Alice Cullen Eclipsed

So last night I finally got around to seeing Eclipse, the third Twilight film. Despite the fact that Eclipse was my favorite of the novels, I did not see it while it was in theaters this past summer. I was seriously dating a non-Twilight fan and trying to spend every moment I could with her. (I bring an Edward like intensity to relationships, which is probably why I am still gloriously single.) Under such circumstances I was not about to take the time to go by myself to a movie and if she showed no apparent interest in going then that was the end of that. To be honest, though, I had dropped out of my previous interest in the Twilight series as it has become too popular for all the wrong reasons, too much about the "sexy stars of Twilight," and I dreaded to see how this trend might affect even the best of the series. I am a proud member of team Alice. This means that I could care less about Bella having to choose between Edward and Jacob and would have much rather seen her develop a friendship with Alice. (See More on My Favorite Friendly Neighborhood Vampires.)


Seeing the film has confirmed my fears, even if the film was not completely without merit. The main addition from the novel was that the film actually included a series of brief scenes with the newborn vampires and actually develops Riley, their supposed leader, as a character. In this the filmmakers were taking their cues from Stephenie Meyer, who actually wrote a novelette, The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner. That novel, though, did not actually focus on Riley, but rather on the newborn Bree. This was actually the sort of move that would have greatly benefited the early Harry Potter films. Those films needed their villains, the present Lord Voldemort, his younger self in the form of Tom Riddle and Sirius Black (a supposed villain) to have major screen time. This could have easily been done by writing new scenes with material hinted at in the books. For example Voldemort breaking into Gringotts, Riddle killing Moaning Myrtle or Sirius' fight with Wormtail. These characters worked in the books as specters in the backdrop. This is not something that works on film. Also the actors playing Harry, Ron and Hermione were not ready to carry the films so any attempt to place the focus on other actors would have been welcome. If the three child actor leads of Harry Potter were not up to the task, the three adult leads in Eclipse, were not much better and could have used having the film taken out from under them.


In a two hour film, everything that stays in let alone anything added is going to come at the expense of something else. The cut part that most caught my attention was Alice "kidnapping" Bella and forcing her into a slumber party. This was not a major plot point in the book and hardly necessary to incorporate into the movie. That being said this was my favorite part of the entire series and the decision to cut it says something about the values of the filmmakers, as opposed to say my values. I love eccentric characters and relationships that offer unusual dynamics and lot of witty back and forths. Alice trying to be human and practicing on Bella is interesting as is Bella monologuing and taking her vampire/werewolf world perfectly in stride. Edward going back and forth about killing Bella is interesting. Bella having a platonic relationship with Jacob, fooling around with motorcycle is interesting. What I have no interest in is a romantic triangle between Bella, Edward and Jacob with Edward going emo, Jacob ranging from sulking to being an SOB (literally) and Bella being a ditz head. What should the filmmakers have found so valuable in the books to be reproduced on screen, but this annoying romantic triangle.


What made the romantic triangle bearable in the book was that, for the most part it was presented through Bella's monologuing. The Twilight movies, for the most part scraped the monologuing, leaving nothing but corny dialogue to be recited with a serious dramatic romance face. They could not have left the story to Bella' monologuing. That might have taken away some of the serious sexiness of the story and left it as a joke. For this same reason, they could not give the time for Alice and Bella's friendship or to develop Riley into a worthwhile character. It might have taken away from the romantic triangle of the sexy stars of Twilight.

Sparkly Fairy Vampire Princess Versus Puppy-Eared Half Demon

Recently I have gotten into the Japanese anime show InuYasha and have been watching it on Hulu. It is about a school girl named Kagome, who is transported, Lion, Witch and the Wardrobe style, to medieval Japan, which functions as a Narnia fantasy world complete with all manner of magical creatures. She has to team up with a half-demon warrior named InuYasha to recover the fragments of a sacred pearl. These serve as lots of little rings of power. Along the way, they gain for allies Shippo, a cute half-fox kid, Miroku, a sleazy monk and Sango, a demon hunter wielding a giant boomerang and a giant flying kitty. They take on a host of villains such as InuYasha’s older brother, Sesshomaru, the resurrected priestess Kikyo, who broke InuYasha’s heart and left him skewered against a tree for fifty years, and the ultimate villain, Naraku, who is less interested in killing our heroes as using them to further corrupt the pearl. I think of Naraku as a less sophisticated version of Lord Foul from The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever. The plot that you see it really bait to fall into the real plot, which is usually more interesting than simply kill the good guys.

The person who recommended InuYasha to me also happens to be a fierce opponent of Twilight, who finds Bella to be too passive and Edward to be down right abusive. I find this strange because I find myself liking InuYasha precisely for the same reasons why I liked Twilight. For me, the main draw of Twilight was normal girl Bella being thrown into this horror fantasy situation of having vampires and werewolves as the chief men in her life. Bella is never fazed by anything and insists on playing the comic straight as she applies her normal person logic to her supernatural life, taking everything to its logical absurdity. The fact that Bella has an incredible level of control over Edward and Jacob, despite not being "powerful" in any conventional sense is itself a form of fantasy wish fulfillment empowerment. Similarly, Kagome applies her school girl logic and concerns about homework and tests as she runs around her fantasy medieval Japan with her puppy-eared half demon in tow, while going questing after magical objects. She has her perfect magic boyfriend to have go fetch and literally say "sit" to. InuYasha, like Edward, might be verbally abusive, but it is in a sulking charming schoolboy sense and made up for by romantic daring and witty back and forth dialogue.  

Like Stephenie Meyer, but working long before she came on the scene, Rumiko Takahashi seeks to overturn the action superhero genre and render it into something more likely to appeal to women. She does this in two ways. First, she places a female as the central protagonist and tells the story from her perspective. It is interesting to note that this does not mean that the female character has to be empowered. Both Kagome and Bella are fairly passive characters, though Kagome is less so, surrounded and protected by more powerful men. Just as with historical narrative, the mere fact that a female is granted narrative goes a long way to neutralizing misogyny. One can take the same patriarchal story, but simply by giving the female narrative you have made her an active figure and ultimately allowed her to gain a level of humanity. Second, InuYasha, like Twilight, takes the action genre and turns it into a tongue and cheek romance. What looks like a blood and violence story is revealed to be a love story as the monster is rendered with a hidden soulful side that yearns to love and be loved in return. Thus the "male" paradigm of power and violence is defeated by "female" charm, empowering not just the seemingly passive female protagonist, but the feminine as a whole. 

