A Video Response to Twilight and New Moon
All of your comments on last week's blog post led me to think more and harder, which led to this video, so thanks!
posted by John Green @ Monday, November 30, 2009
24 Comments
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| website design by silas dilworth. weblog elements provided by blogger. |
24 Comments:
I enjoyed last week's blog, so I was wicked excited to see you'd posted a video about it.
Super Sexy Puff? Nice.
Happy Monday John! DFTBA. :]
John, Thank you for articulating this thought train so well that i can now hear the "w00t-w00t" sigh of relief and think more complexly of other things.
sincerely,
monica
I agree with you on this point, but disagree with your reasoning (or lack thereof):
Before I talk about how much I love Twilight, I want to explain why it's wrong for adults to have romantic relationships with teenagers: It's not because we LOOK old, it's because we ARE old. It's not a question of the young-ness and chiseled-ness of your pecs, it's a question of how many times you've been around the sun.
The problem is that you're just issuing your own morality and giving a "just-because" ruling on the subject matter without really looking at it from an ethical standpoint. We have age of consent and statutory rape laws because teenagers can be harmed by adults, not because adults are disgusting in their actions. The reasoning I use is psychology/neuroscience: The pre-frontal cortex, the area of the brain most crucial in decision-making, doesn't reach maturity in most women until early-mid twenties and in most men until mid-late twenties. The age-of-consent laws actually over-estimate the average decision-making skills of adolescents and just end up creating a completely arbitrary rule-of-thumb, because the line needed to be drawn somewhere (unfortunately, that somewhere is 12-14 in most of latin america and 9 in parts of the middle east).
However, given that people don’t mature uniformly and that we're incapable of deciphering someone's cortical maturity without opening their heads up…and that Twilight is a novel about Vampires and not Zombies…our best bet is to base someone’s actual adult-ness and decision-making skills on their behavior. Does Edward Cullen have a seventeen-year-old’s brain or a 107-year-old’s brain? Like most young-adult males, I’ve stayed very far away from the series and have no authority to answer this question.
-B0K0
The Twilight Saga is like Peeps, whereas a book like Catcher in the Rye is more along the lines of a multi-course steak dinner. One may be significantly more substantial than the other, but I'm not going to deny liking (or eating!) them both.
Edward doesn't fart??
...Ok, NOW I'm in love.
I have to disagree with you on the point that you can't really compare Harry Potter and Twilight but I see what your getting at. They are two very different books but still Harry Potter is more substantial just as Stephanie compared Catcher In The Rye to a steak dinner. Its also deep on many more levels than Twilight and doesn't make me feel lonely. On the contrary it makes me run around the house with a stick I found outside pretending to cast spells on people. But I do respect your wisdom on this point.
Funny as always.
Oh, you are hysterical.
I like the idea of Twilight being the most beautiful lie we have. And I like the Gloria Steinem quote--the bicycle/fish thing.
I do not like Bella's pathetic weakness. And I do not like how the Twilight Saga ends--it seems like everything was glued together really quickly so that no character was left with a broken heart.
To expand on the age-of-consent discussion, it seems to me that the vampire thing also plays a role. If one of the reasons teenagers shouldn't have relationships with adults is the inherent difference in power caused mainly by a difference in intellectual maturity, then Edward has advantages beyond even those of 107 year olds. He's apparently smarter than any human ever, sees better, moves faster, knows more and reads minds. So really, he can't have anything approaching a relationship of equals with a human no matter how old he is. It's always going to be the weird patronizing, fatherly, thing he has going on with Bella, 107 years old or not.
I'm psyched to hear you talk about Twilight not because I like it (although I read all four books [and, FWIW, I thought they were all terribly written, but that's a discussion for another time] and saw the first movie) but rather because all of my 8th grade students obsess about it as you've mentioned.
However, this is the second time that I've heard you make this claim, and I'm really curious where you stand on the Angel/Buffy relationship in contrast to the Edward/Bella one. I'm honestly kind of surprised that this is a point that you keep harping on, but not in any bad way.
Thanks for all the great writing (less so recently) and videos. Keep up the great work.
I felt like a little fan girl when I saw you'd posted a review of Twilight and New Moon! This totally made my night. Thank you, John.
This link seemed appropriate:
http://www.bspcn.com/2009/11/25/top-20-unfortunate-lessons-girls-learn-from-twilight/
*unrelated to twilight*
from Paper Towns--
"girls like you"
"by girls, he means 'girls in the marching band'"
dzon grin, was that a dis to girls in band?
(Also, like, Shakespeare.)
Man, you're my hero.
:]
Yes, Yes, YES. Thank you for so eloquently explaining why it is wrong for adults to have relations with teens--which raises a question: If Hugh Heffner looked like Edward, would that make his debauchery anymore acceptable?
