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March 25, 2009

Henry, you might want to take note of the movie "Twilight" (2008). I got curious what they were trying to sell to kids these days so I rented it. It was totally a"chick flick" but it was interesting to see several of the themes that you have mentioned as sort of "what women really want" :

1. Women are naturally hypergamous. The vampire boyfriend impresses the young girl "human" repeatedly with his super human abilities and saves her life without batting an eye. (I mean it's so blatant and cheesy that it was hard to watch without laughing...)

2. Women want a man who doesn't give them what they want. Not only does the boyfriend not have sex with her, making her want him more, but at the end he refuses to turn her into a vampire to which she mentally says "No one will surrender tonight, but I won't give in. I know what I want."

3. Women have a natural desire to "sacrifice themselves for their family." The young girl in the opening scene says "I've never given much thought to dying. But dying for someone I loved seemed like a good idea." And she says it again later in the movie (just for emphasis).

Someone obviously knows how to get into the heads of teenage girls. But here's what someone else had to say about some of the other lines in the movie and the messages the movie slipped in:

"I've never given much thought to dying. But dying for someone I loved seemed like a good idea."

On the surface that statement seems innocent, and almost sacrificial in nature. But, we quickly discover this movie is not about sacrifice. Instead, it's a statement encouraging teenage girls that killing themselves would be much better than losing what amounts to nothing more than an abusive relationship. Twilight may be garbed in a love story disguise, but when you scratch the surface to go deeper, you quickly discover a movie revolving around themes of death, violence and evil. While the synopsis of the movie, written by the studio wanting you to buy the tickets describes Twilight as a love story, the MPAA describe the movie as a drama/horror. Even the so-called hero/love interest knows the difference between a love story and a horror story. When Edward is trying to dump Bella and tell her he cannot be involved with her, the vampire says...

"What if I'm not the hero. What if I'm the bad guy?"

Of course that is indeed what he is. Edward is a bad guy. Now we not only have a fascination with death, and a romanticizing of evil, but we also have a movie glamorizing the bad guy. In the end, Twilight totally falls apart when it ends with Bella declaring...

"Death is peaceful and easy. Life is hard."

Again I must ask the question -- Is this really a message we want to send to the teens of today?

While I must admit Twilight uses some interesting camera techniques, it falls short in the area of message. While I do enjoy a good story, and I love the use of narration as a way of telling the story on the big screen, Twilight is lacking any sense of grounding in truth and message. It's really a wolf in sheep's clothing. This movie is definitely not what it appears to be on the surface.

Avoid the show!

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Another letter from a reader:

Recently, i watched this movie:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-3228177570976586071&ei=iprKSdTWAp-E-gGIwuXrAg&q=fireproof
(Fireproof)
I thought that was excellent.

It got me thinking. I started to imagine what life would be like if we would have movies like that instead of the usual Hollywood crap...

Henry Makow is the author of A Long Way to go for a Date. He received his Ph.D. in English Literature from the University of Toronto. He welcomes your feedback and ideas at

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