Twilight, pp. 152-156.
Jess drove faster than the Chief, so we made it to Port Angeles by four. It had been a while since I'd had a girls' night out, and the estrogen rush was invigorating. We listened to whiny rock songs while Jessica jabbered on about the boys we hung out with. Jessica's dinner with Mike had gone very well, and she was hoping that by Saturday night they would have progressed to the first-kiss stage. I smiled to myself, pleased.
Our Bella is glad her friend is getting on the rebound the man she herself rejected. I'm sure she finds the whole thing amusing. I'm surprised she doesn't flat-out tell Jessica that Mike only asked her out because Bella turned him down, since Mike hasn't shown any interest in Jessica at this point. You might say that we wouldn't know since Bella doesn't register any male interest in anyone except herself, but I would counter with Mike's confused reaction when Bella suggests Jessica to him.We're also back in our comfort zone of Jessica "jabbering on" and Meyer's clunky, unnatural narration ("first-kiss stage", "estrogen rush"), but I have to wonder what Jessica's waiting for, here. Honey, this isn't a blind date. You've known this guy for a long time, and you've obviously been pining for him for a while, too. I don't think one kiss is exactly moving too fast. Of course, in Stephenie Meyer's Mormon-tacular universe, maybe it's Mike who's refusing to get to first base. You know, because of his True abstinence Love for Jessica that he discovered deep in his heart only moments after Bella turned him down.
But wait, whoa, hold on a minute. "Jess"? When did she become "Jess"? Bella has never once listened to anything Jessica has had to say that wasn't about Edward. As I pointed out before, Jessica's only dialogue printed in the book is Edward-related. Any other time, she, well, she "jabbers on". Bella hasn't done anything with her outside of pretending to listen to her at school. Jessica was at the beach thing, but Bella went there on Mike's invitation and never spoke to Jessica once during the whole thing. This is a girl she's known for two months and has continually ignored over that entire period....and now all of a sudden she's "Jess"? Get real.
Oh well, to be fair, Jessica does get some dialogue here that isn't about Edward. Instead, it's about how Bella is a character who doesn't make sense on her own terms:
Both Jessica and Angela seemed surprised and almost disbelieving when I told them I'd never been to a dance in Phoenix.
"Didn't you ever go with a boyfriend or something?" Jess asked dubiously as we walked through the front doors of the store.
"Really," I tried to convince her, not wanting to confess my dancing problems. "I've never had a boyfriend or anything close. I didn't go out much."
"Why not?" Jessica demanded.
"No one asked me," I answered honestly.
That's right, it's once again time to indulge Meyer's penchant for having it both ways. Bella, the girl that every boy wants and every girl wants to be, has never had a boyfriend "or anything close" (whatever that means). And why not? Because she's uppity and judgemental and thoroughly unlikeable? No, silly, it's because no-one asked. At a (presumably) relatively large public high school in Phoenix. Sure, every male we've seen in Forks has asked or will ask her out (except Edward, but when he's ready to take her out, he'll tell her), but apparently she was a social pariah in Phoenix. I guess Arizonans have an inborn hatred for transparent wish-fulfillment author self-insertions.
I do like that Bella "answered honestly". I could lambast this as yet another example of Meyer's egregious overuse of adverbs or of her pathological fear of using the word "said" in her dialogue, but I'd prefer to think Meyer's finally starting to catch on that Bella does like to lie and so she needs to point out that Bella is actually telling the truth here. But to no avail, since even Jessica's not buying it.
[Jessica] looked sceptical. "People ask you out here," she reminded me, "and you tell them no."
I think we might have an instance of Meta-Jessica here. Somehow, despite Meyer's incredible writing ineptitude, she accidentally created a character, one that refuses to dance to Meyer's tune. Meta-Jessica recognizes Bella's passive-aggression for what it is and calls her on it. But Meyer is strong in the Dark Side of the Force, and Meta-Jessica is quickly hushed up by the power of faux-emo moping. After all, it's been two pages since Bella last moped about Edward's not being around, so we get this:
The girls'-night high was wearing off in the wake of my annoyance at Tyler, leaving room for the gloom to move back in.
Whew! I thought for a minute Bella might be able to go a few hours without spiraling into an Edward-inspired depression. Zis bullet has been, how you say...dodged!
Bella then exhibits her narcissism (or typical teen-aged selfishness, according to some comments) by interrogating the other girl on this girls' night out about whether or not the Cullens missed two days of school because of her, specifically. Not just Edward, apparently, but all of them.
"Um, Angela..." She looked up curiously.
"Is it normal for the...Cullens"--I kept my eyes on the shoes--"to be out of school a lot?" I failed miserably in my attempt to sound nonchalant.
"Yes, when the weather is good they go backpacking all the time--even the doctor. They're all real outdoorsy," she told me quietly, examining her shoes, too. She didn't ask me one question, let alone the hundreds that Jessica would have unleashed. I was beginning to really like Angela.
So, why do you like Jessica again? Oh that's right, you don't.
Meyer really needs to stop calling attention to how ridiculous it is that the Cullens have integrated themselves so thoroughly into their surrounding human society if they can't even be viewed in direct sunlight. I guess world-class surgeon Carlisle isn't on call during these "backpacking trips" to avoid the sun. How lucky for him; I'm sure many doctors in the world would love to know how he manages to avoid being on call whenever he wants. And the Cullens must miss a lot of school in the spring. Even in the Pacific Northwest, there are lots of sunny days in May. And the Cullens have somehow lived in Forks for four generations without anyone noticing that none of them ages. (Remember, Jake's great-grandfather made a pact with the Cullens, the same ones.) This just doesn't make sense on any level. But Meyer wants to have it both ways, so by authorial fiat, she gets it. The Cullens have lived in Forks for about a century, a tiny town that doesn't have nearly enough high schools for them to graduate from a different one every four years, without even changing their names, and no-one notices because Meyer doesn't resolve contradictions in different parts of her novel; she just fails to notice they exist because she doesn't bother to edit. Connor MacLeod survived in plain sight as an immortal for decades, but that was in New York City, where it's a lot easier to hide, and under different names. He didn't move to a town of 3000 and live as "Connor MacLeod" for 200 years without aging a day. Oh, and he could come out during the day.
Bella goes off alone to find a bookstore while her friends go do something else. Bella does this because, she says, she likes to go to bookstores alone. This isn't surprising, since she likes to do everything alone. The only reason she came on this trip at all was to distract herself from moping about Edward. (And of course it didn't work, because she likes moping about Edward.) If Edward had appeared in school that day, you can bet she wouldn't be on this little excursion right now.
In the Twilight film, Bella goes inside the bookstore she finds and purchases a book about folklore, as she's still doing research to determine if Edward is a vampire. In the novel, naturally, even this bit of proactivity is denied her, in part because she already knows Edward's a vampire by means of her privileged access to the author's mind, but mostly because Meyer can't bear to write her fauxtagonist actually doing things.
I wasn't paying as much attention as I should to where I was going; I was wrestling with despair. I was trying so hard not to think about him, and what Angela had said...and more than anything trying to beat down my hopes for Saturday [when Edward is supposed to take her to Seattle], fearing a disappointment more painful than the rest, when I looked up to see someone's silver Volvo parked along the street and it all came crashing down on me. Stupid, unreliable vampire, I thought to myself.
You know, that's the trouble with vampires. They're unreliable.
Showing posts with label bella swan. Show all posts
Showing posts with label bella swan. Show all posts
November 25, 2012
November 12, 2012
Twilight: Warm-up Moping
Twilight, pp. 147-151.
Before I start this week's analysis, I just wanted to point out that Twilight never gives us any clear idea of exactly when it's supposed to be taking place. The year we've already established is circa1992 2005. But what time of year is it? We know school's in, but is it fall? Heading into winter? Heading out of winter? Springtime? No idea. It's probably not spring since nobody went swimming when Mike and the gang went to La Push beach, but that's all I've got for you. Meyer knows what her readers need, though, so a quarter of the way through the book, we find out (well, sorta) what season we're in! As near as I can figure, it's around the end of winter and the beginning of spring, meaning Bella probably arrived in Forks in February and it's now mid-March.
Note to aspiring writers: Don't force your reader to piece together when your story takes place by assembling a dozen teeny bits of information scattered throughout the story. Oh, and don't make your main characters sociopathic narcissists and superpowered control-freaks. And before you fankids start throwing out the names of authors X, Y, and Z who write good stories involving such things, pay attention to what I said: aspiring writers. Make sure you've managed the basics before you try to move on to the hard stuff.
Anywho, Bella whips out her battered Jane Austen compilation and sits down to do some serious English literature-major pleasure reading!
My favourites were Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility. I'd read the first most recently, so I started into Sense and Sensibility, only to remember after I began chapter three that the hero of the story happened to be named Edward. Angrily, I turned to Mansfield Park, but the hero of that story was named Edmund, and that was just too close....I snapped the book shut, annoyed, and rolled over on my back.
We're supposed to believe Bella is so super-special that a vampire who has eaten human beings in the course of more than a century on this Earth is smitten with her, yet her two favourite Jane Austen novels are the two that everybody knows. And remember, it's been exactly three days since Bella last saw Edward, yet she can't read a novel containing a character whose name even resembles his. Mark Kermode thinks this girl is an independent young woman. Mark Kermode is also a gigantic twat.
Yes, Edward's absence (which so far consists of one day of school) means our Bella is, in her own words, depressed, no doubt as Edward intended since he's a manipulative, emotionally abusive arsehole. With Edward away, Bella is forced to talk to her father for the first time since Chapter Three. Mustache Dad earns my gratitude by finally, seven chapters in, giving Jessica a last name. Bella deigns to get his permission to go dress-shopping with Jessica in Port Angeles the next night, even though she's not getting a dress herself. Mustache Dad, despite being in his forties, is confused by the strange, unfamiliar notion that a female would accompany another female shopping. Between this and the creepy pictures-of-the-ex-wife-all-over-the-house thing, Mustache Dad really needs to get out more.
Cut to the next day:
It was sunny again in the morning. I awakened with renewed hope that I grimly tried to suppress. I dressed for the warmer weather in a deep blue V-neck blouse--something I'd worn in the dead of winter in Phoenix.
I had planned my arrival at school so that I barely had time to make it to class. With a sinking heart, I circled the full lot looking for a space, while also searching for the silver Volvo that was clearly not there. I parked in the last row and hurried to English, arriving breathless, but subdued, before the final bell.
It was the same as yesterday--I just couldn't keep little sprouts of hope from budding in my mind, only to have them squashed painfully as I searched the lunchroom in vain and sat at my empty Biology table.
...
I was anxious to get out of town so I could stop glancing over my shoulder, hoping to see him appearing out of the blue like he always did.
No doubt because if he did, you'd drop your 'friends' like so many used tampons and get into another boring, pointless conversation in which he's alternately hostile and patronising and you vacillate between impotent anger and blank indifference.
Is this what you normal people do? Purposefully arrive somewhere late so you have a plausible cover story as you drive around the car park looking for somebody's car? Are you constantly on edge, glancing around furtively in the hope of seeing someone you've had two or three conversations with after an absence of a few days? Were you ever like this?
I just want to know how typical this sort of behaviour is, because I find it frankly appalling.
And with that, Chapter Seven comes to...well, a close would be giving it a little too much credit. A stop. Right, that's better: With that, Chapter Seven comes to a full and complete stop, allowing me to release the safety arm, exit, and collect my belongings. So, my little droogies, you'll have to wait until next week to find out what happens during Bella's thrilling dress-shopping trip to a town slightly larger than Forks. Sadly, I'm serious. One hundred and fifty pages into this novel, and something finally, finally is going to happen on this trip. It doesn't have any connection to the main plot (which, if you can believe it, won't start for another two hundred and fifty pages) and doesn't in any way build toward any sort of climax, but it is a thing that does, in fact, happen.
But not today. It's going to take a bit longer. And you know, I can't think of a more fitting way to impart to you, my droogs, what a chore it is to read Twilight.
Before I start this week's analysis, I just wanted to point out that Twilight never gives us any clear idea of exactly when it's supposed to be taking place. The year we've already established is circa
Note to aspiring writers: Don't force your reader to piece together when your story takes place by assembling a dozen teeny bits of information scattered throughout the story. Oh, and don't make your main characters sociopathic narcissists and superpowered control-freaks. And before you fankids start throwing out the names of authors X, Y, and Z who write good stories involving such things, pay attention to what I said: aspiring writers. Make sure you've managed the basics before you try to move on to the hard stuff.
Anywho, Bella whips out her battered Jane Austen compilation and sits down to do some serious English literature-major pleasure reading!
My favourites were Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility. I'd read the first most recently, so I started into Sense and Sensibility, only to remember after I began chapter three that the hero of the story happened to be named Edward. Angrily, I turned to Mansfield Park, but the hero of that story was named Edmund, and that was just too close....I snapped the book shut, annoyed, and rolled over on my back.
We're supposed to believe Bella is so super-special that a vampire who has eaten human beings in the course of more than a century on this Earth is smitten with her, yet her two favourite Jane Austen novels are the two that everybody knows. And remember, it's been exactly three days since Bella last saw Edward, yet she can't read a novel containing a character whose name even resembles his. Mark Kermode thinks this girl is an independent young woman. Mark Kermode is also a gigantic twat.
Yes, Edward's absence (which so far consists of one day of school) means our Bella is, in her own words, depressed, no doubt as Edward intended since he's a manipulative, emotionally abusive arsehole. With Edward away, Bella is forced to talk to her father for the first time since Chapter Three. Mustache Dad earns my gratitude by finally, seven chapters in, giving Jessica a last name. Bella deigns to get his permission to go dress-shopping with Jessica in Port Angeles the next night, even though she's not getting a dress herself. Mustache Dad, despite being in his forties, is confused by the strange, unfamiliar notion that a female would accompany another female shopping. Between this and the creepy pictures-of-the-ex-wife-all-over-the-house thing, Mustache Dad really needs to get out more.
Cut to the next day:
It was sunny again in the morning. I awakened with renewed hope that I grimly tried to suppress. I dressed for the warmer weather in a deep blue V-neck blouse--something I'd worn in the dead of winter in Phoenix.
I had planned my arrival at school so that I barely had time to make it to class. With a sinking heart, I circled the full lot looking for a space, while also searching for the silver Volvo that was clearly not there. I parked in the last row and hurried to English, arriving breathless, but subdued, before the final bell.
It was the same as yesterday--I just couldn't keep little sprouts of hope from budding in my mind, only to have them squashed painfully as I searched the lunchroom in vain and sat at my empty Biology table.
...
I was anxious to get out of town so I could stop glancing over my shoulder, hoping to see him appearing out of the blue like he always did.
No doubt because if he did, you'd drop your 'friends' like so many used tampons and get into another boring, pointless conversation in which he's alternately hostile and patronising and you vacillate between impotent anger and blank indifference.
Is this what you normal people do? Purposefully arrive somewhere late so you have a plausible cover story as you drive around the car park looking for somebody's car? Are you constantly on edge, glancing around furtively in the hope of seeing someone you've had two or three conversations with after an absence of a few days? Were you ever like this?
I just want to know how typical this sort of behaviour is, because I find it frankly appalling.
And with that, Chapter Seven comes to...well, a close would be giving it a little too much credit. A stop. Right, that's better: With that, Chapter Seven comes to a full and complete stop, allowing me to release the safety arm, exit, and collect my belongings. So, my little droogies, you'll have to wait until next week to find out what happens during Bella's thrilling dress-shopping trip to a town slightly larger than Forks. Sadly, I'm serious. One hundred and fifty pages into this novel, and something finally, finally is going to happen on this trip. It doesn't have any connection to the main plot (which, if you can believe it, won't start for another two hundred and fifty pages) and doesn't in any way build toward any sort of climax, but it is a thing that does, in fact, happen.
But not today. It's going to take a bit longer. And you know, I can't think of a more fitting way to impart to you, my droogs, what a chore it is to read Twilight.
November 4, 2012
Twilight: Non-Appearance
Twilight, pp. 139-146.
Upon effectively acknowledging (if not openly admitting) that Edward eats people, Bella does what she does best: nothing. As we saw last week, she immediately ruled out communicating the knowledge that Edward is a vampire to others because they might think she's, like, crazy, and a girl's got to watch out for her image! Another option was to "go back to ignoring him...tell him to leave me alone--and mean it this time." But that would also require Bella to do something, so this option is out, too. The only choice for our Bella is to take no action at all. Passive female docility, thy name is Bella Swan!
I did get a laugh out of this passage:
I didn't know if there was ever a choice, really. I was already in too deep. Now that I knew--if I knew--I could do nothing about my frightening secret. Because when I thought of him, of his voice, his hypnotic eyes, the magnetic force of his personality, I wanted nothing more than to be with him right now.
Ah, those three or four conversations between Edward and Bella so far mean Bella is "in too deep". And I love the bit about the "magnetic force" of Edward's personality. Bella must have a deep and powerful attraction to "guys who are kind of a jerk", since that's the only "personality" Edward has displayed so far. That would explain a lot, actually.
Bella returns to her house, relieved that she's finally made a decision. That her decision essentially amounts to refusing to make a decision doesn't, of course, bother her in the least.
I should be afraid--I knew I should be, but I couldn't feel the right kind of fear.