--Mitch
I'm not a big fan of twilight, and I love Harry Potter but I completly agree that they cannot be compared. Although I agree with almost all your points, I do have a really big issue with the books, THEY SPARKLE. Vampires do NOT sparkle, vampires are awesome monsters that eat human flesh and don't have strange super-powers like reading minds (Although I can't say I'm not jealous) and again I have to agree with the fact, it is INCREDIBLY wrong for a 107 year old to "do it" with a 17 year old... its weird.
Have I told you lately that...you are an incredibly awesome dude? Yep, great author and you just said EXACTLY what I have been saying to everyoneee who will listen.
Thanks and Happy Holdays!
SM
I was talked into reading the Twilight series by a friend (I'm questioning how good of a friend she actually is now. haha Just kidding). My argument for not wanting to read it was that the series is 'for 13 year old girls," but after finishing the fourth book and seeing the first movie (which was horrible by the way)... I don't think Twilight is at all for teenagers. I was really not impressed to say the least. Edward and Bella's relationship just screams unhealthy to me. Tweens that are very absorbed with this series are learning that it's okay for a significant other to be obsessive and controlling. I really hope that these young adults don't follow the poor relationship examples that this book presents and disguises as perfectly normal. Hopefully I'm just reading into it all.
John, I think I know where you stand on human/vampire relationships, but I would love to hear your opinion on the appropriateness of a relationship between a time lord and his human companion....
There's no rule that we can't fall in love with someone older or younger to us. I, myself, preferred older guys. It's just a matter of how you two handle your relationships. We are all fascinated with fictional stories, especially girls. I'm included too, I like a vampire and human romance, or like Hulk, Spiderman who all got their ownCharms.
What bothered me most about the books was the inadequate parenting skills of Bella's parents, especially as shown in New Moon. OMG,surely Bella's dad (a professional long term EXPERIENCED law enforcement officer)could see how self destructive her behavior/obsession was???I had a hard time reading this book because I was so mad at him. Why didn't he get Bella into therapy & on antidepressents?? Oh, yeah, then there might be no book! He just stood by hopelessly & helplessly like a WIMP.
As a mom & daycare provider, let me tell you real parenting is not for wimps. You can compromise but never back down from a line drawn - like the line of your child's sanity and safety. I tell the kids - most rules are safety rules. Parenthood is about soul searching & investigative tactics to determine your child's friends, state of mind, and how important is a clean room (really - it's up to you - I insist on seeing the floor, if nothing else, because I believe a teen's room can become a fire hazard quite quickly, esp. with hair curlers & straighteners going on at the same time). Parenting can make you uncomfortable (how much privacy does my child deserve/can safely have/do I feel comfortable with), can threaten your marriage unless the parents go off on parental huddles the kids can't hear & make decisions together to present a united front, and makes no allowances for being tired or sick. I wish we could have had the money sometimes to have more than 2 kids, but I alway wanted to make sure I would be able to afford braces & other important things & 2 would be managable for us. Luckily I do daycare for some great kids during the day, indulge my need for baby slobber & feeding bottles & refereeing disagreements & send them home at night for their parents to worry about.
Good luck with your & the Yeti's little nerdling! You & your brother turned out pretty dern good, so I think your parents can be a good example & resource to you. Merry christmas! Your life will never be the same. Take care, Sarah! Labor is just like the worse case of long lasting diarhea you've ever had - but with a lovely surprise at the end. God bless you all! - queenmumsie
I saw this before but deciding to comment on it now for some strange reason, but I liked the video, especially since I read the comments in the blog and I was really angry at that anonymous person that called Alaska stupid. I kind of regret leaving such a mean reply though. The maths teacher's reply to her was a lot more logical, chilled out, and actually had an argument against it!
I agree with what you're saying in the video, and I hadn't really thought through the disturbance of Edward's age, which is kind of surprising...
Jacob Black is insanely V-shaped because he is only 16 years old and has put on like 30 pounds of muscle for this movie which is unhealthy and unnatural for his age and he's probably stopped growing. I think smallest width of his body, the bottom of the V, is the width that he is supposed to have naturally.
I'm not going to say I didn't enjoy looking at it, of course!
Merry Christmas John! :)
Love, love, LOVED. Thanks, John.
Thank you John. I'm very happy that you were not afraid to criticize the books an I'm even more pleased to see that people's reactions are not, ` OMG. Y DEED U DU DIZ? DIZ SO WRUNG. TWILIT SOOOOO KEWL! `. I more than completely agree with you when you say that Bella an Edward's relationship is... scary. Not only is it obsessive, but abusive. It really irritates me when I see all my classmates going INSANE over them. I liked the first book in 8th grade. Then I read Looking for Alaska and was introduced into real conceptual literature. With real morals. Not... not mood-ring eyed vampires. I am no fan of the series and I refuse to support Mrs. Meyer's by seeing her movies. I'm no radical feminist, but I'm not blind either. /:
Post a Comment
Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]
<< Home