Don’t Take It Seriously

I have a confession to make: I was pleasantly surprised by the cinematic adaptation of New Moon, the second volume in Stephenie Meyer's Twilight saga. Don't get too concerned—this is not to say that I thought the movie was any good. Rather, instead of being just purely bad, as I'd expected, it was the sort of movie that's so bad it's wonderful. For example, what else can a person do but giggle when Bella, the story’s protagonist, is so depressed over her true vampire love's departure that she doesn't move or change her clothes for three months.

I'm not trying to make light of depression. But the idea that an 18-year-old girl has nothing to get her out of her desk chair and into some fresh clothes but her passionate love for her pale, contact-lensed boyfriend? That's just pathetic.

Of course, New Moon’s ridiculously over-the-top nature is what keeps it entertaining. When you've got Robert Pattinson (a.k.a. vampire boyfriend Edward Cullen) enunciating his lines with all the deliberate sluggishness of a William Shatner parody, you're set. I, for one, was so enamored of the sheer absurdity of the ostensible rule that every male character must take off his shirt before delivering any remotely dramatic line that I only checked my watch once throughout the movie's two-and-a-half hours.

And yet the layer of camp hilarity that pervades New Moon isn't quite enough to obscure the fact that there are messages in this movie that, as a good progressive, I really don't want to see taken seriously by the teenagers who are swooning instead of laughing at a human-vampire-werewolf love triangle. (Warning: spoilers ahead.)

For instance, when Bella and her werewolf friend-cum-crush, Jacob, stroll on a beach while arguing about whether Jacob's werewolf identity is the way he was born or a "lifestyle choice"—words which, when the heroine of this saga delivers them verbatim, stray uncomfortably close to the rhetoric espoused by homophobic right-wingers—it's hard to write off as another piece of absurdity. What's more, the scene is particularly awkward in the context of a universe which is eager to highlight several types of diversity, from race and ethnicity to gender to disability, but in which every character and every romantic pairing is resolutely heterosexual.

And then, with Bella’s potentially suicidal leap off a cliff in what appears to be a cry for the attention of the two men with whom she's infatuated, and the disturbingly explicit anti-premarital sex message which ends the movie, one leaves the theater convinced New Moon isn’t just some silly love story. Even despite knowing the Mormon background of Meyer, I couldn't believe that the director and screenwriter would have let the end credits roll without undertaking some sort of criticism of the ideas espoused by the main characters in the final scene.

As a jaded, nearly-20-year-old college student, I could laugh at the terrible acting and the utterly ridiculous plotline. I could watch New Moon ironically, as a way to fulfill my desire for camp. But, I'm concerned for the preteen and teenage girls who are the series’ main demographic, and who may not take a critical attitude to Twilight’s themes.

As of Sunday, New Moon had the third-highest opening weekend box office sales in cinema history, and I find myself desperately hoping that this statistic doesn't indicate a trend in what the next generation of young women want out of their romance films. I hope this doesn't mean middle- and high-school girls are thinking that becoming catatonic for three months and then trying to kill yourself over a sudden breakup is an indicator of a healthy attitude towards relationships, or that having sex before marriage could turn you into a vampire.

I'm willing to admit that I may be wrong, and that most teenage girls are viewing the movie as non-seriously as I am. Maybe they're just interested in the admittedly decent production values, from the CGI werewolves to the indie soundtrack to the beautiful Pacific Northwest scenery (the movie was filmed in and around Vancouver). But somehow, I doubt it. Chalk up my skepticism to the audible gasps from the audience whenever any male member of the cast appeared shirtless (which happened roughly once every two minutes).

I have to wonder with apprehension about where this emerging teen culture, which fetishizes abstinence at the expense of mental health, is headed. For the sake of young women (and men), I maintain hope that it’s toward the realization that there are viable life choices besides marriage, deep depression after a breakup, and suicide attempts.

Emily is a staff writer for Campus Progress. She attends Princeton University.

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