The reason Bella isn't afraid is that she knows what Meyer knows, and Meyer knows Edward is a Good Vampire (*blech*). If Bella truly believed Edward was a vampire and had the experiences we readers have seen her have, she absolutely would be afraid. When she was struggling to "decide" what to do, she noted that Edward saved her life as a point in his favour. But he can't eat her if she dies in a car accident, so that really shouldn't be very reassuring. (I don't dare suggest that though he might have saved her life, he may very well be eating other people, because we all know that Bella's life is the only life that matters to her.)
It amazes me how this novel goes out of its way to avoid having any teeth. (Get it? Teeth? Vampires? Oh, write your own jokes.) The story is set up as an example of the venerable "nice girl reforms the bad boy" trope, except the bad boy isn't even bad. So of course Bella isn't afraid. There's nothing to be afraid of! Edward keeps going on and on about how dangerous he is, but since he's basically a poseur, it only gets more laughable every time he does it. I'm not buying it, and Bella's not buying it. This is how low vampires have fallen. They can't even scare high school girls anymore.
The next day, after noting that her mother married at 19 (oh those Mormons and their high school marriage!), Bella goes to school. Because there's no-one else at this school, she immediately runs into Mike.
He was so delighted to see me, I couldn't help but feel gratified.[sic]
"I never noticed before--your hair has red in it," he commented, catching between his fingers a strand that was fluttering in the breeze.
"Only in the sun."
I became just a little uncomfortable as he tucked the lock behind my ear.
Mixed message much?
I didn't edit anything out. Bella goes from feeling gratified at Mike's obvious interest in her to feeling "uncomfortable" when he expresses it. That's our Bella: Want me, and make it clear you want me, but don't, like, do anything. (And it only gets worse with Jacob in the later books, my little droogies.)
"I was going to ask if you wanted to go out."
"Oh." I was taken off guard [sic]. Why couldn't I ever have a pleasant conversation with Mike anymore without it getting awkward?
Because you're leading him on. Next question!
And really, taken [sic]* off-guard? You're shocked that the guy who has expressed obvious interest in you for almost two months is asking you out? Good lord, Rosebud must have knocked you on your ass.
Bella has to spell out to Mike that Jessica likes him, because Meyer can't get her characterisation right and Mike somehow hasn't figured this out. He proves to be a quick study, though, since Jessica is "bubbling with enthusiasm" in the very next class. Bella is "indecisive" (no shit!) about going dress shopping with the girls, despite being in a good mood (which is also why she didn't greet Mike "half-heartedly", as she implies she normally does). Why she's "in a euphoric mood" is a bit less clear. Is it because she's firmed up her commitment to doing nothing? That hardly seems like something to be euphoric about.
As was my routine, I glanced first toward the Cullens' table. A shiver of panic trembled in my stomach as I realised it was empty. With dwindling hope, my eyes scoured the rest of the cafeteria, hoping to find him alone, waiting for me. The place was nearly filled--Spanish had made us late--but there was no sign of Edward or any of his family. Desolation hit me with crippling strength.
Oh. That. Bella's "in a euphoric mood" because it's been, gosh, two whole days since she last saw Edward, but her long personal nightmare is about to end. Nearly forty-eight hours after she last saw him, she's going to see him again! Only, he's not there! Oh no!
I shambled along behind Jessica, not bothering to pretend to listen anymore.
Bella's so despondent she can't even pretend to listen! It must be True Love.
I'm sure there was a period in your life, my little droogies, when someone's two-day absence could be a cause of friend-ignoring despair. There certainly was in mine. A period around age fifteen. I don't mind teens and 'tweens going gaga over this tripe. (Well, at least not for this particular reason.) What I don't get is how anyone outside that bracket can read passages like this without burning the book to ashes and then doing a haka on the smoldering remains.
And there's more. So, so much more....
Angela asked a few quiet questions about the Macbeth paper, which I answered as naturally as I could while spiraling downward in misery. She, too, invited me to go with them tonight, and I agreed now, grasping at anything to distract myself.
I realised I'd been holding on to a last shred of hope when I entered Biology, saw his empty seat, and felt a new wave of disappointment.
...
I was glad to leave campus, so I would be free to pout and mope before I went out with Jessica and company. But right after I walked out the door of Charlie's house, Jessica called to cancel our plans. I tried to be happy that Mike had finally asked her to dinner--I really was relieved he finally seemed to be catching on--but my enthusiasm sounded false in my own ears.
He's probably "finally catching on" because you finally told him clearly that you aren't interested. I don't know, that might just have helped him get the message that you aren't interested.
Now, it's clear that, because Meyer likes Bella and wants us to like her, too, we're supposed to understand that her enthusiasm sounds "false" because she's depressed about going an entire day without seeing Edward. But because Meyer is a bad writer (and because Bella is a bad person), it's equally likely in this context that Bella's enthusiasm sounds false because, even though she straight up told Mike no thanks, she thought he would continue to pine for her. Hearing that he's now asked Jessica out, Bella tries to feign enthusiasm, when she's really disappointed that Mike will no longer be shutting Jessica out in order to fawn over her.
It's all because of that "I really was relieved he finally seemed to be catching on". (Well, that and the Bella-is-a-bad-person thing.) It's almost, almost a bit of self-awareness on Meyer's part, this extra effort to assure us that Bella's really really glad Mike won't be pursuing her anymore. No really, I'm so happy for you. Just so, like, happy. For you. Y'know? That's great. That's...that's really great.
================================================================
*Meyer's grasp of the English language is so bad I keep feeling like Sylvester Stallone's character in Demolition Man, constantly having to correct Sandra Bullock's malapropisms. "It's taken aback and caught, caught off-guard!"
Upon effectively acknowledging (if not openly admitting) that Edward eats people, Bella does what she does best: nothing. As we saw last week, she immediately ruled out communicating the knowledge that Edward is a vampire to others because they might think she's, like, crazy, and a girl's got to watch out for her image! Another option was to "go back to ignoring him...tell him to leave me alone--and mean it this time." But that would also require Bella to do something, so this option is out, too. The only choice for our Bella is to take no action at all. Passive female docility, thy name is Bella Swan!
I did get a laugh out of this passage:
I didn't know if there was ever a choice, really. I was already in too deep. Now that I knew--if I knew--I could do nothing about my frightening secret. Because when I thought of him, of his voice, his hypnotic eyes, the magnetic force of his personality, I wanted nothing more than to be with him right now.
Ah, those three or four conversations between Edward and Bella so far mean Bella is "in too deep". And I love the bit about the "magnetic force" of Edward's personality. Bella must have a deep and powerful attraction to "guys who are kind of a jerk", since that's the only "personality" Edward has displayed so far. That would explain a lot, actually.
Bella returns to her house, relieved that she's finally made a decision. That her decision essentially amounts to refusing to make a decision doesn't, of course, bother her in the least.
I should be afraid--I knew I should be, but I couldn't feel the right kind of fear.
The reason Bella isn't afraid is that she knows what Meyer knows, and Meyer knows Edward is a Good Vampire (*blech*). If Bella truly believed Edward was a vampire and had the experiences we readers have seen her have, she absolutely would be afraid. When she was struggling to "decide" what to do, she noted that Edward saved her life as a point in his favour. But he can't eat her if she dies in a car accident, so that really shouldn't be very reassuring. (I don't dare suggest that though he might have saved her life, he may very well be eating other people, because we all know that Bella's life is the only life that matters to her.)
It amazes me how this novel goes out of its way to avoid having any teeth. (Get it? Teeth? Vampires? Oh, write your own jokes.) The story is set up as an example of the venerable "nice girl reforms the bad boy" trope, except the bad boy isn't even bad. So of course Bella isn't afraid. There's nothing to be afraid of! Edward keeps going on and on about how dangerous he is, but since he's basically a poseur, it only gets more laughable every time he does it. I'm not buying it, and Bella's not buying it. This is how low vampires have fallen. They can't even scare high school girls anymore.
The next day, after noting that her mother married at 19 (oh those Mormons and their high school marriage!), Bella goes to school. Because there's no-one else at this school, she immediately runs into Mike.
He was so delighted to see me, I couldn't help but feel gratified.[sic]
"I never noticed before--your hair has red in it," he commented, catching between his fingers a strand that was fluttering in the breeze.
"Only in the sun."
I became just a little uncomfortable as he tucked the lock behind my ear.
Mixed message much?
I didn't edit anything out. Bella goes from feeling gratified at Mike's obvious interest in her to feeling "uncomfortable" when he expresses it. That's our Bella: Want me, and make it clear you want me, but don't, like, do anything. (And it only gets worse with Jacob in the later books, my little droogies.)
"I was going to ask if you wanted to go out."
"Oh." I was taken off guard [sic]. Why couldn't I ever have a pleasant conversation with Mike anymore without it getting awkward?
Because you're leading him on. Next question!
And really, taken [sic]* off-guard? You're shocked that the guy who has expressed obvious interest in you for almost two months is asking you out? Good lord, Rosebud must have knocked you on your ass.
Bella has to spell out to Mike that Jessica likes him, because Meyer can't get her characterisation right and Mike somehow hasn't figured this out. He proves to be a quick study, though, since Jessica is "bubbling with enthusiasm" in the very next class. Bella is "indecisive" (no shit!) about going dress shopping with the girls, despite being in a good mood (which is also why she didn't greet Mike "half-heartedly", as she implies she normally does). Why she's "in a euphoric mood" is a bit less clear. Is it because she's firmed up her commitment to doing nothing? That hardly seems like something to be euphoric about.
As was my routine, I glanced first toward the Cullens' table. A shiver of panic trembled in my stomach as I realised it was empty. With dwindling hope, my eyes scoured the rest of the cafeteria, hoping to find him alone, waiting for me. The place was nearly filled--Spanish had made us late--but there was no sign of Edward or any of his family. Desolation hit me with crippling strength.
Oh. That. Bella's "in a euphoric mood" because it's been, gosh, two whole days since she last saw Edward, but her long personal nightmare is about to end. Nearly forty-eight hours after she last saw him, she's going to see him again! Only, he's not there! Oh no!
I shambled along behind Jessica, not bothering to pretend to listen anymore.
Bella's so despondent she can't even pretend to listen! It must be True Love.
I'm sure there was a period in your life, my little droogies, when someone's two-day absence could be a cause of friend-ignoring despair. There certainly was in mine. A period around age fifteen. I don't mind teens and 'tweens going gaga over this tripe. (Well, at least not for this particular reason.) What I don't get is how anyone outside that bracket can read passages like this without burning the book to ashes and then doing a haka on the smoldering remains.
And there's more. So, so much more....
Angela asked a few quiet questions about the Macbeth paper, which I answered as naturally as I could while spiraling downward in misery. She, too, invited me to go with them tonight, and I agreed now, grasping at anything to distract myself.
I realised I'd been holding on to a last shred of hope when I entered Biology, saw his empty seat, and felt a new wave of disappointment.
...
I was glad to leave campus, so I would be free to pout and mope before I went out with Jessica and company. But right after I walked out the door of Charlie's house, Jessica called to cancel our plans. I tried to be happy that Mike had finally asked her to dinner--I really was relieved he finally seemed to be catching on--but my enthusiasm sounded false in my own ears.
He's probably "finally catching on" because you finally told him clearly that you aren't interested. I don't know, that might just have helped him get the message that you aren't interested.
Now, it's clear that, because Meyer likes Bella and wants us to like her, too, we're supposed to understand that her enthusiasm sounds "false" because she's depressed about going an entire day without seeing Edward. But because Meyer is a bad writer (and because Bella is a bad person), it's equally likely in this context that Bella's enthusiasm sounds false because, even though she straight up told Mike no thanks, she thought he would continue to pine for her. Hearing that he's now asked Jessica out, Bella tries to feign enthusiasm, when she's really disappointed that Mike will no longer be shutting Jessica out in order to fawn over her.
It's all because of that "I really was relieved he finally seemed to be catching on". (Well, that and the Bella-is-a-bad-person thing.) It's almost, almost a bit of self-awareness on Meyer's part, this extra effort to assure us that Bella's really really glad Mike won't be pursuing her anymore. No really, I'm so happy for you. Just so, like, happy. For you. Y'know? That's great. That's...that's really great.
================================================================
*Meyer's grasp of the English language is so bad I keep feeling like Sylvester Stallone's character in Demolition Man, constantly having to correct Sandra Bullock's malapropisms. "It's taken aback and caught, caught off-guard!"
October 28, 2012
Twilight: Crazy Talk
Twilight, pp. 136-139.
Bella, becoming enraged with herself for reading about vampires on the Internet, storms out of her house and plunges into the forest.
It was all so stupid. I was sitting in my room, researching vampires. What was wrong with me?
Well, your old friend Jake did say the Cullens were vampires, and they certainly are an odd family, and oh yeah, you did personally witness Edward stopping a van with his bare hands. I think Meyer got her characters mixed up. Shouldn't Bella be trying in vain to get other people to believe her? She watched him do something superhuman! I don't think it's unreasonable to do a little Googling.
The next couple of pages are a description of the forest, as Bella wanders in the woods until her frankly unwarranted anger and embarrassment subside. She takes shelter under a fallen tree when it begins to rain and regrets fleeing into the forest, considering she just had a nightmare about vampire Edward that took place in a forest. There's nothing particularly wrong with these passages, except that they're clumsy, again making it seem the book was never shown to a professional editor. Credit where it's due, though: There is one well-written paragraph on these pages. Just one, but hey, that's one more than we've had since Chapter 1:
Here in the trees, it was much easier to believe the absurdities that embarrassed me indoors. Nothing had changed in this forest for thousands of years, and all the myths and legends of a hundred different lands seemed much more likely in this green haze than they had in my clear-cut bedroom.
Not bad, particularly the "green haze" bit. Sure, Meyer misuses the phrase "clear-cut", but what, you expect a writer to be able to use words properly? Geez, you people are so demanding. If you think this writing stuff is easy, where's your bestselling novel, huh?
Of course, Meyer immediately ruins my goodwill with the very next sentence: "I forced myself to focus on the two most vital questions I had to answer, but I did so unwillingly." Um, if you're forcing yourself to do something, then by definition you're doing it willingly. In fact, you could replace "forced" with "willed" in the sentence and the meaning would be exactly the same! "I willed myself to do it unwillingly." Meyer really needs to get a handle on this whole "knowing what words mean" thing.
Bella finally, finally mentions Edward's "impossible strength" as a reason to think he might be a vampire, though I immediately put head to desk when it became obvious she puts "impossible strength" on the same level as "his eyes change colour".
I again listed in my head the things I'd observed myself: the impossible speed and strength, the eye colour shifting from black to gold and back again, the inhuman beauty, the pale, frigid skin.
You know, one of these things is not like the others. If you take out "impossible speed and strength", Meyer is telling me that if I see Winona Ryder wearing coloured contact lenses, I should assume she's a vampire.
I think this goes back to my old hobby-horse of Meyer not knowing her vampire lore, nor making effective use of what little she does know. Observe how Fright Night (the real, Colin Farrell-less one) slowly reveals to its protagonist that Jerry is a vampire. There are plenty of little things that suggest vampirism to one in the know, and with the power of the Internet at her fingertips (on her dial-up modem!), Bella has instant access to all that knowledge. Oh wait, I'm sorry, part of the way Jerry reveals his true nature is by killing people, and since Edward is a Good Vampire (I throw up in my mouth a little every time I have to put those two words together), that's off the table. So yeah, his skin is cold, so he's a vampire. That sure is an airtight case. No wonder Bella doesn't want to tell anyone about her suspicion. (Hilariously, it never occurs to her to talk to Jacob about this, even though he told her that his tribe believes the Cullens are vampires!)
And more--small things that registered slowly--how they never seemed to eat, the disturbing grace with which they moved. And the way he sometimes spoke, with unfamiliar cadences and phrases that better fit the style of a turn-of-the-century novel than that of a twenty-first century classroom.
Wait a minute, back this crazy train up! I've already mentioned that plenty of kids I went to high school with didn't eat, at least not at school. Once again, Bella went to high school in a major city, and she never knew of any girl with an eating disorder, or a guy who used the lunch period to smoke? And since when was the grace of the perfect Cullens "disturbing"? Bella never indicated anything disturbing about it! And speaking of no indication, what's this about Edward talking like he's from the 19th-century? When did this happen? When has he ever said anything that "better fit the style of a turn-of-the-century novel"? I think somebody just tried to sneak in a little ret-con. Wait, no, actually, he doesn't say any "unfamiliar phrase" from the 1800s from this point on, either. I believe we have ourselves a jin-yoo-wine example of an Informed Attribute.
Don't get me wrong, Edward does use unfamiliar cadences and phrases, but they're less "turn-of-the-century" and more "written by a hack writer".
Bella also notes that Edward "seemed to know what everyone around him was thinking...except me." Well if he can't read you, how do you know he can read anyone else? What if he just made it up? It's not like you talked to anyone he read to see if he was right. And do I really need to point out that not only is telepathy not a vampiric power, but it didn't even come up on the "academic-looking" web site Bella Googled up earlier?
For all her protestations of its absurdity (the lady doth protest too much, methinks), Bella pretty quickly decides Edward is a vampire, at long last catching up to the slow 8-year-old who figured this out 6 chapters ago.
And then the most important question of all. What was I going to do if it was true?
If Edward was a vampire--I could hardly make myself think the words--then what should I do? Involving someone else was definitely out. I couldn't even believe myself; anyone I told would have me committed.
