new moon was unintentionally funny, and twilight is probably not gateway literature

            So last night I saw New Moon, the second movie in the Twilight series, and it was hilarious. My sides are bruised from my friends hitting me in irritation, which is fair enough because I’m pretty sure I sounded like an intellectual prick laughing in self-satisfaction the whole time. I plead innocence, at least to the charge of intellectual vanity: had any of said predisposed-to-violent-solutions friends torn their gazes and attentions from Edward’s brow or Jacob’s body they would have realized my laughs were genuine enough. My laughter wasn’t even directed towards any of New Moon’s blatant and amazing array of problematic (read: hegemonic verging on oppressive depending on who you ask) discourses of race, class and gender picked apart by any armchair liberal. No, the funniest parts of the movie were (not necessarily in this order): Edward’s face of extreme tortured brooding/Robert Pattinson’s acting, Bella’s pterodactyl screams during her nightmares/Kristen Stewart’s acting, and lastly, this hilarious Youtube slash video of Edward and Jacob as lovers that I found after the movie while trying to find clips of the other two:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7p89INP7OVs&feature=related. 

Needless to say, I had an unexpectedly grand time.

 

            The problem is of course that this grand time was predicated on a temporary shut-off of my brain/critical thinking and reasoning skills, which is something I commonly hear reiterated when I ask Twilight fans about its appeal. I understand the general criticisms of the Twilight saga (let’s define this as the books and movies): the writing quality of the books is generally lamented as terrible, the movies are even worse than the books, Bella is kind of a pathetic female role model for the young girls who make up author Meyer’s target audience, and the whole story tends to reify archaic gender roles we’d like to tell ourselves we’ve moved beyond in a supposedly postfeminist, neoliberal and happily capitalist society. My point here isn’t really to support or deny any of these criticisms, though you can likely guess what my inclination would be, because I’m far more interested in the significance of what actual Twilight fans make of them. Try to engage most Twilight fans in a critical conversation regarding, well, anything to do with the books or movies and the general response is somewhere in between “You’re probably right but I don’t think about that” and “I know they’re stupid, but I like them”. Basically, it seems like most Twilight readers want to turn off their brains in much the same way I did to watch New Moon.

            So what’s wrong with having a frivolous pleasure? Or enjoying cultural texts without agreeing with or even thinking about their social or political messages? It would be hypocritical of me to say anything but "nothing, so long as it is in moderation". However, in the case of a hugely successful series like Twilight, this willful ignorance requires more interrogation. For one, it means that a readership numbering in the millions potentially carries a significant percentage who are oblivious to these criticisms, and enjoy the books without implicating themselves in the processes of power which occur within them. Now almost any popular culture theorist or communication studies layman will tell you that our relation to cultural artifacts is not one of bland absorption: we take what we like from cultural texts, reject what we don't like, and re-invent them to make them our own. Mediating culture involves a negotiation with, rather than an overwhelming oppression of, the individual; we are not sponges who blithely accept everything we see, hear or read and expel them into society in the same form. I tend to agree with this by and large, however the case of Twilight seems to present a particular challenge. In my experience, Twilight readers seem to exemplify an active resistance to any kind of critical interpretation and negotiation of culture. Is it possible to avoid any such judgment, and have a completely sterile reading of a text? Probably not, as all culture is mediated by our subjectivity regardless of whether or not we are conscious of it, but I am left with the question of the significance of so many people wanting it. What does it mean that perhaps millions of people so actively wish to avoid thinking critically about cultural texts, and "just enjoy" them?

            Maybe the answer lies in contextualising Twilight as a cultural artifact among others. Arguably, most of our current mainstream cultural production encourages us to think less. In a Huxley-esque fashion (think Brave New World), it seems that postmodern, capitalist North America is predicated on our disengagement from politics and philosophy coupled with our love of distraction and pleasure. This leads me to group Twilight among the frivolous distractions which act as impediments to the processes of rational criticism and cultural re-invention, rather than as a piece of literature to be examined on its own merits. Of course, this is a bit disingenuous: I haven't read the books and have only seen one of the movies, and thus cannot make an informed argument that Twilight is a wholly superficial cultural text of no depth. I can only make the suggestion, based on the aforementioned and self-proclaimed willful ignorance of many Twilight readers, that it does not provoke considerable critical or inventive thought or challenge our inclination against such things. I therefore continue to ask the question: "What does it do?" rather than the more essentialist "What is it?"

            Many Twilight fans and even neutral parties would argue that, despite its dubious literary merit, the Twilight books encourage young adults to become readers. This implies, of course, that these budding readers come to appreciate the act of reading in and of itself and thus go on to read more complex books. Certainly aspects of this are true; trashy fantasy novels taught me that reading was non-intimidating and rewarding. However, I would ask the question again of context. In the context of a million relatively frivolous distractions and easy cultural digestibles what does Twilight become? Is it a stepping stone to great literature, or simply another way to avoid reading it?