In Defense of Twilight
Now, before I go any further, I should make it clear that I hate Twilight. I hate both the books and the films.
(I recommend, if you are going to form an opinion on the saga, you at least read/watch it. Too many people offer opinions with no experience of the saga. Stop saying it’s crap because you’ve heard other people say it’s crap. Find out for yourself).
I hate it because I hate the characters, I hate the vegetarian vampires, the lack of sex, the writing, I hate it all.
I think it’s laughable that Meyer says Twilight was influenced by Pride and Prejudice, and that Breaking Dawn was partly inspired by The Merchant of Venice. I hate the fact that her writing was at least partly influenced by her own Mormon beliefs.
However, I still have some points I’d like to make in the saga’s defence.
I read the Twilight saga partly to see what the fuss was about and partly so my younger sister would stop bugging me about them.
My point is, the books were written for quite a young audience. So of course they don’t have sex right away. Of course the vampires are in high school- the books, after all, are aimed at high school students, who want to see characters, be they alive or dead, go through high school just like they do.
Ok, so there’s no sex. There’s nothing particularly wrong with that, I just don’t enjoy it. But then again, I’m not a teenager in high school. Most adults I’ve spoken to think it’s right that teenagers wait until “they’re ready” to have sex, so what’s wrong with that happening in a book?
Some of the best romances in literature have no sex in them, though I wouldn’t put the Twilight saga in the same category. My point is, it’s possible to have a believable, interesting romance with little or no sex, especially when you’re dealing with young characters, and young readers.
The fact that you may not like a book doesn’t make it crap, nor does it make its fans stupid. It means the book is not to your taste. I don’t particularly enjoy Stephen King novels, but I’m not going to dismiss King as a bad writer, nor am I going to bitch to a Stephen King fan about how bad their taste in fiction is. I certainly would never claim to be able to offer criticism of a book I haven’t read.
When you mock Twilight fans, you mock young teenage girls for the most part. What’s clever about that? So you don’t like the books. So what? That doesn’t make other people wrong for enjoying them.
I remember when I was in secondary school, being (light-heartedly) mocked for reading so much, how wonderful it was when all of a sudden, thanks to Twilight, I wasn’t the only person sitting on the stairs reading at lunch time. Most of the girls were doing it, often two or three of them huddled round the same book. There were debates about characters and scenes and themes in the corridors on the way to different classes.
My sister was introduced to Twilight by a friend of hers in school. Though she’s since grown out of Twilight, she’s become a much more avid reader than she was before. Twilight led to many other writers and books for her, and now she has a book collection to rival my own (which I regularly borrow from). Before Twilight, she read very little. In fact, if I remember correctly, she read no books at all, really, unless she was forced to in school.
Personally, I’m good with anything that gets non-readers reading, considering that one in every ten children in Ireland will leave school with literacy problems.
I´m all for teens reading things other than what is mandatory in School. As a teen, I read a lot and I was one of the few who actualy read the mandatory books, lol. But there weren´t many books for teens then. As for Twilight: I read them all, have them all at home. Don´t know if I´ll ever read them again, but for young girls I think it´s an ok read. They obviously take it too damn seriously and they can become quite annoying because of it, but hey, at least they´re reading something.
I don’t hate the Twilight Saga, but I agree with your post in that books that get young people interested in reading are always a good thing. Once you get them hooked on reading, it becomes a lifelong hobby that enriches their lives and helps them become better students. Whether you loved or hated the Twilight saga, there is no debate about the fact that it has created thousands of avid readers, which can never be a bad thing.
While the characters in the Twilight Saga irritate the snot out of me, I don’t hate the series as a whole.
But I agree with you wholeheartedly. This gets kids reading. Then, they discover the “good stuff” and are more likely to enjoy it than they would have before.