This weekend I saw a print ad for the new Twilight movie, Breaking Dawn. Yes, I will embarrassingly admit that I have watched the movies and read some of the books. Seeing this ad, I remembered all of the movies and books and how much they related to the romance novels reading for this week. People don’t usually think of Twilight as a romance novel, but as a fantasy. I think they happen to be the same. This series has a lot of the same plots. The girl always needs a man to be happy, complete, alive, etc. In Twilight, Bella needs Edward. She even said, “I’d rather die than to stay without you.” This seems romantic when seen in the movie or read in the books, but it is actually really sad. She is portrayed as weak and incapable of having her own life. She cannot be happy without Edward by her side at all times. She is clumsy and always gets into trouble by herself. Edward is the strong, intelligent, and powerful male in the series. He decides how the story is going to develop.
In the reading, it discussed how the males can hurt the females, but it is always because he is trying to protect her or it is a “sign of love”. In Twilight series, Edward leaves Bella to protect her. He literally pushes her to “save her”. She gets thrown against a table and bleeds a lot. This doesn’t sound like love to me. These inequalities are very demeaning to women. Even in the posters we can see that Edward is always dominating Bella. He is bigger and grabbing her, while Bella looks weak and frail. This portrayal is a horrible one especially because this audience is not the regular audience that reads romance novels. The audience for Twilight is as low as ten year old girls.
Overall, it is easy to see that Twilight is simply a romance novel and film. The themes of masculinity being power runs through the entire series. Bella needs her man to survive. Apparently, that is the only way.
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