Love Sucks

There are a few things I love: YA lit, Joss Whedon, and the ugly-hot guy in literature.

1. YA and children's books are where it's at. These are the books you grow up loving and end up holding nearer and dearer to your heart than anything written by Joyce or Melville.
2. Buffy helped me survive middle school. I'm usually not a vampire nut, but this show really struck a chord. It used a supernatural universe in order to underscore how weird and deadly high school can be.
3. My middle school crushes were Cyrano de Bergerac and the Phantom of the Opera. Hell, I even liked the eyepatch kid from Newsies the best. Any messed up guy that loved the main girl just for loving him back was right up my 7th grade alley.

So it would seem that Stephanie Meyer's book, Twilight, would be made for me. It's the latest YA book craze--people are dubbing it the next Harry Potter--and, at its core, has a forbidden teen vampire love saga. Flash back to Buffy and Angel much?

I ended up finishing Twilight in less than 24 hours. Sure, it's 500 pages of largish type, so it's not really a very long book. And I tend to be a fast reader. But it's definitely got a hook and Meyer knows how to pull the reader along. What will happen next? Will Bella fall down a well and Edward have to save her? Will Edward decide she's just a tasty snack? Who loves who the most? Okay, that was a little snarky, but really, it is a page-turner. And Meyer actually knows how to write, too. The prose gets pretty purple, but I like that Bella has a more mature voice than most YA protagonists. It especially helps in this kind of novel, too, in which Bella falls so desperately in love with Edward that it seems a little unrealistic.

(Unrealistic in a teen vampire love novel? No!)

What I didn't like about the novel was how needy and weak Bella becomes. Again, she's very mature for her age--she's grown up almost taking care of her parents, and isn't particularly interested in being the queen bee at her new high school. But Bella really loses herself once she starts a relationship with Edward. The two declare their undying love for each other and Bella isolates herself from everyone else she's known in town. Also, there's the threat that Edward could drink her blood at any second. He could just lose control--she's so tasty!--and she seems kind of okay with that. (This is more pronounced than in the Buffy/Angel relationship since here Edward is especially attracted to Bella because she smells so great--like a big plate of cupcakes, basically.) Did I think Edward was hot, even with his creepy vampireness? You betcha. But I was also turned off by how their relationship resembled an abusive one. Sure, Edward saves Bella all the time (girl is worse than Timmy from Lassie, I swear), but there is that constant threat that he could snap. Also, he has a bad temper and is condescending, while Bella laps this up and thinks everything he does is "perfect." He basically stalks her under the pretense of "keeping her safe," which ooged me out a little. Their relationship is extremely intense for seventeen year-olds. (Okay, one seventeen year-old and one guy who's celebrated his 100th birthday already.) By the end, Bella is basically begging to give up her entire life and join him as a member of the undead. It's a little creepy for a YA relationship.

The biggest warning sign for an abusive relationship came at the end, when Bella is talking to her friend, Jacob, whose Native American family is not okay with vampires:

"He was...kind of over the top when you got hurt down in Phoenix. He didn't believe..." Jacob trailed off self-consciously.

My eyes narrowed. "I fell."

"I know that," Jacob said quickly.

"He thinks Edward had something to do with me getting hurt."

Really, Edward did save Bella, but this reminded me of women who claim they "fell" when they actually got hit by their boyfriend/husband. Those echoes give the book a much darker shade than I think Meyer intended.

When I was 13, the Buffy and Angel drama didn't bother me at all. But even now, I think what helped in that situation was that Buffy had some plans/attitudes of her own. She didn't swoon every time she saw him. Sure, she had plans, but they involved somehow rising above both of their issues; she never wanted to become a vampire.

(Of course, in the Twilight-verse, vampires can avoid sucking humans, can go out in sunlight--shiny!--and look hot all the time.)

Did I get pulled in? You bet. I'll probably get the next one from the library as well. But I'm also a little worried for those legions of fangirls out there would think that love is all-consuming and means you need to be with someone whom you are totally awed by and can't survive without. That love means literally giving up life as you know it.

I don't want to sound preachy, because there are all kinds of relationships in literatures, and YA lit shouldn't necessarily teach kids a good, old-fashioned lesson. But it is something that struck me the wrong way, even as I liked the book overall. Maybe it's just a sign of maturity--I'm sure I would have swooned over Edward as a 13 year-old myself.

(Recently, I rewatched My So-Called Life and realized what a jackass Jordan actually is. Same idea, I guess.)

If you haven't read the book, you've probably seen the trailer for the movie or, better yet, the Entertainment Weekly cover. As hysterical as that picture is, it does reflect the tone of the books a little. It's melodramatic heart-throb stuff, but it's fun. I'm not going to be in the theaters on opening night, but I might Netflix it when it comes out in DVD.