A New Dawn part 9: “Dear Aunt Charlotte” by Cassandra Clare March 20, 2010

[Part of a series discussing the essays in A New Dawn edited by Ellen Hopkins. These posts may contain spoilers about all four Twilight novels and Midnight Sun.]

I enjoyed Cassandra Clare’s humorous, yet wise advice about how to choose between Team Jacob and Team Edward. Which mythological beast would make the best boyfriend? Decisions, decisions! Aunt Charlotte kicks her letter off by noting that “this kind of question is a nice change of pace, since in books it always seems to be a girl torn between a vampire and a werewolf, unlike in real life when she would be torn between a mailman and an area insurance adjuster named Bob.” Indeed (+1000 lol points).

Sadly, Taylor's wig here looks better than KStew's in the Eclipse trailer.

Since werewolves and vampires are, y’know, not real, Clare must use movies as evidence upon which she can base her advice. This means she gives us a great overview of the film portrayals of vampires and werewolves over the years. Like Steiber, Clare notes that movies did a lot for both monsters, pulling them out of scary/gross out territory and placing them into the roles of romantic leads.

I have to admit, I used the numerous movies she listed as suggestions for my Netflix queue. Poor 7abibi… Some of them are on demand, so I’ll have to stream them in my copious (+1001 lol points) free time.

In general, her outlook on both werewolves and vampires is mixed at best. Werewolves are strong, sexy, and in touch with nature, but they tend to be more than a wee bit out of control. Vampires may be erotic and aristocratic, but dang are they emo. Romance with mythical creatures is nice in theory, but Aunt Charlotte seems to think the hypothetical real world consequences would be pretty messy. That is, if the mythical creatures in question aren’t too busy fighting centuries old wars, protecting nature, or partying until the cows come home to be in a relationship at all.

I wont reveal the conclusion, but I gave it +eleventy lol points.

A New Dawn part 7: “As Time Goes By” by K. A. Nuzum March 16, 2010

[Part of a series discussing the essays in A New Dawn edited by Ellen Hopkins. These posts may contain spoilers about all four Twilight novels and Midnight Sun.]

What separates humans from monsters seems so obvious that it’s hard to put into words. Nuzum starts with a basic outline of what seems to help us decide what constitutes a monster:

1) Monsters look different from humans.

2) They live outside the normal bounds of society, because they can’t or wont bow to human cultural norms.

3) They live in a “different time zone” than humans.

Wait, what? What time zone is that, exactly? Nuzum separates humans into “Historic Time,” while monsters belong instead to “Mythic Time.” Historic time is progressive and ever-changing. We each keep moving along our own personal time line, making choices about which way it will turn. “One of the ironies of our existence,” says Nuzum, “is that living means always moving closer to death.” Mythic time, on the other hand is circular, eternal, and repetitive as a hamster wheel. Existing in this circuitous existence, a monster will “experience an eternal compulsion to commit and recommit the creation act that transformed them into monsters.”

We place a high value on life’s milestones, specifically because in a progressive timeline “they can’t be repeated or relived.” Edward knows this. He’s had time while repeating high school over and over to ponder the fact that he missed out on a number of important adult milestones like getting a career, getting married, having children – the list goes on and on. He cares enough about Bella to want her to have all of the things he missed out on – even if she insists she doesn’t want them. Witness him dragging her to prom, the ill-fated birthday party in New Moon, and his marriage ultimatum… He’s big on the human coming of age moments, because, as a monster in Mythic time, he will never have them himself.

Nuzum agrees with Edward. Historical time is very important. The accident at the aforementioned birthday party illustrated the dangers of mixing beings from Historic Time with those from Mythic time. Historic time is extremely sensitive to the choices we make and “there’s no such thing as a “do over.”” The suspense we feel when we consider Bella’s choice between Historic time and Mythic time stems from this value we place on life due to our own firm residence in Historic time. Nuzum argues that the Cullen’s vampirism is represented as a last resort, when the only choice is to transform or die. Meyer repeats this choice for us with Bella’s transformation. Nuzum believes that this is necessary in order to quiet reader qualms about Bella turning her back on human life in Historic time and entering Mythic time as a monster. Even monster life is better than death…right? Right?

I’m not so sure that I agree with Nuzum’s assumption that we were all ambivalent about Bella leaving behind the human world. I’m guessing by the end of Twilight a large number of people were thinking exactly what I was thinking:

"Oh, just bite her already!"

Maybe this links back to Steiber’s argument that Meyer’s vampires have inverted the vampire legend. In Twilight, the vampires aren’t the monsters – we are. Our imperfections and vulnerability to the hands of time have us more scared than blood drinkers or shape shifters. Nuzum insists that the passage of time is actually an integral part of our character formation, because “it is our experience in time the defines us as individuals, that gives meaning and uniqueness to each of our lives.” This is undoubtably true, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t scary as heck.

