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It's Twilight/New Moon/Oh Hey Vampires And Werewolves Day on the Internets (well, maybe yesterday was, but I'm a sleep-deprived mother of two and so I get some creative leeway with my calendar): the release of the movie New Moon yesterday has unleashed, over recent weeks, waves of virtual commentary about the Twilight phenomenon and culminated, today, in a tsunami of red carpet photo coverage. So, you know, if you want to indulge in a little Edward-gazing, today's your day. I don't have any red carpet photos of the New Moon premiere, but I do have some reflections on the Twilight series (originally composed for MamaPop last year, when the first movie was released), and why it's simply not as bad as - and, in fact, probably much, much better than - the naysayers say it is.

Read on...

It was to be expected that there'd be a certain amount of criticism directed toward the Twilight series after the movie was released. There was, after all, a considerable amount of criticism of each of the books as these were released, criticism that was largely directed toward the purportedly anti- or un-feminist sensibilities of the series. Bella is a passive character, the argument goes: Bella sacrifices too much for love; Bella sublimates herself to Edward; Bella doesn't kick ass and take names like Buffy did; Bella washes too many dishes for her dad; Bella wears too much fleece, etc, etc.

Whatever. The quote-unquote feminist arguments against the Twilight series are specious at best, in my opinion (I mean, for example: Bella passive? Bella risks her own life on numerous occasions to save people. Bella saves EVERYBODY at the end. And she's not even a Slayer. *rolls eyes*), but nonetheless frustrating. I actually wrote a whole post ranting about how being cynical about love is the new black and how stupid it is - yeah, I called it stupid - to call out romantic love as de facto disempowering, even when the love at stake (heh) is love between a clumsy human girl and a powerful vampire, especially seeing as that clumsy human girl basically makes that vampire her bitch and makes him do whatever she wants.

But then I realized that long lectures on the place of romantic love in the history of feminist discourse and consideration of same against current critiques of Twilight were maybe not so interesting to a community of readers who are probably just looking for something lite to read while they scarf down their afternoon Snickers bar, and so I shelved it.

Then I read this (warning - some spoilers follow):

Is the Twilight series pushing its own kind of morality along with its love story? I think so -- and it is an element that parents and teachers need to be aware is in the books. The narrative suggests that it is better to submit and sublimate yourself to a superior being than to be your own person. Having a will of one's own is not conducive to Meyer's brand of love and living. Only heterosexual relationships are explored, and (married!) sex is always a power play with painful consequences. Plus it is preferable to be a teenage mother above all else, even if it kills you. (io9.com)

Let's break this down:

1) The narrative suggests that it is better to submit and sublimate yourself to a superior being than to be your own person.

This canard is getting old. How is Bella not her own person, exactly? She falls in love and fights - fights hard - to carve a space in this world for that love. She fights Edward - who worries about her life and her future and her breakability - in her pursuit of this love. And she gets what she wants, against all of Edward's initial preferences. She joins Edward's world, sure - but doesn't that happen for many of us when we align our lives with someone else's? We follow partners as their lives take different directions, and they follow us. Since when is sacrifice in the name of love an incontrovertibly bad thing? If Bella left her family and gave up her college plans (which she wasn't keen on to begin with) to go do community work in sub-Saharan Africa, would we be all oh, she's just sublimating herself to community work? Why does love necessarily mean sublimation? SERIOUSLY.

And this 'superior being' bullshit? It's bullshit, for two reasons: one, as I suggested above, Edward is not a superior being. He's an angst-ridden, self-flagellating monster-boy. I think that part of the force of Meyer's narrative lays in the fact that Edward's beauty and strength conceal vast reserves of self-doubt and - in some moments - self-loathing. He's a monster, and he hates that he's a monster. It's Bella who brings to full flower his determination to fully overcome his animal side; it is Bella who overrides his tendency to self-doubt. Who's the superior being? 

Two: as I argued here, the idea that a remarkably 'good' character is a troubling romantic partner is, well, troubling. Why shouldn't we (or our children) aspire to love really good people, people who would love us as well as Edward loves Bella?

2) Having a will of one's own is not conducive to Meyer's brand of love and living.

Huh? See above. 

3) Only heterosexual relationships are explored, and (married!) sex is always a power play with painful consequences.

Right. Because all novels should explore homosexual relationships, just because. They should also take care to ensure that characters represent a range of ethnic and class backgrounds and abilities. Writers should be encouraged to include seeing and hearing-impaired characters, and also characters in wheelchairs. Down with heterosexist, ableist, racist, classist storytelling!

