More on Twilight

Ok so my goal for the day was to draft four pages of my Twilight paper.  I've got four and one-half.  And I think I'll keep going.  Here's the thing.  As I'm rereading and writing, I'm seeing that the whole thing is just as annoying and insipid and even insidious as I first thought.  For a while there, I was second guessing myself:  Maybe I'm just over reacting--maybe it's not that bad.  But it is.  For me the bottom line is that Edward, no matter how charming and handsome and yummy-smelling he may be, is basically just really controlling of an infantilized Bella.  And it makes me ill.  It makes me ill that 12-year-olds (and I maintain that it's "tweens" who are most at risk and probably most reading all this) are absorbing all these ideas about how relationships should be and how romantic E's devotion to B really is, when he's like the classic abuser.  He tells her what to do, questions her sanity, even ultimately isolates her from her family and friends.  This is so not OK.  And yet, in the context of the novel it's presented as not just acceptable but desirable, the mark of Edward's love.  And as I was writing I realized this:  isn't this the very rhetoric that the abuser uses?  Doesn't he say that he somehow has the right to be controlling because it's in the best interest of the female and because it shows how much he loves her?  Excuse me while I barf!