghettoised, although that's never really addressed by anyone.

Ana Mardoll said...

The thought occurs that lions don't REALLY "rule" their pride lands except in so much as other lions are concerned. If the movie had cut the extraneous races and their cooperation -- the kneeling crowds, the monkey, the bird -- and presented it as just the lion's personal interpretation of a war for territory between the hyenas, would it have been more palatable? (Since you could just say the lions were ego-centric and it was only one view?)

Except that doesn't erase the FedEx arrow of integration/cooperation being detrimental to the land.

What a delightful discussion. And on a Twilight thread!

redsixwing said...

Yes, the book really is that bad. *cough*

One of the things that bugs me really badly about the entire Twilight Saga is that when Bella finally shows evidence of being a vertebrate in Breaking Dawn, her spine shows up entirely in context of her Becoming A Mother. She does all sorts of wacky things in order to protect her pregnancy - not herself, as she'll happily try to sacrifice herself again, as several people have broken down - but the whole multiple-contingency getting away from the Volturi plot, the whole standing up against half the Cullen clan telling her to get an abortion (and here's Carlisle to do it safely!) - is all to protect her baby.

Which feeds into the Perfect Mother stuff that was being discussed at the Slacktiverse - here she is ready to kick some butts and take some names, and she can't do it in her own name, but she can go all Mama Grizzly and suddenly be effective, because Perfect Mother is another acceptable role for a woman. Bella's just extra lucky in that she gets to have Perfect Mother AND Perfect Martyr, which are usually mutually exclusive.

Grah.

... wow, I never saw the "integration ruins everything" message with Lion King. Dx Now I do.

The sequel bothered me, mostly because of the sins-of-the-fathers passing to the child stuff, and you can obvs. tell that the kid is bad because he's got a black mane, argh.

Will Wildman said...

Except that doesn't erase the FedEx arrow of integration/cooperation being detrimental to the land.

It really isn't, though - the problem isn't the hyenas, it's Scar imposing environmentally deleterious policies and using the hyenas as his personal militia. As you note, all the other animal types do cooperate and the Circle is sustained.

I think the parallel is of a politician who promises that everyone will prosper and we'll give those no-good elitists what for and all the deserving people will have gazelle all day every day, gets elected, and then just enjoys the trappings of power while his supporters wait for it to rain steak. The politician follows through on some of his promises, but unaccountably the country gets run into the ground and the only people who seem to be getting by are those who were already on top.

Basically, I think 'endless meat' is the savannah equivalent of 'tax cuts for the rich', or possibly 'corporate deregulation'.

Bayley G said...

Banzai talks about being so hungry he could eat a wilder-beast just before the stampede. Furthermore, before Be Prepared, they're outright begging for food from Scar, and complaining about being "at the bottom of the food chain". That combined with the way their chorus in Be Prepared dreams no bigger than "We'll have food! Lots of food!" speaks of chronic starvation to me.

Will Wildman said...

That combined with the way their chorus in Be Prepared dreams no bigger than "We'll have food! Lots of food!" speaks of chronic starvation to me.

What else would they dream about? For all that they are Animals with magical musical-number-invoking powers, they don't exactly have a rich culture or major ambitions - like real-world animals, they look for food, and if they've got it, they're mostly lying around until it's time to eat again. (The creators knew this; see references above about how hard it is to present an interesting and challenging life for lions that mostly sleep and murder.) Having a huge supply of food is the only kind of wealth that they can have without explicitly introducing some kind of currency among animals. I think, while it's hard to be certain in a scenario that completely conflates food and riches, that Banzai's appetite parallels greed better than it does actual hunger.

Ana Mardoll said...

The sequel bothered me, mostly because of the sins-of-the-fathers passing to the child stuff, and you can obvs. tell that the kid is bad because he's got a black mane, argh.

Not to try to erase your FedEx arrow, but I thought that was a point on racism and prejudice. Kobu *isn't* bad (despite his mom -- who is as light-furred as the 'good' lions -- doing her best to raise him that way), he just *looks* that way to Simba because of Kobu's black mane and Scar-appearance. If Simba hadn't consistently let his prejudice get in his way, Kobu would have eventually integrated into the "good" lion pride just fine.

