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Twilight, or Bram Stoker’s Final Triumph
Marcelo Rinesi
Phase Leap
Posted: Jul 22, 2010
The Twilight series of books and movies is the latest stage, and perhaps the culmination, of a daring philosophical exploration that began in its most public aspect with Bram Stoker’s Dracula.
Stoker, of course, did not invent the vampire, as most cultures have, most appropriately, dreaded blood-sucking nocturnal monsters. What Stoker did most successfully was to highlight how attracted we are to them, to their power, their sexuality, and their immortality. He didn’t came up with that, either, but his story would henceforth shape the question for Western civilization.
Ever since Lucy fell for Dracula’s supernatural charms, we have been grappling with the fact that we want it. We want it… but what about the moral cost of a blood-based diet? (There are animals for that, or perhaps synthetic substitutes.) We want it… but what about the loneliness of immortality? (When was the last time you saw a vampire without a date, or without the kind of family trouble that makes you wish for some loneliness?) We want it… but what about our humanity?
 Stereotypically, although perhaps not in point of fact, there’s no being on Earth less philosophically inclined than a young teenager in love, all hormones and impulse. Neither Romeo nor Juliet were Hamlet, nor could they be Nietzsche. They want what they want for the most personal and least abstract of reasons, and Twilight‘s protagonist, the improbably nicknamed Bella, took a single look at immortality, superstrength, brooding intensity, and, yes, superhumanly enthusiastic sex, and said “sign me up.”
The cultural relevance of Twilight hinges on the fact that it’s not a vampire story in Stoker’s sense. It’s not a struggle between morality and the seductiveness of darkness, because there is no darkness involved. In Bella’s world, vampires and werewolves are beautiful people with superpowers, and conflicts are not of a moral nature, but mostly classic variations of traditional romantic plots (e.g., choosing between the now-attractive lifelong friend and the attractive and mysterious stranger). She’s the visible culmination of a cultural thought process that has taken centuries, and that has decided, with the tacit, un-self-aware clarity of youth, that non-humanity is not an issue for romance. And if it’s not an issue for romance, it’s not an issue at all.
Bella isn’t a Nietzschean character (to say the least), and her passive attitude toward the supernatural and/or the stalking seems anachronistic and disquieting in a post-Buffy the Vampire Slayer, post-Scream world. But even in her perpetual state of romantic confusion, her constant pestering for Edward to make her a vampire (thus giving her the twin boons of eternal youth and probably very interesting sex) speaks loudly and clearly about how our civilization has finally resolved the question put forward by Stoker’s Dracula.
Would we give up our non-vampireness for youth and pleasure? Yes. Sign us up.
(Originally published at Phase Leap)
Marcelo Rinesi is the Assistant Director of the IEET. Mr. Rinesi is Data Intelligence Analyst at Vostu.
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COMMENTS
I wouldn't give quite this much significance to Twilight in particular. There have been similar characters, themes and situations in vampire fiction for decades (at least). Twilight just happened to become exceptionally popular with teenage girls, without really being innovative in any cultural or intellectual sense.
(Perhaps the key difference between Twilight and most vampire fiction containing the same themes you picked up here, is that Twilight doesn't really try to simultaneously e.g. appeal to boys, or to be a smart study of moral conflicts or anything, allowing it to optimize all it's content in appealing maximally to (some) girls, thus becoming more popular than most vampire fiction that tries to be more things at once.)
I for one am not looking forward to Twilight movies (even though my girlfriend always drags me to see them at the first opportunity), but True Blood on the other hand I consider great entertainment.
Quote – “Would we give up our non-vampireness for youth and pleasure? Yes. Sign us up.â€
Wot? Huh?... You speak for yourself!
Vile and barbaric fetishes based on sublimation and deceit and the subjugation of innocents! What type of transhumanism are you proposing?
