Maria Pawlowska thinks we should have healthier movie characters for our children to learn from.
Breaking Dawn (alas, only part 1) is finally on screens. For those of you have missed the latest pop-culture fad, Breaking Dawn is the penultimate installation of the Twilight saga, which tells the story of the love between a mortal human and a vampire. Bella meets Edward, falls in love, and spends a few hundred pages trying to persuade him to be with her even though that will likely to change her into an immortal blood drinker. If you’re a Twilight fan I’m sure you think I haven’t done justice to Stephenie Meyer’s books and you’re probably right.
However, I don’t care so much about the intricacies of a romance between a vampire and a human and how it proceeds to turn into a love triangle involving a werewolf. (I wonder why.) What I do care about, however, are gender roles—specifically in the context of sex (OK, I admit that makes for a worse tagline than cross-species romance)—and Breaking Dawn is ripe for the picking.
The movie is chock-a-block full of violence in a sexual and not so sexual context. But who am I kidding, we all got used to people being shot on screen and guts flowing all over the place. What’s more, we don’t really consider it a problem. In the US, for a film to be R-rated, a movie can contain “strong violence often with blood and gore, strong horror scenes and explicit/illegal/prolonged drug use“ but only “mild or implied sex scenes”. So yeah, if you’re a teenager going to the movies, violence is generally OK but baby-making is not.
Anyhow, what rubs me the wrong way about Breaking Dawn is not so much the werewolves having a go at the vampires or the vampires having a go at other vampires. Rather, it’s Edward Cullen’s aggression towards his bride. It the movie (and more so in the book) Bella is literally all in bruises after their wedding night, and she never once stops telling him that she knows it’s all because he loves her and [insert domestic violence excuse of your choice].
Oh, and another funny thing—Edward, being the non-aging, immortal vampire that he is, spent about a century going to high school and somehow never learned where babies come from. (To be fair, Bella seems pretty oblivious as well.) Guess what? They get pregnant on their honeymoon—or maybe it’s just that vampire sperm eats through condoms so there’s no point in trying to prevent a pregnancy.
The pregnancy, though, can (and almost does) kill Bella; she becomes awfully sick as the baby almost literally eats her from the inside. Charming, I’m sure. Then, it appears to me that the director of Breaking Dawn went out of his way to fit the Motion Picture Association’s definition of ”strong violence often with blood and gore” while shooting the scene of baby Cullen’s birth. Go see the movie if you really want to know more. (Or just go read this.)
But Bella isn’t the first Bella in kids’/young people’s films to be involved with an abusive (not quite regular) man and explain it all away as love. Beauty and the Beast anyone? Yup, Disney’s Belle, folks.
(OK, OK I’m stretching it a little. She had a different vowel at the end of her name—details, details, etc.)
Beast may be a prince who’s had a curse thrown on him (don’t they all?), but in the mean time he’s a verbally and physically abusive man for whom starving Belle was a chosen method for dealing with her disobedience. Belle sticks with the Beast, hoping that “her love will change him.” (Of course, it eventually does. It’s a Disney movie and there’s a dancing candlestick with a French accent in it, for Pete’s sake).
Some say (there’s a whole genre called “Feminist deconstruction of Disney princesses”) that Belle doesn’t let him get his way, refuses to acquiesce to his demands, and goes all “civil disobedience” on him by sneaking out for food when he doesn’t allow her to eat. I don’t know about you, but I sure as hell wouldn’t want young girls to get the message that “a partner who doesn’t allow you to eat is OK if you don’t secretly get food anyway.”
Belle and Bella are just two of the many female storybook/film characters who are abused and violated and never leave their abuser. The really worrying thing, though, is that they star in films (and books) for young people who are just forming their attitudes toward relationships.
True, most of that should come from the real world—parents, hopefully. But children learn just—or perhaps, at least—as much about role models and appropriate behaviours from their peers and their entertainment. And maybe I’m just being a spoilsport about this, but I really think that we have a huge issue with how women and girls are portrayed in movies for young children. (Full disclosure: I LOVE Disney movies.)
Hopefully things are changing. There has been somewhat of an uproar about the treatment Bella gets in the movie (and not just on feminist sites), and the Disney Princess Feminist Fails have done the rounds on the Internet. Also, there’s some exciting stuff coming our way soon; Pixar is making its first movie with a female lead. At the end of the day I just really hope young girls and boys will have ever more fun, adventuress (non-victimized) characters of all genders to love and learn from.
—Photo AP/Andrew Cooper
I think most of us are forgetting here that (at least my generation of girls) grew up on Disney movies and I don’t know ANYONE who ever got the message from Beauty and the Beast that it’s OK for a man to treat you badly as long as he reforms himself/really loves you all along. I know that young children are impressionable but I was that young child once and not for a second did I A) translate Belle and the Beast’s relationship into real world terms (aka a woman being treated horribly/held captive by a man) or B) watch… Read more »
“The fire killed 27 victims Including at least one woman”
This was part of a headline that I read about 3 years ago.
When I read the whole story it turns out that in fact no women were killed but the author still felt it necessary to mention it anyway. Seems strange that if the author had been correct that 26 – 27 victims were men but don’t rate a mention of their gender. How many men in this Twilight movie are injured , killed and subjected to violence.