Heck, if Simba and Zira hadn't let their prejudices get in their way, Kobu and the rest of the cubs could have had a decent childhood instead of being raised as war machines, but nooooo, Simba had to cast out the Scar-loyal lionesses into the Crap Lands. Nice job breaking it, Hero.*

* Possibly Zira had some say in this decision as well.

redsixwing said...

I think I'd be happy to see that particular arrow erased, to be honest. *s*

It's possible that I was reading Simba as a sympathetic character when he wasn't; it's also possible I'm misremembering, because it's been an owl's age since I saw that movie.

Bayley G said...

I don't know, I think it's still possible to see Simba as a sympathetic character. Sure, as a boy, he was an arrogant braggart with big dreams, but who wasn't flawed as a child? He lost his father, who was his role model in life, and went through a deep depression and mourning period before eventually managing to grow into a reasonably healthy young man. His first reaction to Nala's news is that all that's in his past and it doesn't concern him, but it turns out that was just fear talking; he's afraid to face his past, to return to a land dominated by memories of his childhood with his father. Once he realizes how badly his people need help, however, he faces his fears and returns, restoring peace to the land.

It's the world itself that's screwed up. Within that framework, Simba seems reasonably heroic. He can't help that the weather only behaves properly for the One True King, or that monarchy is required for the functioning of the entire savannah, or that the entire thing can be read as an unfortunate allegory for a world he never experienced.

But then in the sequel he's suddenly racist, condescending, and basically a terrible father. His daughter is inquisitive and intelligent, but when she asks the tough questions ("If there's so much I must be / can I still just be me/ the way I am? / Can I trust in my own heart / or am I just one part / of some big plan?") he outright ignores her, answering only the question he himself struggled with ("Even those who are gone / are with us as we go on / your journey has only begun / tears of pain, tears of joy / one thing nothing can destroy / is our Pride, deep inside / we are one"). Which is inspirational and all but does nothing to ease her very real fears. I did not really like Simba in the sequel and kind of wish Kiara had been Simba's granddaughter, so there'd be a generation of hearing stories and misinterpreting them in between.

Ana Mardoll said...

It might just be me, but I like that a lot of the Disney Sequel Protagonists grow up to be terrible parents. I know a lot of people disliked how Ariel turned out in The Little Mermaid 2, but I thought it was telling that she would turn out to have some of the same flaws as her father, as well as sort of humanizing that "oh, it looks different from the other side".

In that vein, I can totally see Simba as a protective father because his dad died (existential dilemma!) and he -- as a child -- was nearly killed. So it makes sense, I think, that he would turn out to be aggressive and internalized that his own dad (Mufasa) had been negligently careless to keep his Obviously Evil (in retrospect, to Simba) brother around. It makes a certain sense to me.

But that's just my opinion. :)

cjmr said...

I think a *big* part of Disney Protagonists grow up to be terrible parents is because the 'original' stories are loosely based on classic tales, and the sequels are written by Disney writers to add to the franchise.

Rikalous said...

Oh god so many things to respond to, and I'm too lazy to go back and check who made what point.

re: Jerry Jenkins living in perpetual NaNoWriMo: It's probably easier to make words go on pages if you don't care about the quality of the finished product.

re: Jeremy Irons, awesome: I hear from admittedly not-100%-reliable sources that he blew out either his voice or the mic singing "Be Prepared." In other words, the song was so glorious that something had to give.

re: hyenas: The female hyenas in the Lion King are just as well-endowed as the male animals, so go Disney for accuracy! Incidentally, there's a cool webcomic called Digger out there which has sympathetic hyenas as important characters. The author did the research on hyenas, so among other things they invert the usual gender stereotypes. Oh, and the first hyena shown in the story gets named Ed. I cannot believe I never made that connection.

re: Simba's parenting abilities: He's probably aware that Timon and Pumba's parenting style isn't the ideal, especially for the future ruler. So he could be overcompensating for that, in addition to his hangups about Mufasa and Scar. Mind you, I haven't actually seen the sequel.

Silver Adept said...

Simba is definitely overcompensating, and usually in a "do what I say, not what I did" sort of way. After all, his carelessness is what caused his father to get into a situation where Scar could kill him. So he wants to impart to his kid that being part of the royal family has certain dangers. Or so he thinks, and it leads into the prejudice against anyone associated with Scar or his lineage. It doesn't mean he's right, and as noted above, the whole thing might have been avoided through the judicious use of a royal pardon for most of Scar's supporters. Simba's Pride gets in the way, though.

