Okay, I am getting sick and tired of having to defend my love of all things Twilighty around these parts. Especially to the males of our crack Geek Speak staff. It’s like they are all suffering from a tragic and incurable disorder, something that requires a telethon and possibly a ribbon of some kind. Acute Edward Cullen Aversion Syndrome. They are all missing a gene, or a base-pair chromosome or something. They just Do Not Get It. That Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight Series, for all its flaws (and, oh yes, I’m aware it has many), can still be entertaining and engaging and utterly enchanting is somehow beyond their collective ken, and my love for it has therefore become a source of ridicule and disdain.

Well, listen up, boys (and, actually, yes, quite a few girls as well), ‘cause I am only gonna say this… well, as many times as I need to. But listen up, anyway. ‘Cause I will be heard.

The Twilight world is, in a word, fun. It is -- in many more words -- melodramatic and ridiculous and romantic and nonsensical and hilarious and addictive and breathtaking and unreal. It is one of those rare phenomena that deserves all the hype, because it awakens such profound reactions. Not that it is in any way high art or thought-provoking allegory, but who says something has to be either of those things to be great?

I started reading Twilight about a year after its release. It was really just on a whim that I picked it up in Borders, intending to just check out a page or two, see what all the (then-lesser) fuss was about. To all the people who claim that Meyer is a poor writer, I counter with the fact that I was still standing there an hour later! That is not the hallmark of a poor writer. A poor writer would not make you want to keep reading so obsessively that you completely ignore the a) pain in your neck, b) constant replaying of something from the John Tesh school of audio torture and c) persistent child wailing a few feet away in the kids' section who's been demanding "a nuvva cwaka! A nuvva cwacka!" for at least 20 minutes. (Yes, I could have bought the book and taken it home to read in peace at any time, but I couldn't even face taking my eyes off its pages for as long as it would take to fish some cash out of my purse and hand it over. And then they probably would have had to take the book out of my hands to scan it! And I couldn't bear to let it go.)

Yes, there may be some stylistic flaws in Meyer's, er, style. Her language usage is unimaginative and unremarkable, and I definitely concede that she made some odd, odd choices when plotting out her would-be climactic scenes (if such she did). But I believe that Meyer's gift lies in transcending these mere details, in making something extraordinary out of her very ordinariness. Her writing isn't capital-letter-Good, but it is good at telling her story.

I think my love of Twilight can be explained thus: it's like the difference between a good movie and a FAVOURITE movie. I mean, Schindler's List is probably the best movie I've ever seen, but I have no desire to ever watch it again. Whereas Howard the Duck really isn't very good at all, and I've seen it at least fifty times.

And the Twilight movie possibly even more than that. Although I will add that several of those viewings were accompanied by the RiffTrax commentary. Ah, the RiffTrax commentary. So very worth the price of admission.

In case you’re unware, RiffTrax is the brainchild of Michael J. Nelson and his cohorts from Mystery Science Theater 3000, and the premise is largely the same. One need only download the RiffTrax mp3 to be played in conjunction with the movie of your choice, and then let the chuckling commence. If I may quote, uh, me -- from our Top 13 Genre Parodies, way back in Issue 1 -- RiffTrax commentaries are “… like watching a movie with a couple of very funny friends who don’t know how to shut up... in a good way.”

Some gems from their Twilight riff:

• “Summit Entertainment Presents… an inexplicable cultural phenomenon.”
• “Damn you, disproportionately large high school for a town of three thousand!”
• “It’s pretty hard to look badass, posing next to a Volvo.”
• “Can your heart stand another Google search?”
• “She loves him based on him not killing her. Well, that’s healthy.”

And from New Moon:

• "Now they can walk on water? This is a confusing mythology."
• "So, vampires swim, but canines don't.”/“Yeah, the werewolves suck at baseball, too."
• "Please consider one of the countless methods to contact someone quicker than international travel."
• "Distraught, Jacob would go on to wreak untold havoc upon the homes of three little pigs."

Although this may be my favorite:

• BELLA: "It doesn't make sense for you to love me."
• NELSON: "The Twilight Series, summed up in nine words."

Yes, okay, I concede there is plenty to mock in these movies. But there’s plenty to mock in almost anything (you should hear the RiffTrax guys give Avatar hell), and we laugh because we love. Or, I do, anyway.

I love these movies for many reasons. Lovely cinematography. Awesome soundtracks. Excellent casting. Jasper (Jackson Rathbone). Oh, and Michael Welch as Mike (I’ve been a fan of his since Joan of Arcadia, and that time he played the young O’Neill on SG-1). But mostly because these films are among the very few adaptations I have ever seen that really do justice to their source material, and that pleases my nitpicky soul. In the books, Bella does have a difficult time completing a sentence; Edward and Bella do spend a lot of time gazing at each other’s Immortal Beloved faces; first movie villain James does have a ridiculous ponytail; Jacob does get ripped as Hell in New Moon.