But really, this obsession with vampires is entirely juvenile, no matter what age you are. For years Hammer Horror B-movies have associated sex with horror, and especially the whole series with the brilliant Christopher Lee as the dark prince, (not Ozzy Osbourne). So really, with all due respect, the associations of modern vampire memes and sexual athleticism have more to owe to these cheapo movies than Stoker’s original novel.
At least “True Blood†has something more profound to offer than teenage flicks based around soap styled drama, and lipstick horror.
BTW Stoker’s novel is pants.. read it at least 3 times..nope, still no good! .. Read Frankenstein if you want a true horror story. (But I don’t want to be a hotch-potch of resurrected spare body parts either.. OMG! … What hope transhumanism?)
or to be a smart study of moral conflicts or anything
That's what I find significant. Originally, vampire stories could be nothing if not horror; afterward, they were by definition about moral conflict and temptation. Twilight is neither entertaining nor well-written (nor well-acted), but the fact that it can thoughtlessly use vampires and have the protagonist want to be a vampire, without once making any of the usual questions, is, I think, an interesting symptom of cultural change.
To put it in another way: I long for the day when we can have mainstream, successful fiction in which the protagonist wants to become a cyborg just because of the advantages, or in which he/she falls in love with an AI and the issue is not about its non-humanity.
Vile and barbaric fetishes based on sublimation and deceit and the subjugation of innocents! What type of transhumanism are you proposing?
That's the point --- Twilight vampires don't necessarily have vile and barbaric fetishes, and they don't subjugate innocents (and the werewolves are though but good guys).
In most of our stories during the recent centuries, gaining immortality was portrayed as a Faustian deal. Now that's no longer true. Bella isn't risking her soul.
I'm not saying is a good, mythologically accurate, or even very interesting portrayal or vampires, or that it's good as literature, film-making or entertainment. It's not. It's artistically despicable and only creepy unintentionally.
But *precisely* because a bad, shallow, trashy story can completely mangle the traditional topoi of vampire stories and be so successful tells us that our cultural expectations about what it takes (morally) to gain eternal youth and so on have changed.
@ Marcelo..
I take your points, and despite my light-hearted response there is still a “vein of seriousness†therein. There should still be some cautionary scepticism here, even with the most trivial and light-weight representations of this type of barbarism. These popular representations of contemporary vampires have gone much farther than Buffy now. Vampires have gone vogue?
Tell a million folks that war is just.. they start to believe
Tell a million folks to swallow BS ..and they begin to swallow
Tell a million teenagers its groovy to be a vampire and drink blood.. and they begin to believe?
Can you see the potential dangers? (of amorality). Your points only highlight this danger of cultural osmosis. Back in the Hammer Horror days, the speculations of becoming a vampire were purely mystical.. nowadays are these aspirations so far fetched?
“Blade†and “Underworld†are yet more movie series that promotes the idea that vampires and humans can, and even do exist together, and “True Blood†goes even farther. Yet is this really acceptable? Are these light-weight programs doing more harm than a truly horrifying vision of what vampirism stands for?
The quest for eternal youth and longevity need not be associated with vampirism at all? But hey, then it wouldn’t be so sensational would it?
;0]
@ CygnusX1
Can you see the potential dangers? (of amorality).
Very much so, but what I think is going on is that vampires are being slowly redefined, at least in some cases, away from amorality, but retaining their advantages. It used to be "your soul for eternal youth", but now there's no such downside.
I think that's important, vis a vis, e.g., advances in longevity. There's still a strong cultural current that assumes that *any* significant extension in longevity has to come with a moral price attached --- Twilight, I think, is a symptom that such a current might be ebbing, at least in some quarters.
Just in case: I *don't* want eternal youth with a terrible moral price associated. But at the same time, I don't think that *every* path to eternal youth (I'm using the term loosely here, it could be just a few extra years) will necessarily have to involve such a price.
Twilight = "The how to fall in love with your creepy stalker. A guide for young girls who can't find any other romance."
