Twilight - Eclipse (debate??)

[Maxim Oleksyn]

Either you’re a hater or you’re a Twihard. Either you identify with Bella Swan as a fresh and noble ordinary girl who has a small touch of the extraordinary about her — a lovely wallflower who blooms under the gaze of her courtly vampire beau — or you think that she’s a drippy, passive doormat in thrall to the kind of male-centric romanticism that should have died out around the time of Gone With the Wind. Either you think that the stories are tepid, meandering, and wishy-washy repetitive, or you think that they coast along on wistful currents of yearning, loneliness, and desire. What fascinates me, listening to the noisy battle of Team Edward and Team Jacob, is that the war of opinion over the Twilight saga isn’t just a disagreement about books and movies. It touches something deeper, something that pop culture has always touched and even defined: key questions of what love and sex and romance should look like and feel like, of what they should be. A movie like Eclipse may be a far cry from art, but it’s increasingly clear, at least to me, that the movie hits a nerve, even in people who say they hate it, because it embodies a paradigm shift: a swooning re-embrace of traditional, damsel-meets-caveman values by a new generation of young women who are hearkening back, quite consciously, to the
romantic-erotic myths of the past. The Bella Swan view of the world may, on the surface, be the opposite of “rebellious,” but the reason her story sets so many hearts aflame is that it is, in a way, a rebellion — against the authority represented by a generation of women’s-studies classes. Bella’s story is, by nature, a meditative, even meandering one because it’s the story of how she wants to be acted upon, to be loved, desired, coveted, fought over, protected. A movie like Eclipse represents nothing less than a new and unambiguous embrace, by women, of the male gaze.

[LunaDonna]

All of my girlfriends as well as myself, ranging in age from 35 to 58 LOVE this story. We are all college graduates with advanced degrees, we are professionals and none of us has kids. There are many, many like us out there. This story strikes a cord in females of all ages and all intellects, that is a fact. Wouldn’t it be more relevant to take that fact seriously instead of assuming that these millions of fans are all “soft in the head?” Wouldn’t it be more interesting to ask what it is in the collective female psyche that is triggered by the themes in this story? And wouldn’t it be more telling to figure out why the critics DON’T get it? Maybe we’d learn something that might help men and women get along better…

[Smokey]

I went to the midnight showing of Eclipse and I have to say, I was completely shocked by how many guys were there. There were not many men older than 30, but there were a lot of guys either in high school or college. My teenage son really likes the books/movies and doesn't seem to be bothered by it.

[Earende]

I think that the relationship between Edward and Bella is entirely unhealthy. If anyone thinks that they want a relationship like that or that it is normal, they should be set straight. Under what circumstances it is ok for a girl to actually be in love with 2 guys and go kiss the one that she isn’t dating, then the one she is with be completely ok with it? That screams all sorts of issues. When Edward leaves in New Moon, Bella becomes practically comatose, which is just plain disturbing. That isn’t healthy. However, I don’t think that means that people shouldn’t read these books or that they are idiots for enjoying it. If anything, it can spark intelligent conversations between people (if they want to think really deeply about it).
If parents are concerned, they can talk to their kids about it. It’s great to analyze books/films and have intelligent and informed conversations about them, but I also believe it is important to just read a book for the enjoyment and leave it at that. Twilight is great because you can do one or the other. It isn’t ground breaking literature, but it can be thought provoking if you make it so. Also, the numbers don’t lie; people do enjoy Twilight and that isn’t changing anytime soon, no matter how many people scream on this boards about how stupid Twihards are…:)