Week 10, Sadness at Twilight

I’m a big vampire fan. So the popular culture question of the week  -- Why are vampires so popular – is one that I've frequently asked myself. For this assignment, we were to search out and read five articles about vampire prevalence in popular culture.  My reading list included:

The Politics of Wizards and Vampires

Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez, originally published at Write.Live.Repeat

http://www.racialicious.com/2008/12/11/the-politics-of-wizards-and-vampires/

Former journalist, now writer. 2005, Time dubbed her "The Godmother of Chica Lit"

After Twilight, Gothic Sex Takes a Bigger Bite

Susie Bright

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/susie-bright/after-twilight-gothic-sex_b_276491.html

Sexuality advocate, spokesperson, writer, artist, etc.

Vampires: Why Here, Why Now?

Tom Alderman

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tom-alderman/vampires---why-here-why-n_b_282099.html

Media, Presentation and Speech trainer, speech writer and founder of MediaPrep

Rough Sex With Vampires: What Does "True Blood" Tell Us About Women and Sexuality?

James Brady Ryan, Nerve.com.

http://www.alternet.org/sex/141317/rough_sex_with_vampires:_what_does_%22true_blood%22_tell_us_about_women_and_sexuality

(Entertainment blogger)

Vampires, Werewolves, and "Scary" Female Sexuality: the Sexist World of Twilight

Carmen D. Siering, Ms. Magazine

http://www.alternet.org/sex/140132/vampires,_werewolves,_and_%22scary%22_female_sexuality:_the_sexist_world_of_twilight/

Carmen D. Siering is an assistant professor of English and women’s studies at BallStateUniversity in Muncie, Ind. One of her research areas is popular culture and its influence in the lives of girls and women.

LDS Sparkledammerung IS HERE!

Stoney321 – some random guy on livejournal

http://stoney321.livejournal.com/317176.html

Bite Me! (Or Don't)

Christine Seifert

http://bitchmagazine.org/article/bite-me-or-dont

Assistant professor of communication at Westminster College in Salt Lake City, Utah. She teaches classes in professional writing and rhetoric.

Feminism and the vampire novel

Caitlin Brown

http://www.thefword.org.uk/features/2009/09/feminism_and_th

Caitlin Brown is a recent graduate currently trying to stave off the pain of real life with a never-ending stream of fantasy novels

Seems to me like vampires have been popular for some time now – and have shifted from a fringe-group following to the mainstream. Susie Bright talks about fantasy writers doubling as porn writers – and never being sure which was more disreputable. Alderman’s article reminds me of the Count on Sesame Street and Count Chokula cereal (which I distinctly recall desiring!)

For me, and I suggest that this is true for others as well -- vampire popularity is all mixed up with sex and sexuality. The appeal and intrigue; the danger and taboo.

Vampires came up at my training last week in Oklahoma. The training is about adolescent development and the participants, while dramatizing a point, referenced the teen girls swooning over dreamy Edward.

I’m thrilled that they are getting the point, but cringe at the reference. I’m terribly sad that Edward and the Twilight series are the vampires de jour. Seifert notes that they’ve stolen Harry Potter’s status as “prince of young adult genre.” What a shame!

The feminists are furious about Twilight. Seifert calls it “Abstinence porn.”

In reality, the abstinence message—wrapped in the genre of abstinence porn—objectifies Bella in the same ways that “real” porn might. The Twilight books conflate Bella losing her virginity with the loss of other things, including her sense of self and her very life. Such a high-stakes treatment of abstinence reinforces the idea that Bella is powerless, an object, a fact that is highlighted when we get to the sex scenes in Breaking Dawn.

Of course the paradox is that the more Meyer sexualizes abstinence, the more we want Bella and Edward to actually have sex. This paradox becomes extra-convoluted when we find out, in a moment that for some is titillating, for others creepy, that sex could literally equal death for Bella.

I must agree. Deciding not to have sex is well and good. But equating sex to death and inflating the state of virginity so extremely is troubling. Is our intention to teach our young people that “good” sexuality is that which you never actually have, just desire?

What my colleagues and I are working so hard to get adults to understand is that adolescent sexuality is natural, needed and unavoidable. Resisting one’s own sexual development is a disaster. Not being able to cope with, explore, understand and embrace in a healthy way is a disaster. But we, as adults, simply can’t get past the huge gasp that is the topic of young people and sex.

Even the term, abstinence is laden with meaning and values. As part of my communications trainings, I encourage the youth serving community (largely teen pregnancy prevention and adolescent sexual health) to abstain from using the term “abstinence.” According to cognitive linguists working to “re-frame” sexuality education (Real Reason research for the ACLU) the term reinforces our perception that sexuality is inherently bad (dirty feelings, impure thoughts) and our opponent in a struggle (fighting off those feelings). That by talking about abstinence we are framing what is a normal, healthy part of our being as something to be resisted and repressed.