There's an "if" there, but it doesn't matter. Bella is convinced she has three options, and none of them is "Find out if Edward is really a vampire." She doesn't consider this option because she already knows he is, because Meyer knows he is, and all this hand-wringing over how unbelievable it all is has been much ado about nothing. Bella doesn't have any more information about Edward than she had before, and her Google search militated against his being a vampire (because, of course, he's a Twilight vampire, so the traditional vampire legends are of little help in identifying him as a creature of the night). But she accepts it now because Meyer says she does.
Bella, being an amoral narcissist, immediately rejects the option any sane person with any modicum of concern for their fellow human beings would choose because of how it might reflect on her. Again, referencing Fright Night, when the protagonist (who, like Bella, is a high school student) discovers Jerry is a vampire, he tells everyone: his mother, the police, his girlfriend, the actor who played his favourite vampire hunter, everybody. They all think he's crazy, but that doesn't stop him from trying to get people to listen. Because vampires are dangerous. Vampires kill people. And trying to warn people they're in danger is the right thing to do. Even if it means people think you're crazy. Even if it might get you locked up.
Now, we readers know Edward is a Good Vampire (*ulp*), but Bella doesn't have any reason to believe that. She's heard Jacob's telling of the legend that the Cullens don't eat people (and even Jacob is sceptical that the Cullens are Good) but that isn't supported or backed up by anything else, not even by Edward himself. Bella was just thinking about how he'd told her he's "the villain, dangerous..." and now she knows this is more than just adolescent posturing. Edward really is a villain. He really is dangerous, because he really is a vampire, and so are all the other Cullens.
But Bella isn't concerned that the Cullens are eating people. She isn't worried that her father, as chief of police, would likely be the first to die if word of the Cullens' true nature got out and they decided to strike first. She's not troubled that the boy she likes is a walking corpse who, for all she knows, has killed thousands of people and will continue to kill thousands more.
Nope, all she's concerned about is what might happen to her. She might be committed if she tells anyone (as if "the Cullens are vampires!" would even warrant a mandatory visit from the school guidance counselor, much less institutionalisation), so telling anyone is right out, not even considered.
Now, some commentators have taken me to task for continually pointing out Bella's selfishness, saying it's unfair to single her out for behaviour that's typical of teen-age girls. That may be a fair criticism elsewhere in the novel, but not this time. After all, there's normal selfishness, there's extreme selfishness, and there's pathological narcissism, and that last one is the level Bella Swan is on. To ignore what appears to be a clear danger to the people around you--including your own father--due to fear of a wildly exaggerated negative outcome for oneself isn't just unusual, it's inhuman. Now I know why Bella, having discovered that her crush is a vampire, isn't afraid for her immortal soul.
She doesn't have one.
Bella, becoming enraged with herself for reading about vampires on the Internet, storms out of her house and plunges into the forest.
It was all so stupid. I was sitting in my room, researching vampires. What was wrong with me?
Well, your old friend Jake did say the Cullens were vampires, and they certainly are an odd family, and oh yeah, you did personally witness Edward stopping a van with his bare hands. I think Meyer got her characters mixed up. Shouldn't Bella be trying in vain to get other people to believe her? She watched him do something superhuman! I don't think it's unreasonable to do a little Googling.
The next couple of pages are a description of the forest, as Bella wanders in the woods until her frankly unwarranted anger and embarrassment subside. She takes shelter under a fallen tree when it begins to rain and regrets fleeing into the forest, considering she just had a nightmare about vampire Edward that took place in a forest. There's nothing particularly wrong with these passages, except that they're clumsy, again making it seem the book was never shown to a professional editor. Credit where it's due, though: There is one well-written paragraph on these pages. Just one, but hey, that's one more than we've had since Chapter 1:
Here in the trees, it was much easier to believe the absurdities that embarrassed me indoors. Nothing had changed in this forest for thousands of years, and all the myths and legends of a hundred different lands seemed much more likely in this green haze than they had in my clear-cut bedroom.
Not bad, particularly the "green haze" bit. Sure, Meyer misuses the phrase "clear-cut", but what, you expect a writer to be able to use words properly? Geez, you people are so demanding. If you think this writing stuff is easy, where's your bestselling novel, huh?
Of course, Meyer immediately ruins my goodwill with the very next sentence: "I forced myself to focus on the two most vital questions I had to answer, but I did so unwillingly." Um, if you're forcing yourself to do something, then by definition you're doing it willingly. In fact, you could replace "forced" with "willed" in the sentence and the meaning would be exactly the same! "I willed myself to do it unwillingly." Meyer really needs to get a handle on this whole "knowing what words mean" thing.
Bella finally, finally mentions Edward's "impossible strength" as a reason to think he might be a vampire, though I immediately put head to desk when it became obvious she puts "impossible strength" on the same level as "his eyes change colour".
I again listed in my head the things I'd observed myself: the impossible speed and strength, the eye colour shifting from black to gold and back again, the inhuman beauty, the pale, frigid skin.
You know, one of these things is not like the others. If you take out "impossible speed and strength", Meyer is telling me that if I see Winona Ryder wearing coloured contact lenses, I should assume she's a vampire.
I think this goes back to my old hobby-horse of Meyer not knowing her vampire lore, nor making effective use of what little she does know. Observe how Fright Night (the real, Colin Farrell-less one) slowly reveals to its protagonist that Jerry is a vampire. There are plenty of little things that suggest vampirism to one in the know, and with the power of the Internet at her fingertips (on her dial-up modem!), Bella has instant access to all that knowledge. Oh wait, I'm sorry, part of the way Jerry reveals his true nature is by killing people, and since Edward is a Good Vampire (I throw up in my mouth a little every time I have to put those two words together), that's off the table. So yeah, his skin is cold, so he's a vampire. That sure is an airtight case. No wonder Bella doesn't want to tell anyone about her suspicion. (Hilariously, it never occurs to her to talk to Jacob about this, even though he told her that his tribe believes the Cullens are vampires!)
And more--small things that registered slowly--how they never seemed to eat, the disturbing grace with which they moved. And the way he sometimes spoke, with unfamiliar cadences and phrases that better fit the style of a turn-of-the-century novel than that of a twenty-first century classroom.
Wait a minute, back this crazy train up! I've already mentioned that plenty of kids I went to high school with didn't eat, at least not at school. Once again, Bella went to high school in a major city, and she never knew of any girl with an eating disorder, or a guy who used the lunch period to smoke? And since when was the grace of the perfect Cullens "disturbing"? Bella never indicated anything disturbing about it! And speaking of no indication, what's this about Edward talking like he's from the 19th-century? When did this happen? When has he ever said anything that "better fit the style of a turn-of-the-century novel"? I think somebody just tried to sneak in a little ret-con. Wait, no, actually, he doesn't say any "unfamiliar phrase" from the 1800s from this point on, either. I believe we have ourselves a jin-yoo-wine example of an Informed Attribute.
Don't get me wrong, Edward does use unfamiliar cadences and phrases, but they're less "turn-of-the-century" and more "written by a hack writer".
Bella also notes that Edward "seemed to know what everyone around him was thinking...except me." Well if he can't read you, how do you know he can read anyone else? What if he just made it up? It's not like you talked to anyone he read to see if he was right. And do I really need to point out that not only is telepathy not a vampiric power, but it didn't even come up on the "academic-looking" web site Bella Googled up earlier?
For all her protestations of its absurdity (the lady doth protest too much, methinks), Bella pretty quickly decides Edward is a vampire, at long last catching up to the slow 8-year-old who figured this out 6 chapters ago.
And then the most important question of all. What was I going to do if it was true?
If Edward was a vampire--I could hardly make myself think the words--then what should I do? Involving someone else was definitely out. I couldn't even believe myself; anyone I told would have me committed.
There's an "if" there, but it doesn't matter. Bella is convinced she has three options, and none of them is "Find out if Edward is really a vampire." She doesn't consider this option because she already knows he is, because Meyer knows he is, and all this hand-wringing over how unbelievable it all is has been much ado about nothing. Bella doesn't have any more information about Edward than she had before, and her Google search militated against his being a vampire (because, of course, he's a Twilight vampire, so the traditional vampire legends are of little help in identifying him as a creature of the night). But she accepts it now because Meyer says she does.
Bella, being an amoral narcissist, immediately rejects the option any sane person with any modicum of concern for their fellow human beings would choose because of how it might reflect on her. Again, referencing Fright Night, when the protagonist (who, like Bella, is a high school student) discovers Jerry is a vampire, he tells everyone: his mother, the police, his girlfriend, the actor who played his favourite vampire hunter, everybody. They all think he's crazy, but that doesn't stop him from trying to get people to listen. Because vampires are dangerous. Vampires kill people. And trying to warn people they're in danger is the right thing to do. Even if it means people think you're crazy. Even if it might get you locked up.
Now, we readers know Edward is a Good Vampire (*ulp*), but Bella doesn't have any reason to believe that. She's heard Jacob's telling of the legend that the Cullens don't eat people (and even Jacob is sceptical that the Cullens are Good) but that isn't supported or backed up by anything else, not even by Edward himself. Bella was just thinking about how he'd told her he's "the villain, dangerous..." and now she knows this is more than just adolescent posturing. Edward really is a villain. He really is dangerous, because he really is a vampire, and so are all the other Cullens.
But Bella isn't concerned that the Cullens are eating people. She isn't worried that her father, as chief of police, would likely be the first to die if word of the Cullens' true nature got out and they decided to strike first. She's not troubled that the boy she likes is a walking corpse who, for all she knows, has killed thousands of people and will continue to kill thousands more.
Nope, all she's concerned about is what might happen to her. She might be committed if she tells anyone (as if "the Cullens are vampires!" would even warrant a mandatory visit from the school guidance counselor, much less institutionalisation), so telling anyone is right out, not even considered.
Now, some commentators have taken me to task for continually pointing out Bella's selfishness, saying it's unfair to single her out for behaviour that's typical of teen-age girls. That may be a fair criticism elsewhere in the novel, but not this time. After all, there's normal selfishness, there's extreme selfishness, and there's pathological narcissism, and that last one is the level Bella Swan is on. To ignore what appears to be a clear danger to the people around you--including your own father--due to fear of a wildly exaggerated negative outcome for oneself isn't just unusual, it's inhuman. Now I know why Bella, having discovered that her crush is a vampire, isn't afraid for her immortal soul.
She doesn't have one.
October 14, 2012
Twilight: Artists as Creators
Twilight, pp. 129-131.
Fittingly, Chapter 7 begins with Bella lying to avoid having to interact with her father. Instead, she goes upstairs and listens to a CD endlessly so she can't think. Yes, a CD. In 2005. Cripes, I had an mp3 player in 2005. Again, Bella is weirdly out of date on her technology, and it's even more absurd since she grew up in a major Imperial city. Meyer writes the scene awkwardly in order to carefully avoid naming the CD (*snicker*) or the band. I suppose it's better that way, since she would undoubtedly have Bella listening to Soul Asylum or the Smashing Pumpkins.
I don't know exactly what it is that Bella doesn't want to think about, but whatever it is, it's so bad that she's willing to listen to a CD (*snicker*) over and over again until she starts liking the music. That music, in turn, is so terrible that it makes her fall asleep and dream about Jacob.
"Jacob? What's wrong?" I asked. His face was frightened as he yanked with all his strength against my resistance; I didn't want to go into the dark.
"Run, Bella; you have to run!" he whispered, terrified.
"This way, Bella!" I recognised Mike's voice calling out of the gloomy heart of the trees, but I couldn't see him
"Why?" I asked, still pulling against Jacob's grasp, desperate now to find the sun.
But Jacob let go of my hand and yelped, suddenly shaking, falling to the dim forest floor. He twitched on the ground as I watched in horror.
"Jacob!" I screamed. But he was gone. In his place was a large red-brown wolf with black eyes.
Being pulled around by men...that's our Bella!
This dream is more of what Meyer learned in her creative writing courses at BYU. For those unfamiliar with what Meyer is doing here, it's called "foreshadowing", a technique in which the writer sketches out the rest of the plot in a couple of pages, clearly revealing everything that's going to happen right out of the gate so uninterested readers can skip to the end. Apparently, Jacob's explaining that his tribe of American Indians are werewolves isn't good enough for Meyer. She wants to make sure we idiot readers "get" that Jacob is a werewolf. I guess we can be thankful that she doesn't hit us over the head with Edward's vampirism again. Right?
And then Edward stepped out from the trees, his skin faintly glowing, his eyes black and dangerous. He held up one hand and beckoned me to come to him. The wolf growled at my feet.
I took a step forward, toward Edward. He smiled then, and his teeth were sharp, pointed.
Everything must be explained! No presumption of attention span will be made!
And why is the wolf growling at her feet? Is she standing on a steak? Maybe her feet smell like cat.
The wolf launched himself across the space between me and the vampire, fangs aiming for the jugular.
See, the vampires and werewolves don't like each other. Remember how Jake said that like 5 pages ago? You do? Because I want to make sure we're all on the same page here.
Now I've got it! This novel is Underworld fanfiction! Maybe I should start blogging fanfics.
Once again, Bella uses her direct line to the author to discover where Jacob is attacking. He leaps through the air, yet Bella knows not only that he's going for the neck but that he's going for the jugular vein. And really, "launched himself across the space between me and the vampire"? Go ahead, try to write a predicate more awkward. It cannot be done.
"No!" I screamed, wrenching upright out of my bed.
I know I keep going on about this, but this novel continues to amaze me with its bad writing, the way Meyer simultaneously fails in two different directions at once. Last week I pointed out the laziness of using your own experiences in place of research. But now, Meyer doesn't rely on her own experiences of waking up from a nightmare but instead gives us the old "sitting bolt upright in bed" cliche. Has she ever done that? No, she hasn't. No-one has. At least, no-one who wasn't being filmed by a hack director. I have at least one nightmare a week that wakes me up, and never once have I sat bolt upright. Neither have you. It's a movie trope, the lazy screenwriter's shorthand for "this character is troubled".
Meyer is such a lazy author that not only does she use a well-worn trope in place of character development, but it's a movie trope used because it's visually striking. Hello, Steffy? Movie tropes don't work in print. Again (and a small part of me dies every time I have to say this) the Twilight film is an improvement since it excises this entire sequence. And if it had been included, I don't think Bella would've sat bolt upright after awaking from her nightmare.
Twilight is not a good film, but I daresay it's a respectable effort considering the constraints under which it was made. The only way to make the film any good would've been to give it the Jaws treatment: Keep the character names and the basic premise and jettison everything else. The problem is, with the overwhelming influence of fanboys on the success of licensed films these days, that isn't an option. (And fangirls. We really need a unisex term for this!) So the filmmakers couldn't change too much, or the Twihards would revolt. Meyer is also successful enough that she was able to demand and get script approval, so the filmmakers always had her looking over their collective shoulder, shaking her head with disapproval every time they tried to make Edward more interesting or Bella less despicable.
I maintain a deep-seated loathing of people who give way, way too much credit to people who create a certain property. For these people, because Meyer is a good author (ignoring for the moment the fact that she isn't), she gets to have a say in how a film produced from her work is made, despite having no experience at all in the world of filmmaking. But it's her work, so somehow she knows what's best for it.
Now, I'm not saying that people who adapt other people's work don't have at least a creative obligation to respect that work. When I see an adaptation that's clearly just cashing in on recognition of the licensed property, I don't like it. Take the Michael Bay Transformers. Apart from the fact that it's a stinky shit-stain on the underpants of humanity, it's also a terrible adaptation of the Transformers. I'll never forget my seething rage when Starscream expresses complete loyalty to Megatron. In the original Transformers, Starscream was Megatron's constantly scheming underling. He tried to usurp Megatron at every turn and was killed by Megatron moments after declaring himself leader of the Decepticons. Now, Bay had any number of Decepticons to exhibit total loyalty to Megatron, and he chose out of the whole slate of characters the one whose entire character was not being loyal to Megatron. It was symptomatic of the larger problem that Bay clearly didn't know or care about the mythos he was working in. He wanted to give our Imperial military a vigourous handjob that had giant robots in it, and he used the Transformers name to accomplish that. This is also one of the myriad of reasons for my enduring hatred of the film Starship Troopers. Whatever you think of its merits as a film, it's contemptible because it utterly betrays the book (which isn't even that good), in fact having the completely opposite message. Jaws may have tossed out most of its source material, but it doesn't completely betray it; the film is still about a shark that terrorises a small island community. It doesn't expect you to sympathise with the shark and cheer when it eats someone.
"But Carl Eusebius, you magnificent bastard!" I hear you saying. "You just wrote a hagiography of Blade Runner, which completely betrays its source material by having a contradictory message! In the novel, the androids are bad because they're inhuman, while the film portrays them sympathetically and thinks they're equal to biological humans!" You're correct, my Firefly fanfic-writing friend! But the difference is that Blade Runner wasn't made to cash in on the novel's fame. The novel didn't have any fame. In fact, nearly everyone who's read the novel (including yours truly) did so because of the film, not the other way round. I wouldn't know who Philip K. Dick was without Blade Runner, and I'm hardly alone in that. And because Dick was a true artist and not a hack capitalising on the zeitgeist, he liked Blade Runner (well, the script, as he died before it was released), even while recognising that it had significantly changed his work. Dick was happy the film was good and didn't get all butthurt that it wasn't slavishly faithful to his work.* If you're not riding the source material's coattails, then you have more freedom to change things. On the other hand, if, like Twilight, your adaptation is being made to capitalise on the success of the source material, you have an obligation to at least not be a complete betrayal of that material.