Anyway, not too say all of the arrows aren't there, and that the King needs a serious attitude adjustment, but that he's behaving like a stereotypical first-time parent along with all of his other baggage.

Will Wildman said...

I meant more that the lions refrain from gorging themselves on the antelopes and the antelopes apparently accept that occasionally a relative will get devoured for the good of evolution. If Scar's plan to ascend to power involved unifying the antelopes into a lion-stomping battalion, that would be a different version of upsetting the Circle, and now we're heading back into chris's Lion King AU in which Mufasa is desperately trying to figure out how to invade the realm of Triton.

Ana Mardoll said...

Best. Alternate. Universe. Ever.

National Geographic's Relentless Enemies -- narrated by JEREMY IRONS and 100% awesome -- showcases a special herd of water buffalo that really do kind of live in a Circle with the local lions. The lions pick off the weak, the sick, and the babies, and the buffalo protect their own pretty dang well. It's really fascinating.

Randall M said...

Am I the only one who saw THE LION KING as a straight-up re-telling of HAMLET recast with African savannah animals, song-and-dance numbers, and an extremely improbable happy ending?

I thought MacBeth, personally.

Darth Ember said...

If I remember rightly, it was mentioned somewhere that the cub at the end of Lion King 1 was not Kiara; it was a male cub, who died at some point. If Simba's already lost one cub, one can understand his getting overprotective.

Darth Ember said...

Also, on how Twilight fits with Mormon things... this and its follow-up posts are by an ex-Mormon. Warning, strong and often very coarse language.

Kit Whitfield said...

despite his mom -- who is as light-furred as the 'good' lions -- doing her best to raise him that way

I saw her song - is it called 'My Lullaby'?* - on YouTube. Can I be the only person who liked her? She's just about as close as Disney gets to a woman who's neither a spunky, girlish innocent, a cosy old biddy, or a witch persecuting any pretty girl handy. She has loyalties, darnit, and she takes responsibility, and she thinks into the future, and she owns the right to be angry and to want power and to put her own family ahead of the authorised order. Her motherhood isn't about being an angel in the house: she knows her son will be an adult and she's looking forward to it, and her love is passionate and fierce rather than selfless and fluffy. She's got a backbone.

It's too bad that Disney could only attribute these qualities to a villain. But sod it, I really like her. If Simba killed her husband she's got reason to be mad at him, and she's Disney's best shot at a mature woman in her prime.

(If my son ever reads this as an adult when he's worked out all my flaws as a mother and thinks, 'Wow, that explains a lot!' - well, sorry, honey. Love you.)


*http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJGqxf86cZs

chris the cynic said...

Simba didn't kill her husband. The hyenas did, and the hyenas certainly didn't do it on Simba's account. They did it because they had their own lives and their own dealings with Scar that had nothing to do with Simba. Yes, what made the hyenas kill Scar was something that he said during a conversation with Simba, that's true, but it isn't as if Simba showed up and said, "I think the hyenas should kill you, why don't you prove my point?" the hyenas made the choice all on their own. With no prompting from anyone else.

Simba didn't even seem aware of the fact the hyenas were considering it. He wasn't interfering with their internal affairs.

I have only the vaguest memories of the Lion King II, so I don't know if she blames actually blames Simba, but if she does I think we can add complete and utter racist to her list of attributes because the only way she could have identified Simba as the killer is if she thinks of the hyenas as mindless tools who can't do anything without a lion directing them.*

I don't think anyone else ever went that far in their anti-hyena thinking. Scar considered the hyenas tools to be exploited, but he never treated them as mindless.

-

* It's not as if there weren't plenty of witnesses, and given the passage of time the story has to be amoung the best known on the Savannah. If we assume, perhaps incorrectly, that she hadn't already abandoned Scar to live in exile that would mean that she presumably saw it with her own eyes.

Ana Mardoll said...

The hyenas do kill Scar, but I believe it's presented such that they wouldn't have if Scar hadn't lost the backing of most of the lionesses (who had defected to follow Simba). (Why the lionesses didn't defect to follow their own selves is Gender Fail, but probably appropriate to the lion species.) So Simba is "responsible" for Scar's death, albeit much less so than, say, Scar himself.