    

Articles of Interest (Harry Potter Economics, Asperger Vampires, Coming Back to Judaism, Jewish Gospel Music and Conservative Health Care)

The Economist has an article on Harry Potter, dealing with, with what else, the economic side of Potter. In particular, the article looks to the future of Potter now that the films are about to be finished. Are you looking forward to Harry Potter: The Theme Park? To the people at Bloomsbury and Scholastic, who were transformed into giants of the book publishing industry, may I humbly suggest a musket and magic fantasy series being written on a blog near you?

Speaking of novels being written on the blogosphere, Miss. S. has started posting her Eternal series. This is a story about vampires in the spirit of Twilight and True Blood. (She is another person that I converted to the Gospel According to Stephenie Meyer.) This is not a horror story; this is a story that has some great characters, some of whom happen to be vampires. (Do these vampires have Asperger syndrome?) I unashamedly admit that Miss. S. is the more polished writer than yours truly and I think she has a real shot at being able to turn this into a published novel. I would not solicit readers and comments for myself, though that would be nice too but please give Miss S. your support; she deserves it.

Kosher Academic has a guest post on In the Pink about being the child of a mother who converted out of Judaism and coming to Judaism as an adult. Steven Levitt of Freakonomics has a somewhat similar background. It is the subject of his book Turbulent Souls.

Kerri Macdonald writes, in the New York Times, about Joshua Nelson, a black Jewish gospel singer. No, he is not a convert. According to the article: "When he was growing up, Mr. Nelson and his family went to a black Orthodox synagogue in Brooklyn on holidays." I am curious if anyone knows what synagogue they are referring to.

David Brooks is one of my favorite columnists for his ability to make the case for conservative principles (something different from the Republican Party) and doing it in a judicious and moderate fashion. This is once again on display as he examines his mixed feelings about Health Care Reform. As a Libertarian, I do not support any government involvement in health care. I do not support Medicare; I do not even support a Food and Drug Administration. That being said if we are going to have government health care we might as well try to have good government health care. As of right now we already have government run health care. You will not be refused care in a hospital because you are not capable of paying for it. Our government health care system, though, is simply horrendous. The question for me is that, recognizing that the sort of Libertarian health care reforms I support are not going to happen, not even if Republicans get back into power, should I support President Obama's plan which is relatively sane and moderate as far as government health care plans go?

The Man in Black and My Favorite Sparkly Fairy Vampire Princess: In Defense of Comedic Romantic Heroes

Today I went to see New Moon. I would like to go officially on the record at this point to admit that Twilight is wearing a bit thin on me. This comes from Twilight becoming too popular too quickly and for all the wrong reasons. I think I am going to vomit if I see one more magazine cover with the "sexy stars of Twilight" on the front. Twilight was a brilliant comic horror romance starring Bella's motor mouth. She monologues her way through vampires and werewolves all the while being unfazed by any of it, but keeping her eyes focused on her normal teenage girl issues. Twilight would collapse into absurdity the moment it tried to actually be a real love story; the characters cannot stand up to the limelight of being judged by standard fiction logic. This sums up for me why New Moon was at best a mediocre film. The first film had the good sense not to take itself too seriously and could be taken simply for laughs. New Moon crosses that line into trying to be serious, leaving us with over the top acting and way too much angst. This is particularly unfortunate as, of all the books, New Moon is Bella's story; she is off on her own without Edward for most of the book except when she purposely puts herself at risk in order to summon up images of him telling her not to do whatever she is doing.

I went alone as the girl I am now seeing opposes Twilight. I managed to hook the last two women in my life onto Twilight, but no luck in this case. (I still think she is very cool anyway.) She says that Twilight is the one romance that she would never allow her daughter to read. Her reason for this is that she finds Edward Cullen to be emotionally abusive:

Bella is essentially interacting with Edward in a way that exposes her to emotional abuse.  She stays with him, even when he insists on making all her important life choices. And the only time that she disagrees with him is when she is making a foolish, short-sighted decision (e.g. wanting to be turned, not wanting to go to college, etc.).

I do not hold this against her. Firstly because at least she admits that Alice is a great character. Secondly, because I do not think she is all that far off. Considering all the teenage girls gushing over Edward and taking him seriously, I would have to admit that the risk of girls taking Edward as a romantic ideal and Bella as a model to follow may be too great. Edward's behavior is problematic and nowhere more so than in New Moon. He abandons her, leaving her in a fit of depression for months. Then, when he comes to believe that she is dead, he tries to commit suicide by angering the vampire mafia, the Volturi. No, I would not want my daughter dating Edward, angst-ridden sparkly emo vampire fairy princess or not. As a fictional, over the top romantic hero, though, this is fine. I would not want my daughter dating Romeo, with his panache for killing cousins in duels right after the wedding and general suicidal tendencies, either. The ending sequence of New Moon works fine if you are willing to take it for what it is; a spoof of Romeo and Juliet applied to this vampire universe.

I appeal to my favorite comic romance (and hers as well) The Princess Bride. (Many of you will have likely seen the brilliant film adaption of it. I urge you to read the even better novel from which it came. The novel makes fun of Lord of the Rings.) The story involves two lovers Buttercup and Westley. Westley leaves Buttercup to make his fortune, is captured by pirates and assumed dead, only to come to Buttercup's rescue several years later as the Dread Pirate Roberts. When he rescues her he is dressed in black and wearing a black mask. Buttercup does not recognize him but assumes that he is the man who killed her love. The man in black is rude to spiteful to Buttercup until she pushes him down a ravine and he calls out "as you wish," his old code phrase for "I love you." Buttercup then roles down the hill herself to smother him with kisses. So Westley manages to survive the pirates and become their leader, but he does not bother to send his love a message saying "I am alive and running a successful pirate business." (This is a variation on the classic question about Joseph, who becomes the Viceroy of Egypt and goes seven years without sending his father Jacob a note saying "I am fine dad, I was just sold into slavery by my brothers, but things are going pretty good now.") To top this off, Westley acts very coolly to her upon rescuing her, accusing her of abandoning him to marry Prince Humperdinck. We are never told what makes Buttercup so attractive. She spends the entire story in need of being rescued and whining. (Hardly a good feminist role model.) I would not consider this behavior the sort to be imitated. That being said I am willing to accept this as a spoof on the traditional romance, taking romantic troupes and pushing them to over the top extremes. If I wanted to get academic I would say that we are engaged in a feminist deconstruction of the traditional romance, bringing out the latent patriarchy of the genre by taking it to its reductio ad absurdum extreme.