But you shouldn't have to be a slave to it. Different media require different approaches. So a decent Twilight film would've kept some character names and the premise: A high-school girl falls in love with a vampire. That's it. From there, you could've made a female-centred version of Fright Night, and who wouldn't want that? Edward would be evil, scary, and threatening, while Bella would be naive, innocent, and vulnerable. But over the course of the film, she would get stronger and smarter, and she would lose her innocence. The end of the film would have her rescuing Mike from the vampire's clutches and killing Edward despite her earlier love for him, and, like Sarah Connor, she would come through the experience stronger but sadder, a better person but less happy for it.
But we don't get that. Instead, we get Meyer mother-henning her creation, and everyone smiling and nodding their approval. She's The Creator, after all. Nobody has the right to interfere with her creation, and so any chance Twilight had to be good is lost, like tears in rain.
=============================================================
* Dick also turned down $400,000 to write a novelisation of Blade Runner. (Yes, a novelisation of a film based on a novel. I love the entertainment industry!) He insisted on a reprint of the original book, not a dumbed down cash-in. This from a man who was once so poor he was reduced to eating cat food. That's some artistic integrity, right there.
Fittingly, Chapter 7 begins with Bella lying to avoid having to interact with her father. Instead, she goes upstairs and listens to a CD endlessly so she can't think. Yes, a CD. In 2005. Cripes, I had an mp3 player in 2005. Again, Bella is weirdly out of date on her technology, and it's even more absurd since she grew up in a major Imperial city. Meyer writes the scene awkwardly in order to carefully avoid naming the CD (*snicker*) or the band. I suppose it's better that way, since she would undoubtedly have Bella listening to Soul Asylum or the Smashing Pumpkins.
I don't know exactly what it is that Bella doesn't want to think about, but whatever it is, it's so bad that she's willing to listen to a CD (*snicker*) over and over again until she starts liking the music. That music, in turn, is so terrible that it makes her fall asleep and dream about Jacob.
"Jacob? What's wrong?" I asked. His face was frightened as he yanked with all his strength against my resistance; I didn't want to go into the dark.
"Run, Bella; you have to run!" he whispered, terrified.
"This way, Bella!" I recognised Mike's voice calling out of the gloomy heart of the trees, but I couldn't see him
"Why?" I asked, still pulling against Jacob's grasp, desperate now to find the sun.
But Jacob let go of my hand and yelped, suddenly shaking, falling to the dim forest floor. He twitched on the ground as I watched in horror.
"Jacob!" I screamed. But he was gone. In his place was a large red-brown wolf with black eyes.
Being pulled around by men...that's our Bella!
This dream is more of what Meyer learned in her creative writing courses at BYU. For those unfamiliar with what Meyer is doing here, it's called "foreshadowing", a technique in which the writer sketches out the rest of the plot in a couple of pages, clearly revealing everything that's going to happen right out of the gate so uninterested readers can skip to the end. Apparently, Jacob's explaining that his tribe of American Indians are werewolves isn't good enough for Meyer. She wants to make sure we idiot readers "get" that Jacob is a werewolf. I guess we can be thankful that she doesn't hit us over the head with Edward's vampirism again. Right?
And then Edward stepped out from the trees, his skin faintly glowing, his eyes black and dangerous. He held up one hand and beckoned me to come to him. The wolf growled at my feet.
I took a step forward, toward Edward. He smiled then, and his teeth were sharp, pointed.
Everything must be explained! No presumption of attention span will be made!
And why is the wolf growling at her feet? Is she standing on a steak? Maybe her feet smell like cat.
The wolf launched himself across the space between me and the vampire, fangs aiming for the jugular.
See, the vampires and werewolves don't like each other. Remember how Jake said that like 5 pages ago? You do? Because I want to make sure we're all on the same page here.
Now I've got it! This novel is Underworld fanfiction! Maybe I should start blogging fanfics.
Once again, Bella uses her direct line to the author to discover where Jacob is attacking. He leaps through the air, yet Bella knows not only that he's going for the neck but that he's going for the jugular vein. And really, "launched himself across the space between me and the vampire"? Go ahead, try to write a predicate more awkward. It cannot be done.
"No!" I screamed, wrenching upright out of my bed.
I know I keep going on about this, but this novel continues to amaze me with its bad writing, the way Meyer simultaneously fails in two different directions at once. Last week I pointed out the laziness of using your own experiences in place of research. But now, Meyer doesn't rely on her own experiences of waking up from a nightmare but instead gives us the old "sitting bolt upright in bed" cliche. Has she ever done that? No, she hasn't. No-one has. At least, no-one who wasn't being filmed by a hack director. I have at least one nightmare a week that wakes me up, and never once have I sat bolt upright. Neither have you. It's a movie trope, the lazy screenwriter's shorthand for "this character is troubled".
Meyer is such a lazy author that not only does she use a well-worn trope in place of character development, but it's a movie trope used because it's visually striking. Hello, Steffy? Movie tropes don't work in print. Again (and a small part of me dies every time I have to say this) the Twilight film is an improvement since it excises this entire sequence. And if it had been included, I don't think Bella would've sat bolt upright after awaking from her nightmare.
Twilight is not a good film, but I daresay it's a respectable effort considering the constraints under which it was made. The only way to make the film any good would've been to give it the Jaws treatment: Keep the character names and the basic premise and jettison everything else. The problem is, with the overwhelming influence of fanboys on the success of licensed films these days, that isn't an option. (And fangirls. We really need a unisex term for this!) So the filmmakers couldn't change too much, or the Twihards would revolt. Meyer is also successful enough that she was able to demand and get script approval, so the filmmakers always had her looking over their collective shoulder, shaking her head with disapproval every time they tried to make Edward more interesting or Bella less despicable.
I maintain a deep-seated loathing of people who give way, way too much credit to people who create a certain property. For these people, because Meyer is a good author (ignoring for the moment the fact that she isn't), she gets to have a say in how a film produced from her work is made, despite having no experience at all in the world of filmmaking. But it's her work, so somehow she knows what's best for it.
Now, I'm not saying that people who adapt other people's work don't have at least a creative obligation to respect that work. When I see an adaptation that's clearly just cashing in on recognition of the licensed property, I don't like it. Take the Michael Bay Transformers. Apart from the fact that it's a stinky shit-stain on the underpants of humanity, it's also a terrible adaptation of the Transformers. I'll never forget my seething rage when Starscream expresses complete loyalty to Megatron. In the original Transformers, Starscream was Megatron's constantly scheming underling. He tried to usurp Megatron at every turn and was killed by Megatron moments after declaring himself leader of the Decepticons. Now, Bay had any number of Decepticons to exhibit total loyalty to Megatron, and he chose out of the whole slate of characters the one whose entire character was not being loyal to Megatron. It was symptomatic of the larger problem that Bay clearly didn't know or care about the mythos he was working in. He wanted to give our Imperial military a vigourous handjob that had giant robots in it, and he used the Transformers name to accomplish that. This is also one of the myriad of reasons for my enduring hatred of the film Starship Troopers. Whatever you think of its merits as a film, it's contemptible because it utterly betrays the book (which isn't even that good), in fact having the completely opposite message. Jaws may have tossed out most of its source material, but it doesn't completely betray it; the film is still about a shark that terrorises a small island community. It doesn't expect you to sympathise with the shark and cheer when it eats someone.
"But Carl Eusebius, you magnificent bastard!" I hear you saying. "You just wrote a hagiography of Blade Runner, which completely betrays its source material by having a contradictory message! In the novel, the androids are bad because they're inhuman, while the film portrays them sympathetically and thinks they're equal to biological humans!" You're correct, my Firefly fanfic-writing friend! But the difference is that Blade Runner wasn't made to cash in on the novel's fame. The novel didn't have any fame. In fact, nearly everyone who's read the novel (including yours truly) did so because of the film, not the other way round. I wouldn't know who Philip K. Dick was without Blade Runner, and I'm hardly alone in that. And because Dick was a true artist and not a hack capitalising on the zeitgeist, he liked Blade Runner (well, the script, as he died before it was released), even while recognising that it had significantly changed his work. Dick was happy the film was good and didn't get all butthurt that it wasn't slavishly faithful to his work.* If you're not riding the source material's coattails, then you have more freedom to change things. On the other hand, if, like Twilight, your adaptation is being made to capitalise on the success of the source material, you have an obligation to at least not be a complete betrayal of that material.
But you shouldn't have to be a slave to it. Different media require different approaches. So a decent Twilight film would've kept some character names and the premise: A high-school girl falls in love with a vampire. That's it. From there, you could've made a female-centred version of Fright Night, and who wouldn't want that? Edward would be evil, scary, and threatening, while Bella would be naive, innocent, and vulnerable. But over the course of the film, she would get stronger and smarter, and she would lose her innocence. The end of the film would have her rescuing Mike from the vampire's clutches and killing Edward despite her earlier love for him, and, like Sarah Connor, she would come through the experience stronger but sadder, a better person but less happy for it.
But we don't get that. Instead, we get Meyer mother-henning her creation, and everyone smiling and nodding their approval. She's The Creator, after all. Nobody has the right to interfere with her creation, and so any chance Twilight had to be good is lost, like tears in rain.
=============================================================
* Dick also turned down $400,000 to write a novelisation of Blade Runner. (Yes, a novelisation of a film based on a novel. I love the entertainment industry!) He insisted on a reprint of the original book, not a dumbed down cash-in. This from a man who was once so poor he was reduced to eating cat food. That's some artistic integrity, right there.
October 7, 2012
Twilight: Paging Mary Sue
Twilight, pp. 127-128.
Now that Bella has had the plot explained to her (the plot being "Edward is a Good Vampire"), it's time to get back to her favourite activity that doesn't involve Edward: humiliating Mike!
"There you are, Bella," Mike called in relief, waving his arm over his head.
"Is that your boyfriend?" Jacob asked, alerted by the jealous edge in Mike's voice. I was surprised it was so obvious.
"No, definitely not," I whispered. I was tremendously grateful to Jacob, and eager to make him as happy as possible. I winked at him, carefully turning away from Mike to do so. He smiled, elated by my inept flirting.
You know, with all the big bad going on in this book, I find myself continually surprised by how much the little things get to me. Relief? What, he thought he'd lost her? She and Jacob walked along the beach for all of 20 minutes! Mike could still see them from where he was. It's not like they disappeared into the woods. And if he really did lose her, he can just call or text her. Oh wait, he can't because Bella apparently doesn't have a mobile. In 2005. It's inexcusable. Again, maybe I could buy this if Bella grew up in Forks, but are we to believe Bella almost finished high school in Phoenix without a mobile?
Of course, the reason Bella doesn't have a mobile is that Stephenie Meyer didn't have a mobile when she was in high school. This goes back to a writer's need to think about what a character would do, not what she would do. Novice writers are often told "Write what you know." Like a lot of simple, commonsense advice, it's misleading. What it ought to mean is "Don't write about stuff you haven't taken the trouble to learn about beforehand." That way you won't be embarrassed by having people or events in your story that are utterly unbelievable. However, it's often used to mean "Write about experiences that you yourself have had", the idea being that this will make your writing sound authentic to the reader.
But that only works if you're pretty much fictionalising your own life. This approach worked for Oliver Stone, whose Platoon is a fictionalised version of his experiences serving in the Imperial military during the Vietnam War. He was writing about his own life, and Platoon does carry an air of authenticity. What Stone couldn't have done was set Platoon during the Persian Gulf War, because everything about it is different. The Vietnam War was a protracted low-intensity conflict fought primarily in the jungle and primarily against guerillas. The Persian Gulf War was a short, high-intensity conflict fought in the desert against a conventional military force. Not to mention the character of military service in the Empire had changed quite a bit, as the army serving in Vietnam was a mixed volunteer/conscript force, as against the Persian Gulf's all-volunteer military. If Stone had thought to himself, "Well, I was in the military during Vietnam, so I can writing authentically about the Persian Gulf", he'd have looked like an ass. If Stone ever decides to make a film about the Persian Gulf War--or the Iraq War, which in some ways resembles the Vietnam War--he'll start out by doing lots and lots of research on that war.
That's right, research. Fiction writers--well, the good ones--do research. A lot of it. That way, when their doctors start talking, they sound like doctors. When their firefighters need to do something, they do what actual firefighters do. If you don't research this, if you just wing it on what you've picked up through cultural osmosis, your lawyers will sound unprofessional, your business people will make decisions guaranteed to make them fail, and your scientists will be wealthy eccentrics who do Science! by pouring coloured liquid from this beaker into that beaker. And your readers will know you're lazy, because even if they aren't cops themselves, they can tell if a character sounds like a real cop or not. Those readers who actually are cops will be laughing uproariously at everything you get wrong.
So Oliver Stone would do research. He wouldn't just assume his own experiences from 20 years earlier will suffice. Meyer, on the other hand, couldn't be bothered to put any effort into writing this novel. Research? P-shaw! Ten years ago, she was a high school girl. Write what you know! I know what it's like to be a high school girl. Authenticity!
That's what's going on here. Meyer didn't bother to find out what a teenager's life is like now, and so Bella is firmly trapped in the magical land of early '90s angst.
I've got it! Twilight is My So-Called Life fanfiction!
Meyer is also lazy with her first-person narrative, telling us matter-of-factly why Jacob did something. Bella doesn't have access to Jacob's mind. All she can do is guess that he's asking his rather odd question because of how jealously Mike says, "There you are, Bella." (That's quite a feat, by the way. How do you make such an innocuous statement sound jealous?) But it would've been harder to write this scene if it were actually confined to Bella's perspective, so Meyer just breaks the fourth wall and lets her fauxtagonist know what she knows. Beats the heck out of that "writing" stuff.
Also, it's rather appalling that Bella is so grateful to Jacob and so concerned with making him happy that she doesn't stop flirting with him. Which makes a crock out of her next lie...err, statement:
"You should come see me in Forks. We could hang out sometime." I felt guilty as I said this, knowing that I'd used him. But I really did like Jacob. He was someone I could easily be friends with.
Not guilty enough to stop using him, I guess.
The Forks kids are leaving, so it's time for Bella to depart. Jacob taunts Mike over Bella's flirting with him instead of Mike (what a guy!), and Bella makes sure to sit with people who won't talk to her so she can be think about Edward, despite her claim that she's trying not to. (If you're really trying to avoid brooding, how about, I don't know, talking to your friends?) And with that, Chapter 6 comes to a close.
Now that Bella has had the plot explained to her (the plot being "Edward is a Good Vampire"), it's time to get back to her favourite activity that doesn't involve Edward: humiliating Mike!
"There you are, Bella," Mike called in relief, waving his arm over his head.
"Is that your boyfriend?" Jacob asked, alerted by the jealous edge in Mike's voice. I was surprised it was so obvious.
"No, definitely not," I whispered. I was tremendously grateful to Jacob, and eager to make him as happy as possible. I winked at him, carefully turning away from Mike to do so. He smiled, elated by my inept flirting.
You know, with all the big bad going on in this book, I find myself continually surprised by how much the little things get to me. Relief? What, he thought he'd lost her? She and Jacob walked along the beach for all of 20 minutes! Mike could still see them from where he was. It's not like they disappeared into the woods. And if he really did lose her, he can just call or text her. Oh wait, he can't because Bella apparently doesn't have a mobile. In 2005. It's inexcusable. Again, maybe I could buy this if Bella grew up in Forks, but are we to believe Bella almost finished high school in Phoenix without a mobile?
Of course, the reason Bella doesn't have a mobile is that Stephenie Meyer didn't have a mobile when she was in high school. This goes back to a writer's need to think about what a character would do, not what she would do. Novice writers are often told "Write what you know." Like a lot of simple, commonsense advice, it's misleading. What it ought to mean is "Don't write about stuff you haven't taken the trouble to learn about beforehand." That way you won't be embarrassed by having people or events in your story that are utterly unbelievable. However, it's often used to mean "Write about experiences that you yourself have had", the idea being that this will make your writing sound authentic to the reader.
But that only works if you're pretty much fictionalising your own life. This approach worked for Oliver Stone, whose Platoon is a fictionalised version of his experiences serving in the Imperial military during the Vietnam War. He was writing about his own life, and Platoon does carry an air of authenticity. What Stone couldn't have done was set Platoon during the Persian Gulf War, because everything about it is different. The Vietnam War was a protracted low-intensity conflict fought primarily in the jungle and primarily against guerillas. The Persian Gulf War was a short, high-intensity conflict fought in the desert against a conventional military force. Not to mention the character of military service in the Empire had changed quite a bit, as the army serving in Vietnam was a mixed volunteer/conscript force, as against the Persian Gulf's all-volunteer military. If Stone had thought to himself, "Well, I was in the military during Vietnam, so I can writing authentically about the Persian Gulf", he'd have looked like an ass. If Stone ever decides to make a film about the Persian Gulf War--or the Iraq War, which in some ways resembles the Vietnam War--he'll start out by doing lots and lots of research on that war.