I can see the like for Zira. Villain Songs are so awesome that they have their own trope, but hers is a topper buried in a relatively unpopular sequel. She's misguided and a really dreadful person -- she loves her children and the members of her pack in order of how useful they are to her plans -- but that doesn't mean she's not awesome in her own way. In a different life and on the Side Of Good, I think she could have been a good war leader.

Will Wildman said...

The hyenas do kill Scar, but I believe it's presented such that they wouldn't have if Scar hadn't lost the backing of most of the lionesses (who had defected to follow Simba).

Debateable - on the surface, the hyenas kill Scar because he tried to sell them out by claiming that it was their plan to kill Mufasa and he was pressured into it, as seen here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oOGKa7bMuoE

The degree to which this depends more on them feeling they have no further use for Scar or more on this being conclusive proof that he's never cared about them and only saw them as tools is probably individual perspective.

Though I haven't seen any of the Lion King sequels, I do like Zira as a villain based on what I know. She isn't outright likeable, but as Kit says, she defies most of the usual Disney female archetypes, and while her techniques accept a patriarchal system (she can't take power of Simba's pride; she's got to raise her son to do it) her motivations have universal appeal (revenge, power) rather than the kind of covetousness that female villains usually get.

Yzma (voiced by Eartha Kitt, so: yes) from Emperor's New Groove was similarly just in it for the power, but in the original draft when the movie was supposed to be a more serious epic in Lion King style, she wanted to destroy the sun because she blamed it for making her look old and ugly. The rewrite improved that, I guess, although it did mean losing her villain song, which they never replaced: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=374xW4zZbZA

Kit Whitfield said...

I think The Emperor's New Groove works best with a limited number of songs; so much of its charm lies in comic timing with the dialogue. I do appreciate the fact that Pacha's wife is a confident mature woman, but you could hardly call it a feminist movie. It's funny, though, so there's that.

Lonespark said...

We need to have a Disney thread. But I would prefer it waited until I've seen more sequels. My husband bought YuleBaby the complete Lion King set for her birthday, but I haven't seen the sequels yet. Or any sequels to the princess movies. But I do spend an inordinate amount of time when I have on Disney animated meta and fic.

chris the cynic said...

Ana: So Simba is "responsible" for Scar's death, albeit much less so than, say, Scar himself.

Will: on the surface, the hyenas kill Scar because he tried to sell them out by claiming that it was their plan to kill Mufasa and he was pressured into it

Yeah, I feel that if we're blaming people other than the hyenas for Scar's death, I definitely think that Scar should be first in line. If he'd kept his mouth shut there's a pretty good chance he would have lived, and possibly still had the hyenas as his allies.

Ana Mardoll said...

Oh, completely agree. It's a classic Disney Death where the fault is entirely 100% the villain's. Scar was way too smart to suddenly blame the hyenas, and he should have known Simba wouldn't fall for it.

I only mention Simba's "responsibility" at all in the sense that think that's what Zira feels -- she's not misinformed or delusional, I don't think, she just seems Simba as the start of a chain of events that ended in Scar's death. Well, imho.

Amarie said...

To Will and Kit:

Thanks for the perspective on where the racial/sexism stances could come from in Twilight!

And, err...for the record? I have to say that I am THE Disney-philiac. And Lion King is one of my favorites. *whimpers and sniffles*

So, I feel that I really can't offer much more to say. Plus, everyone has made some very, very good points! :D

chris the cynic said...

After reading Will's posts on the economics of the Lion King, and thinking about it for however long it's been since he wrote those posts, I think the Lion King is actually supposed to be an allegory for an alternate reality in which someone saw the dust bowl coming and tried to prevent it, that being Mufasa.

Scar would represent the US government's original stance on using the land, "You can all be farmers. Farmable land for everyone. We'll farm and farm and farm until we all get rich from it. Farm, farm, farm, farm, farm." (Here "Everyone can be a farmer" is represented by "Everyone can eat as much meat as they like, screw the balance of nature.")

Simba would be the Alternate Universe's version of Hugh Bennett. The fight between Simba and Scar would be the speech in the Senate where, when the dust from the plains turned day to night by blotting out the sun, Bennett said, "This, gentlemen, is what I'm talking about. There goes Oklahoma," thus killing off the idea that the problems of Scarian policies could be safely ignored.