I am willing to accept stories like Twilight and Princess Bride for what they are, comic romances that present over the top love stories with particularly domineering and moody male heroes with love-struck and submissive females with little in the way of actual personality, as long as they stay in their boundaries. The moment any future teenage daughter of mine takes any of this too seriously I think I would need to have a talk with her. (Note that memorizing the entire film of Princess Bride does not consist of taking things too seriously. Rather it is the mark of a healthy childhood and mature taste in movies.) There are fairy tales, fairy vampire princesses with sparkles and then there is real life. Fairy tales are useful as long as they are kept in their place.

Lunchtime Book Recommendations: An Idea as to How to Create Must Read Books

I often eat lunch in the Hebrew Academy lunchroom during the same time as some of the elementary school grades. The other day, I was in the lunchroom when I saw one of the teachers do something very interesting. Towards the end of the half hour period, when students were beginning to finish, she took the microphone and asked if any students would be interested in coming up to tell everyone about a book they recently read and would recommend. The teacher then asked for a show of hands as to who has read the book. A young friend of mine recommended Diary of a Wimpy Kid. It seems that the vast majority of the kids have read the series. I am not familiar with these books but they clearly seem to be very popular. Another kid came to the floor carrying a copy of Garth Nix’s Lirael and suggested the first book in the series, Sabriel. When asked what he liked about the books the kid did not say anything so I shouted out “Mogget.” Mogget is a cat shaped spirit, who likes sleep and fish and will kill you if you take his collar of. His main role in the series is to be the sardonic voice of reason, saying “this is stupid and we are all going to die.” I raised my hand, but was not called upon. I wanted to recommend Suzanne Collins’ Hunger Games. This is a teenage book about a reality show in which twenty-four kids are thrown in a giant arena; the last one alive wins a life of fortune and fame. Think of it as Theseus meets Lord of the Flies with a totally awesome heroine armed with a bow and arrow.
This whole idea of allowing kids to come up and make book recommendations is an excellent exercise in controlled chaos. We are handing a microphone over to kids without any prescreening and they get pitch any book they so wish. I also think it is a brilliant way to sell reading to kids. One of the advantages that movies and television have over books is that they start with a wider audience and there are fewer of them to compete for an audience. This allows for the creation of a “must see” factor; people will watch films and television shows, regardless of their actual merit, simply because they know that other people are watching these things and they do not want to be left out when these things are being discussed say around the office water-cooler. The model here is for committed individuals to take an interest in something. Once a critical mass is reached, these individuals become a group and the object of their interest becomes a lightning-rod for others to bring them into the group. A larger and larger group of people will “tune in” to find out what the whole fuss is about.

It is certainly possible for books to do this. Harry Potter and Twilight are proof. In both cases, Goblet of Fire for Potter and Breaking Dawn for Twilight, these series had a moment where they went from just being very successfully books to being “cultural phenomenon.” The key to this was that these books became big enough to catch the attention of the media. The media, true to its fashion, made these books front page news as they “examined” the phenomena. Of course being front page news sold more copies of these books, bringing more “examinations” and continuing the cycle. Potter and Twilight succeed through a bit of luck and because they possessed certain qualities to give them mass appeal. The question becomes, how do you create a dozen Potters and Twilights? Take Nix’s Abhorsen series mentioned earlier, these are the sort of books that have the right mixture of in theory being for children while having more adult content to appeal to a mass audience. All that is needed is that bit of luck to create the needed critical mass in order to attract media attention and make them “must read” books.

Having kids come up and recommend books to their peers in a public forum allows for the creation of small groups around a book. I get up and recommend a book. Someone else raises their hand to show that they read it. Now I have something to go over to that person with in order to talk to them. A third person in the audience in the crowd sees that two people have read this book and are excited about it. This person then goes and reads the book. Now you have three people interested in something. Interest gathers interest and before you know it you have chain reaction of people reading the book to find out what everyone else is talking about. And you have it, Must Read Books!

The Attack of Some Vampires from my Past

When I first posted on Twilight I mentioned a series of books called The Vampire Diaries L. J. Smith.

These books are very similar to Twilight. Vampire Diaries even has a werewolf making an appearance. It makes a very useful comparison in that the Vampire Diaries serves to demonstrate how easily Twilight could have gone wrong in the hands of a less talented author.


I read Vampire Diaries when I was in fifth grade. Like Twilight, Vampire Diaries is built on the premise of girl meets guy, girl falls in love with guy, guy falls in love with girl, guy just happens to be a vampire and stuff ensues from there. The Bella Swan character here is named Elena Gilbert and the role of Edward Cullen is taken up by Stefan Salvatore. Stefan, a vegetarian/black-ribbon vampire, comes from Renaissance Italy where he had a brother named Damon. Both he and Damon, while hating each other, fell in love with the same woman, Katherine, and asked her to choose between them. Katherine, unbeknownst to them, was a vampire and, unwilling to make a choice, decided to go with both of them. Stefan and Damon proved unwilling to live with the arrangement. Seeing this Katherine committed suicide by stepping out unprotected into sunlight. (The obvious plot twist does occur. We later find out that Katherine faked her suicide and shows up in the present.) Elena looks almost exactly like Katherine and, once Damon shows up, she becomes caught up in this centuries old brotherly war. Damon in the right hands could have been an interesting character along the lines of Spike from Buffy the Vampire Slayer. He is the villain through the first two books, who becomes good, at least sort of, and provides the cynical commentary. As it plays out in the book though, Damon comes out as making no sense. When the books needed him as a villain they made him a villain and then make him one of the good guys once Stefan needs a brotherly sidekick.

Just to be clear, I do not consider Vampire Diaries to be worthwhile reading. They are like the Twilight series, but without the charm, Bella’s running straight-man commentary and the long supply of characters that one actually cares about. The quality writing is about the same as two better known young adult horror authors of that generation, R. L. Stine with his Fear Street series (This is before he turned to writing for pre-adolescents with the Goosebumps series.) and Christopher Pike. Smith is on the more chaste side of things, more Stine than Pike. I find it to be an interesting reflection on our society that Twilight has been controversial for its abstinence message. There is more sexual content in Twilight than Vampire Diaries. Vampire Diaries was written long ago in the early 90s when one could write young adult novels without any sex and no one would think twice. (One had to be careful on the off chance that ten-year old Orthodox boys might read them.) To be fair to Smith, I did read all four of the books in the series back then. (I have since found out that she has continued the series in recent years.) Despite the fact that I viewed the books then as trash and would likely have an even lower opinion now, there must have been something that drew me in. I even fantasized about being able to play Klaus, the “big bad” who appears in the fourth book as the vampire behind the scene pulling the strings of the story. I do think I would make a great vampire and would love to play one. Klaus, though, would be too head man Dracula vampire for me. I would be better off as the second-in-command vampire who gets to run around, kill people and laugh.