That's right, research. Fiction writers--well, the good ones--do research. A lot of it. That way, when their doctors start talking, they sound like doctors. When their firefighters need to do something, they do what actual firefighters do. If you don't research this, if you just wing it on what you've picked up through cultural osmosis, your lawyers will sound unprofessional, your business people will make decisions guaranteed to make them fail, and your scientists will be wealthy eccentrics who do Science! by pouring coloured liquid from this beaker into that beaker. And your readers will know you're lazy, because even if they aren't cops themselves, they can tell if a character sounds like a real cop or not. Those readers who actually are cops will be laughing uproariously at everything you get wrong.
So Oliver Stone would do research. He wouldn't just assume his own experiences from 20 years earlier will suffice. Meyer, on the other hand, couldn't be bothered to put any effort into writing this novel. Research? P-shaw! Ten years ago, she was a high school girl. Write what you know! I know what it's like to be a high school girl. Authenticity!
That's what's going on here. Meyer didn't bother to find out what a teenager's life is like now, and so Bella is firmly trapped in the magical land of early '90s angst.
I've got it! Twilight is My So-Called Life fanfiction!
Meyer is also lazy with her first-person narrative, telling us matter-of-factly why Jacob did something. Bella doesn't have access to Jacob's mind. All she can do is guess that he's asking his rather odd question because of how jealously Mike says, "There you are, Bella." (That's quite a feat, by the way. How do you make such an innocuous statement sound jealous?) But it would've been harder to write this scene if it were actually confined to Bella's perspective, so Meyer just breaks the fourth wall and lets her fauxtagonist know what she knows. Beats the heck out of that "writing" stuff.
Also, it's rather appalling that Bella is so grateful to Jacob and so concerned with making him happy that she doesn't stop flirting with him. Which makes a crock out of her next lie...err, statement:
"You should come see me in Forks. We could hang out sometime." I felt guilty as I said this, knowing that I'd used him. But I really did like Jacob. He was someone I could easily be friends with.
Not guilty enough to stop using him, I guess.
The Forks kids are leaving, so it's time for Bella to depart. Jacob taunts Mike over Bella's flirting with him instead of Mike (what a guy!), and Bella makes sure to sit with people who won't talk to her so she can be think about Edward, despite her claim that she's trying not to. (If you're really trying to avoid brooding, how about, I don't know, talking to your friends?) And with that, Chapter 6 comes to a close.
September 29, 2012
Twilight: The Civilised Tribe
Twilight, pp. 123-126.
This week, I'm not going to go on about why I hate the characters or how the conversations are nonsensical or the way Meyer stacks the deck in her self-insertion main character's favour. No, this time it's strictly Carl Eusebius going on about bad writing. Specifically, how not to handle exposition.
Last time, I gave Bella's side of the conversation with Jacob that was the entire reason she came on this trip to La Push beach with her so-called friends. This time, let's take a look at the unwieldy wad of exposition poor Jacob is forced to spout once Bella's flirting has got him to open up about "the treaty" that he was specifically forbidden to talk about, with Bella's narration and responses (consisting entirely of "[word], what's that?") omitted. Remember, these are supposedly the words of a boy who "just turned fifteen".
"Well, there are lots of legends, some of them claiming to date back to the Flood--supposedly, the ancient Quileutes tied their canoes to the tops of the tallest trees on the mountain to survive like Noah and the ark. Another legend claims that we descended from wolves--and that the wolves are our brothers still. It's against tribal law to kill them. Then there are the stories about the cold ones. There are stories of the cold ones as old as the wolf legends, some much more recent. According to legend, my own great-grandfather knew some of them. He was the one who made the treaty that kept them off our land. He was a tribal elder, like my father. You see, the cold ones are the natural enemies of the wolf--well, not the wolf, really, but the wolves that turn into men, like our ancestors. You would call them werewolves. So you see, the cold ones are traditionally our enemies. But this pack that came to our territory during my great-grandfather's time was different. They didn't hunt the way others of their kind did--they weren't supposed to be dangerous to the tribe. So my great-grandfather made a truce with them. If they would promise to stay off our lands, we wouldn't expose them to the pale-faces. There's always a risk for humans to be around the cold ones, even if they're civilised like this clan was."
This, my little droogies, is what we in the bad movie world call an info-dump. That's a scene in which the screenwriter has a whole bunch of information the audience needs to know and can't be bothered to work it organically into the story. The solution is simple: Have one or more (but usually one) character dump the information on the audience through a lengthy explanation to another character.
Exposition (a fancy critic's term for "explaining stuff") is tricky to write, especially when it's information the characters all already know. You've seen this handled badly in films before. You may not have consciously noticed the problem, but your brain did, and something probably felt "off" about the scene. Jaws: The Revenge provides an example. Ellen Brody is on the phone with her granddaughter, and her son Sean says, "Ask the big doctor about his job. Tough life, you Bahamian beach bum, playing in the water all day." Now, I think Ellen already knows what her own son does for a living, and she might even know where he lives. Sean also knew these things. These two lines are only in the film to tell the audience what Michael's job is and where he lives.
It's easier when one character actually doesn't know the information, because then another character can explain it for both her benefit and the audience's. You've seen this done well in other movies, though exposition done well usually isn't noticed. An example from the original Star Wars film is Obi-Wan Kenobi telling Luke Skywalker about his father, the Empire, and the Jedi. Short, sweet, and Kenobi gives us our first glimpse of the lightsabre, so we have something to interest us besides just him talking.*
But sometimes you have a situation in which you need to deliver a lot of exposition. The world the characters inhabit is so different from anything the audience is familiar with that they can't make sense of events without this information. Still, even if one character doesn't know the information, having another character launch into an uninterrupted lecture is an info-dump that puts the audience to sleep. So a talented writer finds a way to break this exposition up. The Matrix is an example. Once Neo wakes up, he needs the Matrix explained to him. This is done mostly with Morpheus's dialogue, but it's not one long scene of him lecturing. A few hints are dropped when Neo is being medically treated, and then Morpheus meets him in the resistance's Matrix-like program and brings him up to speed partly through dialogue, partly through images, and partly through training. Perhaps the finest example of exposition done well is the original Terminator (1984). Reese has to explain to Sarah Connor that he is from the future, that he has travelled through time, there was a nuclear war, humans were enslaved by machines, humans built a resistance, that resistance is about to defeat the machines, the machines desperately sent a terminator back in time, a terminator is a nigh-indestructible robot that looks human, and that terminator is programmed to kill Sarah because it is her future son that will lead the successful resistance. He delivers all of this information, but while he's doing so:
1) The terminator engages in a car chase with them.
2) Reese and Sarah escape briefly as they change cars.
3) Reese and Sarah crouch inside the car because at any moment the terminator might spot them.
4) Sarah, hearing part of this exposition, understandably concludes Reese is a nutjob and attempts to flee.
5) The terminator reacquires the pair, and they engage in another car chase.
The final bit of exposition is delivered when the cops attempt to convince Sarah--who's taking him more seriously now that she's seen how unstoppable the terminator is--that Reese really is crazy by letting her see him ranting about time travel and laser guns.* Reese does come off as loony, and Sarah begins to doubt her earlier trust in him. This sets up the terminator's attack on the police station, when Sarah is hiding and Reese is looking for her. There's a moment where we wonder: Will she trust him? Or will she trust the police, who are utterly unprepared for what awaits them? An exposition scene ends up setting up a suspenseful payoff later in the film. Thus, the necessary information reaches the audience, and it does so in a way that emerges organically from the events of the film.
Now imagine Reese and Sarah standing in a room and Reese proceeding to explain the entire backstory of The Terminator, the only interruption being Sarah saying, "Cyborg? Like, a robot?"
That's an info-dump. That's what this scene here is. That's Meyer's atrocious writing.
I don't want to shock you or anything, but the Twilight film shortens this scene quite a bit. Plus, as I noted last week, the movie only has Jacob drop hints about werewolves and vampires, never using either of those words. In fact, I think--it's hard to tell from the acting--that movie Jacob doesn't know the Cullens are vampires. He just knows, like his nameless pal, that "the Cullens don't come here".
Book Jacob dispels any mystery there might have been. Yep, we're werewolves, and the Cullens are Good Vampires.
"What do you mean, 'civilised'?
"They claimed they didn't hunt humans. They were supposedly somehow able to prey on animals instead."
I tried to keep my voice casual. "So how does it fit in with the Cullens? Are they like the cold ones your great-grandfather met?"
"No." He paused dramatically. "They are the same ones."
They call the Cullens civilised because they're easy to sneak up on.
============================================================
* Though since Kenobi is played by Sir Alec Guinness, a scene consisting entirely of him talking would've worked just as well.
** The film also deftly avoids the pitfall of trying to explain how time travel works without getting itself all tied up in knots. Reese is a grunt, not a technician or scientist ("I don't know tech stuff"), and so there's no reason he ought to know the intricacies of how time travel works.
This week, I'm not going to go on about why I hate the characters or how the conversations are nonsensical or the way Meyer stacks the deck in her self-insertion main character's favour. No, this time it's strictly Carl Eusebius going on about bad writing. Specifically, how not to handle exposition.
Last time, I gave Bella's side of the conversation with Jacob that was the entire reason she came on this trip to La Push beach with her so-called friends. This time, let's take a look at the unwieldy wad of exposition poor Jacob is forced to spout once Bella's flirting has got him to open up about "the treaty" that he was specifically forbidden to talk about, with Bella's narration and responses (consisting entirely of "[word], what's that?") omitted. Remember, these are supposedly the words of a boy who "just turned fifteen".
"Well, there are lots of legends, some of them claiming to date back to the Flood--supposedly, the ancient Quileutes tied their canoes to the tops of the tallest trees on the mountain to survive like Noah and the ark. Another legend claims that we descended from wolves--and that the wolves are our brothers still. It's against tribal law to kill them. Then there are the stories about the cold ones. There are stories of the cold ones as old as the wolf legends, some much more recent. According to legend, my own great-grandfather knew some of them. He was the one who made the treaty that kept them off our land. He was a tribal elder, like my father. You see, the cold ones are the natural enemies of the wolf--well, not the wolf, really, but the wolves that turn into men, like our ancestors. You would call them werewolves. So you see, the cold ones are traditionally our enemies. But this pack that came to our territory during my great-grandfather's time was different. They didn't hunt the way others of their kind did--they weren't supposed to be dangerous to the tribe. So my great-grandfather made a truce with them. If they would promise to stay off our lands, we wouldn't expose them to the pale-faces. There's always a risk for humans to be around the cold ones, even if they're civilised like this clan was."
This, my little droogies, is what we in the bad movie world call an info-dump. That's a scene in which the screenwriter has a whole bunch of information the audience needs to know and can't be bothered to work it organically into the story. The solution is simple: Have one or more (but usually one) character dump the information on the audience through a lengthy explanation to another character.
Exposition (a fancy critic's term for "explaining stuff") is tricky to write, especially when it's information the characters all already know. You've seen this handled badly in films before. You may not have consciously noticed the problem, but your brain did, and something probably felt "off" about the scene. Jaws: The Revenge provides an example. Ellen Brody is on the phone with her granddaughter, and her son Sean says, "Ask the big doctor about his job. Tough life, you Bahamian beach bum, playing in the water all day." Now, I think Ellen already knows what her own son does for a living, and she might even know where he lives. Sean also knew these things. These two lines are only in the film to tell the audience what Michael's job is and where he lives.
It's easier when one character actually doesn't know the information, because then another character can explain it for both her benefit and the audience's. You've seen this done well in other movies, though exposition done well usually isn't noticed. An example from the original Star Wars film is Obi-Wan Kenobi telling Luke Skywalker about his father, the Empire, and the Jedi. Short, sweet, and Kenobi gives us our first glimpse of the lightsabre, so we have something to interest us besides just him talking.*
But sometimes you have a situation in which you need to deliver a lot of exposition. The world the characters inhabit is so different from anything the audience is familiar with that they can't make sense of events without this information. Still, even if one character doesn't know the information, having another character launch into an uninterrupted lecture is an info-dump that puts the audience to sleep. So a talented writer finds a way to break this exposition up. The Matrix is an example. Once Neo wakes up, he needs the Matrix explained to him. This is done mostly with Morpheus's dialogue, but it's not one long scene of him lecturing. A few hints are dropped when Neo is being medically treated, and then Morpheus meets him in the resistance's Matrix-like program and brings him up to speed partly through dialogue, partly through images, and partly through training. Perhaps the finest example of exposition done well is the original Terminator (1984). Reese has to explain to Sarah Connor that he is from the future, that he has travelled through time, there was a nuclear war, humans were enslaved by machines, humans built a resistance, that resistance is about to defeat the machines, the machines desperately sent a terminator back in time, a terminator is a nigh-indestructible robot that looks human, and that terminator is programmed to kill Sarah because it is her future son that will lead the successful resistance. He delivers all of this information, but while he's doing so:
1) The terminator engages in a car chase with them.
2) Reese and Sarah escape briefly as they change cars.
3) Reese and Sarah crouch inside the car because at any moment the terminator might spot them.
4) Sarah, hearing part of this exposition, understandably concludes Reese is a nutjob and attempts to flee.
5) The terminator reacquires the pair, and they engage in another car chase.
The final bit of exposition is delivered when the cops attempt to convince Sarah--who's taking him more seriously now that she's seen how unstoppable the terminator is--that Reese really is crazy by letting her see him ranting about time travel and laser guns.* Reese does come off as loony, and Sarah begins to doubt her earlier trust in him. This sets up the terminator's attack on the police station, when Sarah is hiding and Reese is looking for her. There's a moment where we wonder: Will she trust him? Or will she trust the police, who are utterly unprepared for what awaits them? An exposition scene ends up setting up a suspenseful payoff later in the film. Thus, the necessary information reaches the audience, and it does so in a way that emerges organically from the events of the film.
Now imagine Reese and Sarah standing in a room and Reese proceeding to explain the entire backstory of The Terminator, the only interruption being Sarah saying, "Cyborg? Like, a robot?"
That's an info-dump. That's what this scene here is. That's Meyer's atrocious writing.
I don't want to shock you or anything, but the Twilight film shortens this scene quite a bit. Plus, as I noted last week, the movie only has Jacob drop hints about werewolves and vampires, never using either of those words. In fact, I think--it's hard to tell from the acting--that movie Jacob doesn't know the Cullens are vampires. He just knows, like his nameless pal, that "the Cullens don't come here".
Book Jacob dispels any mystery there might have been. Yep, we're werewolves, and the Cullens are Good Vampires.
"What do you mean, 'civilised'?
"They claimed they didn't hunt humans. They were supposedly somehow able to prey on animals instead."
I tried to keep my voice casual. "So how does it fit in with the Cullens? Are they like the cold ones your great-grandfather met?"
"No." He paused dramatically. "They are the same ones."
They call the Cullens civilised because they're easy to sneak up on.
============================================================
* Though since Kenobi is played by Sir Alec Guinness, a scene consisting entirely of him talking would've worked just as well.
** The film also deftly avoids the pitfall of trying to explain how time travel works without getting itself all tied up in knots. Reese is a grunt, not a technician or scientist ("I don't know tech stuff"), and so there's no reason he ought to know the intricacies of how time travel works.
September 23, 2012
Twilight: Paint It, Jake
Twilight, pp. 114-122.
Well well well, my little droogies, the time is finally upon us, to meet the third piece of our sad, sick love triangle. But first, the set-up:
At least Mike was happy to see me.
"You came!" he called, delighted. "And I said it would be sunny today, didn't I?"
"I told you I was coming," I reminded him.
"We're just waiting for Lee and Samantha...unless you invited someone," Mike added.
"Nope," I lied lightly, hoping I wouldn't get caught in the lie. But also wishing that a miracle would occur and Edward would appear.
Mike looked satisfied.
"Will you ride in my car? It's that or Lee's mom's minivan."
"Sure."
He smiled blissfully[!]. It was so easy to make Mike happy.
"You can have shotgun," he promised. I hid my chagrin. It wasn't as simple to make Mike and Jessica happy at the same time. I could see Jessica glowering at us now.
So much wrong in so few lines. Then again, you could take any group of lines from this book and likely find a dozen things wrong with them. Of course we need to be constantly reminded that Mike is interested in Bella, as if we'd forgotten, since that's the only reason he's in the story. Okay, that's not fair, he's also here to be not-Edward in this first book, since the real not-Edward non-rival is still to be introduced (and doesn't become an alleged rival until the sequel). I especially like that Mike smiles "blissfully" that Bella will be riding in his car. I guess he's already assuming she'll be sitting next to him--and brother, if that isn't bliss, I don't know what is--though he's blissful before she's actually done this. Bella, ever concerned about others' feelings, squeezes Jessica between herself and Mike to placate her. We're supposed to think Bella's such a great friend that she's putting her own happiness second to that her two friends', but she doesn't want to sit next to Mike anyway! (You may notice there's a lot of "we're supposed to think, but" while reading this novel.) She wants someone else to talk to Mike so that she won't be bothered.
Notice that Mike expresses surprise that Bella showed up. As I said last week, I, too, am surprised. In fact, it's almost as if there's a hidden, omnipotent power manipulating events behind the scenes so that things happen even if they're not consistent with anything we've seen before. What's laughable is Bella's reminder that, "I told you I was coming." Is Meyer really this blind to her fauxtagonist's actions? Bella's word isn't worth anything! She lies frequently and well. I wouldn't trust her to take my order at Denny's.