(Wait. The Twilight series does have characters from a range of backgrounds! And a character in a wheelchair! And depending upon how you read those two Romanian vampires who appear in Breaking Dawn, there's a case to be made that homosexual relationships are not ignored. Stephenie Meyer did take Political Correctness In Novel Writing 101! Take that, Tolstoy, you racist, ableist, heterosexist bastard!)

Also, someone's been reading a bit too much Catherine Mackinnon. That whole 'all sex is rape/all sex is violence' line is so last millenium. Sex is dangerous for Edward and Bella because Edward is - wait for it - a vampire. That there's a risk of him eating Bella during the act doesn't speak so much to a power play as it does to, you know, his diet. And Bella's the aggressor, remember? If anyone is pulling power moves v.v. sex in their relationship, it's Bella.

4) It is preferable to be a teenage mother above all else, even if it kills you.

This is the one that I find most baffling and infuriating.  It reduces Bella's desire to protect her unborn child to a desire to be a teenage mother. That's just stupid. Bella didn't set out to get pregnant; she didn't pursue teenage motherhood. She got pregnant and decided to keep the baby. Oh, hey, maybe you've seen Juno? She preferred teenage motherhood above all else, too!

The writer argues that because Bella refuses an abortion, the book is "a virtual pro-life P.S.A." and that Meyer is forcing 'anti-abortion hysterics" upon her readers:

The too-predictable plotline would be bad enough without statements like this from Bella: "This child, Edward's child, was a whole different story. I wanted him like I wanted air to breathe. Not a choice -- a necessity." Never mind that Bella, 18, had never wanted children and had been arguing with her husband about going to college, which he summarily dismissed.

(Ed. note: that last parenthetical statement is just wrong. Edward does everything in his power to convince Bella to go to college. She's the one who resists.)

But then bad Edward wants to give Bella an abortion because he knows their half-vampire/human baby will kill her! "He leaned away and looked me in the eye. 'We're going to get that thing out before it can hurt any part of you. Don't be scared. I won't let it hurt you.' 'That thing?' I gasped...Edward had just called my little nudger a thing. He said Carlisle would get it out. "No," I whispered." You see, Bella often refers to her unborn child as "her little nudger," since it grows inside her at an unnatural rate. Yes, she does.

Apparently, it is just the most insidious and troubling thing EVER that Bella becomes attached to her unborn child. Because, you know, that never happens! ALL accidental pregnancies are supposed to end in abortion, because if you were ambivalent about becoming a mother before you got knocked up, you should just stay ambivalent, and ambivalence = being anti-baby, so seriously, you should just flush that thing out and forget it ever happened. That's why Juno was such a bad movie; it was so unrealistic. Also, pregnant women never name their unborn babies, and would never risk their lives to protect them! Because abortions are awesome, and we like to keep our abortioning options open until the last minute! NEVER GET ATTACHED TO A FETUS, is what I always say.

GAWD. This is the shit that makes pro-choicers (which I, emphatically, am) look bad. Deciding against abortion doesn't make you rabidly anti-choice or even anti-abortion. It means that you want to keep your baby. Last time I checked, that wasn't a reprehensible thing.

Look, you don't have to like the Twilight books. If they're not your thing, if you don't find them convincing, that's your opinion and that's fine. I mean, they're not going to end up on any Great Books list alongside Shakespeare, so you don't need to worry about Edward and Bella being canonized as the second coming of Romeo and Juliet. The march of Great Literature will continue, helped along by the publication of the latest variation of The Jane Austen Book Club or whatever it is that Oprah is putting her stamp on these days and literacy will not get hurt. But please: resist the urge go all Savonarola on the Twilight books, with preachy denunciations of its troubling morality and insidious teachings. What makes your insistence that 'parents and teachers should be made aware' and readers 'forewarned' that the content of these books is potentially 'dangerous' any better than any other censor's self-righteous attempt to get the books they deem 'troubling' put behind the library check-out counter?

And if not, at least come up with more sophisticated criticism. My eyes get tired from all the rolling.

(You can read the companion piece to this post - Five Reasons Why You Should Totally Let Your Kids See Those Vampire Movies - over at Her Bad Mother. And you can see the discussion prompted by the original version of this discussion over at MamaPop. And then you can go see New Moon. Or go surf entertainment blogs in search of photos of Robert Pattinson at last night's premiere. Enjoy!)

Most of my family has served in the military in some capacity or another. My grandfather was in the (Canadian) Navy. My mother was in the Air Force. My father (pictured above) was in the Air Force. My father-in-law served in the Black Watch (Royal Highland Regiment) of Canada in World War II.