This concept is echoed by Valdes-Rodriguez:

In the character of Harry Potter, and in the characters of his friends, teachers and associates, Rowling has created an essentially progressive “green” (and possibly agnostic) universe where people and wizards are good and kind by nature. Here, compassion and goodness are the norm, and students are taught to be ever-watchful for those few among them who make the unusual and shocking choice to be bad.  …

By contrast, the lead male character in the Twilight series is Edward, a “vegetarian” vampire. Edward is heroic not because he is good by nature, but rather because he makes the choice to be good, against all his “natural” instincts. In this way, Twilight is the ideological polar opposite of Potter.

And all of this heavy doctrinal crap gets tied to adolescent sexuality. Bottom line: Girls, all this sex stuff – it’s a bad, bad thing and you’ve got to resist it to be the kind of girl that  your Edward is gonna love. After all, Edward does it.  And Edward is, Edward is … God?

So I had read a lot of this anti-Twilight analysis at the feminist and race blogs. But recently I stumbled across and joking reference to S. Meyer’s (Twilight author) Mormonism. I recalled that it had come up, but I had only assumed it was tied to the abstinence message.

LDS Sparkledammerung IS HERE!

The Secrets of the Sparkle a.k.a. TWILIGHT: STONIFIED (Image heavy)

ETA Due To Heavy Traffic This was written to amuse my buds and me. I am not claiming to be the Mormon Vampire Authority, even though let's face it: I am the leading Mormon Vampire Authority. (Nutshell: laugh, or turn back now. This was meant for joking and is filled with dirty words they can't use on TV.)

Here one is treated to a long, sometimes funny rendering of the Twilight movie using screen grabs and a running commentary that highlights all the ties to the Mormon faith. I learn that “sparkle” is Mormon thing that I’ve never heard of and that our humorous story teller has some sharp points to make.

… Every time SMeyers would write about Edward, I would just boggle. She was drawing from everything we Mormons were taught about Good Ol' Joe - he was handsome, shockingly so, he could draw you in with just his presence, let alone when he spoke, down to his freaking nose and hair color. HI THERE CREEPY AUTHOR WANTING TO BONE YOUR PROPHET. (I have no problem with bible slash, etc. Just... I don't think she knows she's doing it.)

Referring of course to Joseph Smith, the founder of the faith. Ouch. Bible slash? From the Urban Dictionary:

slash fanfiction

fanfiction depicting a sexual and/or romantic relationship or situation between two characters of the same gender.

may involve real people or imaginary (sometimes copyrighted) characters.

often referred to as slash

eg. harry/draco, hermione/ginny femmeslash, orlando/viggo

Mixing it up with God. Which serves as a reminder -- girls, you are powerless in this equation. Another depressing aspect of Twilight. According to Brown:

At the crux of sexism within the vampire novel is the paradigm of male vamp/female human, a framework which an overwhelming majority of vampire novels are based around. The consequence of this is to represent the male as virtually unassailable in terms of power, and generally intellectually superior due to the centuries of wisdom he has accumulated.

Do we really want to perpetuate this message to our girls? That woman are weak, needing guidance and protection from the more powerful man is an ideal. That we are only “good” in our virginal, untouched state. That our sexuality is dangerous, evil and to be resisted, subjugated to our purity and wholesome self-sacrifice.

I see Twilight as a missed opportunity. Where found the Harry Potter series to be wonderfully subversive in how it promotes difference, I feel oppressed by how Twilight promotes this tired old sexist vision of female sexuality.

But while Twilight is a bummer, other vampire stories offer different messages. And Brown acknowledges it:

All of this is not to say that the vampire novel is inherently anti-feminist. The power dynamic of male vamp/female human is in fact uniquely set up for the possibilities of subversion and exploration of the nature of power in any male/female relationship. It is a preconfigured metaphor for the dominance of men within society and the varied responses to this power imbalance available open to women.

Enter the Anne Rice vampire novels. The majority of her sexy vampire action is man on man.  And a climax where the ancient vampire matriarch attempts to exterminate all the men on the planet? This is not a standard sexist plot line. I started reading Anne Rice when I moved to San Francisco in the late ‘80s – when the gay community had peaked in terms of it’s celebration and was moving into the dark AIDs era. Thus, I was fascinated to read Susie Bright’s comment:

The real turn in "vampire porn" happened in the course of the AIDS crisis. Every great public terror and prejudice expresses itself in an erotic catharsis, and "blood-sharing" was no different. In the earliest days of the HIV pandemic, when no one knew where to turn, vampire stories, and all intimate tales of blood-sharing, filled my slush pile to the brim.

