Background Info:
John Green is the (completely awesome) author of a few of my favourite books, Looking For Alaska, An Abundance of Katherines and Paper Towns.
He and his brother Hank also have a youtube channel (Vlogbrothers) in which they often talk to each other, but they talk about Big Issues also for the world & stuff.
Oh, and they’re are the founders of Nerdfighters.com which is just kind of made of awesome.

So, without furthur ado, this is John Green’s opinion of Twilight (the source being his youtube channel, obviously):

Source.

The writer of this article, Hank Sartin, is definately anti.
He mostly talks about the lack of feminism in the series despite what Stephenie Meyer says.
He also touches briefly on the idea we were getting at two posts back with the adults reading kids’ books and about the influence of Harry Potter on the YA genre.

So nostalgia and escape are certainly part of the puzzle, but Twilight’s popularity also speaks to a rear-guard cultural movement, a conservative response to the radical changes in sexual politics of the last decade. Stephenie Meyer has claimed her books are feminist because they are about Bella making a choice, an assertion that would be laughable if so many people weren’t nodding in agreement. The Twilight novels espouse values more suited to 1809 than 2009: They offer up chaste romance with an ideal man, initially mysterious and menacing, who eventually confesses his love for the heroine and protects her from his own unruly desires—and from evil men who want to ravage her (or “suck her blood”). Feminist? Hardly. The Twilight series aims to clean up the sloppy excesses of grrrl-power feminism. It teases readers and viewers with the prospect of burgeoning teen sexuality only to cap it with an abstinence-only message coded through vampirism. As Edward warns, there’s no safe sex when he could lose his precarious control of his urges at any moment. So, one supposes, heavy petting is out, too. How much fun can it be to live as an immortal playboy when you can’t even get to second base?

It’s an interesting article, kinda ranty, but if you want to read more: click here.

Thanks to Jude for the tip!

Twilight, the movie, comes out this week. It is based upon the bestselling novel by Stephenie Meyer, and, like the book, is said by many to be the “next Harry Potter,” meaning it is the first young-reader book series to come close to the astronomical sales of J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series. Meyer still has a lot of catching up to do, having sold “just” 17 million books worldwide, compared to Rowling’s 400 million.

While both sets of books deal with children and their adventures with the supernatural, that is where the similarities end. Potter is aimed at a slightly younger demographic (9 to 12) and is loved by boys and girls alike; Twilight appeals mostly to older girls (14 to 19) and their sexually frustrated mothers.

The most startling difference between Twilight and Potter, however, is not demographical; it is ideological.

Put simply, Rowling and Potter live on the left; Meyer and Edward dwell on the right.

Both sets of books are popular in the United States, but I believe it is for drastically different reasons, however subconsciously those reasons may reside. Just as the nation continues to more of less split into the red and the blue (with high hopes that our President-elect can change this), the fundamentalist and the forward-thinking, so too does the world of children’s literature.

Read the rest of the Source Article here at racialicious.com.

It’s an interesting article, mostly talking about the politics behind Stephenie Meyer and JK Rowling’s different ideas.
Worth checking out, I’d say. =)

Source: http://www.applegeeks.com/

I was reading through a blog post today about the world of a fifteen-year-old as expressed metaphorically in young adult literature. There’s a brief mention of Twilight, towards the end, which is why I’m sharing this:

The creepiest baby in all of young adult literature, of course, is the one in Stephenie Meyer’s Breaking Dawn, the final installment of the Twilight vampire saga. Protagonist Bella is all about physical transformation. For her, death is a consummation devoutly to be wish’d, because it will entail eternal youth with forever-love Edward. But after the wedding she finally consented to in order to get some sparkly loving, she discovers an impossibly fast-growing pregnancy—a vampire spawn that kicks her still-human ribs apart, gives her internal bleeding, breaks her spine, and requires a gruesome Caesarian-by-teeth. (I am so looking forward to seeing how the movies handle that.)

The horrific pregnancy and birth, however, is followed by Bella’s own birth into her new life as a dazzling vampire, with self-control and abilities even other vampires find impressive. And, bonus, her child is also perfect: never cries, always loving, rapidly growing, and walking and talking by two months. The wages of sin might be death, but the wages of post-marital sex seem to be nightmarish pain, followed by eternal life blessed by a wonderful child.

Bella is often accused of passivity, but although there are certainly faults to be found with her fixation on romance to the exclusion of all other interests, she doesn’t actually lack forward momentum. She’s the sexual aggressor and instigator of change in her relationship, hurtling through milestones at breakneck speed—first love, first soul-crushing breakup, marriage, sex, childbirth, and motherhood in less than two years—before achieving her goal of eternity in a fairy-tale cottage with her loving family. Her transformation is agonizing and traumatic, but, aware of the risks and owning her choice, she pushes unrelentingly for it anyway. Although I do wonder if Bella’s really considered the ramifications of repeating high school over and over again, as her husband and new siblings-in-law do—after this ultimate transformation, she has perfection, but a static and essentially unchanging one.

