Friday Review-Breaking Dawn (2012)

Boy howdy, I am not sure I am ready to review this last installment in the Twilight extravaganza. So far the Twilight movies have been cheesy at the best of times, and horrible, over the top, badly acted/written/directed at the worst of times. That said, Breaking Dawn could have been worse, and honestly the crew didn't have a whole lot to work with here. Breaking Dawn finally sees Edward and Bella get married, do the nasty, get pregnant and pop out the vampire baby within the span of a few months. Bella is so frail and weak, as usual, that she can not survive the baby's growth and birth which leads to Bella drinking blood milkshakes and finally giving birth and being turned into a vampire herself. Meanwhile the werewolves bitch and moan and pine for lovers lost and take their shirts off and that's about it. All of this is stretched into a 2 hour extravaganza of longing looks, the same sort of quasi-indie music that graced the past three films and symbolic chess boards. Breaking Dawn isn't the worst (it might even be the best) of the series and it certainly is bombastic and melodramatic enough that it seems intentional. The fairy tale wedding, honeymoon and marital life at the Cullen house is all beautifully done, everything in subtle shades of brown, beige and taupe which gives in an otherworldly feel.  Bella looks suitably emaciated and grey as the vampire baby devours her from the inside out. And yet Breaking Dawn is filled with the kind of material that, let's just say, I wouldn't want my teenage daughters seeing, and I don't refer to the soft-core sex scene. Bella is an insufferable whiner who can't even muster a smile for her own wedding, never mind that she instantly gets pregnant since, even in this series which makes abstinence it's mantra, no one thought to talk about birth control. To make matters worse Bella keeps her ex-boyfriend and sometimes love interest, Jacob, around because it makes her happy. If Bella were a man who happily kept his wife and girlfriend in the same house, this would be lambasted by critics and parents but since it's poor little Kristen Stewart, no one seems to mind. Edward even approaches Jacob and asks him to maybe-possibly sex Bella up. Meanwhile in wolf territory, Stephenie Meyer's distaste for Aboriginal people gives us lots of scenes of Jacob being rejected and moping about it, Leah being rejected and moping about it, discord in the tribe and bad CGI. As this movie slogs on till it's gory, seizure inducing conclusion the morals become so convoluted you wonder how any parent forked over $10 to their teenage daughters to go see this. The birth scene, which must have filled writers and producers with dread, sees Edward forcibly ripping the baby out of Bella WITH HIS TEETH while she screams bloody murder, and Rosalie (who, thankfully, was turned into a kinder, gentler, less-of-a-bitch Rosalie than in the book) scooping up the three month old newborn. Then Edward stabs Bella with a giant needle filled with his venom and proceeds to bite her. I can only imagine what psychologists would have to say about this. Anyway, Jacob 'imprints' on the baby which, I shudder to describe, means that he has fallen in love with her and will take on any role in her life until she is a suitable age for sexing up. This kindly gives everyone a way out of the awkward love triangle, except for the poor creeped out audience. In any case, Bella FINALLY gets to become a beautiful vampire and we get to wait till next year to FINALLY finish the Twilight series, once and for all.

Rant on Breaking Dawn

Tuesday, 20 December 2011

So, people who know me know of the distaste I have for Breaking Dawn, the final installment in Stephenie Meyer's Twilight Saga. Look, the first three books were a ridiculous cheese fest, made worse by the terrible movies they were made into, but they were innocent enough and for the most part inoffensive, and I'll confess, I more or less enjoyed them. Breaking Dawn on the other hand takes all the misguided morals of the first three books and turns them into a preachy and gory onslaught. Throughout the first three books Edward is a controlling and manipulative boyfriend and Bella faints at the mere sight of, well, anything un-ladylike, and basically demonstrates that women are more or less incapable of taking care of themselves in any way, shape or form. I have a problem with this message but worse is the fact that Bella is some kind of lady vixen who just wants to sex up Edward, who nobly denies her until they are married. That is, the abstinence message is not necessarily bad in itself but the idea of men as the guards of women's virtue, that men need to protect women from their own sexuality, is not only ridiculously outdated but offensive on every level. Then Breaking Dawn comes along and Bella is finally well and punished for her rampant sexuality. She gets a lovely wedding but having sex with Edward leaves her bruised and battered and worse, pregnant with a baby that quickly begins to destroy her. Yikes. Suddenly things take a turn in the opposite direction though. After a veritable gore fest, Bella has a baby and turns into a vampire! Finally, she gets what she wants, but wait, she has a kid now and she doesn't get to do what she wants because she is busy raising a baby right? Nope! Edward's family gladly takes care of the child while Bella and Edward boink like bunny rabbits. I know that it is just a book but I find all of these things to be ridiculously offensive. It's not the 1700's anymore. I mean, on one hand, the message that unprotected sex (even though they're married, it's okay) will only lead to a baby, either as punishment or because that is the only thing sex is for, is, well I don't think I need to outline the problems in that thinking. But worse, once they have the baby all responsibility gets shifted to the parents. Bella is a spoiled brat who thinks she is better than everyone and even after having a baby she isn't inconvenienced with the burden of caring for her. Uff. The next problem I have with Breaking Dawn is Meyer's handling of the love triangle between Jacob, Bella, and Edward. Frankly, I was never really into this love triangle, it just seemed mean. Bella strings Jacob along for a couple of books at least before finally marrying Edward. And does Jacob tell her to fuck off? No, he loiters around, whining and pining until he finally "imprints" on their daughter. I'm not even going to comment on this because it is a.) lazy writing and b.) gross. And, does anyone think that the whole plot point of the werewolves is a bit, well, racist? The werewolves are Native American, and they are temperamental and moody, fighting amongst themselves, and almost always wrong. Occasionally they come around to aid the white people but ultimately they lose in the Twilight Saga because Jacob doesn't get the girl. Furthermore Bella doesn't just marry a white guy, she marries the whitest guy around and Jacob becomes her son-in-law, a sort of secondary position.

On one hand, part of me feels like, okay, a lot of people like these books and they are just books, but on the other hand I think writers do have to be conscious of the messages, even unintended ones that they are putting out there and as consumers we have to be able to critique what we are reading and watching. What do you think? Is Twilight sexist/racist?