Simba's return to power represents the adoption of Bennettian conservation, and that ultimately has the effect of changing the climate enough that it was again possible for there to be rain. The return of the rain being the ultimate vindication of Bennettian policies. In the movie this is severely compressed, of course, but the symbolism is all there, I swear it*.

The Hyenas would turn on the Scar politicians after said politicians blamed the whole thing on their constituents, the dustbowl farmers == the hyenas.

It's an attempt to retell a sad chapter of American history in more black and white way by casting those who screwed things up for everyone as evil instead of misinformed (sleazy Scar instead of mistaken Mufasa.)


Or something like that.

-

*No, I don't.

Rikalous said...

Blaming the hyenas wasn't the best idea Scar ever had, but I think it's understandably stupid. Scar's a schemer, but that doesn't mean he's great at improvising when everything's falling apart. His real screwup was admitting his guilt to Simba-hanging-onto-the-cliff because, eh, I guess to assert his dominance over his brother (who he initially takes Simba for) just a little more. Way to keep a handle on your neuroses, Claudia MacBeth.

chris the cynic said...

That's a good point. His only mistakes are that he doesn't know when to stop talking.

His character revolves around his ability to speak. It's his most powerful asset, it's the source of all his power*, but he can't shut it off. If he'd just kept his mouth shut the first time he would have stayed in charge. If he'd kept his mouth shut the second time he would have been exiled but alive.

-

*Where would he be without the hyenas, for example? His only power over them is his oratory.

Erl said...

I know this is a derail (back to the original subject-- a rerail, maybe?), but like Ana the part of Breaking Dawn I had the most trouble with was an authorial, not a character decision. If I recall correctly, Bella realizes she is pregnant (i.e., pukes and then says, hey, I'm late) and then IMMEDIATELY THEREAFTER experiences the quickening, the first sensation of fetal movement.

The quickening, historically, has been considered the point at which the fetus takes on an independent life. It seems to me to be symbolically well-suited for that. (Of course, in a medical sense this is an odd distinction, and speaking as a person who has never been pregnant, I can't speak to individual experiences or even trends.) ndent movement.

The impression I got, therefore, was that not only is abortion off the table as something Bella might choose, but the strange progression of her vampire pregnancy takes it off the table as well. There's no period during which Bella can be aware that she's pregnant and yet the fetus does not show independence. There's no period during which the pregnancy is something that happens to Bella's body, rather than something that entails (metaphorically) an independent life.

I may be misreading that, or reading it uncharitably, but that seemed to me to be part of pretty negative pregnancy myths. As long with just a poor factual source of information.

Launcifer said...

So, er, I might just have inadvertantly flagged Amarie's last post. Sorry about that. Damned unopposable fingers.

Anyway, it's random (and irrelevant) anecdote time. My brother's best friend is a reformed thief, a genuine second-storey chap, as it were. Also a black belt in taekwondo. His favourite character in anything, ever? Rafiki. The end result: his preferred party piece is to put the Lion King on my brother's tv, zip forward to Rafiki's "kick hyena bottom" scene and then free-climb my brother's house. I have yet to decide if this is crazy-awesome or downright terrifying. I am, however, thankful that he waits until my nephews and nieece have gone to bed.

Rikalous said...

Er, I'd like to note that my earlier post should have called Scar Claudius MacBeth, on account of the Lion King being Disney's take on Hamlet or possibly MacBeth. Just in case anyone was confused.

Kit Whitfield said...

There's no period during which the pregnancy is something that happens to Bella's body, rather than something that entails (metaphorically) an independent life.

That's going to vary a great deal from individual experience to individual experience. I know I thought of my son as an independent life within a couple of weeks of finding I was pregnant. Vampirism aside, I was in a different position because he was a planned baby and Bella's pregnancy is accidental, but I thought of him as a person pretty much from the get-go. And that was stressful in itself, because I knew a lot of pregnancies miscarry in the first trimester, so to me that meant my child was in danger. I could tell myself that if I miscarried it was because the baby had a problem it wouldn't have survived, but emotionally speaking, the uncertainty was a big deal.