If you want to argue that the "immortality meme" has invaded popular culture, blame Highlander, not vampires. There is also Star Trek, with it's various "human" immortals back in the 60's, and let's not forget the most popular immortal of recent history, Wolverine.
We've been immersed in "immortality" in our comics, in our popular TV, in our movies, all of which have had far more to to with popularizing "immortality" as something non-faustian.
The thought of living forever has been creeping into our psychology our entire lives, but in ways that has made clear that the only true horror is being alone in your immortality. To truly be able to "enjoy" immortality, it must be shared... preferably with everyone.
I think some readers may misunderstand the Twilight series. Speaking from a academic/literary perspective, Twilight is a God-and-man allegory showing Bella -- an unreliable narrator, with an unpolished narrative style -- who reaches divinization through commitment, love, and sacrifice. The key here though is that she, like many people, fails even to see her own self very clearly (as her Edward points out often) until the very, very end of Breaking Dawn, when she fully realizes her divine potential. You will notice many references to lying in the series, suggesting that Bella is "lying," or at least incorrect in how she sees things. The surprising thing, at least to me, is that so many people believe her wholeheartedly.
For example, she is lonely for the god-like presence of the Cullens after they depart in New Moon, the possibility of reaching a heavenly state in their presence, and when she seeks comfort with the earthy wolfpack, readers assume that she is hopelessly dependent upon men. Yet she saves every other character in the series, especially the men, who are hopelessly mistaken and wrong-headed in every decision they make. The girls, especially Bella, need to rescue everyone else over and over again. Still, feminist critics complain that she is weak. Just because Bella views herself as weak doesn't mean the readers shouldn't notice that she is the dominant savior for the entire series.
Others complain that the stories are morally bereft because she is sleeping with a vampire. Only sleeping, but still they complain. Yet Edward is expressly said to be her "guardian angel" repeatedly in the series. He is watching over her, and providing a tangible goal as she sets out to discover the godly in life and within herself. When she herself becomes a demi-God, the most powerful vampire in the world because she has diligently sought to be more godly, these readers still complain. Who among them strives to "see as she is seen" by God as Bella has?
Then there's the Bella = zero readers. Why all these other complaints if she is merely nothing? Surely the reader enjoys a profoundly subjective experience through Bella's first-person perspective -- which is why 100 million readers have become immersed into the story. But if she had no perspective, what is with the hundreds of opinions that litter the entire series? She hates occasions, values her friendships, worries that she is unnaturally clumsy, and so forth. She has an opinion on virtually everything she sees. The immersive experience of seeing life through Bella's eyes is not only not a nothing, it is a something which they not only engage with, she is someone they aspire to become more like. Why? Her fans enjoy watching her choices, because they then feel empowered to make their own choices in their own lives.
And it concerns me when a cultural milestone like this awakes so many in our culture, yet is so widely misunderstood by its critics and is criticized not on what it offers, but on what they imagine it doesn't offer. For example, feel free to visit TwilightNewsSite.com and have a look at the Meaning area, or listen to a recent podcast. There is more there than meets the eye. Which is Meyer's main point -- for Bella, for the series, and for each of her careful readers who she rewards in remarkably profound ways.
@ James..
After reading your comment, I may just check out a book.
However the following may be relevant to this thread also..
Wikiquote – “When asked about the structure of the novel, Meyer described her difficulty to pinpoint the premise of the novels to any specific category:
I have a hard time with that. Because if I say to someone, 'You know, it's about vampires,' then immediately they have this mental image of what the book is like. And it's so not like the other vampire books out there – Anne Rice's and the few that I've read. It isn't that kind of dark and dreary and blood-thirsty world. Then when you say, 'It's set in high school,' a lot of people immediately put it in another pool. It's easy to pigeonhole with different descriptions.