Soon after Twilight became really big with Breaking Dawn, I noticed Vampire Diaries on sale in a two-volume edition. I had a laugh at that; apparently Twilight was powerful enough to resurrect a book from the netherworld of used paperbacks. Now I find out that Vampire Diaries is being made into a television show by the CW. That counts as taking the desire for something Twilight-like to an extreme. Since the source material was mediocre at best and is being made, one assumes, because it is like Twilight, I do not expect the show to be any good nor do I expect it to last for more than a few weeks. I would like to say that will have the good sense to not bother watching it at all. I suspect, though, that I will find myself watching at least an episode for all time’s sake.

I would like to add a side note as to the nature of young adult/teenage fiction. As it should be clear from the post, I regularly read young adult fiction before I was a teenager when I was a pre-adolescent reading on a teenage level. I still read a fair amount of young adult material since I have a strong inner-child and like a good story no matter what age category. In this sense, I represent both ends of the market for young adult literature. This begs the question of is the audience for young adult literature really teenagers. The book reading population is quite small and those who do read are likely to be significantly above average readers. Teenagers who actually read books are likely to be at an adult reading level and therefore reading adult books. Pre-adolescent readers, though, are likely to be reading at a teenage level and will, therefore, turn to young adult books. On the flip side, there are also going to be adults who are going to be attracted to young adult fiction. Sean Jordan argues that since most adults are not capable of reading adult fiction there is a large market for children’s books that are mature enough to appeal to adults but are “childlike” enough for such people to read. He makes this argument in regards to Harry Potter. The model would also fit Twilight and to a large extent the Da Vinci Code (a young adult book openly marketed for adults from the beginning) as well. In the end audience for young adult books are not teenagers, but pre-adolescents and adults.

Twilight at Midnight

I caught a midnight showing of Twilight. The theater was packed, mostly with girls. I asked the person sitting next to me what she thought the female to male ratio was and she said 20:1; that seemed about right to me. It was great seeing the movie in a theater packed with hard core fans; it was incredible how almost every move and grimace Edward and the rest of the Cullens, made from the very beginning, got laughs. You had an audience that was clued in to the Cullens and what lay behind them. This was certainly a movie for the fans; I am not sure that those unfamiliar with the books would be so quick to appreciate what all the fuss is about. Considering the size of the fan base and the fact that this movie was made for less than forty million dollars it is fair to say that Twilight, like Lord of the Rings, the Chronicles of Narnia and Harry Potter, is one of those rare film adaptations that could succeed merely by relying on fans of the book.

As someone who absolutely loved the books, I was concerned about the film. Twilight would be a very easy book to butcher. All one would need to do is let it slide into a generic action/horror movie and abandon everything that made it special. The books had truly charming characters; to bring that to the screen one would need a good script and, even more importantly a cast of highly skilled actors. The screenplay was a model of a faithful intelligent adaptation, true to the book in spirit and basic plot while still willing to make those necessary minor changes for the sake of pacing and to tighten up the story. The biggest change was bringing James, the chief villain, in early in the film instead of having him wander into the story towards the end. James and his associates, Laurent and Victoria, get to kill two people in the Forks area. One has a far greater luxury when dealing with a book to allow a story to simply meander, without a clearly focused plot. The first Harry Potter film made the mistake of not doing something similar with Lord Voldemort; they chose to remain faithful to the book and kept Voldemort off screen until the very end. This took away much of Voldemort’s effectiveness and took away what could have been a much needed rudder to give the film some sense of plan and purpose. This is funny because unlike, the young stars of Harry Potter, Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson (He played Cedric Diggory in the Harry Potter films.) prove to be more than up to the task shouldering the film.

This brings us into my second point, namely how good the acting was in this film. To take a step away from Stewart’s and Pattinson’s Bella and Edward, this film has a surprisingly rock solid supporting cast. One of the weaknesses of the books was that Stephenie Meyer (Who makes a cameo appearance in the film as a restaurant patron.) wrote really shallow human side characters. With the exception of Bella, all of Meyer’s non werewolf and vampire characters come across as cardboard cutouts. Bella’s human friends, Mike, Jessica, Angela Eric and Tyler, are remarkably dull and serve merely as fillers to the story, giving Bella some sort of life outside of Edward. Bella’s father Charlie serves mainly to be clueless about her and Edward’s relationship, particularly about the fact that Edward regularly spends the night with her. Bella’s mother, Renee, lives in Phoenix, and is nothing more than a scatter brained eccentric on the periphery of Bella’s life. The actors playing these parts, though, manage to create real characters. Maybe Meyer could afford to let these characters fall by the wayside, but these actors took on these roles and played them for all they were worth. Particular mention should be made of the actor who played Mike Newton. I particularly disliked Mike in the book; he is nothing but a jock and the fall guy, who never really stood a chance of getting Bella. He was played in the film as a bit of a geek, but really sweet. The actor who plays the role is Michael Welch; I have never seen him in anything else, but I will definitely be keeping tabs on him to see what he does in the future. I knew I recognized the actress who played Renee, but I could not place her until it hit me that she played Nina Myers in 24. She manages to do quite a bit with the little she was given. (If you really want to see her in action, watch Season One of 24. You will love her up until the end than you will hate her guts.)

The Cullen family was great. I particularly liked how they played Emmett. This is another example of someone who took a throwaway roll and made something of it, not even by speaking but just by being a presence on screen. I liked Alice, but unfortunately they did not give her much to do. The baseball scene was surprisingly good. For a movie with this sort of budget they managed to bring something that was visually quite interesting.