My opinion may be one sided slightly as i am a fan of these books, but i honestly feel that reading so much into something you have not read is rather judgemental, yes it’s a unrealistic never going to happen fairy tale, but its harmless, the lead guy is utterly head over heels in love and would lay down his life for the object of his affections. It couldn’t be any less about being in a physically damaging relationship. Girls go potty for this film because they want a love like the one this book created. But instead of just… Read more »
The vast, vast majority of on-screen violence is males being attacked, shot, blown up, bludgeoned, stabbed, burned, exploded, and dismembered, and otherwise killed or murdered. Not a single mention of objecting to any of that. Why? Why is that violence acceptable for kids but Twilight’s treatment of the girl isn’t?
When I saw the title, I was (mistakenly) hopeful that this would be more about teaching kids good values (e.g. non-violence, humanity, kindness, etc. no matter who the victim is ) rather than another feminist female-superiority message. I should know better by now.
A very unoriginal analysis, but here goes: I think there’s a larger romantic fantasy at the heart of the Twilight saga, and this just happens to play out with vampires and werewolves, which are not really the central elements of the story. If they all lost their supernatural powers, the center of the story would remain. Bella is a relatively non-descript female character, played by a fairly non-descript actress. She is essentially an Everygirl character living in Nowhere, USA. She could be any one of millions of teen girls. The really big fantasy is not the existence of werewolves and… Read more »
For a minute, I wasn’t sure if you were describing Twilight or the new Doctor Who series: “A mysterious immortal-yet-young man with amazing powers appears out of nowhere in the life of an everyday middle-class girl, shows her a world of wonder and magic, and assures her that she’s actually the Most Important Girl in the Universe.”
You might as well just label it preteen porn.
@wellokaythen: you’re right and your analysis is spot-on: that’s “(young) female porn”. 🙂
Like male porn, it’s all about what they dream and would like to happen, not about reality at all.
And that’s why it’s so appealing and exciting, I think.
I think your points about violence and sex are spot on… but I also think they are the ones that parents, friends and even the Disney cricket in our own heads can most easily combat. As the father of a daughter, I know how to have the conversation that violent men and sex that leaves marks are to be avoided. The larger meta-message of all these books/movies (present even before the sex part) is that a young woman meets a guy who she puts ahead of her own well-being, and the only way to keep him is to give herself… Read more »
I wish it was okay for young men to get that same eloquent message about valuing their own lives.
Yeah Maria I am right there with you. The whole thing kind of confuses me, the more so because I am the dad of a 17 year old girl. Here was my attempt to understand. Driving in cars with vampires…talking to my teenager about #twilight and true love: http://bit.ly/girls-vamps
There’s a desire to balance safety with pleasure, and the way Twilight does it annoys the hell out of me as a feminist. Procreative sex within the confines of a heterosexual marriage trumps everything, especially if the result is a son. “Twilight” is “Steel Magnolias”-type martyrdom to male desire for the young adult market. Watching someone like Bella, or a real person like Amy Winehouse, who is willing to blow everything on loving the wrong man in order to be loved, I can’t help but think that we admire too much young women who are too tragically broken or too… Read more »
I think you are overly simplifying the plot of the movie. In all the parts it is said that the issue of sex is because of vampire strength and control over it while under strong emotions. I don’t really think much young girls would see a teenage vampire in their boyfriends and would not as easily transfer the ideas and behviors. Maybe I’m overly optimistic, but for me, the issues were resolved in the movie in a complete way, also in the case of pregnancy (inter-racial after all :>).
I just watched Labyrinth last night on Netflix Streaming (80’s starring David Bowie and Jennifer Connally). Probably not as popular as Twilight but had many of the same psychosexual themes ONLY, Jennifer Connally’s character rejected the Troll King in favor of staying a kid/teen. The story wasn’t all that good (LucasArts and Henson spending money on special effects!) but the female protagonist was strong and interesting. Dirty Dancing was wildly popular in the 80’s as well, and had one of the strongest female leads of its time. Strong men and strong women, what a concept. The vampire canon I came… Read more »
I don’t know if you have seen Buffy the Vampire Slayer, if not check it out. Buffy is the strongest and most awesome female lead I can think of and by season 7 the feminist metaphor really starts to come into play. Also, in regards to violence in TV and Movies, in Europe they censor violence and not sex. In America we censor sex and not violence. I think this says a lot about our society. Even American TV shows are censored for their violence in Europe.
What’s puzzling is that for all that the Twilight books and movies are about a young girl being victimized, seduced, and exploited by a (much) older man, it’s GIRLS who are drawn to it and who love the stories with a frenzied fanaticism. What is it about this theme that’s so compelling to adolescent females?
What about the Social Darwinism at play here. The story revolves around a young girl having to choose between rival gangs. Ultimately she chose the lover with the most cultural prestige. she still gets to manipulate the beta Male hovering around her like a love sick puppy. I’m pretty sure this story could be played out with real street gangs.
I don’t like the Twilight books, but I think this argument is obnoxious. The vampire in Twilight has technically been around for 100 years (?), but he is physically and emotionally 17. Bella freaks out a bunch of times that he won’t “turn” her sooner, because she doesn’t want to be older than him. Looking at it as if he’s a pedophile is not only absurd, but (in my opinion) trivializes pedophilia.
I agree that the arguments posed are obnoxious. In the Belle example, this logic would make every parent that sent their child to bed without dinner abusive. While I don’t agree with this type of punishment, I wouldn’t necessarily label a parent abusive if they did that. Where it concerns the human-on-vampire violent copulation: I have read the books, I understand the context, and the full story behind it. Dismissing it as partner abuse I believe would be to pervert the original idea and vision of the author. That said, should a 12-year old be reading the material without some… Read more »