The funniest part is how easy Bella is to predict. Mike's "unless you invited someone" is the last sentence on the page. As I was turning the page, I knew Bella was going to lie, and sure enough, she does (lightly, whatever that means). Anybody remember way back on page 65?
"It matters to me," I insisted. "I don't like to lie--so there'd better be a good reason why I'm doing it."
Do a search on this blog for "lie" or "lying". Click the tag at the end of this post labelled "lying". You'll come up with a half-dozen times Bella has lied in the, what, three days that have passed in this story so far? (Yes, weeks have passed off-screen, but I'm pretty sure we've only spent three or four days in the company of the characters.) And that's only the times I've mentioned it. I'm sure I've skipped over a few of the more minor lies. For someone who doesn't like to lie, she certainly does it readily, easily, and often, so much so that when this opportunity to tell a lie came up, there wasn't a question in my mind that she would take it.
Oh, and if you remembered that Bella told her "I don't like to lie" lie in reference to something that wasn't even a lie, give yourself a cookie.
Once at the beach, a few of the kids (one of whom is Mike) decide to go hiking. Bella makes the decision to go based on who she most wants to avoid (in this case Lauren, Tyler and Eric, who've decided to stay on the beach), and she gets "a huge smile" from Mike, of course, for choosing his group. (Poor bastard.) She's completely enthralled during the hike by all the wonderful sights and sounds and "wonder[ing] what Edward was doing now, and trying to imagine what he would be saying if he were here with me". When they get back to the beach, some kids from the Indian reservation are there chatting up the ones who stayed behind. We know which one of them matters because he gets a name, Jacob Black. Jacob, being a male, is instantly smitten with Our Bella, "looking at me appreciatively in a way I was learning to recognise". Remember when I talked about how Bella is alternately too jaded and too naive to be 17? Here's an example of the naive part. "Learning to recognise"? This is something I imagine most girls in the Empire start to get a handle on around age 12. Bella grew up in Phoenix, not the backwoods of Appalachia. How could she possibly have reached 17 without recognising boys' interest in her? Answer: Because Meyer, despite having been a 17-year-old girl who grew up in Phoenix, is such a terrible writer that she's less able to write a convincing 17-year-old girl who grew up in Phoenix than I am.
Lauren, of course, notices this and is (wait for it) jealous of Bella. With her "pale, fishy eyes" and "insolent tone", she's really interested in this boy who "just turned fifteen", but of course, every boy only has eyes for Bella. One of the other boys--this one doesn't get a name--says "The Cullens don't come here" when Lauren mentions Edward for no reason. Now the film more or less leaves it at that. It simply has Jacob and Bella walk on the beach with Jake expositing that the Cullens aren't allowed on the reservation and in exchange the Indians aren't allowed to--uh, go to their house, I guess. The novel, however, has Jacob straight up tell Bella that the Indians are werewolves and the Cullens are vampires. Now the film's way of handling Bella's discovery that Edward is a vampire isn't exactly brilliant; she basically does a Google search and concludes vampirism is the only possible explanation for Edward's pale skin and avoidance of the sun. (I guess her search didn't turn up "emo kid".) But it still beats the novel's having Jacob flat out tell her. I mean, a Google search isn't overly exciting, but at least Bella found out on her own. Here, even that tiny sliver of agency is absent, because she doesn't have to do anything but listen to Jacob tell her.
Wait, no, that's not quite true. She does do something: She uses her sexuality to manipulate Jacob into doing something for her. Get used to it, as it won't be the last time she does this to him. Again, this isn't my analysis. She tells us that's what she's doing.
I was still turning over the brief comment on the Cullens, and I had a sudden inspiration. It was a stupid plan, but I didn't have any better ideas. I hoped that young Jacob was as yet inexperienced around girls, so that he couldn't see through my sure-to-be-pitiful attempts at flirting.
Again, Bella is allegedly a 17-year-old girl who went to public school in a major urban area, yet we're to believe she has no experience flirting with boys. I'm going to quote these "pitiful attempts" with Jacob's part removed. Here's some raw Bella action for you:
"So you're, what, sixteen?" I asked, trying not to look like an idiot as I fluttered my eyelids the way I'd seen girls do on TV[!].
"Really?" My face was full of false surprise. "I would have thought you were older."
"Do you come up to Forks much?" I asked archly, as if I was hoping for a yes. I sounded idiotic to myself, afraid he would turn on me with disgust and accuse me of my fraud, but he still seemed flattered.
I purposefully lumped myself in with the youngsters, trying to make it clear that I preferred Jacob.
"Oh, I won't tell anyone, I'm just curious." I tried to make my smile alluring...
"I love them," I enthused, making an effort to smolder at him.
I focused on keeping the vital interest I felt out of my eyes.
Our Bella, she doesn't like to lie. Nope. There'd better be a good reason why she's doing it.
Well well well, my little droogies, the time is finally upon us, to meet the third piece of our sad, sick love triangle. But first, the set-up:
At least Mike was happy to see me.
"You came!" he called, delighted. "And I said it would be sunny today, didn't I?"
"I told you I was coming," I reminded him.
"We're just waiting for Lee and Samantha...unless you invited someone," Mike added.
"Nope," I lied lightly, hoping I wouldn't get caught in the lie. But also wishing that a miracle would occur and Edward would appear.
Mike looked satisfied.
"Will you ride in my car? It's that or Lee's mom's minivan."
"Sure."
He smiled blissfully[!]. It was so easy to make Mike happy.
"You can have shotgun," he promised. I hid my chagrin. It wasn't as simple to make Mike and Jessica happy at the same time. I could see Jessica glowering at us now.
So much wrong in so few lines. Then again, you could take any group of lines from this book and likely find a dozen things wrong with them. Of course we need to be constantly reminded that Mike is interested in Bella, as if we'd forgotten, since that's the only reason he's in the story. Okay, that's not fair, he's also here to be not-Edward in this first book, since the real not-Edward non-rival is still to be introduced (and doesn't become an alleged rival until the sequel). I especially like that Mike smiles "blissfully" that Bella will be riding in his car. I guess he's already assuming she'll be sitting next to him--and brother, if that isn't bliss, I don't know what is--though he's blissful before she's actually done this. Bella, ever concerned about others' feelings, squeezes Jessica between herself and Mike to placate her. We're supposed to think Bella's such a great friend that she's putting her own happiness second to that her two friends', but she doesn't want to sit next to Mike anyway! (You may notice there's a lot of "we're supposed to think, but" while reading this novel.) She wants someone else to talk to Mike so that she won't be bothered.
Notice that Mike expresses surprise that Bella showed up. As I said last week, I, too, am surprised. In fact, it's almost as if there's a hidden, omnipotent power manipulating events behind the scenes so that things happen even if they're not consistent with anything we've seen before. What's laughable is Bella's reminder that, "I told you I was coming." Is Meyer really this blind to her fauxtagonist's actions? Bella's word isn't worth anything! She lies frequently and well. I wouldn't trust her to take my order at Denny's.
The funniest part is how easy Bella is to predict. Mike's "unless you invited someone" is the last sentence on the page. As I was turning the page, I knew Bella was going to lie, and sure enough, she does (lightly, whatever that means). Anybody remember way back on page 65?
"It matters to me," I insisted. "I don't like to lie--so there'd better be a good reason why I'm doing it."
Do a search on this blog for "lie" or "lying". Click the tag at the end of this post labelled "lying". You'll come up with a half-dozen times Bella has lied in the, what, three days that have passed in this story so far? (Yes, weeks have passed off-screen, but I'm pretty sure we've only spent three or four days in the company of the characters.) And that's only the times I've mentioned it. I'm sure I've skipped over a few of the more minor lies. For someone who doesn't like to lie, she certainly does it readily, easily, and often, so much so that when this opportunity to tell a lie came up, there wasn't a question in my mind that she would take it.
Oh, and if you remembered that Bella told her "I don't like to lie" lie in reference to something that wasn't even a lie, give yourself a cookie.
Once at the beach, a few of the kids (one of whom is Mike) decide to go hiking. Bella makes the decision to go based on who she most wants to avoid (in this case Lauren, Tyler and Eric, who've decided to stay on the beach), and she gets "a huge smile" from Mike, of course, for choosing his group. (Poor bastard.) She's completely enthralled during the hike by all the wonderful sights and sounds and "wonder[ing] what Edward was doing now, and trying to imagine what he would be saying if he were here with me". When they get back to the beach, some kids from the Indian reservation are there chatting up the ones who stayed behind. We know which one of them matters because he gets a name, Jacob Black. Jacob, being a male, is instantly smitten with Our Bella, "looking at me appreciatively in a way I was learning to recognise". Remember when I talked about how Bella is alternately too jaded and too naive to be 17? Here's an example of the naive part. "Learning to recognise"? This is something I imagine most girls in the Empire start to get a handle on around age 12. Bella grew up in Phoenix, not the backwoods of Appalachia. How could she possibly have reached 17 without recognising boys' interest in her? Answer: Because Meyer, despite having been a 17-year-old girl who grew up in Phoenix, is such a terrible writer that she's less able to write a convincing 17-year-old girl who grew up in Phoenix than I am.
Lauren, of course, notices this and is (wait for it) jealous of Bella. With her "pale, fishy eyes" and "insolent tone", she's really interested in this boy who "just turned fifteen", but of course, every boy only has eyes for Bella. One of the other boys--this one doesn't get a name--says "The Cullens don't come here" when Lauren mentions Edward for no reason. Now the film more or less leaves it at that. It simply has Jacob and Bella walk on the beach with Jake expositing that the Cullens aren't allowed on the reservation and in exchange the Indians aren't allowed to--uh, go to their house, I guess. The novel, however, has Jacob straight up tell Bella that the Indians are werewolves and the Cullens are vampires. Now the film's way of handling Bella's discovery that Edward is a vampire isn't exactly brilliant; she basically does a Google search and concludes vampirism is the only possible explanation for Edward's pale skin and avoidance of the sun. (I guess her search didn't turn up "emo kid".) But it still beats the novel's having Jacob flat out tell her. I mean, a Google search isn't overly exciting, but at least Bella found out on her own. Here, even that tiny sliver of agency is absent, because she doesn't have to do anything but listen to Jacob tell her.
Wait, no, that's not quite true. She does do something: She uses her sexuality to manipulate Jacob into doing something for her. Get used to it, as it won't be the last time she does this to him. Again, this isn't my analysis. She tells us that's what she's doing.
I was still turning over the brief comment on the Cullens, and I had a sudden inspiration. It was a stupid plan, but I didn't have any better ideas. I hoped that young Jacob was as yet inexperienced around girls, so that he couldn't see through my sure-to-be-pitiful attempts at flirting.
Again, Bella is allegedly a 17-year-old girl who went to public school in a major urban area, yet we're to believe she has no experience flirting with boys. I'm going to quote these "pitiful attempts" with Jacob's part removed. Here's some raw Bella action for you:
"So you're, what, sixteen?" I asked, trying not to look like an idiot as I fluttered my eyelids the way I'd seen girls do on TV[!].
"Really?" My face was full of false surprise. "I would have thought you were older."
"Do you come up to Forks much?" I asked archly, as if I was hoping for a yes. I sounded idiotic to myself, afraid he would turn on me with disgust and accuse me of my fraud, but he still seemed flattered.
I purposefully lumped myself in with the youngsters, trying to make it clear that I preferred Jacob.
"Oh, I won't tell anyone, I'm just curious." I tried to make my smile alluring...
"I love them," I enthused, making an effort to smolder at him.
I focused on keeping the vital interest I felt out of my eyes.
Our Bella, she doesn't like to lie. Nope. There'd better be a good reason why she's doing it.
September 19, 2012
Twilight: Creative Writing
Twilight, pp. 105-113.
This chapter just...ends. There are four more pages, sure, but absolutely nothing happens. Now I know what you're thinking: Did he fire six shots, or only five? Damn, I did it again. What I meant was, you're thinking, "But Carl Eusebius, absolutely nothing happens in the whole book!" Well that's not strictly true, as something does in fact happen in the last, oh, 100 pages of this 500-page tome. But the point is well taken that not much happens in this novel. Still, for these four pages there's nothing to comment on. Our heroine and her ephebophiliac partner listen to some of their favourite music (Debussy, so we know they're pretentious clowns with no taste), Bella describes her mother ("irresponsible and slightly eccentric"), and the couple re-hash the "do you think I'm dangerous?" thing for the 387th time. The only part that perked my interest a teeny bit was when Edward asks her age.
"I'm seventeen," I responded, a little confused.
"You don't seem seventeen."
His tone was reproachful; it made me laugh.
"What?" he asked, curious again.
"My mom always says I was born thirty-five years old and that I get more middle-aged every year."
Well, that explains why Bella thinks and talks like a 35-year-old woman (though author Meyer was only 29 when she wrote Twilight). I'd have preferred, though, a 17-year-old main character that was, I don't know, believably 17. Like Juno, Twilight gives us a high-school girl who speaks mannered, overly-scripted cynicism.
It gets old real fast.
And really, what does Edward care? She's in high school. Why does he need her exact age? When you're a century old, would it make any difference to you if someone were 15 rather than 17? I'm not even half a century old, and I don't notice a difference between 15 and 17. This is just another example of our being told that Edward's 100 years old even though he doesn't act at all like someone from another century. It's also evidence for my theory that Meyer wrote only a single draft of the entire novel, with perhaps some spelling corrections here and there. She suddenly realised she's on page 105 and hasn't told us Bella's age. Solution? Well, in this scene Bella's talking to Edward, so just have him ask her! There, problem solved, moving on.
Wait, you already guessed her age? Edward and Bella are in the same biology class and he's a junior, which is enough information to figure out her age without having it spelled out for you?
Anyway, on to chapter six. (Yes, we're five chapters in, and this is how little has happened.) Bella isn't looking forward to today, Friday, because...well, I don't know. She knows Edward isn't going to show up at school, true, but she later cites that as "the worst part about Friday". What else made her not look forward to Friday? She doesn't give any other reason. Well, she'll have to interact with other, non-Edward people, so I guess that's a bummer. Bella tells us that "it more than lived up to my non-expectations". What does that mean? She clearly had expectations (since she "wasn't looking forward to Friday"), and as the day does turn out badly (by Bella's standards, at least), it did, in fact, live up to her expectations.
This is probably the kind of crap Meyer learned in her "creative" writing courses at Brigham Young. "Irony," intones the failed fiction writer teaching whichever class it is, "is when you take what's expected ["live up to my expectations"] and invert it ["live up to my non-expectations"]." Creativity! Either that, or Meyer took that Alanis Morrisette song as a template for her writing. (That would explain a lot, actually.) Isn't it ironic, don'cha think? No, Alanis, I don't think. There's nothing ironic in the song "Ironic", including its being named "Ironic" even though it isn't ironic. Rain on your wedding day isn't ironic. Being married by the same judge who presided over your last divorce--that's ironic. And damn funny. This isn't the appropriate place for irony, anyway. C'mon, Steffy, the way to write that line was "it more than lived down to my expectations". I'm a talentless hack writing a blog no-one reads, and I know that.
Hey, I've got an idea. Let's do a remake of Twilight, this time without the sucking.
I know it's been a while since we had some Jessica-bashing, but don't worry, author Meyer knows what we readers crave. First, Jessica especially enjoys the story of Bella's fainting. Bella notes that Mike doesn't add to her embarrassment by revealing anything he saw or heard about her fainting spell, though of course he isn't appreciated or thanked or even acknowledged for this. (Bella declares it "lucky" that Mike stays silent. It's not luck, genius; he made a conscious decision to say nothing, presumably for your sake. The least you could do is say thank you.) Jessica then asks what Edward and Bella talked about. Bella is evasive, which annoys Jessica. Bella attributes this to Jessica's hope that Bella would give her some gossip, but I think she's just annoyed that Bella keeps dodging her questions. After all, Edward and Bella were talking in a public place, not behind closed doors. I don't think "what did you talk about?" is particularly intrusive. And Edward is someone who has refused to talk to anyone else for the past couple of years. If he suddenly started talking to someone, isn't it natural that people would want to know why? Jessica notes that Bella looked angry during the conversation. (Who wouldn't be, trying to talk to that jagoff?) Because Bella suffers from Narcissistic Personality Disorder, she interprets this simple act of human concern as more probing into her affairs and so responds only with an arch, "Did I?"
Later, Bella notices that Lauren* has been giving her "a few unfriendly glances". Remember Lauren? No? That's okay, because she hasn't appeared before now. Yes, with all the people Bella met in chapter one, Lauren wasn't one of them. She's here now because Meyer needs someone to be jealous of Bella. No, I don't know why she doesn't just have Jessica do it, since she's taken pains to establish Jessica's jealousy in earlier chapters. (That must be why I don't write best-selling novels.) Meyer has decided to bring in another girl to be jealous of Bella, so despite this character's never appearing before, Meyer acts like she's been here all along. That's certainly some...creative writing right there.
To find out why she's getting "unfriendly glances", Bella eavesdrops on Lauren's conversation with Mike. Lauren says she doesn't know why Bella doesn't sit with the Cullens instead of with them. Oh, snap! Oh no she di'nt! We're supposed to be shocked at this betrayal by someone we've never seen or heard from before, but frankly I think it's completely fair. Why doesn't she go over the Cullens? At no point in this novel has she taken any interest in anything her "friends" have had to say or expressed any desire to spend any time with them. She's agreed to go to the beach with them, but immediately before she noticed Lauren's "unfriendly glances", she heard the weather might be good that day and thought to herself that because of this good weather, the trip might not be "completely miserable".** On her way to the beach, she doesn't speak to anyone. Not a single person. On the way back, she purposefully sits next to someone who won't talk to her so that she'll be free to think about Edward without interruption.
