I do a good job of blocking painful, unnecessary things from my memory.
—Bella Swan, Twilight, Chapter 1, p.6
There are those of us prepping our cynical reaction times, readying our deep sighs, and practicing the nonchalant rolling of our eyes in preparation for tonight’s presidential debate. (Which, unfortunately, will not include moderation from Nicki Minaj and Mariah Carey.) Meanwhile… there are those of us prepping their best impressions of a vampire, readying their best black ensemble, and sharpening their pearly glitter-prompting fangs in preparation for the most epic vampire film franchise finale… ever.
Yes, maniacal Twilight fans across the globe got to feast their bloodthirsty eyes on the last piece of Breaking Dawn promotional propaganda with the Tuesday morning release of the poster for “The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 2″ which boasts the tagline “The Epic Finale That Will Live Forever”. Get it? Like vampires. It will live forever. Or until the next great vampire movie franchise based on a book trilogy comes along.
My hope would be that these fangirl, fanboy, vampire-wannabes and their werewolf-aspiring counterparts would encompass a demographic not yet old enough to vote. Sadly, we must accept that there are plenty of adults who have been bitten by the aptly-named Stephenie Meyer virus. Relax, it’s not real. And thankfully not even remotely contagious.
And so I stare, blankly at my computer monitor until the images separate into pixels, until my browser looks like a portal, until I’m staring into something that resembles the opening of The Matrix, trying to make sense of the madness. Once you do one Google search for anything related to Twilight, you are propelled down a vortex of all things Twilight. Which means tons of pictures of Kristin Stewart.
For so long as she has been recognizable as an actress, Kristin Stewart has been criticized for one thing, her seeming inability to portray any emotion with her face. This is not a judgment of her nor is it an assassination of her character. I should make it abundantly clear at this moment that I have not seen nor read any of the Twilight movies or books. At this present moment I have no intention to do either. This is not a review but rather an observation.
I tried to watch the first movie. I really did try. But there’s only so much awkward staring one man can handle. The whole first third of that movie was Edward trying to have a staring contest with Bella and Bella being all like, what the eff, bro. Awkward. Made more awkward by the fact that again Bella seemingly can’t portray any emotion with her face. That’s her magic power. Sadly, she’s not secretly a fairy.
The most recent installment of this movie franchise received a lot of criticism. Most of which focused on the realities of Bella’s relationship with Edward—the abuse, the violence, the subliminal messaging that somehow it’s okay, that Edward can’t control himself, that he’ll be better in the morning. In fact, almost every review I have ever read about the Twilight Saga talks about Bella’s somewhat obnoxious quest for love and her having to choose between Edward and Jacob. (Which, by the way, who wouldn’t choose Jacob, seriously.)
I digress; I’m about to break this whole thing wide open. Because as much as I haven’t seen these movies I adamantly agreed with many of the criticisms of the last installment, especially the piece written by Linda Holmes in which she knocks the film as being “profoundly irresponsible.”
The problem I have with these critiques is… here it comes…
Twilight is not a love story.
It can’t be. Twilight is not about a high school student choosing between two potential partners. From everything I know to be true about Twilight and from all of the adoration and critique that I have read, I cannot accept that this movie is that same old cinematic story of a love triangle. It is in no way a throwback to Threesome or any kind of homage to Fight Club’s vicious cycle of Tyler wants Marla wants Narrator wants Tyler.
Insert here a quick montage of everything that has lead up to tonight’s political debate. Remember briefly the follies of the Republican debates. Remember, there was Jon Stewart (presumably no relation to Kristin) on his Daily Show railing Herman Cain‘s attempt to answer a question pertaining to President Obama’s approach to Libya. Stewart commented on Cain’s hesitance saying, “it’s like he’s trying to download the answer but that little ball is spinning, he’s just buffering.” Cain pauses uncomfortably several times during his Libya answer and blames his stumbling on the lot of stuff twirling around in his head. To which Stewart comments, “being President is a real non-stop head-stuff twirl-fest.”