The Anne Rice novels appealed to me because these were different vampires – vampires that enjoyed their lives and our human world. Vampires that offered new perspectives on history. Vampires that questioned their existence – their own status as good or evil. Rice offers a sharp contrast to the clarity about good and evil presented in Twilight. Existential vampires. And sexy, don’t forget sexy.

I haven’t read Anne Rice in awhile. Her continuation of the series became more and more focused on the existential and less and less on the sexual. My interest waned. I held on for awhile because she is good at making history come alive in her stories.

In the last few years, my dalliance with vampires has shifted to Charlene Harris’ Southern Vampire Series and the Anita Blake Vampire Hunter series.

Charlene Harris’ series is the inspiration for the HBO series True Blood. HBO takes many liberties with it – including, in my opinion—the overall tone and texture. The opening montage is dark and gross with imagery of death and religion and nature and fervor. I always thought the stories had a bit of a sunny, optimistic cast to them – probably reflecting the upbeat disposition of the main character – Sookie Stackhouse. She’s a psychic, gets involved with vampires, loses her virginity to one, works for their governing bodies and is the “hot” asset.

Sookie might not have the physical strength of her vampire friends, but she has her own “power” that they all must respect (because they need it, to some degree). She is swept off her feet by a vamp, falling into Brown’s traditional sexist vampire pattern, but she is intentional with her decision to have sex with the vampire and ultimately ditches him and moves on.

Laurell K. Hamilton’s Anita Blake is the anti-Belle. I didn’t watch Buffy much, but I’d imagine that the Anita Blake books are an adult, X-rated version. Sex, lots and lots of it, figures prominently. Sadly, too much sex, not enough action – because Anita Blake is a vampire hunter and paranormal detective – she can raise zombies! (Zombies and vampires? There are also werewolves and a variety of different animal/human transformation types. And zombies.) Anita kicks ass – literally. She is forever discussing how well armed she is (knives and guns, of course) and struggles with the fact that she is a cold-blooded killer of super-natural bad guys. Interestingly, she too starts off as a virgin and a vampire-bigot, considers herself religious. In fact her faith is part of the strength she brings to killing the bad guys.

As with the Sookie Stackhouse novels, the Anita Blake series presents a world where vampires are “out” and part of American society. For me, this altered world makes the reading all the more fun, and offers even deeper investigation of power dynamics. In Sookie’s world vampires are alternately feared and exotic-ized. A powerful religious cult group works to exterminate them all; legislation is proposed to better control them. They are the “new” minority to be oppressed – and feared. Similarly, Anita Blake’s world is one where she, as a vampire hunter, is rightly entitled to kill a vampire – no judge or jury needed.

I’m fascinated in these stories by the parallels to our historical and current views on and  treatment of minorities – particularly sexual minorities. I’m also drawn to how these authors imagine the “mainstreaming” of vampire life into American culture. The HBO series is titled “TrueBlood” – the name of the synthetic blood created in Japan -- a discovery that prompted the vampires to “come out” of the closet as vampires – since they now had a viable alternative to drinking human blood. You see advertisements for it through out the show.

For me, all of this serves to re-define the “otherness” we as Americans feel the need to assign to each other based on sex and sexuality. As if the more variations we keep adding to the mix finally creates a rainbow of otherness, essentially challenging that there is a single dominant way of looking at sexuality. By presenting this infinite array of diversity it becomes harder and harder to accept the narrow, imbalanced gender perspectives of the past:

The female heroine is often represented as yearning for the vampire to exercise his sexual power over her, yet in the best contemporary vampire novels the writer uses this desire to explore the nature of fantasy and equality within relationships. Anita Blake, Sookie Stackhouse and Cassandra Palmer each become increasingly assertive in achieving the fulfilment of their sexual desires, as at times several of the books in these series become less about the bloodlust, and more about the lust to bang anything without a pulse. But crucially, the misadventures of these female heroines do not compromise their independence or their integrity. The fantasy of submission to the vamp lover is fulfilled, but this is not the end of the story; the balance of power can change, and this desire in itself need not lead to a fundamentally unequal power dynamic between men and women in the novel.

 (Brown)

This is why Twilight makes me sad. The new vampire narratives could – like Harry Potter did – offer a whole new way of thinking about adolescent sexuality. Instead it reinforces the same old same old and does nothing to move the conversation forward.

At the training I mentioned before, the one where Twilight was brought up, I wanted to continue the learning by asking – what kind of conversation can we have with our young people about Twilight? I didn’t have an answer then. Carmen D. Siering suggests:

As influential adults, mothers (and, by extension, teachers and librarians) have an obligation to start a conversation concerning the darker themes and anti-feminist rhetoric in these tales. There is plenty to work with, from the dangers of losing yourself in an obsessive relationship to the realities of owning one's sexuality.

Twilight does offer adults a great opportunity to talk about relationships and power and autonomy. Developmentally, young people need a chance to explore these topics and if we, as adults don’t do it, Bella and Edward have the last word.