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It started like this. A Facebook Status Update along the lines of “Stephenie Meyer is the stupidest, most pointless lackwit in existence and should have her face ripped off by ravening, rabid squirrels while Alan Ball stands by, laughing with maniacal glee.” (Or something of the sort.)

Then came the rebuttal. “Oh, don’t be like that, Twilight’s not so bad. Sure, it’s not high literature or anything, but it’s an enjoyable read and has a fun take on vampire mythology -- plus, the movies are at least faithful to their source, unlike that excuse for a Sookie Stackhouse story Ball calls True Blood.”

And then came this…

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It’s not just that Twilight isn’t high literature -- it's not even literature at all. It’s lurid, poorly developed melodrama designed for prepubescent girls and women with a skewed sense of relationships (why act for yourself when a hot, hunky guy can solve everything?). It reflects Meyer’s skewed, wonky “religion” to a tee and encourages values that should have been left behind a century ago. Not to mention it’s horrendously written -- at least J.K. Rowling can tell a compelling story. Meyer has no idea how to do so -- witness the ridiculous non-structure of New Moon. The woman’s an idiot. And her take on vampires isn’t fun -- it’s stupid and lame.

I liken the phenomenon to the brief love affair adolescent girls had with Hanson. Most of them are too ashamed to admit it now, and the backlash is already happen with Meyer’s books. My writing partner has a sixteen-year old daughter who used to adore the Twilight books. Now she and all of same-aged friends openly mock them. The studio is smart to push these films out as fast as possible -- they know that it’s nothing more than a fad. And fads may flare up brightly, but they burn out quickly.

I’m deeply offended by Meyer’s assertion that women are only defined by their male counterparts. I’ve written quite a few female characters in my time, and I’ll lay serious money on the fact that I understand the female psyche far more intricately than that simpering housewife, to whom husbands and children are the Alpha and the Omega.

Her work is themeless, poorly structured and peopled with shrill, one-note characters. Her prose is formulaic and uninteresting (sure, it’s easy to read, but so are “Dick and Jane” books) Her work has nothing whatsoever to say -- it’s vapid fantasy for impressionable tweeners and bored housewives exactly like Meyer herself. Truth be told, the bulk of her readers are undereducated and not well-versed in real world relationships. Who cares if she’s popular for this brief instant? Abysmal films like Norbit and Big Momma’s House raked in tons of cash; popularity isn’t a signifier of quality.

As for True Blood, familiarize yourself with the word “adaptation.” Movies and TV shows are different than books, and when you follow the written page like scripture, you end up with Chris Columbus’s Harry Potter films. I’m sick of whiny fanboys bitching when things are altered for the sake of cinematic clarity, as it shows a sense of obsession and utter misunderstanding on the part of individuals who have absolutely no idea how to tell a story in different formats. In the case of Harris’ work (and yes, I’ve read them) Ball has actually bettered the books in his adaptation -- no surprise there, really, as the books weren’t that good to begin with. He’s given us deep, intriguing characters and a genuinely provocative (and most of all, adult) story.

There’s really no comparison between it and Twilight -- it’s better in every conceivable manner.

And here’s where you’re gonna really go crazy – it’s better than Buffy, too. Unlike Whedon’s work, its characters don’t all speak in the same voice, and it hasn’t betrayed its characters for the sake of luring in new viewers (hey, we’ve decided Willow’s suddenly gay… oooh, here’s Dawn, an utterly useless character to appeal to the tweeners!).

I’m not a fanboy. I feel no blind obedience to the genre. I come at things as an artist trying to genuinely say something and as such, I have a great love for the reflective (and often transgressive) power of art. Indeed, I think the overwhelming internet fanboy culture has altogether weakened literature and cinema over the past decade. Point of fact, I mostly despise fanboys (particularly the idiotically obsessive Browncoats -- sure, Firefly was fun, but it’s been repeatedly lapped on both a philosophical and fun level by Ron Moore) who tend to focus only on superficial, surface qualities of a piece of work -- they concentrate on the “cool” rather than the provocative.

I don’t want sheer escapism. I want to be stimulated and provoked. I want to walk away from something with a new and intriguing perspective. I want metaphor and allegory. That doesn’t mean that everything has to be Schindler’s List, but I don’t feel the need to waste my time with sheer fluff anymore. I find the phrase “turn your brain off” to be insulting. Might as well say “act like an idiot.” It’s the same effect. As far as we know, this is the only life we have, and exposing yourself to the same thing ad nauseum is a crime against your mind.

I have no patience for superficial readings of art. I spend my days going over theme, symbolism and meaning. I don’t read fanfiction, I don’t read tie-in books, I don’t read “fun” series, because, again, I don’t want simple escapism. Genre fiction and cinema is at its best when it acts as a prism to reflect real world issues and cultural mores. I enjoyed the first three seasons of Buffy due to the fact that Whedon was clearly interested in applying standard horror tropes to the high school experience -- it was an interesting metaphor. Seasons 4 through 7 lost this due to his involvement with other projects, and the dropoff is stark and obvious.

This is part of why I adore True Blood. Because, unlike Charlaine Harris, Alan Ball has an actual artistic voice. He has something to say, and it’s filtered through her basic framework. Ball is known for pushing the envelope on subject matter that stimulates him. He’s considerably expanded and deepened the characters. Characters don’t have to be likable (witness the wondrous Alex in A Clockwork Orange -- he’s repellent, but always watchable); rather, they have to be interesting. And the combination of Ball’s exceptional writing and Paquin’s bravura performance make the character of Sookie Stackhouse endlessly interesting. She seems so much more flawed and real than in Harris’s novels, even when she goes over the top. The major problem with Harris’s writing is that it’s ordinary. Bland. The allegories are bush league clichés compared to Ball’s. He’s done a rare thing -- taken shoddy source material and made something out of it that actually matters.

If all you want is base entertainment, more power to you. Art is obviously subjective, and different people take away different things. Me, I want more than simple storytelling -- I want to take away something genuine. Something human. This is probably why I’m consciously drawing away from the genre lately. Because it’s mostly turned into fanboy wank. I get paid to write genre because I’m good at it, and I’m happy to share my stories with the Geek Speak audience. Over the past year, I wrote a lot of genre, and a host of films will be coming out for the next couple of years that reflect that. But there’ll be a time, not far in the future, where I leave it behind completely for new artistic goals. I recently wrote a straight comedy and found it intensely satisfying. Also, I’m making my directorial debut at the end of the year, and it’s a drama. One that hopefully, in some small way, matters. At least, it matters to me.

Unlike Twilight, which matters not at all. To anyone.

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And the debate raged on… “Are you saying that Ron Moore, as in Ronald D. Moore, the architect of the utterly ridiculous Starbuck-is-an-angel, “All Along the Watchtower”-is-a-galactic-reference-point fourth season of BSG, is in any way superior to Joss Whedon even at his (approximation of) worst? Are you insane?”

And thus it will continue, ever an anon. All of this has happened before, and will happen again. 
 

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See our Geek Speak review of Hard Ride to Hell, written by David Rosiak, with writing partner Matt Chernov, here.

HARD RIDE TO HELL

Out now, on DVD!

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