At the end of the day this is Stewart’s and Pattinson’s film and they shine as Bella and Edward. Neither of these are easy roles. For Bella you needed someone who could play a comic straight, one of the hardest things to do in acting; how does one be funny without obvious life lines? Bella needed to be pretty but real, someone who does not look like they spent hours working on themselves and believably dresses like someone living on the budget of a daughter of a small town sheriff. I was hoping that the film would follow the books and keep itself firmly centered on Bella. I even had the idea that they should have Bella narrating the story. This they did. Edward had to be charming, but scary. Edward goes through a lot of mood swings, something not that far off from manic depression. This has to work as a coherent whole and not collapse into “I love you/I hate you.” Pattinson never succeeds at making Edward scary, but he gets off on all other accounts. He is to die for charming and one is willing to buy into him as a manic depressive as applied to a supernatural being.

All in all, I do not think I could have asked for a better Twilight film. Anyone who was a fan of the books is going to love this film. If you have not read the books, I would suggest that you read them first. Alternatively maybe watching the film will show you what you have been missing and get you to open up one of the real literary treats of the past few years.

Military Fiction: A Call for Help

In our book club, we are finishing up Brave New World. It has taken us a lot longer than it should have as there were some delays. For our next book, we are doing Twilight, which has me jumping for joy. I have wanted to do Twilight for a while now but did not think I would get it, considering that the book club was mostly guys. I gave it to the chair of the book club and she fell in love with it and decided to push for it. It helped that two girls recently joined us, giving us more balance in terms of gender. While I am looking forward to several weeks of Twilight I am concerned about how it will play out with certain members of the group. One of the problems with choosing books is that we not only have a wide range of reading interests but also of reading ability. For example, there are two people in the group, one of whom has since left for college, besides for me who have very strong backgrounds in science fiction and fantasy. We had a habit of going off on side tangents which no one else in the group understands. To add to this, all three of us can quote long sections of Monty Python at each other, much to the annoyance of everyone else. The ongoing process has been the chair leaning on me to lean on them to keep them in line and to keep the conversation to things that other people can understand and follow. As for reading ability. I am working on a Ph.D. in history. There is another person in the group who is a Ph.D. student in English. The chair just got her Ph.D. But then we have people in the group for whom reading books is a struggle. One such person has little interest in reading anything except for novels about modern warfare. He is particularly fond of Tom Clancy. This is life in a group full of people with Asperger Syndrome.

It is about our Tom Clancy fan that I am writing. He is dead set on us reading a Tom Clancy novel or at least something along those lines. I and others in the group have no interest in reading Tom Clancy. Besides for the fact that Clancy’s books tend to be full of right-wing cold war paranoia, they are also too long to work well for us. Every time we have voted on a book this person has dutifully posted a Clancy or something along those same lines and every time he has been voted down, much to his great frustration. I would like to help him out here so I am turning to you, my readers. Can anyone recommend a novel about modern warfare (World War II to the present) that is not Tom Clancy or a Tom Clancy clone? It should have plenty of action, but still have useful discussion material and be less than five hundred pages.

I welcome any and all suggestions.

Bella’s Wedding, Bedding and Surprise: A Review of Breaking Dawn (Part II)

(For part I see here.)

Book one of Breaking Dawn deals Bella’s wedding, bedding, and the discovery that she, against all possibility is pregnant with Edward’s child. This book is 138 pages. In essence, Meyer took what should have been Breaking Dawn and lopped off the first three-hundred to four-hundred pages to get right to the chase. It skips the engagement and starts right before Bella’s and Edward’s wedding and goes through their honeymoon. I was looking forward to having Bella and Edward being engaged, planning their wedding and have Alice take everything over. We got a hint of that at the end of Eclipse, but I wanted more of that. Also, the lead up to the wedding is precisely the sort of “dramatic” tension that Meyer thrives at: is it a wedding or a funeral? By skipping over the lead up to the wedding, Meyer missed out on what could have been her finest hour.

Unlike Eclipse, which used Alice quite a bit, Breaking Dawn lets Alice slink off to the side. It skips out on Alice planning the wedding. Books two and three also reduce her to bit parts. She gets sidelined with headaches and then, when things get tough, she runs off with Jasper leaving the Cullens in the lurch. Granted this is all about her pulling a very Alice stunt, but I wanted Alice to be Alice at the center of the action. I can only take a certain amount of Bella and Edward. Bella having to go up against Alice balances things out.

As to the bedding part; Meyer has until now been able to succeed, despite her religious beliefs, at writing a love story because she has not needed to write any actual sex into it. She kept things at a place she was comfortable with, which allowed her to write effectively. With Breaking Dawn she has written herself into a corner; she is out of her comfort zone and seems like a deer caught in the headlights.

Book two deals with Bella’s pregnancy and comes out to 215 pages. This book is interesting because it switches perspective away from Bella, which is how, with the exception of the last chapter of Eclipse, the entire series has been written. Meyer turns to Jacob Black, the werewolf. This tactic manages to inject some life into the book and goes a fair way toward saving it. Jacob gets into an interesting and quite Cardian situation with his fellow werewolves, which Meyer handles effectively. The main issue of book two is Bella’s insistence on bringing her child to term, despite the fact that it is killing her. In this, she finds an unexpected ally in Rosalie, the one Cullen who has been against her. Obviously, there is a pretty strong pro-life message wrapped up in all of this. There was one thing that really upset me about this book. Edward, in an attempt to get Bella to give up the child, tells Jacob something that was just weird, really out of character and just plain wrong. I know that Edward is in panic mode, but still. This was just another example of Meyer not being able to handle sexuality past a certain point and getting herself stranded.

At 387 pages, book three is by far the longest and comes close to matching the original Twilight novel in length. This book deals with the Volturi coming after Bella and Edward’s newborn child, claiming that it violates the rules and therefore must be eliminated. The Cullens, in a very Cardian maneuver, get help from the local werewolf population down at La Push but also reach out to every vampire they can get to come, not to fight the Volturi but to “witness” to them, that the Cullens have broken no law. The struggle with the Volturi comes right out of the society building story. The Cullens are a counter society and the Volturi, as the establishment, seek any excuse to eliminate them. This notion of the Cullens and their society-building story is neatly summed up in a little speech that Meyer gives to a vampire named Garrett:

I have witnessed the bonds within this family – I say family and not coven. These strange golden-eyed ones deny their very natures. But in return have they found something worth even more, perhaps, than mere gratification of desire? I’ve made a little study of them in my time here, and it seems to me that intrinsic to this intense family binding – which makes them possible at all – is the peaceful character of this life of sacrifice. There is no aggression here like we all saw in the large southern clans that grew and diminished so quickly in their wild feuds. There is no thought for domination. (Breaking Dawn pg. 717-18.)

