I Don't Get It

Last night, I fucked around and finally saw the international smash hit Twilight. I'd taken a pass on seeing it, because...well, it's just a movie I had no desire to see. But The Girl swears by it. She's read all the Twilight books and has seen the movie twice. So, since she seems to like it, I thought I'd give it a go. And I really don't get what the big deal is about.

Don't get me wrong: I actually like vampires and their associated media. I'm the only person I know who's actually read Dracula. I've even read Sheridan Le Fanu's Carmilla, the book that gave Bram Stoker the idea for Dracula. In terms of movies, the string of vampire movies that Hammer Films produced during the '60s and '70s are some of my favorite horror films. So I'm down with the whole vampire thing. But I just can't even claim to understand what's to like about Twilight.

These vampires, the Cullens, are the lamest bunch of lame-asses ever assembled. They don't drink the blood of humans because they don't want to kill anyone. They can't go out in the sun because their skin shimmers like diamonds in direct sunlight. And even though they're not actually related, they all live together in a beautiful modern home as a nice, nuclear family. When Bella comes to visit, they welcome her into their home and are nice enough to cook her a lovely non-blood dinner. They even go outside later to play a nice game of family baseball.

Vampires. Really.

It's like Stephanie Meyer, the writer of the Twilight books, has taken the beautiful, romanticized versions of vampires from Anne Rice's novels and removed all the terrible and evil (and slightly gay) aspects of those vampires, leaving only a completely sterile version of vampires whose most difficult burden in life is how much product to put in their hair.

I guess this is what you get when a practicing Mormon writes a vampire book. All the lusty and eroticized elements are removed, replaced with good Christian values and a lot of hand holding and longing glances and "oh, I'll die without you." In fact, if you take out the vampire element altogether, what you have is a very bad version of Romeo and Juliet, where the characters unfortunately live on for three more books. (Even The Girl admits that the books are about as engaging as drying paint.)

So, as a vampire fan, I just cannot get into this whole Twilight thing, as it's basically just a teen romance with vampires who are vampires in name only. And, seeing as I'm not a teenage girl, I think they suck.

I'll take Christopher Lee's Dracula over Robert Pattison's Edward any day.