Twilight is great for teaching feminism!by Mischief Maker 03/13/2013, 8:48am PDT
fabio wrote:
Did she ever take enough time off for harping on Christmas songs to give her thoughts on the Twilight series, books written by a woman, loved by girls, where the female protagonist is nothing but a passive object to be put in danger and fought over as a prize by men?
However awful they are in execution, the Twilight movies are kinda accidentally genius. Their mormon author's purpose was to sexy up teen abstinence and the "traditional" role of women, and by shifting perspective to fantasy, she (perhaps unintentionally) shines a giant spotlight on the insanity of traditional gender relations. Feminism 101 should start with Twilight to set the stage.
It's like this. All people, regardless of gender, have two basic mental needs: a feeling of independence and self-assertion, and a feeling of social connection and empaty. To be in a state where you're missing either of these is unbearable.
Leaving aside the "why" for another discussion, our society allows men all the independence they want, but harshly discourages empathy. To go Mischief Maker for a second...
The only two people a man is allowed to be completely emotionally open to are his mother and eventually his wife. Men are only allowed the emotional connection they crave through women. Not talking sex, I'm talking connection. Playing a heartfelt ballad that you wrote on an acoustic guitar? Fag.
Women get the opposite. Society allows them to emotionally connect with everyone and everything, but the only way they can gain the power of self-assertion is through men. First her father, then eventually her husband.
At the start of Twilight, Bella's father is in a depressive slump and isn't doing his manly duty of providing his daughter the security that would let her assert herself. It's all his faul that she's at the mercy of men around her, represented as ravenous superpowered monsters who desire her (blood) and are always a hair trigger away from pouncing. It's not until she meets Edward, a superpowered monster who she can trust, that she can start to interact with the world of men with some degree of security. When Edward breaks up with her in the 2nd book, she's once again thrown to the wolves and she's only able to survive by latching onto Jacob. Easy for men to say it's an asshole move leading Jacob on like that, but from Bella's perspective it's a matter of life and death.
Finally in the last book she marries Edward and has a kid. Edward is now guaranteed to be hers for life. At that point she gains his power and is able to assert herself amongst men. She even goes a little crazy with this power she's been denied her whole life (like an unethical woman who instigates fights between her boyfriend and some guy at the bar). In the end she's kicking ass and taking names with this power, but only in the socially acceptable "maternal" context, which is again, power she got from her man.
Going back to fabio's Chris Rock video, THAT'S why women turn on each other when a man comes between them. "Edward" kind of guys who are both powerful and trustworthy are few and far between, and until she has a permanent life-commitment from an Edward, a woman will never be secure and independent (and even then she has to be alert for other women "stealing" her Edward away).
Does all this sound stupid to you? Good! Because the goal of feminism isn't to make women men, it's to break down this dysfunctional dichotomy. We've made excellent, though still incomplete, progress in tearing down obvious institutional oppression like glass ceilings. But for feminism to truly be victorious women have to free their minds from the Twilight paradigm, and men have to free their minds from "what are you, a fag?"
Eliminating media that tells little girls that they're screwed if they don't have a man to protect them is one means to that end. It's not the end itself. As I said in my example of Samus pre-Other-M, gamerz of the Nintendo generation were already prepared for strong self-sufficient female characters. Further alterations to the videogame environment won't advance the goal, therefore these videos are unnecessary, a waste of money, and dilute the message of feminism.