Breaking Dawn has its moments and is definitely a worthwhile read, despite my criticisms. I did have high expectations for this book; I hoped that Meyer could accomplish what J. K Rowling did with Deathly Hallows. This was not to be. What we received were three abridged books in which much of what made the Twilight series so much fun had simply leaked out. I still enjoyed Breaking Dawn immensely. Even when she is not at her best, Meyer is still one of the most gifted people in the business and I eagerly await her future work. (Maybe she can do a spinoff about Alice.) This will probably, though, not go into my comfort pile, books, like Harry Potter and the rest of the Twilight series, that I go back to again and again whenever I need a smile.

Oh, and by the way, I am so naming my daughter after the Loch Ness Monster.

Bella’s Wedding, Bedding and Surprise: A Review of Breaking Dawn (Part I)

A while back I came up with a theory as to what Stephenie Meyer would do with the Twilight series. Eclipse left us with Bella agreeing to marry the vampire love of her life, Edward, having survived three books still alive, human and, remarkably enough, still a virgin. I thought of Breaking Dawn as offering a checklist of getting Bella wedded and bedded and undead. My thinking was that instead of going with the obvious ending of having Bella being turned into a vampire, Meyer would go through with the wedding and the bedding, but then have Bella get pregnant, with a human child. (The books never said that vampires could not have children.) Since Edward and Bella are a unique couple, it is perfectly reasonable that the vampires would be unaware that such a thing could be possible. Having a child would change Bella’s priorities. Now she would be determined, one, to protect her child and keep it human and, two, to stay human for her child's sake. The child, once it is born, would be some sort of special genius capable of tipping the balance of power in the supernatural world, taking the series into serious Orson Scott Card territory. The Volturi, the vampire mafia, would come after Bella, her child, and the Cullens. They would be interested in the child and the fact that Bella would now have violated the terms of Alice’s agreement with them (Back in New Moon, Alice explained Bella’s presence with them by saying that the Cullens were planning on turning her.) would give them the perfect excuse. This would lead to the Cullens having to fight the Volturi. To do this they would have to form an alliance with the werewolves and various other friends such as the Danali and Jasper’s old comrades Peter and Charlotte. This would climax in a cataclysmic battle, which would take place, somewhere right outside Forks. I think it is important that an author has the spine to kill off major characters. Hopefully, Meyer would allow for some heavy casualties and kill off a few of the Cullens, Carlisle being a likely target. Meyer might even take out Edward or Bella.

I figured this storyline would take three books to tell. The first book would have Bella getting wedded, bedded and pregnant. It would also establish the Volturi as something far worse then what they seemed until now, some old friends of Carlisle, who went after humans but kept the vampire world under some form of control; a minor evil which stops an even greater evil. The second book would deal with Bella’s pregnancy, the birth of her child and would have the opening rounds with the Volturi, leading to some great crises. Killing off Carlisle, much as J. K. Rowling killed off Albus Dumbledore, would fit nicely. Finally, in the third book, we can wrap everything up with a grand royal rumble of supernatural creatures, with Bella ever in the center and commenting on it all in her unflappable straightforward fashion, which is what makes these books tick.

I nixed this idea for two reasons. The first being that I checked one of the established Twilight websites and it specifically stated in its FAQs that vampires could not have children. I assumed that someone had posed this theory to Meyer and she downed it. The second thing was that I found out that Breaking Dawn was going to be the final Twilight book, so Meyer clearly planned to wrap everything up here and not open up a whole new storyline. While not to give too much away, as it turns out my theory, while not completely accurate, was quite close; so much for that website. As for this being a three-book storyline, Meyer took it and crammed it into one 754 page book. Curiously enough, unlike the previous books, Breaking Dawn is divided into three books, which follow the basic plot structure I outlined. Because of this, I intend to deal with Breaking Dawn as three separate books.


(To be continued …)

The Society Building Story and its Implications for Individualism and Faith

I have written a number of posts dealing with Orson Scott Card, Stephenie Meyer and their use of society building stories in their fiction. Before leaving the issue (for now), I thought I should say a few words to wrap things up. In looking back at my posts on the topic I realized that I failed to adequately explain why I think this issue is so important. Stephenie Meyer’s decision to follow Card’s lead is not a matter of artistic copying but of a shared critique of modern individualism and a shared religious vision.

At its heart, the society building story, in which a small group of individuals, with little reason to care for one another, are thrown together and attempt to build a society with one another, possesses an ambiguous relationship with individualism. If one wanted to be simplistic one could even accuse it of being anti-individualism. The characters start off as relatively independent individuals. The plot turns on their decision to surrender their independence and tie themselves down to the needs of the group. For example, in The Host, Wanderer surrenders herself to helping her community of free humans. With Ender, however strong he might be, he needs some sort of group to give himself up to. This is a far cry from the sort of do it alone heroic individualism at the heart of so much of modern fiction and of science fiction as well. This is not the work of Robert A. Heinlein; this is most definitely not Ayn Rand.

One could even link this to the religious beliefs of Card and Meyer. Card and Meyer are both Mormons, a religious group known for its strong sense of group discipline. Card and Meyer could therefore be read as anti-moderns, whose message is that, to find fulfillment, one must reject the individualism of modern secular society and submit oneself to the demands of the group; much in the same that Mormons and followers of other religions allow themselves to be controlled by the dictates of their group.

In a sense, though, the society building story used by Card and Meyer is strongly individualistic. The characters freely choose to bind themselves to their newly built society. So this act of society building is ironically very much the act of individuals; they could not have succeeded unless they were such strong individuals. Also, this act of society building is done in defiance of some other society. Wanderer rejects the perfect society of the Souls. The Cullen family of Twilight, by their very existence, is a rejection of the Volturi and their value system. Ender’s Dragon army fights the system at the Battle School even as it plays its mock battles against other armies.

This ambiguity about individualism is also at the core of work of Robert A. Heinlein, the father of heroic individualism within science fiction, as well. In certain respects, Heinlein is a forerunner for both Card and Meyer. While Starship Troopers glorifies the individual soldier it is also a remarkable ode to duty and an indictment of modern society’s inability to install a sense of duty and responsibility within its members. Heinlein’s The Moon is a Harsh Mistress can be read as a society building novel itself. It is about a computer led rebellion by the residents of the Moon against the rule of Earth. The people living on Heinlein’s future Moon reject the paternal statism of the countries of Earth and strive to build their own libertarian state. The real struggle in the story is not over whether the people of the Moon can defeat the occupation forces from Earth but if such a diverse group of people can band together as one group.