While humorous, the chain of “gaffes” amongst the Republican candidates running for President was nothing if not alarming. And that’s an objective view. If you look at the current state of The United States and economies around the world, it doesn’t take a Harvard graduate to tell you that something is amiss, that the world as a whole is in need of ideas and lucrative suggestions. If there was ever a chance for anyone to step forward and say, “Hey! I know how to fix this thing,” today would be a greater day than any. Yet we trudge on, banner-waving the same hypocritical ideologies that led us here in the first place. We certainly don’t know how to fix a fraudulent banking system, correct job growth, stimulate the economy or perpetuate ourselves into better living but we do a fine job on a national scale of removing protesters from parks with unnecessary force.
Which brings me to the media circus that was Occupy Wall Street (OWS). Remember, that was a thing that happened. There are those that applauded this movement and those who opposed it. Those who think it had many legs to stand on and those who think it was a gathering drum circle of hippies with no merit. The critics of the OWS movement were and still are quick to point out that while those involved in the protests were great at identifying the problems in our current system, that there were no logistical or probable ideas coming out of those protests that could fix the aforementioned problems. Yet, a quick cut to the ideas being brainstormed by those who hold political office and there’s not many great ideas coming out of that camp either.
The squeaky wheel gets the grease and I am certain we can all agree that we didn’t overlook those Homeland Security ads that ran nationwide instructing us to say something if we see something. Because that’s what we do, when we see something suspicious we tell someone of authority, right? We make as much noise as possible until someone listens and our claims are investigated. I mean, that’s what you do in your own life, right? If there’s a mysterious charge on your bank statement or a confusing misprint on your phone bill or if the service at the restaurant was sub-par, we complain. We tell someone. So, surely, even if OWS had no idea how to fix the unmistakable issues at hand then they were at the very least an alarm summoning those who should know what to do.
I’m sure there are more than a dozen people who wish there was such an alarm built-in to Pennsylvania State. Because that’s what we are supposed to do when we see something that we know is not right. You interrupt it. You stop it. You get in the way and you prevent it from happening again.
Surely I’m not just bringing up these talking points for the sake of sounding controversial. The one thing that is being widely overlooked about all of these simultaneous news stories, all of these articles and videos and news segments and sound bites, everything being pumped into our eyes and ears, all of these stories are related—forged together by ignorance.
Ignorance is the problem. And Bella’s facial expression is our answer.
Twilight is not a love story. Twilight is the most brilliantly masked political satire of our time. While one arm of the political Medusa persuades you, seduces you and turns you, the other side goes after your offspring.
Why does Bella think she only has two choices? Why does it have to be either Edward or Jacob? She’s young, she has her entire life ahead of her and yet here she is, bruised, battered, mentally anguished, and holding onto a truth she wants so desperately to be a reality. She wants Edward to be the man she knows him to be, but there are some hurdles involved there; there’s a lot of madness she has to overlook in order to see Edward as the one.
So too do we prepare for tonight’s debate. We’re eager to vote for the man we want to believe in. We chose one political party at some point in our lives and recognized it as the flagship of your morality; it represents our upbringing and our world-view and our personal life goals. We supported said party’s candidates even when they miss-stepped, even when they misspoke, even when their views were not entirely succinct with ours. We gave them the benefit of the doubt.
If you step back, if you put on a pair of truly unbiased goggles, if you look at the political arena, at the vast American perspective, you’ll see that you don’t really recognize it. When the Republican debates were in full swing earlier in the year, there was not one person alive who could honestly, wholeheartedly point their finger at any one of the candidates on that debate stage and say with absolute confidence, “I think this person is qualified to run our country and speak on behalf of the free world.”
So as we rally as a nation, divided as we may be, pumped for the first of three presidential debates, we have to realize that we’ve already picked our sides, most of us, and we’re waiting for our candidate to unveil their full potential. Most of us have already convinced ourselves that in American politics there are only two options and we continue to let the political system amuse us and amaze us with the hopes that one day it will simply untangle itself and become the system we know it to be.
The undeniable truth is that we are not a nation of inspired youth discovering our inner potential and overcoming our fears. Instead we are a nation of cold-hearted individuals, captivated by our fears because for so many generations we have been raised to believe that we have a limited number of options and in the end, no matter which choice we have made, we are almost always left standing in the middle of a love-hate relationship, expressionless and lacking empathy.
But then again what do I know?