None of them died in service. But they did serve, and today - as I remember that so many have died - I think that that is going to be what I focus on when I talk to my kids about what Remembrance Day and Veterans Day mean. Not the death, not the sacrifice, not the loss (how can four year olds wrap their heads around loss of life in war? should we even expect them to try?) - just the service, the tremendous service, that so many men and women provide to their countries day after day, year after year. Just that. The service. The protection they provide, the security, the maintenance of peace, the defense of peace, the making - in some cases - of peace.

That, I think, is easy enough to explain to a child. And well-worth doing. So worth doing.

(Is that enough, do you think? How SHOULD we talk to our kids about Remembrance/Veterans' Day? Talking about death with small children is complicated enough - how do we discuss it alongside war and conflict and all those terrible things that, although we should remember, we so often struggle to forget?)

(Thank you, veterans and service-people. THANK YOU.)

In honor of the 40th birthday of Sesame Street, the original version of the all-time awesomest Sesame Street song EVER:





(How does one spell MAN-NA MAN-NA, anyway? MAH-NA MAH-NA? MANNA MANNA? MAH-NUH MAH-NUH?)

(MUH-NUH MUH-NUH? MUNNA MUNNA?)

(doo doo doo-doo-doo)

(MA-NA-MA-NA!)

Happy Birthday, Sesame. Thank you for the many, many hours of joy, and for the many that you'll provide to my kids.

Jasper is, as I've mentioned, sick: respiratory difficulties of some sort or another that haven't yet been fully determined. What we do know, or think that we know: it's not swine flu. Which is a relief. Of sorts.

We can't really rest easy - indeed, we're pretty likely to be resting entirely uneasily - until Jasper is well again. Because he's ill, he can't get the vaccine. Because he's ill, he's more vulnerable than he'd be otherwise to the virus. Because it's his respiratory system that's vulnerable, any viral attack could be very, very dangerous to him. Too dangerous.

Yesterday, a healthy young boy in our city died of swine flu. He was diagnosed with regular flu last week after falling ill, felt improved enough to play hockey on Saturday, and then fell ill again that evening. His parents took him to a clinic on Sunday, where they were told it would pass. Evan Frustaglio went bed on Sunday evening, and stopped breathing, and when his parents went to wake him, he was gone.

Just like that. GONE.

I am not exaggerating when I say that this news makes me want to a) keep Jasper - keep Jasper and Emilia - indoors for the rest of flu season, and b) have Jasper sleep right beside me so that I can lay awake and monitor his breathing until I am certain - as certain as I can be - that the greatest risk has passed. Or until I go mad from sleep-deprivation. Whichever comes first.

The first option is not a viable option. The second, well... I'd like to say that I'm sort of kidding, but I'm not. But as much effort I'll put into that second option, it's not the answer. I don't know what the answer is. Live with my worry, I guess.

And this: implore you all to please, please vaccinate your children if you can. Stay home if you fall ill. Wash your hands. Do whatever you can to stop this from spreading. Containment only works if we all do it. Don't put any children at risk.

Please.

Yesterday, watching that helium balloon aircraft  - that helium balloon aircraft that everyone thought had a child inside - float through the sky, I thought, there go all of my ambitions for my children to be fearless. There go stolen horses and gravity-defying stunts and building rockets in the backyard. There goes my daring.

Once the balloon was down, of course - and the whole thing revealed to be, possibly, a hoax - I was able to breathe again and to regain perspective. One can encourage fearlessness and daring in one's children without being stupid, obviously. One can urge their children to build rockets - under supervision. One can hope that their children might leap atop horses and race across fields - once they've learned to ride. One can encourage adventuring and exploring and learning and testing and fun - and also teach caution and responsibility.

None of which, it seems, the Heene family did, although maybe I'm wrong. Whether it was a hoax or not, the unattended balloon, ready to take flight at just the tug of a rope by a six-year old's hand, was a danger that the parents should never have allowed. Did they not think that their kids might explore said balloon? Or that someone else's kids might do the same? Who builds a ready-to-go aircraft in their backyard and leaves it unattended? If pools are supposed to have fences, shouldn't loaded helium balloon ships? (And if it was a hoax, as the interview below seems to suggest? PPHHBBBT. Those people are evil and stupid.)

But apparently this is precisely what we look for in television entertainment - excitement! danger! idiots! - because the Discovery Channel has apparently offered this family - again, the heads of which are either stupid or evil or both - a reality-show deal. For a show about - get this - "scientific family projects that you can do yourself at home"

What we can learn from this: go ahead, endanger your children's lives! Exploit them to get attention! Do stupid, stupid things with helium balloons and make sure that the world is watching, because? SOMEONE WILL PAY YOU FOR THAT SH*T.

That 'BOOM' you just heard? Was no exploding helium balloon. That was my head.

Below, the interview in which Falcon Heene - the boy who was not in the balloon - says, 'we did it for the show.'

(*BOOM*)

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