Card and Meyer are hardly supporters of the sort of polyamorous marriages that Heinlein advocated. Card and Meyer belong to the mainstream Mormon Church, not to one of the polygamous sects, so they are not into alternative lifestyles. As I see it, their use of society building stories has a distinctively religious component to it. Any religious group operating in the western world today operates, to a certain extent, on a similar model as the societies found in the work of Card and Meyer. All religious groups are, in one way or another, counter-cultures. In a secular state, the government cannot be used to advance the cause of any religious group. Even more importantly, in a secular society, the very ethos of the society is contrary to the values of established religions. One can see communities of faith as collections of renegades from the general society who have been thrown together by circumstances other than their personal like for each other and must join together to form their own alternative society.

The society building story as it is used by Card and Meyer carries the distinct stamp of their Mormon faith. Mormonism is a religion organized in a highly authoritarian manner, but also one in which power is closely centered at the base. The Mormon religion does exert a tremendous amount of control over the day to day lives of its followers; members most give tithes to the Church and serve the Church in the field as missionaries. That being said the Church maintains no paid clergy; instead, leading members volunteer to serve for a fixed period of time. What is truly fascinating about how Mormons operate is their system of wards. Wards are small chapters, usually encompassing a single city or neighborhood. For Mormons, wards operate as an extension of the family; there are ward meeting and ward picnics. Mormons fall under the authority of a given ward simply by living in a given area. They do not get to choose who their fellow ward members are; if they do not get along with other members of their ward they do not have the option of breaking away and creating a new ward. (Considering all the fights and splits that go on in synagogues, I can see the advantages of such a system.) So an individual Mormon’s relationship to a ward runs in terms of a society building story. One is thrown in with a group of people that one has no particular reason to care for. In such a situation, there is no other choice but to build for oneself, out of such material, a society, and even a family.

Time Magazine Article on Twilight

Time Magazine has an article out on Stephenie Meyer and the Twilight series. It has a nice analysis of Meyer’s style of writing and how it differs from that of J.K Rowling. While the author of the piece acknowledges that Twilight is not high literature he clearly respects Meyer as a writer and does not turn his nose down at her for writing "teen lit."

The Adolescent Military Genius versus the Friendly Neighborhood Vampires: An Analysis of Orson Scott Card and his Influence on Twilight. (Part III)

(This is the continuation of a series of posts. See here and here. I wrote the first two parts of this piece back in February. Sorry for the delay.)

As with the work of Orson Scott Card, the issue of society/family building and maintenance plays a large role in Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight series, lying just beneath the romance and the vampires. The Cullen family is a perfect example of the Cardian society/family. The Cullens are a group of seven individual vampires brought together by circumstances beyond their control. What keeps them together is not friendship or love but their shared commitment to a “vegetarian” lifestyle; they do not kill humans, just an occasional grizzly bear or mountain lion.

The Cullen family can be seen as a support group or even as a religious congregation. They are bound together by more than common beliefs; they need each other to keep on the path. With the exception of Carlyle, none of the Cullens can be described as a non-threat to any human within a several-mile radius. Left to their own devices they would turn lethal and they all know it. The Cullens, therefore, keep a constant watch on each other to make sure that no “accidents” happen.

Meyer does an excellent job striking a balance between keeping the Cullens likable and making them threatening. The Cullens have their charm, but they could go off on a killing spree and it would still make perfect sense in terms of their characters. It is more than just a matter of each of the Cullens having an overwhelming desire to kill anyone on sight or smell. Underneath their lovable exteriors, they are, to put it simply, evil.

The fact that the Cullens, as vampires, are irredeemably evil is the foundation of their whole way of life. They believe that they are evil satanic beings and crimes against nature. They, therefore, hate themselves and strive to go against the most basic element of their nature, the need to kill.

This is essentially the doctrine of human total depravity, which many Christian groups believe in. The fact that Meyer made Carlyle an ex-Anglican minister is probably not a coincidence. He is preaching a religious doctrine, complete with heaven, hell, and salvation. At its basis, though, Carlyle’s faith is one built around the belief in the utter depravity of himself and of the congregation he now leads. Whether the Cullens actually kill any innocent people or not is beside the point; the very fact that they can be tempted already puts them beyond the pale of righteousness. Carlyle is actually the religious optimist in the group. He believes that vampires have souls and might have a hope of getting into heaven, as opposed to Edward, who believes that they are all damned no matter how righteous they manage to be.

We view the Cullens through the lens of Bella, a modern human teenager. In theory, she believes in God and is a person of faith but, in practice, she is fairly indifferent to matters of religion. As a modern, she takes an optimistic view of human beings. She tends toward the belief that people, when left to their own devices, are basically decent. She takes a very non-judgmental attitude toward people, believing that people can be left to their own devices and they will find their way to righteousness. Because of this, she has no way of comprehending the notion of seeing oneself as a totally depraved sinner, standing under the glare of a judging God. It should be enough for God that we are basically nice people, right? The Cullens, with their very unmodern religious views, is a culture shock for her. Part of the fun of her character is how she plows straight through the world of the Cullens with her modern female teenager logic, taking everything in stride.

The running debate between Bella and Edward, over whether she should be made into a vampire or not, should be understood within this religious context. Edward wishes, above all else, to protect Bella’s soul. Bella does not think in terms of souls; for her, the only issue is whether she might end up killing someone in the end, but she is confident that the Cullens will be able to protect her until she develops the sort of self-control that they have. For Edward, it is irrelevant if Bella ends up killing someone, she would still be, for all eternity, an utterly depraved monster just like him. Part of Bella’s development as a character is her coming around to the religious worldview of the Cullens, with its concern for souls, heaven, hell, damnation, and above all else their view of themselves as totally depraved. By the end of Eclipse, Bella, even though she intends to join the Cullens, has come to the realization as to the true nature of the stakes involved. The fact that Edward seems to be willing to go along with this would indicate that his religious views have also evolved at least somewhat; he now is willing to acknowledge the theoretical possibility of salvation.

Ultimately the Cullens are a model for a religious society. It is not a religious society as most people would think of the term. They are not a group of righteous, sin-free people, or even people who think they are righteous and sin-free, joining together because they believe that they are better than everyone else. The religious society that the Cullens form is a society created by utterly depraved sinners for utterly depraved sinners and out of the recognition that they are utterly depraved sinners. The fact that they form this society does not make them any less depraved; what it does do is give them the strength to transcend their own depravity.