The writer goes on to say that she prefers the sorts of books most of us seem to like, where the problems the characters faced were real in a way that they didn’t necessarily all end with “happily ever after” like twilight did. I can’t tell what Karen Healey (the author of the article) actually thinks of twilight in terms of her fan/anti-ness but it’s an interesting point none the less.
I think one of the biggest differences between twilight and some other YA lit I read is that I think the way Stephenie Meyer writes is an unintentional metaphor. When she has her characters do something, she thinks literally, but we read the undertones and don’t appreciate it. It is this that I think makes her seem so misogynistic, etc. to us. The fact that these crazy, unintentional themes are entwined with the reality of our world is confusing to us, especially at whatever age we’re at where we’re trying to figure out who we even are.
I agree with the author of the article in the sense that I personally prefer the more realistic versions of the stories. Life isn’t perfect now, and even if we get married and have kids, and live forever, it’s still not going to be perfect.
We realize that, and that’s why we’re more drawn to the more gritty, imperfect stories where people are flawed and where they triumph nonetheless because they’re normal like us. In Bella’s case, she was “special” to begin with, due to forces outside her control. She was saved by a beatiful stranger and her transformation into adulthood was either already there, or at least eased up a bit due to the fantasy she lived in. Her vampire transformation is the symbol of her transition into adulthood. It was easy for her, after the whole gruesome birth scene. Her rebirth showed her as the dream person, perfect and special in every way now that she’d grown up.
But we don’t want to be told that everything is perfect if you act like a stereotypical housewife. We want to be shown real, fantastically flawed, lovable in their own way characters!
Is that where Stephenie Meyer fails?

Haha, wow.
Tangent much? =P

Anyway, here’s the whole article if you want to read it. Please note: It mentions assorted other YA novels, and is more about the metaphorical hardships in YA novels than anything I just said.

So yeah.

Thoughts?

From “Sorry, ‘Twilight’ fans, some experts say vampire love isn’t healthy” article on Kansascity.com:

There are moments in the books that are troubling even to those who enjoyed the series.

One is about a character named Sam who, when he was turning into a werewolf, loses control and hurts Emily, the young woman he desires. Later, he apologizes profusely. She forgives him because he was out of control and didn’t mean to hurt her. The two get together, but Emily is left scarred forever.

If you subtract the werewolf element, such scenarios sound all too familiar to experts such as Mitru Ciarlante, the youth initiative director for the National Center for Victims of Crimes in Washington, D.C.

“This pattern of the ‘werewolf’ losing control sounds like a dynamic we’ve heard in abusive relationships,” Ciarlante said. Stalking is also “very much an element in teen relationship abuse and a precursor to sexual violence.”

Suzanna Narducci, a co-founder of TweenParent.com, a Web site for parents of 9- to 13-year-olds, said she wouldn’t forbid kids from reading the books or seeing movies, although she admits that when Bella makes a choice about college, “that killed me,” and the relationship between Sam and Emily “reeked of domestic violence.”

“It’s a matter of using it as a teachable moment,” Narducci said. “Romance means something so different for them. It’s important for parents to use it as an opportunity to have an open dialogue about what romance is like and about the difference between fantasy and reality.”

Read the whole article here and here (page two).

It focuses more on the Sam/Emily relationship, but it offers some insight on why people like it and concerns about whether this should be okay or not.

It also helps that the writer of the articles seems to reside in Connecticut, like me, Lizzy. I guess smart people live here? =P

Thanks to Jamie (JaToTheMe) for the tip!

The Vatican has blasted New Moon, calling it “deviant” and a “moral vacuum”.

The Twilight sequel, which hits cinemas this weekend, has been criticised by the governing body of the Roman Catholic Church for its supernatural references.

“This theme of vampires in Twilight combines a mixture of excesses that, as ever is aimed at young people and gives a heavy esoteric element,” complained the Vatican’s culture council leader, Monsignor Franco Perazzolo.

He added, “This film is nothing more than a moral vacuum with a deviant message and as such should be of concern.”

The Vatican’s stance comes as something of a surprise as they have softened their stance on certain blockbusters recently – approving the most recent Harry Potter film and calling the sequel to The Da Vinci Code “harmless entertainment”.

Um… Wow.

The twihards are all pissed, but still.
Score 1 for the Pope?

Source