So Lauren, painted here as a bad person because of her dislike of Bella's favouring the Cullens over her own friends (as Lauren speaks, Bella notices "what an unpleasant, nasal voice she had"), is only reacting to the obvious implications of Bella's behaviour. And she's completely right. Bella doesn't like anyone in Mike's group of friends. She avoids talking to them, is evasive and dishonest when she's forced to interact with them, and never listens to anything they have to say because she's obsessed with Edward. And this isn't my analysis. Bella states all of these things directly to the reader. She tells us she doesn't want to talk to these people because she wants to think about Edward. She tells us she lies to them. She tells us she doesn't listen to what they say when she's in conversation with them. And she's told us the Cullens are perfect, even though she knows nothing about any of them except their names. So Lauren's question is a damn good one: Why isn't Bella sitting with the Cullens instead of with her non-friends?
Oh wait, I forgot, a proper lady doesn't talk to people to whom she hasn't been introduced. See, that would require taking an action (of her own volition!), andupper-class women in 19th-century England 21st-century high school girls in Washington state don't do that. So she'll need to wait for someone to give her permission to speak to the other Cullens. I'm sure Edward will do that, when he thinks the time is right.
===============================================================
* Occasionally I've pointed out how even the crappy Twilight film is a marked improvement over this terrible book. I noted in an earlier post that the "all the girls are jealous of Bella" subplots were excised from the film version. Unsurprisingly, the character of Lauren doesn't appear at all. There's no reason for her to; her entire character is "I'm a bad person because I don't like Bella". Since the filmmakers were wise enough (I like to think) to realise this doesn't portray Bella in a particularly favourable light, they probably told Meyer that these story beats and characters had to be nixed "for time". (As noted above, Jessica is also jealous of Bella, but as her primary purpose in the story is to be less awesome than Bella, she remains in the film version, with most of her jealousy eliminated.)
** So if Bella expected the trip to be "completely miserable" until she saw the weather might be nice, why did she agree to go? Well, that would be because Meyer needs this to happen so she can introduce a plot thread that will become important in later books. This requires Bella to be at a particular beach to meet a particular character, who will then have the opportunity to exposit this plot thread to the reader. Once again, Meyer somehow manages to give us two hallmarks of bad writing for the price of one: Even though Bella is a Mary-Sue, to the extent she has a character, Meyer doesn't hesitate to violate that character for the convenience of the plot.
This chapter just...ends. There are four more pages, sure, but absolutely nothing happens. Now I know what you're thinking: Did he fire six shots, or only five? Damn, I did it again. What I meant was, you're thinking, "But Carl Eusebius, absolutely nothing happens in the whole book!" Well that's not strictly true, as something does in fact happen in the last, oh, 100 pages of this 500-page tome. But the point is well taken that not much happens in this novel. Still, for these four pages there's nothing to comment on. Our heroine and her ephebophiliac partner listen to some of their favourite music (Debussy, so we know they're pretentious clowns with no taste), Bella describes her mother ("irresponsible and slightly eccentric"), and the couple re-hash the "do you think I'm dangerous?" thing for the 387th time. The only part that perked my interest a teeny bit was when Edward asks her age.
"I'm seventeen," I responded, a little confused.
"You don't seem seventeen."
His tone was reproachful; it made me laugh.
"What?" he asked, curious again.
"My mom always says I was born thirty-five years old and that I get more middle-aged every year."
Well, that explains why Bella thinks and talks like a 35-year-old woman (though author Meyer was only 29 when she wrote Twilight). I'd have preferred, though, a 17-year-old main character that was, I don't know, believably 17. Like Juno, Twilight gives us a high-school girl who speaks mannered, overly-scripted cynicism.
It gets old real fast.
And really, what does Edward care? She's in high school. Why does he need her exact age? When you're a century old, would it make any difference to you if someone were 15 rather than 17? I'm not even half a century old, and I don't notice a difference between 15 and 17. This is just another example of our being told that Edward's 100 years old even though he doesn't act at all like someone from another century. It's also evidence for my theory that Meyer wrote only a single draft of the entire novel, with perhaps some spelling corrections here and there. She suddenly realised she's on page 105 and hasn't told us Bella's age. Solution? Well, in this scene Bella's talking to Edward, so just have him ask her! There, problem solved, moving on.
Wait, you already guessed her age? Edward and Bella are in the same biology class and he's a junior, which is enough information to figure out her age without having it spelled out for you?
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| Everything must be explained! No assumption of reader sentience will be made! |
This is probably the kind of crap Meyer learned in her "creative" writing courses at Brigham Young. "Irony," intones the failed fiction writer teaching whichever class it is, "is when you take what's expected ["live up to my expectations"] and invert it ["live up to my non-expectations"]." Creativity! Either that, or Meyer took that Alanis Morrisette song as a template for her writing. (That would explain a lot, actually.) Isn't it ironic, don'cha think? No, Alanis, I don't think. There's nothing ironic in the song "Ironic", including its being named "Ironic" even though it isn't ironic. Rain on your wedding day isn't ironic. Being married by the same judge who presided over your last divorce--that's ironic. And damn funny. This isn't the appropriate place for irony, anyway. C'mon, Steffy, the way to write that line was "it more than lived down to my expectations". I'm a talentless hack writing a blog no-one reads, and I know that.
Hey, I've got an idea. Let's do a remake of Twilight, this time without the sucking.
I know it's been a while since we had some Jessica-bashing, but don't worry, author Meyer knows what we readers crave. First, Jessica especially enjoys the story of Bella's fainting. Bella notes that Mike doesn't add to her embarrassment by revealing anything he saw or heard about her fainting spell, though of course he isn't appreciated or thanked or even acknowledged for this. (Bella declares it "lucky" that Mike stays silent. It's not luck, genius; he made a conscious decision to say nothing, presumably for your sake. The least you could do is say thank you.) Jessica then asks what Edward and Bella talked about. Bella is evasive, which annoys Jessica. Bella attributes this to Jessica's hope that Bella would give her some gossip, but I think she's just annoyed that Bella keeps dodging her questions. After all, Edward and Bella were talking in a public place, not behind closed doors. I don't think "what did you talk about?" is particularly intrusive. And Edward is someone who has refused to talk to anyone else for the past couple of years. If he suddenly started talking to someone, isn't it natural that people would want to know why? Jessica notes that Bella looked angry during the conversation. (Who wouldn't be, trying to talk to that jagoff?) Because Bella suffers from Narcissistic Personality Disorder, she interprets this simple act of human concern as more probing into her affairs and so responds only with an arch, "Did I?"
Later, Bella notices that Lauren* has been giving her "a few unfriendly glances". Remember Lauren? No? That's okay, because she hasn't appeared before now. Yes, with all the people Bella met in chapter one, Lauren wasn't one of them. She's here now because Meyer needs someone to be jealous of Bella. No, I don't know why she doesn't just have Jessica do it, since she's taken pains to establish Jessica's jealousy in earlier chapters. (That must be why I don't write best-selling novels.) Meyer has decided to bring in another girl to be jealous of Bella, so despite this character's never appearing before, Meyer acts like she's been here all along. That's certainly some...creative writing right there.
To find out why she's getting "unfriendly glances", Bella eavesdrops on Lauren's conversation with Mike. Lauren says she doesn't know why Bella doesn't sit with the Cullens instead of with them. Oh, snap! Oh no she di'nt! We're supposed to be shocked at this betrayal by someone we've never seen or heard from before, but frankly I think it's completely fair. Why doesn't she go over the Cullens? At no point in this novel has she taken any interest in anything her "friends" have had to say or expressed any desire to spend any time with them. She's agreed to go to the beach with them, but immediately before she noticed Lauren's "unfriendly glances", she heard the weather might be good that day and thought to herself that because of this good weather, the trip might not be "completely miserable".** On her way to the beach, she doesn't speak to anyone. Not a single person. On the way back, she purposefully sits next to someone who won't talk to her so that she'll be free to think about Edward without interruption.
So Lauren, painted here as a bad person because of her dislike of Bella's favouring the Cullens over her own friends (as Lauren speaks, Bella notices "what an unpleasant, nasal voice she had"), is only reacting to the obvious implications of Bella's behaviour. And she's completely right. Bella doesn't like anyone in Mike's group of friends. She avoids talking to them, is evasive and dishonest when she's forced to interact with them, and never listens to anything they have to say because she's obsessed with Edward. And this isn't my analysis. Bella states all of these things directly to the reader. She tells us she doesn't want to talk to these people because she wants to think about Edward. She tells us she lies to them. She tells us she doesn't listen to what they say when she's in conversation with them. And she's told us the Cullens are perfect, even though she knows nothing about any of them except their names. So Lauren's question is a damn good one: Why isn't Bella sitting with the Cullens instead of with her non-friends?
Oh wait, I forgot, a proper lady doesn't talk to people to whom she hasn't been introduced. See, that would require taking an action (of her own volition!), and
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* Occasionally I've pointed out how even the crappy Twilight film is a marked improvement over this terrible book. I noted in an earlier post that the "all the girls are jealous of Bella" subplots were excised from the film version. Unsurprisingly, the character of Lauren doesn't appear at all. There's no reason for her to; her entire character is "I'm a bad person because I don't like Bella". Since the filmmakers were wise enough (I like to think) to realise this doesn't portray Bella in a particularly favourable light, they probably told Meyer that these story beats and characters had to be nixed "for time". (As noted above, Jessica is also jealous of Bella, but as her primary purpose in the story is to be less awesome than Bella, she remains in the film version, with most of her jealousy eliminated.)
** So if Bella expected the trip to be "completely miserable" until she saw the weather might be nice, why did she agree to go? Well, that would be because Meyer needs this to happen so she can introduce a plot thread that will become important in later books. This requires Bella to be at a particular beach to meet a particular character, who will then have the opportunity to exposit this plot thread to the reader. Once again, Meyer somehow manages to give us two hallmarks of bad writing for the price of one: Even though Bella is a Mary-Sue, to the extent she has a character, Meyer doesn't hesitate to violate that character for the convenience of the plot.
September 18, 2010
Twilight: Alpha Female
Twilight, pp. 71-73.
Mike, at least, was pleased by the obvious coolness between me and my lab partner.
Of course he is, the poor sap. And if you think Bella is going to give him a polite but firm 'Still not interested, sorry', well, you haven't read the rest of this blog. Or much of Twilight. Either way, you're better off.
Now we get to The Dance. It's apparently a Sadie Hawkins Day sort of thing, though here it's called by the unappealing moniker 'girls' choice spring dance'. I suppose Meyer didn't want to associate her fauxtagonist with anything so progressive as Sadie Hawkins.
I know what you're thinking--did he fire six shots, or only five? No, no, I'm sorry, that's not it. You're thinking this dance is setting up Bella's asking Edward to go to it. But that would involve Bella, you know, taking an action, and we'll have none of that. So even though the dance is girls' choice, we still get a scene of Mike taking initiative while Bella adheres to her policy of not doing a damn thing. But first, poor Jessica, recognising Bella's superiority, has to subtly ask Bella to let her have Mike.
Jessica...called me the first Tuesday of March to ask my permission to invite Mike to the girls' choice spring dance in two weeks.
So, do women do this, too? I've never really understood why men do it, and I've certainly never done it. Why do you need to ask someone else if you can ask another person out? What has that person got to do with it? Either the person you're asking will say yes, or she won't. Surely it's her choice, isn't it? Even stranger, here we have two high school girls do it. Stranger still since there's no reason to do so. What indication has Bella ever given that she's interested in Mike? He is interested in her. So it's not even a case of asking someone if you can date a person she wants to date. It's a case of asking someone if you can date a person who wants to date her. That makes the whole scenario give off an alpha female vibe. Bella is (somehow) highest in the pecking order, so no social moves can be made without first consulting her and getting her approval.
And why does Jessica want to ask Mike out anyway? From what we've seen, he doesn't give her the time of day. He's only interested in Bella, even if he has to go through Eric (ha!) to get to her. Indeed, Mike blows Jessica off because he's waiting for Bella to ask him to the dance!
'So,' Mike said, looking at the floor. 'Jessica asked me to the spring dance.'
'That's great.' I made my voice bright and enthusiastic. 'You'll have a lot of fun with Jessica.'
'Well...' He floundered as he examined my smile, clearly not happy about my response. 'I told her I had to think about it.'
'Why would you do that?' I let disapproval colour my tone, though I was relieved he hadn't given her an absolute no.
His face was bright red as he looked down again. Pity shook my resolve.
'I was wondering if...well, if you might be planning to ask me.'
In the name of God, why? Why would you wonder that?
This scene was also cut from the film, since, again, the screenwriter probably realised how little sense it makes. How is it that Mike, portrayed up to now as a popular kid with some social skills, squirms and blushes and stares at the floor like the nerd in a bad sex comedy asking out the sorority bombshell he's sweet on? And does he not get that Bella's not really interested and never has been? If this were the unpopular, social outcast kid with no experience, his obliviousness might pass, but Mike isn't the sort of stock character who would misread Bella's plain disinterest so badly. Unless, of course, he's The Jerk in the bad sex comedy, who can't seem to fathom that there exist girls who don't find him attractive, but Mike doesn't come off as The Jerk, and The Jerk is smarmy and cocksure, not nervous and shy.
It's nice that Bella felt some pity for him, though. If she had a really big heart, she'd go ahead and ask him to the dance so he'll feel better.
Blech.
Also, note the 'clearly not happy about my response'.* Someone needs to sit Stephenie Meyer down and clearly explain to her clearly that 'young' don't mean 'dumb', clearly. That you're writing for a young adult readership is not an excuse to treat your readers like they're idiots. I think the average twelve-year-old reader has long since understood that Mike likes Bella, and that reader will understand that Mike would be unhappy when she says she doesn't want to go to a dance with him. But no, Meyer has to spell everything out in bright red letters. Mike might as well say all of his lines in Incredible Hulk-speak. (That's the speech of Dumb Hulk, of course.) 'Mike want Bella. Bella go dance with Mike? Bella say no? MIKE WANT BELLA. Bella say no 'gain. Mike sad.'
Bella gives Mike her permission to go to the dance with Jessica as well. Mike asks if she has already asked someone, momentarily eyeballing Edward when he does so. This lets us know that Mike does know Bella's not interested in him, so I'm officially clueless as to why he expected her to ask him.
'So you shouldn't make Jess wait any longer--it's rude.'
This is one of the most revolting aspects of the novel. This entire subplot exists solely to flatter Bella, the author's (and presumably meant to be the reader's) alter-ego. Mike is never a credible rival for Bella's affections. Rather, he is a tool to establish Bella's superiority over Jessica, the only other girl in the story, in the eyes of, well, everyone, including Jessica herself. She can only have someone Bella has rejected, and Bella will have the decaying corpse that rejected Jessica (as established when Meyer misused the expression 'sour grapes' on page 22). For those who were appalled at how bad the Twilight film was, it improves upon the novel again here by exorcising most of this subplot.
Ah, now I know what some of you poor souls who know something about Twilight are saying. 'But Carl Eusebius', you say, 'Mike may not be Edward's rival, but Jacob is, and he isn't here yet.' Now, I have not read the later books, but I have seen the later movies, and Oh My Brothers**, Bella never seriously considers Jacob, either. In fact, as a major character, Jacob gets treated even worse by Bellameyer. (More on that later, if I make it that far.)
'Yeah, you're right,' he mumbled, and turned, dejected, to walk back to his seat.
Poor guy. Now he's stuck going to the dance with the cute, popular, likable girl who's smart, friendly and asked him out. No wonder he's so dejected.
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*I want you to know, my little droogies, that I found it difficult to resist making a fish joke here, but I managed.
**One of my readers commented on this phrase. It's a quote from the novel and film Clockwork Orange, so I've hesitated to add 'and Sisters', since then it wouldn't be a quotation. To balance this, I've tried to use feminine pronouns whenever I'm not specifically referring to males, reversing the traditional practice.
Mike, at least, was pleased by the obvious coolness between me and my lab partner.
Of course he is, the poor sap. And if you think Bella is going to give him a polite but firm 'Still not interested, sorry', well, you haven't read the rest of this blog. Or much of Twilight. Either way, you're better off.
Now we get to The Dance. It's apparently a Sadie Hawkins Day sort of thing, though here it's called by the unappealing moniker 'girls' choice spring dance'. I suppose Meyer didn't want to associate her fauxtagonist with anything so progressive as Sadie Hawkins.
I know what you're thinking--did he fire six shots, or only five? No, no, I'm sorry, that's not it. You're thinking this dance is setting up Bella's asking Edward to go to it. But that would involve Bella, you know, taking an action, and we'll have none of that. So even though the dance is girls' choice, we still get a scene of Mike taking initiative while Bella adheres to her policy of not doing a damn thing. But first, poor Jessica, recognising Bella's superiority, has to subtly ask Bella to let her have Mike.
Jessica...called me the first Tuesday of March to ask my permission to invite Mike to the girls' choice spring dance in two weeks.
