'The Twilight Saga'

For when the vibe is amorous, dreamy, and moody.

'The Twilight Saga' -- Edward and Bella in 'Twilight'

This series has got to be one of the most confounding works of this century. It quickly spawned an entire tranche of deeply fanatical devotes; obsessively reading the books in a weekend and then showing up to the theater to hate-watch-but-secretly-adore the movies with all of your girlfriends was a quintessential part of the young female millennial experience. Capitalizing on this fervor, Hollywood used it as the arguable soft launch of cash-grabby franchise films. And while the books, movies, and merchandise raked in collective bajillions, everyone pretty much agrees that the story is just not very good. It boasts a sloppy love triangle as the central narrative anchor, which as narrative anchors go is fairly uninspired, and the remainder of the plot is largely bland, nonsensical and uninteresting. So, it has rightly and understandably drawn ire and ridicule in equal measure to its wild and enduring popularity.

However, if you are able to consider that all of the things we usually think of as key elements of literary brilliance (nuanced plotlines, subtle character development, etc.) are merely window dressings for an exploration of extraordinarily complex themes, then Twilight becomes a lot more interesting.

But first, a note on aesthetic. There is no doubt that the whole series is a vibe. In many ways, it lives in that category of film that is more about conveying an aesthetic than telling a story (like The Fall). For Twilight, the aesthetic is all about location. Forks, Washington is as much a character of The Twilight Saga as The City is a character in Sex and the City. The damp, verdant gloom lends itself to a dreamy quality without which the whole thing would be sorely lacking. Forks provides the perfect backdrop for the profound exploration of choice that the series (apropos of its teen audience) explores.

On the surface, the choice is this: the young, pretty, awkward-but-not-really heroine must choose between the love of Jacob and the love of Edward. Jacob represents the temporal while Edward represents the eternal. One is rough, the other is refined. One is literally hot while the other is cold. It’s a choice between the old world and the new, between a humble life and an opulent one, between the earthy and the crystalline. Coastal Washington has all of this in spades, and so, besides being a optimal place for bringing the eerie and otherworldly to life, services the choice architecture from an aesthetic perspective very well.

More than just leaning into the natural and societal paradigm of the PNW, though, this whole ball of wax carries a strikingly Christian ethic as it languorously and angstily ponders that most central of Christian questions, which is if course eternal life. The romantic dichotomy and emphasis on choice reflects itself in the duality of Myers’ sparkling vamps. Eternal life is either hellish or demonic (represented by the red-eyed killers) or heavenly and elevated (the pacifist and “vegetarian” golden-eyes). All of the trite conflict surrounding the Cullen family’s soullessness and Bella’s blasé attitude toward losing hers for life eternal with her problematic hunk belies a genuinely novel treatment of age-old vampire lore. A vampire can only acquire golden eyes through self-control and denial of their baser nature, which is to kill humans and feed on their blood. This course represents the narrow path in Christianity. It is exceedingly difficult maintain and few vampires actually manage it. Those that do, however, seem to be blessed with close relationships and an eternity spent with all creature comforts imaginable (like a mansion made of glass in the woods filled with all the books ever written and dubious art, and a whole tropical island off the coast of Brasil), while those who don’t are cagey, cynical, lonely, and doomed to wander the earth barefooted, hungry and inappropriately garbed.

The Christian iconography goes beyond the vampire world-building, and layers in with the aforementioned bland, nonsensical and uninteresting plot points. Despite the series’ identity as a teen romance, the main pair wait until they marry to consummate their love. And they mate not just for life, but for all of eternity. The series also celebrates the right to life and maternal sacrifice with its much-maligned Renesmee arc. Renesmee herself amounts to an immaculate conception, born of a union between mortal and immortal that shouldn’t scientifically be able to bear fruit (who among us thought Edward capable of producing any bodily fluids at all, except maybe the mouth-venom that turns living creatures into stony eternal beings?). She will reach adulthood at the age of seven (the number of divine fulfillment – let us not forget that God saw the world was good and rested on the seventh day) and then enjoy immortality thereafter, permanently youthful and walking the line between human life and eternal life (Daughter of Man, Daughter of God, anyone?).

All of this to say, I offer my heartiest endorsement for The Twilight Saga (both the books and the films) to enter high school curriculum all across America. It’s got to be better than what’s circulating in the classrooms right now. It’s also a nice little dollop of early-aughts escapist nostalgia for anyone who needs some of that in their lives.

Watch the Film