Also, quickening isn't exactly the on-off switch that mythology would suggest. It's commonly said that women 'feel the baby moving' earlier in subsequent pregnancies than in their first, not because of a different baby but because of experience: the first few times you feel the baby move, a lot of first-time mothers think it's their stomach rumbling or a muscle twitching. I know the first time I felt my son move, I wasn't quite sure: it might have been a muscle twitch, I thought it was him, but it seemed a bit too good to be true. Also, I was in bed awake in the early hours, so I didn't have any distractions. With the benefit of experience I know it was him, but for an inexperienced mother, there can easily be a period of I-think-I-felt-the-baby-move-but-I'm-not-sure.

I haven't read Breaking Dawn, but everything I've heard about the pregnancy stuff suggests it's very much a fantasy by and likely to appeal to the kind of woman who's actually had children. You have a supportive audience to witness and validate the physical trauma, but at the same time the pregnancy is over quickly, skips the first trimester where you have to keep it secret and so don't get treated any different even when you're feeling rough, then you get a recovery period where the baby is cared for by trustworthy people while you rest and recover and wind up looking better and feeling stronger than you did pre-baby. I think the insta-quickening is, from that perspective, less a political statement and more a fantasy of having pregnancy's long uncertainty period eliminated.

Amarie said...

Oh, it's alright, Launcifer! In fact, I'm such a blogging-idiot that I don't even know what flagged means. *nods like Patrick Star* :)

So, you're fine! :D

And, Kit, I have to say that you are a brave, brave woman. The more I hear about your pregnancy, the more I respect and admire you. I can only hope that if I go through something like that, I would have similar strength and dexterity. ^ ^

Lonespark said...

I really appreciate your comments on this aspect, Kit. I haven't read any of the Twilight series, but I've read excerpts, and what I've seen of Breaking Dawn seemed like a very... unencumbered? fantasy. Kind of like what fanfic writers often call "crack-fic," where the story can be compelling and emotionally resonant and exciting, but it's seldom tied down by canon, or physics, or good taste, etc.

And I do think there's a need for, and a market for, all kinds of fantasies and reinterpretations and riffs on pregnancy/birth/motherhood. We've talked over at the Slacktiverse about how society shames and denigrates pregnant women and mothers while holding up an idea of Motherhood. And there are parallel things with idealizing The Children while screwing over actual children... I feel like we need as much as we can get of humor and irreverance and variety in voices and perspectives in the way we talk about pregnancy and and birth and motherhood and parenting, and magical vampire babies can contribute somewhat as a piece of that.

I don't have the perspective of carrying a planned child, or even really a wanted child. I certainly love my kids, but that's now that they're born breathing people, and honestly I wasn't big in to the baby stage either. So I tend to relate to tales of pregnancy as being inhabited by odd alien creatures who may change your future in unexpected ways. (But not m-preg. Unless it's Loki.)

Lonespark said...

When I say humor and irreverance, I mean, women speaking from their own experiences, irreverantly if that's their take. Not making fun of pregnant women, which has obviously been done, and nastily, quite a lot. And we get to make fun of ourselves, of course, but that's tricky, since one woman's tragedy can be another's farce, or comedy-drama, or whatever. (Sci-fi kungfu political roadtrip?)

Kit Whitfield said...

It's an interesting thing - and I include my pre-pregnancy self in this - how 'pregnancy illiterate' we tend to be. There just isn't very much information out there about what pregnancy is like, and pop culture has very little to say about the experience: there's a great silence in our popular discourse. And I think a lot of that can be seen in reactions to the Twilight pregnancy. To me, the fantasy appeal of the pregnancy seem as obvious as the fantasy appeal of the romance - both are traumas that resolve impossibly well, and if anything the pregnancy fantasy is the more raw and straightforward of the two - but somehow in the analyses I see (not here so much, mind), people tend to have plenty to say about the romance, but often chalk off the pregnancy and birth as just being ker-azy.

Which doesn't really say very much for how society listens to women's experiences of something so major, sadly.

Lonespark said...

Wow, I feel like that is a big profound point about many modern culture, and part of what (some) folks are reacting to when they decry loss or denigration of Traditional Womanhood. I would love to learn more about the history of culture attitudes toward and depictions of pregnancy, and I suppose especially in art and media targeted to women.

Prior to the Industrial Revolution, and probably since then in many places, wouldn't most people have experience with their mothers or other family members being pregnant?

I have sometimes joked about the incredibly high rate of maternal mortality and the relatively high rate of infant mortality in country music. And I kind of feel bad about it in a way, considering that it largely grew out of cultural settings where health care and decent nutrition were very hard to come by, and often still are. So again with the complications.

