Twilight: the Battle for Legitimate Art

A lot of critical analyses of Twilight, the award-winning series by Stephenie Meyer, focus on legitimacy. Is Twilight literature? Is it good literature? Is it worthy of critique? These questions reveal the fundamental fallacy rooted deep within our culture: the idea that art should be questioned at all. Art is art. It needs no explanation, no analysis, no excuse. Art is the expression of our inmost psyche, our deeply-rooted desires, our secret yearnings which would otherwise be impossible to express. Twilight is all of this and more.

Instead of interrogating this text from this perspective, I would like to pay homage to this great work by exploring the characters and plot with the same simple lucidity and attention to detail Meyer paid them. I want to get inside this work, to live in it, and experience it again. I want to feel what people feel when they immerse themselves in art such as this; I want to touch nerves in the same plain yet oh-so-effective way. I want people to be moved, and I want them to be entertained. Let us cease to critically analyze; let us not merely destroy. Let us create.

Let us use our hearts, not our minds.

Let’s do art.

TWILIGHT

Art is Beauty

25 thoughts on “Twilight: the Battle for Legitimate Art”

Lucy Knisley did a very similar take on Stephenie Meyer: http://lucylou.livejournal.com/566295.html

Twighlight is not my kind of escapist literature, (or my kind of anything) but the hostility expressed by some people concerns me. As if their opinion is so all-encompassing that other people should *stop* enjoying a thing they enjoy because it has been pronounced to be “not good.” (This does not reflect on your post above, it is meant as a general statement.)

I have a rule at my blog – Just because you like it, doesn’t mean it’s good. And Conversely, just because it’s not good, doesn’t mean you can’t like it. I want to promote self-awareness in my readers. In reality, it doesn’t work because fans believe that *if they like it, it must therefore be good.* And nothing any critic can say will sway them. ^_^

I learned a new Japanese work last week: ??? – Chuunibyuo. Second-year of middle school disease. I.e, 14-year old angst. Coincidentally, some of the most wildly successful manga and anime franchises focus on this. Amazing, huh? ^_^

I like Twilight! As I’ve written a time or two here…not unreserved love, or anything, but I think it’s fairly entertaining, and that it’s bizarre in interesting ways.

I still think this post is funny though.

i read the first volume of the Twilight manga, and the “plot” thing- at least in the traditional comic book sense- sure holds true.

There’s no antagonist introduced in manga volume 1, no real conflict that I can recall, and I don’t think it even bothers with a cliffhanger ending.

Yeah…Twilight is all about the romance. There’s suspense plot sort of, but it’s clearly secondary to the angst and the vampire hotness and the angst. And the love triangle. Also the angst. So maybe less secondary and more quinternary? At best?

I kind of love the sparkly vampires. It’s bizarre and ridiculous and kind of moving, I think.

Maybe I’ll post my essay about twilight and andrea dworkin and virginity here later in the week….

Dave Barry wrote a very funny parody of Twilight.

Erica: nobody is allowed to like anything I don’t like. After all, everybody’s entitled to my opinion.

Oh, I also like that Joy got the Twilight/superhero connection. Edward is so Superman for tween girls.

Haha, Alex – Of course.

Since I only like evil, psychotic lesbians who wear uniforms and eyepatches over their right eyes, you’re all going to have very limited reading choices when I rule the world. ^_^

Tom: Why would you link that? That person obviously doesn’t love Twilight the way *I* do. No appreciation for lovingly rendered art these days.

Erica: I definitely think people should be able to enjoy the things they enjoy.

Noah: Superheroes, also Brad Pitt. The same thing, really.

Brad has GOT to make a superhero flick.

I nominate him for Matter-Eater Lad from DC’s ‘Legion of Superheroes’.

I haven’t read any of the books, but I watched the first movie. The thing that really struck me about it was the pervasive, upper-middle class *banality* of the vampire family’s lifestyle. Edward drives a dinky little car, has a tasteful bedroom with loads of music, and they all play baseball. Gothic sublime, it ain’t.

Yeah; I have an article about the class implications of Twilight here.

I sort of like the clumsy cluelessness of it (Volvos and baseball are sexy!) But mileage will differ, as always.

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i kind of feel like love triangles can count as “plot.”

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also, i haven’t read the book, but the stuff that bothered me about the (first) twilight movie wasn’t really any of the awkward angst or sparkly vampires, if anything i think it could have had done with more of both (not literally more sparkly vampires but more of that callow but raw and somewhat strange teen yearning/romanticism.) i’m still kind of a sucker for magical coming of age horror/fantasy stuff, mainly akira and carrie, both of which have some pretty silly bits. i didn’t mind the white-bred vampire family thing either.

it was the shameful cribbing from the sci-fi channel cinematic back-catalog that killed it; like that pov “animal stalking the woods” sequence at the beginning. as soon as they cued the canned-eagle-screech sound effect twilight was dead to me.

As threatened, I’ve posted my twilight and dworkin essay here.

“I sort of like the clumsy cluelessness of it”

Yeah, there is something disarming about how cheesy the upper-class signifiers are. It’s like that Simpsons episode where Mr Burns is in the bathtub with top hat on, smoking a cigar and–what really sells the gag–eating a packet of
“extra-fancy potato chips”.