It’s not that bad, you’re just misogynistic
Some movies, books, and songs are just easy targets to poke fun at. As pop culture cycles through content, we see an endless stream of hype, arguments, backlash, controversies, and classic trolling of new media. Films such as the up and coming Sonic the Hedgehog and the newly released Cats know this cycle all too well as mass public mockery has forced them to revise their work. However, no piece of pop culture has been crafted into a punching bag by the public as much as The Twilight Saga has.
While Twilight is no beautiful tome of language, the criticism and outright hatred it received was amplified simply because teenage girls really enjoyed it. As Twilight’s popularity grew, think-piece upon think-piece began to dominate the online field as grown men gave their strong opinions held with loose logic and validity as to why a franchise for young women is the absolute worst thing to exist. Yes, Stephenie Meyer altered and appropriated the history of the Quileute people to further the series and the CGI baby in Breaking Dawn Part Two is incredibly terrifying; however, the former is often not mentioned when discussing reasons to detest this piece of work.
Our infamous protagonist Bella Swan is often the centre of attack in anti-Twilight discourse for being a dull character. This is not only false, but it’s slander at its finest. Bella is a great character, she just isn’t a Manic Pixie Dream Girl and doesn’t cater to all the men in her life. This made her less desirable to the male audience and more desirable to the female audience because women could relate to her. Newsflash, men: not constantly smiling and having complex emotions that aren’t always centered on ensuring eccentric entertainment doesn’t make you a dull person—it’s just an aspect of basic human existence. Bella is an incredibly well-rounded teenage girl: she’s sure of herself, empathetic, stubborn in the best possible ways, brave, and is willing to sacrifice her life for the well-being of her friends, family, and the love of her life. Acting as the main source of drama throughout the first two novels, Edward Cullen truly did put her through hell as he both emotionally and geographically tried to distance himself from her in what he believed was an act to ensure her safety. Bella was able to forgive him for this and look past it, not because he manipulated her into doing so, but because she understands that he is capable of change, which we see as his character grows and develops throughout the series. Bella is an incredibly interesting character; she lacks self-esteem as she doesn’t feel worthy of Edward’s love but is filled with confidence as she endlessly stands up for herself throughout the series. Bella continually stands up to, defends herself against, and sasses ancient vampires who could kill her—a seventeen-year-old—with a swift flick of their wrist. She even punched a werewolf in the face.
Arguably, she did make a few questionable choices throughout the series. Most notably, in New Moon we see her recklessly ride motorcycles which leads to a few crashes, and she jumps off a cliff (depending on who you ask, that last one may or may not be a suicide attempt). Given that this all occurs not too long after Edward and the rest of the Cullens move away, this is typically used as ammo as to why Bella is such a terrible role model for young girls. First of all, there is no universal consensus as to what a good role model, especially a good teen role model, is. Different virtues, characteristics, actions, behaviour, and aspects of success that are deemed to be essential qualities of a good role model vary from person to person. While fictional characters can be role models, that doesn’t necessitate that they should be. They are ultimately just existing for your own entertainment, they aren’t real people, so the characters will do things that are questionable if the author believes that unsettling actions will captivate their readers and allow them to sell more books. I’m not suggesting that the behaviour or actions of fictional literary characters should be dismissed and accepted blindly, or that readers shouldn’t be critical of a character’s traits, or that we shouldn’t call out abusive and harmful behaviours in a novel. For Twilight, the entire series was dismissed simply because the leading female character failed to model what adults, who weren’t reading the series, considered to be good and proper behaviour for teenage girls.
Yes, some of Bella’s actions are not the most remarkable, but she’s a teenage girl, and we all do stupid things as teenagers. Part of why the series is so important is because Meyer is able to capture adolescents in such an authentic manner. With an Italian vampire mafia and vampire-human hybrid babies, Twilight looks nothing like a typical adolescent experience, but Meyer is able to illustrate exactly what a run-of-the mill teenage life is like. Every problem was life or death, each emotion was felt to dramatic extremes. Yes, the series is melodramatic and cheesy, but so are literally all teenagers. Meyer captures the lack of autonomy that teens are given as Bella is essentially forced to live with her father because her mother chose to hit the road and travel with her minor league baseball-playing boyfriend. Like most teenagers, Bella feels trapped in her life, presented with promises of love, happiness, and a future, but is stuck in a place where she doesn’t get to decide how to attain these aspects of life. Bella is able to achieve ultimate agency as she decides to become a vampire. Early on, this desire and choice is presented to Bella, and she makes her choice, gets what she wants, and enjoys it. The choice to be vampire becomes so provocative in the series, as it is something that none of the vampires we see got to choose, it was simply something that was done to them without consent. Bella’s ability to make the sound decision on this life-changing moment disrupts the narrative of many vampire books and movies. She always knows what she wants, does everything she can to get it, and never regrets her decisions.
Yes, it’s really weird that Edward watches her as she sleeps, but he never watches her undress or looks at her naked. Once Bella knows that this is happening, she gives him full permission to continue watching her because she’s just freaky. In Midnight Sun, which is the first novel of the series but in Edward’s perspective, Edward reconciles that what he’s doing is wrong. He hates himself for it and has a huge internal struggle on interacting with her; he views himself as a monster and ultimately wants her to do better. The criticism on this specific behaviour is justified, but if you’re going to slander Edward then you better do the same to Scott Pilgrim of Scott Pilgrim vs. the World as he stalks Ramona Flowers at a party they both attended until she leaves, and to Angel of Buff the Vampire Slayer, an adult vampire who watches teenage Buffy as she sleeps and inevitably has a romantic relationship with her. The former and latter didn’t receive the moral outrage that Twilight did, and it’s not because they weren’t popular, it’s because they were created by men and not a working mother.
The Twilight Saga has its faults and problems, and I’m not necessarily saying it’s a literary masterpiece—all I’m saying is that it’s really not that bad.
Twilight wasn’t hated because it was popular or because of its flaws, but because of who it was popular with. The degrading backlash to Twilight was mostly informed by the fact that in order to experience the novel or film, you had to engage with a feminine space, with a piece of work that was created for the sole purpose of indulging in the fantasies of teenage girls and making them happy. At its core, the series is about characters who don’t gain power over one another, but instead learn to live with who they are, and what they want. As the series ends with all of the characters ultimately being happy, whether they like it or not, this is something that people can and aspire to relate to.
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