I feel that I was reasonably literate about pregnancy in a big-picture sense. I knew it was a big deal in terms of the effect on your body, both during pregnancy and afterward. I knew it could be dangerous, and could change seemingly unrelated things, your hair for example. But I still didn't really grasp the overwhelming number of bodily systems and organs and so forth that are implicated and affected. To a certain extent I feel like the way we talk about, and avoid talking about, pregnancy is similar to other issues with disability and difference. There's not one way to be pregnant. There's not one way to parent well. There's not one way to achieve or maintain mental health. There's not one way to enjoy sex or experience gender. But there are so many potentially harmful default assumptions about the "best" way to do live and to be.

bekabot said...

@ Lion King

Myself, I like to class the hyenas as anti-regulation libertarian fools who think that growth without limits is a possibility. But that's just me. Besides, there's lots of things in Lion King which clue me in that that wasn't the original creative intent.

no said...

you say "problematic" too much

chris the cynic said...

I agree, it's extremely problematic.

Ana Mardoll said...

Now I want a ticker count on the post, ha.

Will Wildman said...

Well, by my ticker (Find: "problematic"; check instances) the word appears 12 times on this page. Five are in the main post, two are in Ana's subsequent posts, one is quoting one of Ana's subsequent posts, and then one each for Amarie, Bayley G, The Enigmatic Man Of Contradiction ("no"), and chris.

"Choice" appears 47 times; "sex" appears 28 times; shockingly "sparkle" appears only twice, and in neither of those cases does it form the phrase "choice sparkle sex", which I feel is a missed opportunity.

I can understand why someone might not like the word 'problematic' - it is, after all, passive voice, which is generally not received as strongly as something like "I have a problem with this". Maybe there are reasons that people favour 'problematic'? I haven't done the etymological research. But I definitely have a problem with things that are this freaking problematic.

Ana Mardoll said...

Very useful research! Though I wonder if Choice Sparkle Sex is better or worse than other leading brands...?

I know I consciously use the word to invoke passive Fed Ex arrows. Then I get away from "oh, that's just Ana" or "Meyer didn't mean it that way". The arrows are there, whether or not everyone else sees them and whether or not they were put there on purpose, I say. :)

Will Wildman said...

I know I consciously use the word to invoke passive Fed Ex arrows. Then I get away from "oh, that's just Ana" or "Meyer didn't mean it that way". The arrows are there, whether or not everyone else sees them and whether or not they were put there on purpose, I say. :)

This is good and makes sense to me. The flipside that I could also see is that people sometimes argue "Well of course it's possible to find a 'problematic' reading of anything if you try hard enough" because they imagine that some folks sit around all day looking for justifications to be Outraged By Bigotry. In those circumstances I could perhaps see that "I have a problem with this" skips over the potential reading of 'I have imagined a person who could hypothetically be offended by this' and goes straight to 'This junk be freaking me out, yo', asserting that there is an immediate visceral reaction. But of course that latter case depends on people who are arguing that "No one really has a problem with this, you're just imagining it" but who truly respect others' emotional reactions, so possibly it doesn't apply well to this version of reality.

chris the cynic said...

I can understand why someone might not like the word 'problematic' - it is, after all, passive voice

This is pretty clearly off topic, but I don't care. I've said it before, I'll say it again here:
Ass is kicked by the passive voice.

Rikalous said...

From my research, Choice Sparkle Sex is so expensive, and the company that produces it has such a shoddy ethics record, that its quality is quite besides the point.

Ana Mardoll said...

Yeah, sometimes you just have to vote with your wallet.

bekabot said...

"This is pretty clearly off topic, but I don't care. I've said it before, I'll say it again here:
Ass is kicked by the passive voice."


To understand how much harder it is to kick ass indirectly than to kick ass directly is to conceive a respect for the passive voice.

LaEsmeralda said...

Trigger Warnings: Violence Against Women, Infertility
Hi Ana, I'm a first time poster, long time reader, and I enjoy your Twilight deconstructions as a breath of fresh air in an Internet filled with (justified) Twilight bashing. It's fascinating to read a charitable take on Twilight and how it reflects society, as well as a commentary on it's many, MANY flaws. I've never watched "Breaking Dawn", but I read the recaps of the book on "Mark Reads" and I found it distressingly offensive. However, I looked for the birthing scene out of curiosity on YouTube, and what I saw sickened me so much that I had to comment here and ask what you thought of it.