And Edward is just really, really, ridiculously good looking. Which Robert Pattinson carries off with ease. Now, it has been suggested that he cannot act and has no charisma: I take exception. Violent exception! The moment the music swelled and Edward walked through that cafeteria door in the first movie, hair immaculately upswept and skin seemingly infused with an inner glow, remains one of the few times I have actually been able to articulate the sound a Tribble makes. (My fellow cinema patrons took no notice, as they were largely making similar noises of their own.) I will concede there are times when Kristen Stewart’s Bella is a little inscrutable, but when you’ve read the books you know what’s going on in her head, and therefore her occasional lapses into stuttering incoherence (okay, her perpetual lapses into such) make all kinds of thematic sense.

Is this a man/woman thing, this Twilight disconnect, the kind of eternal misunderstanding between the sexes that provides such endless fodder for stand-up comedians of a certain observationalist school?

No, I really don’t think it is. I mean, I know women who hated the Twilight movie profoundly, and I know men -- yes, grown up, rational, even heterosexual men -- who actually enjoyed it. They saw it on a plane or were dragged along by their partners and later confessed to me that they didn’t mind at all (little though they admitted it to said partners; what, and whistle away all the Good Boyfriend Points they earned for agreeing to go? Never!). I will grant that those same men found New Moon far less acceptable, especially all the stuff before the werewolves show up, and, believe me, I get it. The whole thing where Bella is whiny, mopey, lost-without-him Miss Havisham-crazy probably came across as a little maudlin and histrionic. But believe me, in this case the movie actually bettered the book (which, when does that happen?); if you think Edward-less Bella was annoying in Kristen Stewart-form, imagine if you were privileged to experience every lovelorn thought that crossed her near-suicidal mind in drippy first person prose? Exhausting.

Now, it has been often suggested (most hilariously, here) that Stephenie Meyer’s Mormonism has influenced her story in a negative and insidious manner; there is certainly a big groundswell of resentment against Bella essentially going into a decline in New Moon. And I understand it, I do. It’s definitely not the best message to be sending to the young women of the world. But for all that it’s tragically pathetic, it’s not that far off: no one takes a First and Only Love more seriously than a teenage girl, and when the breakup comes (as it almost inevitably will), it can seem as though life is not worth living. As a veteran of more than one crying jag listening to endless replays of “The End of the World” by Brenda Lee after a particularly bitter breakup, I can kind of relate to Bella’s pain--even if I do want to stab her in the neck with a fork and tell her to Get Over It. But what I love about the New Moon movie is that it manages to take what seems like hundreds of pages of dispirited woe-is-me-ing and turns them into a clever season-changey montage. (‘Cause everybody needs a montage. Even Rocky had a montage.)

And this whole evil-Mormon-indoctrination issue is what drives me most crazy about the people who, on the one hand, scoff at the lack of depth in this series and then, on the other hand, exclaim aghast at the wrongs being done unto our daughters and daughters’ daughters by Meyer’s patriarchal religion infecting her books. If Meyer, in Twilight, is indeed successfully pushing her Mormon women-are-chattels agenda, then clearly the story must transcend mere paranormal teen romance and have deeper meaning, in defiance of the many critics who consider it superficial and inane—it’s just that the deeper meaning is not one with which many enlightened, allegedly “liberal” souls happen to agree. As it happens, I’m not a big one for the God stuff either, but plenty of people are, and I don’t think there is anything wrong with anyone cleaving to their own beliefs. Why is it we accuse religious folks of being fundamentalist and bigoted, and yet don’t for a moment hesitate to call into question their sanity and intelligence, and cavil at their attempts at indoctrination? Don’t they have the right to sell their world view in genre as much as scientists and evolutionists? I am secure enough in my beliefs that I don’t find them threatened or challenged by the clear articulation (or even subtle insinuation) of someone else’s. I even managed to get through Battlefield Earth without once feeling the desire to read Dianetics.

Besides, Orson Scott Card is a card-carrying Latter Day Saint, as are Dragonlance mastermind Tracy Hickman, The Clone Republic’s Steven L. Kent and Runelords architect David Farland, yet there is way less of this “What of the Children?” hysteria bemoaning their unholy influence on impressionable young minds. Is it ‘cause they write Science Fiction and High Fantasy, and are therefore considered the province of men? How sexist.

But this debate is not about the merit of the books. This debate is about the movies made of those books, and I just really love them. I do. And you can too!

People, it’s easy. Just stop expecting The Twilight Saga films to be something they’re not. These are not proper vampire films, so stop searching therein for metaphor and meaning (lest it be something Joseph Smith might endorse, apparently). I mean, if you go into a movie that is advertised with impossibly beautiful teens on the poster posed in dramatic clinches and staring soulfully out at you, are you really thinking you’ll end up with Near Dark or 30 Days of Night, or, hell, even Daybreakers? These are teenage vampire romance films. They’re basically She’s All That with more violence; A Walk to Remember with more mythology; The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants with better laundry hygiene. (Do you know those girls never wash those jeans? Gross.)

I happen to like She’s All That and its ilk, and I really like vampires; combine the two, and it’s gold, baby! Diamond, even. And I know that, to some, it’s dross at best, or maybe cubic zirconia--at worst, that imitation plating that turns your skin green, or something having to do with a Bedazzler. But that’s okay. Y’know what? I don’t really like True Blood. It takes all kinds, folks.

And some of us like our vampires Bedazzled.

  -- Rachel Hyland

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