Twilight Unfortunate Implications
- “Harry Potter is about confronting fears, finding inner strength and doing what is right in the face of adversity. Twilight is about how important it is to have a boyfriend.”Robin Browne (often misattributed to Stephen King)
The Twilight franchise isn't only criticized for "ruining" vampires. The books, movies and followers have a good deal of notoriously uncomfortable aspects to their stories.
- Edward's behavior is basically that of an emotionally abusive boyfriend
, and he has all the personality of a cardboard box. Bella uses excuses that real life abused women use to justify his behavior, such as that Edward acts this way because he really loves her. And at the end of Twilight it's very easy to see parallels to this, with Bella breaking up with Edward while screaming that she never wants to see him again and demanding that her father let her leave ASAP, Edward chasing her to Arizona to convince her to return, and her deciding to come back after being badly hurt and staying in the hospital... with the excuse being that she fell down a flight of stairs. - Bella's behavior is arguably just as vile. This review takes Dr. Hare's twenty traits of sociopathy and applies every single one to something Bella has done or thought in New Moon.
- In fact, throughout the series, Edward performs every action that could be taken as a form of abuse against Bella, short of actually striking her, and even then there was at least one occasion where he grabbed her with force that was just shy of doing any actual damage. There was also the time he threw her into a table and severed her arm, ostensibly to protect her from a rabid Jasper.
- This article examines how interracial relationships never work out in these stories, how Bella is essentially marrying an old man who doesn't want sex but always wants to boss her around, how Bella, who wants sex, goes after the painfully prudish Edward instead of the man who wants it as much as she does, and how in the end, Bella essentially chooses not to choose.
- In the official guide to Twilight, Meyer outright says that turning into a vampire causes the person to turn white, no matter what their ethnicity is. This is not so bad, except that in a previous section, Meyer also states that it is the sparkly, pale appearance of the vampires that make them universally beautiful.
- Suicide is treated by virtually every character as the most heroic way to make amends for doing something bad. Bella also frequently uses threats of self-harm to guilt Edward into staying with her, which is a shockingly common form of gaslighting.
- This page points out that the entire relationship between the two main characters resembles more a drug addiction (or lust) than love. Edward even lampshades it in the first film, but Bella also has her fair share of it, particularly in New Moon. After being left by her boyfriend, she has an Angst Coma that can only be fixed with big "doses" of adrenaline in order to experiment extreme sensations that allow her to have visions. She keeps hurting herself but still keeps elevating the doses of danger, to the point of practically killing herself in the process. And this is portrayed as true love.
- As stated in this review, the concept of immortal children is terrifying. Meyer (certainly unintentionally) implies that many, many children died in the process of making immortal children so that their vampire creators could have someone to baby and drool over; considering how hard it is for vampires to stop feeding and begin the transformation process, it's very possible that countless children died during this process. Not to mention these vampires were stealing these babies away from their rightful families and condemning them to a life of eternal pain (seeing how painful it is for a vampire to be thirsty), not to mention the fact that they'll never mature or be able to experience life to the fullest. Also, they were responsible for the deaths of literally thousands of people because they couldn't control themselves. And yet we're supposed to believe the Volturi are just so evil for putting a stop to this reign of terror. Furthermore, Bella is completely fine with the deaths of hundreds of people just to save her and her daughter's lives because they're more important than ordinary humans. Even other vampires are seen as less important than Bella and Renesmee in her mind, as she's willing to build an army of them to save her. Renesmee is in the same boat as her mother since she never objects to the vampires and shapeshifters laying down their lives for her and she doesn't even have the excuse of not knowing any better since that she supposedly has the intelligence of an adult. Keep in mind that both characters are supposed to be smart and compassionate people who think of others before themselves. Made worse since their vampire army never actually did anything but talk, the Volturi peacefully left them alone, so all those humans who were made snacks by the vampires were essentially senseless deaths that could have been prevented had the Cullens go to the Volturi straight away in the first place instead of build an army!
- Roger Ebert pointed out that portraying Native Americans as werewolves seems to imply that they are savage animals who don't like to wear clothes.
- Meyer seems to have a rather noticeable vendetta against blond-haired people.
- As CinemaSins pointed out in their Breaking Dawn Part 1 episode, Jacob imprinted on Renesmee, a child. Considering how imprinting works in this series, this is basically pedophilia.
- Imprinting is not to the imprinter's advantage either. Meyer explains that any werewolf that do imprint on another woman will fall in love with her. Which is a more positive way of saying he will be obsessed with her, stalk her and never leave her side. He's essentially brainwashed into serving his love, shallowing his personality, no matter how mean she is to him (Renesmee is guilty of this to Jacob). What's worse is that if the imprintee rejects him (Emily) the imprinter will most likely maul half her face off (Sam), or something akin to it, forcing her to stay with him. Terrifying? Keep in mind that all of this is conveyed in a romantic light.
- The completely fabricated mythology of the Quileute tribe, a very real group of indigenous persons with their own very real mythology. While the tribe typically doesn't complain about the tourist dollars the series has brought them, they're otherwise understandably pissed about their culture being deliberately rewritten.
- Reading the Twilight Lexicon Personal Correspondence #12 can be a rather… unpleasant experience, to say the least. Meyer attempts to justify some of the issues fans have had about aspects of the story, such as the Cullens murdering numerous people without any consequence, and it doesn't go so well.
- Bella is very shallow, as she rejects Eric and Mike, who are nice to her on her first day, on the grounds that they are not as physically attractive as Edward, who is not nearly as nice, which seems to imply that a relationship should be based on purely physical characteristics rather than actually knowing the other person.
- As pointed out here, Bella rarely thinks before she acts and usually just lets her emotions and selfish impulses guide her actions… and this ultimately leads her to an eternity of happiness with the man of her dreams and a perfect, adoring family, all of whom seem to care about nothing more than taking care of Bella and making her happy.
- On the rare occasion that she does make her own decisions (as opposed to just reacting to stimuli and letting Edward think for her) it ends in disaster… from which Edward usually saves her. In fact, generally just going against Edward's will usually doesn't end well for Bella.
- "Things We Learned From Twilight" sums up much of the above very nicely.