So, do women do this, too? I've never really understood why men do it, and I've certainly never done it. Why do you need to ask someone else if you can ask another person out? What has that person got to do with it? Either the person you're asking will say yes, or she won't. Surely it's her choice, isn't it? Even stranger, here we have two high school girls do it. Stranger still since there's no reason to do so. What indication has Bella ever given that she's interested in Mike? He is interested in her. So it's not even a case of asking someone if you can date a person she wants to date. It's a case of asking someone if you can date a person who wants to date her. That makes the whole scenario give off an alpha female vibe. Bella is (somehow) highest in the pecking order, so no social moves can be made without first consulting her and getting her approval.
And why does Jessica want to ask Mike out anyway? From what we've seen, he doesn't give her the time of day. He's only interested in Bella, even if he has to go through Eric (ha!) to get to her. Indeed, Mike blows Jessica off because he's waiting for Bella to ask him to the dance!
'So,' Mike said, looking at the floor. 'Jessica asked me to the spring dance.'
'That's great.' I made my voice bright and enthusiastic. 'You'll have a lot of fun with Jessica.'
'Well...' He floundered as he examined my smile, clearly not happy about my response. 'I told her I had to think about it.'
'Why would you do that?' I let disapproval colour my tone, though I was relieved he hadn't given her an absolute no.
His face was bright red as he looked down again. Pity shook my resolve.
'I was wondering if...well, if you might be planning to ask me.'
In the name of God, why? Why would you wonder that?
This scene was also cut from the film, since, again, the screenwriter probably realised how little sense it makes. How is it that Mike, portrayed up to now as a popular kid with some social skills, squirms and blushes and stares at the floor like the nerd in a bad sex comedy asking out the sorority bombshell he's sweet on? And does he not get that Bella's not really interested and never has been? If this were the unpopular, social outcast kid with no experience, his obliviousness might pass, but Mike isn't the sort of stock character who would misread Bella's plain disinterest so badly. Unless, of course, he's The Jerk in the bad sex comedy, who can't seem to fathom that there exist girls who don't find him attractive, but Mike doesn't come off as The Jerk, and The Jerk is smarmy and cocksure, not nervous and shy.
It's nice that Bella felt some pity for him, though. If she had a really big heart, she'd go ahead and ask him to the dance so he'll feel better.
Blech.
Also, note the 'clearly not happy about my response'.* Someone needs to sit Stephenie Meyer down and clearly explain to her clearly that 'young' don't mean 'dumb', clearly. That you're writing for a young adult readership is not an excuse to treat your readers like they're idiots. I think the average twelve-year-old reader has long since understood that Mike likes Bella, and that reader will understand that Mike would be unhappy when she says she doesn't want to go to a dance with him. But no, Meyer has to spell everything out in bright red letters. Mike might as well say all of his lines in Incredible Hulk-speak. (That's the speech of Dumb Hulk, of course.) 'Mike want Bella. Bella go dance with Mike? Bella say no? MIKE WANT BELLA. Bella say no 'gain. Mike sad.'
Bella gives Mike her permission to go to the dance with Jessica as well. Mike asks if she has already asked someone, momentarily eyeballing Edward when he does so. This lets us know that Mike does know Bella's not interested in him, so I'm officially clueless as to why he expected her to ask him.
'So you shouldn't make Jess wait any longer--it's rude.'
This is one of the most revolting aspects of the novel. This entire subplot exists solely to flatter Bella, the author's (and presumably meant to be the reader's) alter-ego. Mike is never a credible rival for Bella's affections. Rather, he is a tool to establish Bella's superiority over Jessica, the only other girl in the story, in the eyes of, well, everyone, including Jessica herself. She can only have someone Bella has rejected, and Bella will have the decaying corpse that rejected Jessica (as established when Meyer misused the expression 'sour grapes' on page 22). For those who were appalled at how bad the Twilight film was, it improves upon the novel again here by exorcising most of this subplot.
Ah, now I know what some of you poor souls who know something about Twilight are saying. 'But Carl Eusebius', you say, 'Mike may not be Edward's rival, but Jacob is, and he isn't here yet.' Now, I have not read the later books, but I have seen the later movies, and Oh My Brothers**, Bella never seriously considers Jacob, either. In fact, as a major character, Jacob gets treated even worse by Bellameyer. (More on that later, if I make it that far.)
'Yeah, you're right,' he mumbled, and turned, dejected, to walk back to his seat.
Poor guy. Now he's stuck going to the dance with the cute, popular, likable girl who's smart, friendly and asked him out. No wonder he's so dejected.
======================================
*I want you to know, my little droogies, that I found it difficult to resist making a fish joke here, but I managed.
**One of my readers commented on this phrase. It's a quote from the novel and film Clockwork Orange, so I've hesitated to add 'and Sisters', since then it wouldn't be a quotation. To balance this, I've tried to use feminine pronouns whenever I'm not specifically referring to males, reversing the traditional practice.
September 7, 2010
Twilight: Non-Action
Twilight, pp. 68-70
Lots of bad on these two-and-one-half pages.
In my dream it was very dark....
Ha! Don't worry, we're not going to bother with Bella's dream of Edward. The description of it is so flat and lifeless I wonder why Meyer included it at all. I'll only note that the following
After that, he was in my dreams nearly every night...
is pretty creepy, maybe pathological. Instead, we'll look at the ludicrous aftermath of Edward's Superman save. The driver of the van involved in the incident, one Tyler Crowley*, continues to apologise over the course of the next month, and Bella picks up on the signals from this unsurprising new suitor.
Tyler Crowley was impossible, following me around, obsessed with making amends to me somehow....He followed me between classes and sat at our now-crowded lunch table. Mike and Eric were even less friendly toward him than they were to each other, which made me worry that I'd gained another unwelcome fan.
I think this is way past 'making amends', and that last part lets us know that Bella think so, too. This is where, if she had any concern for her so-called friends or even just for other human beings, she would tell Tyler (and, really, the other two boys as well) that she's not interested and that he can either be her friend or be nothing. But of course, as we've seen, Bella likes being the object of boys' desire, even though she has no intention of ever reciprocating. She doesn't want to be bothered by their attention, so she does 'tr[y] to convince [Tyler that] what I wanted more than anything else was for him to forget all about it', but she stops short of telling him to leave her alone entirely because, well, then she wouldn't be flattered by his attention.
This is another area in which the Twilight film manages to make the teeniest of improvements over the book. With Meyer having final approval over what goes into the film and the danger of Twihards howling over any deviation from the source, improving on the novel must have been a Herculean task. (I don't feel bad for the screenwriter, though, since she was handsomely paid for her effort and apparently considered it sufficient reward to return for the sequel.)
In the film, there is no indication that Eric--Hollywoodised into an Asian**--has any interest in Bella. Nor does Tyler, who in my recollection does not appear after apologising in the hospital. (He does appear very early to sexually harass her, but the scene makes it appear he's more into Mike than Bella.) I'm sure the filmmakers explained to Meyer that these flirtations had to be cut for time, but I like to think they were as put-off by the Bella character as I am and tried to trim at least some of these obnoxious moments.
Meyer then proceeds yet again to beat the reader over the head with the 'he moved so fast' business. Here we have confirmation that, not only did bystanders not see what happened, they buy Bella's lies about happened, even though what she says flatly contradicts what at least some of them must have seen. She claims he pulled her out of the way, and none of the dozens of eyewitnesses refutes this. They simply Stepford-chorus that they didn't see Edward at all until it was over.
'You didn't see him push the van away?' she asked incredulously.
Actually, no, she didn't ask that. But I bet with the unnecessary adverb there, you were fooled, if only for a second.
Instead, she wonders 'why no one else had seen him standing so far away'. Her conclusion?
With chagrin, I realised the probable cause--no-one else was as aware of Edward as I always was. No-one else watched him the way I did. How pitiful.
I've read this paragraph a few times, in context, and I can't tell whether Meyer means Bella is pitiful for paying too much attention to Edward or everyone else is pitiful for not paying enough. Context leans towards the former, but the wording strongly implies the latter, and Bella has certainly shown contempt for all the non-Edward people around her (and even Edward gets some contempt on occasion). So I'm going with Bella thinking it's pitiful that everyone doesn't constantly keep track of Edward's location.
That's our Bella.
And so the 'girls have cooties' grade-school boy-girl interaction continues, as Edward resumes sitting next to Bella in biology class
as far away from me as the table would allow, [and] he seemed totally unaware of my presence. Only now and then, when his fists would suddenly ball up--skin stretched even whiter over the bones--did I wonder if he wasn't quite as oblivious as he appeared.
The bloodless corpse turns paler with exertion. Edward comes off more like a creepy guy LARPing a vampire than a genuine creature of the night. I'm also very put off by the 'wasn't' in that last clause. I suppose it's still correct, but man, it goes over as smoothly as a Che Guevera t-shirt at an American Legion meeting.
He wished he hadn't pulled me from the path of Tyler's van--there was no other conclusion I could come to.
I suppose that's true, when you think only of yourself as Bella does. There's 'no other conclusion'; it must have something to do with you.
I wanted very much to talk to him, and the day after the accident I tried. The last time I'd seen him, outside the ER, we'd both been so furious. I still was angry that he wouldn't trust me with the truth, even though I was keeping my part of the bargain flawlessly. But he had in fact saved my life, no matter how he'd done it. And, overnight, the heat of my anger faded into awed gratitude.
Hmm...I'm thinking he might not trust you with the truth because he has no reason to do so. Maybe I'm no longer hip or with-it like the hepcats in high school these days, but I don't reveal intimate details to people with whom I've had precisely one conversation, no matter how angry they might get about it.
He was already seated when I got to Biology, looking straight ahead. I sat down, expecting him to turn toward me. He showed no sign that he realised I was there.
'Hello, Edward,' I said pleasantly, to show him I was going to behave myself.
He turned his head a fraction toward me without meeting my gaze, nodding once, and then looked the other way.
And that was the last contact I'd had with him...
No, you didn't miss anything, and I promise I cut nothing from this page so far. Bella really considers saying 'Hello, Edward' to be trying to talk to him. For someone she dreams about and obsesses over (her words!), that's a pretty limp effort, but apparently it took all the energy she could muster to take any initiative at all. Spent from this exertion, she
...gave no more notice that he existed than he showed toward me. I was miserable.
Here's a thought for how to deal with your misery at not being able to talk to Edward: Talk to Edward. It's worth a shot, I think.
But no, our fauxtagonist has to remain inert while things happen to her. Remember, ladies, there's no need to do stuff when there are males around. They'll do all the stuff. You just sit and look pretty and be all emotional.
Despite my outright lies, the tenor of my e-mails alerted Renee [her mother!] to my depression, and she called a few times, worried.
Five pages ago, Bella doesn't like to lie. Now 'outright lies' are the order of the day. '[T]here'd better be a good reason why I'm doing it,' she told us then.
Well, she can't very well let her mother know she's sad that a boy she won't talk to won't talk to her, can she? I mean, if this got out, where would the trail of bodies end?
===============================================================
*If Meyer showed any awareness at all of the genre she's working in, I'd wonder if this were a 'clever' reference to Aleister Crowley.
**Why, yes, Eric the Asian does end up romantically involved with the only ethnic-looking girl evident in the film. What are the odds of that?
Lots of bad on these two-and-one-half pages.
In my dream it was very dark....
Ha! Don't worry, we're not going to bother with Bella's dream of Edward. The description of it is so flat and lifeless I wonder why Meyer included it at all. I'll only note that the following
After that, he was in my dreams nearly every night...
is pretty creepy, maybe pathological. Instead, we'll look at the ludicrous aftermath of Edward's Superman save. The driver of the van involved in the incident, one Tyler Crowley*, continues to apologise over the course of the next month, and Bella picks up on the signals from this unsurprising new suitor.
Tyler Crowley was impossible, following me around, obsessed with making amends to me somehow....He followed me between classes and sat at our now-crowded lunch table. Mike and Eric were even less friendly toward him than they were to each other, which made me worry that I'd gained another unwelcome fan.
I think this is way past 'making amends', and that last part lets us know that Bella think so, too. This is where, if she had any concern for her so-called friends or even just for other human beings, she would tell Tyler (and, really, the other two boys as well) that she's not interested and that he can either be her friend or be nothing. But of course, as we've seen, Bella likes being the object of boys' desire, even though she has no intention of ever reciprocating. She doesn't want to be bothered by their attention, so she does 'tr[y] to convince [Tyler that] what I wanted more than anything else was for him to forget all about it', but she stops short of telling him to leave her alone entirely because, well, then she wouldn't be flattered by his attention.
This is another area in which the Twilight film manages to make the teeniest of improvements over the book. With Meyer having final approval over what goes into the film and the danger of Twihards howling over any deviation from the source, improving on the novel must have been a Herculean task. (I don't feel bad for the screenwriter, though, since she was handsomely paid for her effort and apparently considered it sufficient reward to return for the sequel.)
In the film, there is no indication that Eric--Hollywoodised into an Asian**--has any interest in Bella. Nor does Tyler, who in my recollection does not appear after apologising in the hospital. (He does appear very early to sexually harass her, but the scene makes it appear he's more into Mike than Bella.) I'm sure the filmmakers explained to Meyer that these flirtations had to be cut for time, but I like to think they were as put-off by the Bella character as I am and tried to trim at least some of these obnoxious moments.
Meyer then proceeds yet again to beat the reader over the head with the 'he moved so fast' business. Here we have confirmation that, not only did bystanders not see what happened, they buy Bella's lies about happened, even though what she says flatly contradicts what at least some of them must have seen. She claims he pulled her out of the way, and none of the dozens of eyewitnesses refutes this. They simply Stepford-chorus that they didn't see Edward at all until it was over.
'You didn't see him push the van away?' she asked incredulously.
Actually, no, she didn't ask that. But I bet with the unnecessary adverb there, you were fooled, if only for a second.
Instead, she wonders 'why no one else had seen him standing so far away'. Her conclusion?
With chagrin, I realised the probable cause--no-one else was as aware of Edward as I always was. No-one else watched him the way I did. How pitiful.
I've read this paragraph a few times, in context, and I can't tell whether Meyer means Bella is pitiful for paying too much attention to Edward or everyone else is pitiful for not paying enough. Context leans towards the former, but the wording strongly implies the latter, and Bella has certainly shown contempt for all the non-Edward people around her (and even Edward gets some contempt on occasion). So I'm going with Bella thinking it's pitiful that everyone doesn't constantly keep track of Edward's location.
That's our Bella.
And so the 'girls have cooties' grade-school boy-girl interaction continues, as Edward resumes sitting next to Bella in biology class
as far away from me as the table would allow, [and] he seemed totally unaware of my presence. Only now and then, when his fists would suddenly ball up--skin stretched even whiter over the bones--did I wonder if he wasn't quite as oblivious as he appeared.
The bloodless corpse turns paler with exertion. Edward comes off more like a creepy guy LARPing a vampire than a genuine creature of the night. I'm also very put off by the 'wasn't' in that last clause. I suppose it's still correct, but man, it goes over as smoothly as a Che Guevera t-shirt at an American Legion meeting.
He wished he hadn't pulled me from the path of Tyler's van--there was no other conclusion I could come to.
I suppose that's true, when you think only of yourself as Bella does. There's 'no other conclusion'; it must have something to do with you.
I wanted very much to talk to him, and the day after the accident I tried. The last time I'd seen him, outside the ER, we'd both been so furious. I still was angry that he wouldn't trust me with the truth, even though I was keeping my part of the bargain flawlessly. But he had in fact saved my life, no matter how he'd done it. And, overnight, the heat of my anger faded into awed gratitude.
Hmm...I'm thinking he might not trust you with the truth because he has no reason to do so. Maybe I'm no longer hip or with-it like the hepcats in high school these days, but I don't reveal intimate details to people with whom I've had precisely one conversation, no matter how angry they might get about it.
He was already seated when I got to Biology, looking straight ahead. I sat down, expecting him to turn toward me. He showed no sign that he realised I was there.
'Hello, Edward,' I said pleasantly, to show him I was going to behave myself.
He turned his head a fraction toward me without meeting my gaze, nodding once, and then looked the other way.
And that was the last contact I'd had with him...
No, you didn't miss anything, and I promise I cut nothing from this page so far. Bella really considers saying 'Hello, Edward' to be trying to talk to him. For someone she dreams about and obsesses over (her words!), that's a pretty limp effort, but apparently it took all the energy she could muster to take any initiative at all. Spent from this exertion, she
...gave no more notice that he existed than he showed toward me. I was miserable.
Here's a thought for how to deal with your misery at not being able to talk to Edward: Talk to Edward. It's worth a shot, I think.
But no, our fauxtagonist has to remain inert while things happen to her. Remember, ladies, there's no need to do stuff when there are males around. They'll do all the stuff. You just sit and look pretty and be all emotional.
Despite my outright lies, the tenor of my e-mails alerted Renee [her mother!] to my depression, and she called a few times, worried.
Five pages ago, Bella doesn't like to lie. Now 'outright lies' are the order of the day. '[T]here'd better be a good reason why I'm doing it,' she told us then.
Well, she can't very well let her mother know she's sad that a boy she won't talk to won't talk to her, can she? I mean, if this got out, where would the trail of bodies end?
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*If Meyer showed any awareness at all of the genre she's working in, I'd wonder if this were a 'clever' reference to Aleister Crowley.
**Why, yes, Eric the Asian does end up romantically involved with the only ethnic-looking girl evident in the film. What are the odds of that?
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