(no subject)

[owlectomy]

child_lit is having a discussion of the Twilight books, which prompted me to think about them in more depth. I hated the second book, and couldn't even finish the third, but what I noticed about my review, looking back at it, is how ambivalent it is. The gender politics may be awful, but is the book really any worse than, say, Fushigi Yuugi from that perspective? And why did FY feel so new, and so fantastic to me, given that I've considered myself a feminist (albeit not necessarily one with a lot of perspective) since I was seven?

I wrote:



I would argue that one of the big messages that pop culture is sending - once you get past the Disney Princess romance fantasies - is that you can expect very little from a boyfriend. The relationship that gets portrayed on the majority of domestic sitcoms seems to be, the husband is an incompetent, emotionally stunted, irresponsible hedonist, while the wife has to love and accept him unconditionally and forgive his awful decisions. Yes, the wife gets to be competent - but she also has to be the responsible one, the stick-in-the-mud, the one who doesn't get to have any fun.

Once you get outside sitcoms, it's not that bad - but it seems like, in general, there's that kind of almost Victorian 'angel of the house' rhetoric where the woman has to be virtuous because men can't be. Actually, several weeks ago I was paging through a Christian teen dating advice book which said, in almost as many words, guys are horndogs, guys can't be trusted, so it's the woman's responsibility to ensure that the couple doesn't have sex. And this is a 2007 book!

So I think the real attractiveness of the Twilight series is this message of, you deserve better than that, you deserve a boyfriend who adores you and would do anything for you, you don't have to settle for "lovable but incompetent" or worse. (And Edward certainly is competent, if nothing else).

And at one level that's a wish-fulfilment kind of message, and Twilight certainly takes it to unrealistic extremes (while overromanticizing certain things that shouldn't be romanticized). I think it's unfortunate that the book substitutes passionate angst and pretty words for actions that are genuinely rooted in non-dysfunctional love.

But when I was a teenager, and reading a lot of trashy manga, I think one of the best things I took from them was the idea that I deserved a really good relationship with a really good guy, and if that wasn't in the cards I would happily remain single.

Mind you, I still don't like the Twilight books or their gender politics...

Comments

Re: THANK YOU!

[dianamcqueen.livejournal.com]

well, also there's also the fact that if you know what a healthy relationship, or are in one, there's a greatly lessened chance that you'd be driven enough to write a book about relationships. Most of my writing and comics books was analyzing things I didn't understand or desired greatly, and now that my dreams/desires are changing and I've met so many more people than i did when I was writing those stories, it's like those urges to emotionally explore relationships on paper isn't there anymore.

I'm also not a writer, so the desire to have a narrative solely for having a narrative was never mine. :)

I'm always on the look out for new and weird, and realistic pairings anf explorations. Ones that I'd never think of. That's exciting to me :)

I think you know more about healthy relationships than most women our age!