Namely, Jacob tackling Rosalie to the floor and holding her by her throat, ostensibly to protect Bella from Rosalie's bloodlust.

This makes no sense from the story's perspective. Rosalie is shown to want a baby, specially THIS baby, more than anything in the world, and she is the only character who supported Bella's decision to have it. Why would Rosalie falter at the last minute? And why would the filmmakers think it was responsible to show one of the "heroes" of the story resort to violence against a female character, and be shown as justified in his actions? The writers could have easily substituted Jacob's attack with Alice taking Rosalie to one side, but they didn't. I know that the scene was greatly toned down from the book, which had Jacob savagely beating Rosalie and kicking her out of the birthing room, supposedly to protect Bella, but his entire narration up until that point had been filled with loathing and contempt for Rosalie, and he expressed his glee in having an excuse to beat her up.

It is clear to me that Rosalie (and Leah) are Meyer's whipping girls. Whenever Bella makes a decision that has potentially negative consequences, these two characters suffer the fallout, and Bella emerges without a scratch, so to speak; with everything she ever dreamed of and more besides. When Bella decides to become a vampire and give up all chances of motherhood, Leah suffers with being turned into a werewolf against her will and her fertility stolen from her. When Bella decides to go through with a pregnancy that could potentially kill her, Jacob verbally and physically abuses Rosalie for daring to support her in this action. Rosalie wants children, but doesn't get them, Bella never wanted children, but is rewarded with a baby that will raise herself.

All in all, "Breaking Dawn" is rife with horrendous implications, but violence against women (perpetrated by the "good guys", no less!) just turns my stomach. Did that strike anyone else as beyond the pale? In all the reviews all of the film (and the book!) that I read, not one mentioned Jacob's abhorrent actions. Is it because Rosalie is a "villain" and therefore violence against her is justified? Somehow, I can understand the twisted logic behind that fantasy - my SO not only loves me above all others, but they actively hate the people who are prettier than me and will beat them up to defend my honour!- but it's a fantasy that I could never get behind. It strikes me as kind of insecure, like you can't trust your SO to be kind and courteous to other people without suspecting them of sexual interest. Anyway, that's my long winded way of saying that I am shamelessly Team Rosalie, and that I am looking forward to hearing what other people have to say about the film's violence.

Ana Mardoll said...

I haven't read BD yet, so I honestly wasn't aware that this scene exists. In the movie, iirc (and I just rewatched it last week), Rosalie holds the scalpel, says something about "I can't", and leaves the room without too much fuss. I didn't notice Jacob attacking her, but I didn't know to be looking for it.

If it is as you describe in the book, then that is really unfortunate. I do agree that Rosalie and Leah take a ridiculous amount of authorial damage, for no really justifiable reason. And it even goes to a point that seems to break canon: Rosalie has never tasted human blood and the only humans she has ever killed were her murderers. She's supposedly 'as clean as Carlisle' but one drop of Bella's blood and she has to leave the room? That makes no sense.

Ana Mardoll said...

That's a good point. It probably helps that my writing is emotional enough that probably "this junk be freaking me out, yo" is coming through even if I don't say that directly. LOL.

hapax said...

In fact, The Lion King isn't Hamlet, it's Rosencrantz and Gildenstern Don't Die (And Hamlet comes too!).

And now I'm thinking of Avi's marvellously funny ROMEO AND JULIET -- TOGETHER (AND ALIVE!) AT LAST.

Funnily enough I know a chap who tried to sue Disney because it turned out that he'd sent them a treatment ... for something that looked suspiciously like The Lion King and then never got anything for it.

Well, he'd have to stand in line behind Osamu Tezuka.

hapax said...

As you note, all the other animal types do cooperate and the Circle is sustained.

We-e-elll...

As described by Mufasa, the antelopes "cooperate" by allowing the lions to eat them. The lions "cooperate" by eating the antelope, then dying of old age and fertilizing the grass. Yeah, that's the kinda cooperation we need more of in this stratified society!

At least in Scar's version, when the wildebeest kill Mufasa, the cooperation is a bit more ... Circular.

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