The books are based on the vampire myth, but Twilight vampires differ in a number of particulars from the general vampire lore. For instance, Twilight vampires have strong piercing teeth rather than fangs; they glitter in sunlight rather than burn; and they can drink both animal blood as well as human blood. Meyer comments that her vampire mythology differs from that of other authors because she wasn't informed about the canon vampires, saying,
It wasn't until I knew that Twilight would be published that I began to think about whether my vampires were too much the same or too much different from the others. Of course, I was far too invested in my characters at that point to be making changes... so I didn't cut out fangs and coffins and so forth as a way to distinguish my vampires; that's just how they came to me.â€
Inspiration and themes
“According to the author, her books are "about life, not death" and "love, not lust". Each book in the series was inspired by and loosely based on a different literary classic: Twilight on Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, New Moon on Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, Eclipse on Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights, and Breaking Dawn on a second Shakespeare play, A Midsummer Night's Dream. Meyer also states that Orson Scott Card and L. M. Montgomery's Anne of Green Gables series are a big influence on her writing.
Other major themes of the series include choice and free will. Meyer says that the books are centered around Bella's choice to choose her life on her own, and the Cullens' choices to abstain from killing rather than follow their temptations: "I really think that's the underlying metaphor of my vampires. It doesn't matter where you're stuck in life or what you think you have to do; you can always choose something else. There's always a different path."
Meyer, a Mormon, acknowledges that her faith has influenced her work. In particular, she says that her characters "tend to think more about where they came from, and where they are going, than might be typical.†Meyer also steers her work from subjects such as sex, despite the romantic nature of the novels. Meyer says that she does not consciously intend her novels to be Mormon-influenced, or to promote the virtues of sexual abstinence and spiritual purity, but admits that her writing is shaped by her values, saying, "I don't think my books are going to be really graphic or dark, because of who I am. There's always going to be a lot of light in my storiesâ€
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twilight_(series)
Thanks Cygnus. Those are relevant and interesting quotes. Indeed, there appears to be quite a bit of genre mixing and morphing going on in Twilight -- which extends well beyond vampires-who-don't-melt-in-the-sun.
Steve Walker of BYU points out in the first episode of the twilightnewssite.com podcast that the Cullens are more angelic than vampiric (though, like Aslan, they do pose dangers for those who approach them). Seemingly modeled after a somewhat idealized Mormon family, Walker says that the "vegetarian" Cullen vampires are something more like an imagined "translated being" (i.e., John the Revelator or Mormondom's Three Nephites). Hence their "sparkling" -- they are beings of light, who travel among humans on this earth.
Twilight doesn't seem very much about sex, to me at least (of course, for some people, everything is about sex). Although it does seem pre-occupied (at some level) with the human body: i.e., is it bad, negative, a product of original sin? Or is it the means by which divinization can be reached?
Author Meyer sides with the latter point of view, based on what could be seen as a radical feminist interpretation of the Adam-and-Eve story: Eve was right, she helps Adam purposely leave the Garden of Eden so that they could live the commandment to have children and face the challenges which life brings, thereby gaining experience, wisdom and personal growth; their correct choice is underscored by our being here (so it must have been the right decision). Hence the vitriolic criticism the series raises among orthodox Catholics and similar religions.
In Twilight, Bella helps Edward see that he is not a "soulless monster" and so he (and the others she saves, including the entire vampire world) can see that leaving their immature and fallen state (no matter how "natural") is the best possible path. She herself becomes the most powerful vampire/being in the world. God-like, you could say.
Meanwhile, the "natural" vampires are revealed to not be defenders of the status quo, but fallen angels, i.e, Lucifer and his minions. The Volturi, the assumed royals of the vampire world, are actually false gods, who are specifically shown encouraging evil cults in "The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner."
So humans, through their autonomy/free agency, can choose -- not only between heaven and hell in an afterlife (a specific concern in the series) -- but to become god-like or like devils, creating their own heaven or hell, right here, right now, on earth.
In short, romantic, parental, and brotherly love is the path to divinity, whereas selfishness, misanthropy and lack of respect for life are the path to the demonic.
Quite heady stuff for what is, on the superficial level, a young adult romance/"horror"/teen-in-high-school story.
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