The Trouble with Twilight

I've been thinking a lot about our conversation about the Twilight series last week.  My thoughts are a bit jumbled, really an indication of how confused I am about this topic.

I told you that Jessica introduced me to the series--or to thinking more seriously about the series--in my grad. course on literature theory.  Her use of feminism and psychoanalysis to analyze the series, particularly Bella's pregnancy, was so intriguing that I decided to read the books.

I got the first book in the series (forgot the name) from a relative ( a woman in her forties) who was, as she admitted, absolutely besotted with Twilight and, in particular, loved the male lead and vampire, Edward.

Another friend of mine, in her early fifties, also adores Twilight and is unfazed by all the criticism that "thinking" women have levelled against it.  It's about love, about the desire for eternal love, something we all long for, she told me.  I've been meaning to spend a Saturday with her watching the entire series of movies while sipping Daiquiries.  (No luck, so far).

My niece, a young and very confident woman told me, some years ago, that she is reading Twilight in English.  Not only am I learning a lot of English, she told me, but I simply love the books. We've been wrong about vampires... she concluded--half tongue in cheek.

When I started reading book one, on the ride back from Lexington Kentucky, I couldn't put it down.  I was pulled in, almost reluctantly, and while my critical side would occasionally scoff at the writing and what i thought of as Bella's brainlessness, the depictions of Edward did pull me in, as did the plot.  I don't remember that much of the books (in fact, I would not reread them), but I do remember the scene where Bella and Edward are out in the woods and he takes of his shirt.  His skin is glimmering in the sunlight and he tells her not to touch him...I thought of this as an interesting comments on, and in some ways bending of, gender.  Edward, here, is clearly the object of desire, and while he has been stalking Bella, he also does not permit her to touch him; they do not even kiss, if I remember correctly, all because doing so is bound to unleash this terrible power in him (as it does, when they finally consumate their love sexually).

The way Twilight circulates in university English Departments is as a text to be resisted, to be analyzed in terms of its gender, class, racial ideologies, which need to be exposed for what they are and resisted.  I know some of my colleagues have taught the books--one even required her students to see the movies. I am curious "how" the novels entered the classroom and I imagine, perhaps wrongly, that the focus was the ideological construction of gender and class in the novels.  The novels were texts to be analyzed, exposed, and demythologized; nobody, to my knowledge (myself included) ever admitted to pleasure in reading them.

But isn't that the real question? Why, even if we are aware of what's problematic about Twilight, are we drawn to reading it? And by "we," I mean women, since I have not met a single male who has read or admitted reading the novels.  Is Twilight a kind a "soft porn" for young adult and adult women (and who voluntarily admits to reading such stuff?).  And what is it about Vampires that's so attractive--not just to women, but also to men?  Wouldn't it be interesting to find out?