Today I discovered a picture on Flickr that depicted a burnt copy of New Moon. It's one of those movie tie-in covers too, all black and glossy with Robert Pattinson et al's faces ridden with angst. I actually don't like looking at Robert Pattinson's face in the slightest but that photo evoked a grimace from me for entirely different reasons.
The burning of a book is marked historically by censorship of ruling political/religious institutions and parties of the day, and oppression of the distribution of certain kinds of knowledge. Bookburning is a notable ceremonial process for political, religious, or moral objections to literature and content. Book burning has connotations of oppressive authoritarian governments, from Qin Shi Huang of China cracking down on the works of the Hundred Schools of Thought in order to unify all political visions with his own to the infamous burning of books under the Nazi regime on May 10, 1933. Do we really want to go there over this?
It's definitely trendy to hate on Twilight now. If you're not a preteen girl chances are you feel underwhelmed about the novel series-turned films about a vampire (yes, the sparkles) falling in love with a human teenager. Even worse, the series is popular. Even worse, it's not brilliantly written. I've read it and I wouldn't say that it's worse than Dan Brown or a lot of other bestselling books. Bestselling books are bestselling because they have appeal beyond invested readers to the kind of person who will pick up a paperbook at random at the airport, and maybe read seven books in a year, why do I even have to say this? Someone who does not read a lot will have less strenuous standards of a text beyond "Is this entertaining? Is there enough suspense that I want to finish this story to the end?" And that's fine. Different people getting different things out of different types of books, brave new world. Snobs and college-age male skeptics, set down your Bic lighters.
I would be remiss if I didn't address the more serious aspect of the Twilight backlash about the kind of message it sends out to susceptible young girls about gender roles and relationships. Edward Cullen's behavior could be red flagged for abuse if you made a checklist. Having read all of the books but Breaking Dawn (even I have my limits), I had to say that the Twilight series is romance fantasy of the most flippant kind. To me, the discriminating and slightly older than the target audience reader, it takes itself so seriously that it cannot possibly be serious. But there is something though about this Bella Swan girl that teen girls are relating to in droves. To me she reads very much like an empty vessel, but perhaps that makes it easier for their self-insertion into the story.
Would I let my daughter read the book? I wouldn't stop her from reading very many things to be honest; I would hope I raised her to have a questioning mind. The truth is, our culture is already like navigating a minefield of sexism and backdated social views. "Girls, you in danger." Time is short, Twilight is cheap, and it's not setting us forward, I know that.
The Twilight backlash still makes me roll my eyes thought because it ends in needlessly dramatic, wannabe-edgy thoughtless gestures like this. You are setting up no debates about the things that matter, or even reading a book- in fact, you're thinking less than Stephenie Meyer, Twilight author. You didn't want it in the first place, WHY ARE YOU BUYING A BOOK TO BURN IT?!? Start discussions over the validity of the text, protest near Stephanie Meyer's house with a sign or something, but don't burn the books. It's destructive and it's offensive and it's not up to you to take that book off the market.
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