A New Dawn part 6: “Tall, Dark, and…Thirsty?” by Ellen Steiber March 14, 2010

[Part of a series discussing the essays in A New Dawn edited by Ellen Hopkins. These posts may contain spoilers about all four Twilight novels.]

This essay was one of my favorites of the lot. It started with a fun overview of vampire mythology, literature, and movies and some of the social constructs our changing vampires have reflected over the years. Unsurprisingly, when Steiber begins interpreting Meyer’s vampires as part of that continuing tradition she’s more than a little disappointed in how they stack up. As a traditional vampire novel, Twilight kind of sucks (lame pun intended). [Maybe because they’re a different kind of blood drinker? The “drink this wine it is my body” kind of blood drinker?… Ahem…] She then finds something even more creepy than blood-drinking monsters lurking beneath the vampiric veneer.

Steiber places the origins of our current crop of vampires in the Balkan “Vampire Epidemic” of the 1730’s. The legends and old wives tales found their way to Britain and were popularized by two works in particular. The first was John Polidori’s “The Vampyre” (I got my hot little hands on it for free right here). Published in 1819, Polidori’s tale of the vampire Lord Ruthven is said to be a product of the same ghost story session that spawned Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. The darkly magnetic Ruthven, Steiber tells us, was even based upon another of the session’s participants, the bad boy, rock star poet Lord Byron.

Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897) amped up the sexual tension. What with his trio of sexy lady vampire roommates and taste for young innocent women, Dracula was clearly a metaphor for the specter of sexuality in the repressed Victorian Era. “He’s a perfect example of the exotic, inscrutable stranger whom good girls really should avoid,” says Steiber. In 1931, Dracula became immortalized on the silver screen by the Hungarian actor Bela Lugosi. His portrayal was so arresting that it has held up for 80 years as the prototypical vampire. Ask anyone to do a vampire imitation and I’m betting it will owe quite a bit to Lugosi’s Dracula.

Over the years vampires have become even more tied to sexuality and romance. Steiber points out the advantages to a vampire as a romantic lead. A vampire is powerful and magnetic, making him immediately appealing to other characters and readers alike. The vampire has also become something of a sympathetic loner, making them emotionally vulnerable in ways that can be exploited for a number of plot devices, particularly a romance.

After setting up the source material for our modern vampires, Steiber decides that Meyer has actually inverted numerous traditional elements of the vampire. Edward is not a dark parasite destroying the life and virtue of his innocent victim. Quite the reverse, Edward is a paragon of Victorian morality, safeguarding his beloved’s virtue – even when she begs not only to become a monster, but to jump his bones as well. Even Bella’s transformation into a vampire is an inversion of the classic story line. Bella does not become a fallen monster, instead her transformation saves her life and enables her to raise her child.

If the vampires in Meyer’s universe aren’t about sexuality and destruction of innocence, then what on earth are they about?

“What I’ve come to see about vampires, though, is that they change with the time and culture they appear in. They’re mirrors of our fears and desires. Early bloodsucking vampires were all about the hold that the dead had on the living…The stories of psychic vampires told of people who fed on other’s energy, drawing their strength from weakening those around them… Even Bram Stoker’s Dracula has been interpreted as a reflection of fears of its time: of foreign influence threatening british society, of our animal nature threatening to overwhelm our reason, and of illicit and irresistible sexual compulsion threatening marriage…Meyer’s vampires – or more accurately Bella’s obsession with Edward seems to mirror our current terror of aging, our own deep fear that without flawless physical beauty, we’ll never truly be worth loving.”

The prevalence of the beauty as virtue has a major impact on the young women of today. Especially now that we live in an age of rhinoplasty for sixteen year olds and Photoshop features for personal digital cameras. Steiber is rightfully concerned that Twilight seems to whole-heartedly endorse this philosophy and export it to the millions of teen girls who read it.

“She’s taken our warped attitude toward age and made it even more extreme, and because Bella is so easy to identify with, I can’t help but feel uneasy with this. Life is change. What Bella’s so eagerly signing up for is everlasting stasis.”

Ellen Steiber‘s essay really surprised me. I thought I was in for a bit of historical info, but she really shifted my perspective on Edward’s sparkling, marble pecs and gave me another interpretation about the underlying meaning of Twilight. Her assertion that we have abandoned our disgust of the monstrous, parasitic vampires of the past in order to focus our loathing on humanity has given me plenty of tasty food for thought. Her bio at the end of the essay says that she’s also written for a book called Demigods and Monsters: Your Favorite Authors on Rick Riordan’s Percy Jackson and the Olympians Series. Sounds delicious… *Adds to Amazon wishlist*