The Adolescent Military Genius versus the Friendly Neighborhood Vampires: An Analysis of Orson Scott Card and his Influence on Twilight. (Part I)

Stephenie Meyer, the bestselling author of the Twilight series, has a lot in common with the legendary science fiction author, Orson Scott Card. They are both active members of the Church of Latter Day Saints (Mormons). More importantly, while neither of them is known for religious novels per se, they both write from a background of faith and bring a strongly religious, though not particularly Mormon, vision to their work. Beyond this, I would suggest that the Twilight series contains certain Cardian elements. This should not be surprising as Stephenie Meyer has publicly stated that she is a fan of Card’s work.

I read Card as a running meditation as to the question of how one builds and maintains a society? What causes people to join together as a society? How does the individual relate to the surrounding society? What brings an individual to make sacrifices, sometimes the ultimate sacrifice, for the sake of his society? These issues underline almost all of Card’s work. For the purposes of this post I will focus on Card’s most famous work, Ender’s Game, and it various sequels.

On the surface, Ender’s Game is about a war between humans and an alien race known as the Buggers. Andrew “Ender” Wiggin attends a school for brilliant children. The purpose of this school is to create the next brilliant military commander, another Napoleon Bonaparte or Alexander the Great. The children at this school are being trained for one thing only, war. As such their primary education revolves around military strategy games, either computer games or the mock combat of the battle room.

The war against the Buggers is only an incidental part of the story. What Card is interested in is this Battle school as a group of competing societies. While the main character, Ender Wiggin, is a genius, his real talent is his ability to handle people. Ender is someone whom other people are willing to follow. People admire him and desire to learn from him and emulate him. Ender in turn is someone who honestly desires to help people. The narrative arch of the novel revolves around Ender building societies. Through the various stations that Ender finds himself, whether as a Launchie, as an unvalued member of Salamander army, as a valued member of Rat army, as a Toon leader in Phoenix army, or as the head of Dragon Army, Ender connects to various people and gets them to forge bounds with each other. Many of these people, such as Petra Arkanian and Bean, eventually become his subordinate commanders in the coming war against the Buggers.

What is interesting about Ender’s character is that, even though he is this great leader, he is a reluctant leader and does not seek power or recognition. Ender does not put himself at the center of the societies he builds. He always remains off to the side and alone.

The foil for Ender is his older brother, Peter Wiggin. Peter possesses similar gifts as Ender. The difference, though, between Peter and Ender, and the reason why the Battle school never took Peter, is that Peter lacks a firm moral base; Peter manipulates people for his own ends and is completely untrustworthy. While Ender is away from home at the Battle school playing his war games, Peter plays his own game, attempting, under the pseudo-name of Locke, to become a world leader. What is so interesting, though, about how Card deals with this character is that, while Peter may be immoral, he is not evil nor is he the villain of the story. Over the course of the novel and its sequels, Peter manages to do a tremendous amount of good even if the things that he does always seem to incidentally help him.

Ender and Peter can be seen as models of two different kinds of leaders, who come to be the center of two different kinds of societies. Peter is a political leader, who desires power over other people. He accomplishes his goals by making it in people’s interest to put him in power. He eventually becomes the Hegemon of the entire earth and leads mankind in its expansion to the stars. Ender is a spiritual leader. Even though he leads the first human colony to a foreign planet and becomes its governor, he gives up his post for a life of exile. His legacy is a book that he writes called the Hive Queen and the Hegemon. This book becomes a bible for those humans who go off to settle the galaxy and it spawns a religious movement known as the Speakers for the Dead. In the end, while Peter may have been a great political leader, nothing survives him. While Ender does not build any physical empires, he creates a society, beyond any physical boundaries, that lasts for thousands of years.

(To be continued ...)

We are Going to Do Feminism Like It Is 1895: A Review of the Gemma Doyle Trilogy (Part I)

This past summer a girl, that I was going out with, recommended that, since I, like her, was a Twilight fan, I should try Libba Bray’s A Great and Terrible Beauty (GTB). The date proved to be lousy, but the book proved to be a wonderful suggestion. Captured by its sharp, tongue and cheek wit and its parade of references to classical literature and poetry, I quickly read A Great and Terrible Beauty along with its sequel, Rebel Angels, and waited until the end of December for the final book in the series, A Sweet Far Thing, to come out. The lesson from this, I think, is that a good book is worth a bad date. The Gemma Doyle Trilogy is a work of historical fiction/fantasy about a nineteenth century English girl who attends a girl’s finishing school near London called Spence Academy. Gemma grew up in India as the daughter of an English official but is sent to Spence soon after her mother, Virginia Doyle, dies under mysterious circumstances. While the official story, which is put out, is that she died of cholera, Gemma saw her, in a vision, stab herself in order not to be captured by a dark creature, sent by someone named Circe in order to capture her. (I do love a book that is not afraid to kill of characters.) Gemma has to balance her visions, her attempts to come to terms with them and their implications with life at Spence. At Spence girls are fashioned into young ladies fit to play their role in high society, which is to marry well, run a household and bear children who can carry on the glory of the British Empire. This is the world of upper class Victorian England; a place in which absolute conformity is demanded and even the slightest act of deviance can destroy one’s reputation. Not that everyone actually plays by the rules; what matters is the appearance of conformity. Gemma quickly befriends Ann Bradshaw, a poor scholarship student, who is an even bigger misfit in this school than Gemma. The two of them have to take on Felicity Worthington and her followers, Pippa Cross, Cecily Temple and Elizabeth Pool. One of the things that I really loved about this series though is that despite Felicity’s Draco Malfoy like character, Bray does not simply keep her as an antagonist. Felicity and Pippa actually end up, by the middle of GTB, becoming good friends with Gemma and Ann. Not that Felicity really reforms; she remains her arrogant, cruel manipulative self, but she is quite lovable in her own way. She may be a vicious snake, but she is our vicious snake. Pippa also is a great character. Not to give anything away, but Bray does some very interesting things with her. One of the weaknesses of the Harry Potter series was that, up until the Half-Blood Prince, Rowling never tried to make Draco Malfoy likable or particularly effective as an antagonist to Harry. There could have been something very attractive about Draco. He has Crabbe and Goyle to protect him from any of the students. He has Severus Snape to protect him from any of the teachers. And if he gets into some real trouble he always has his father, Lucius Malfoy, to protect him from the Ministry of Magic. This boy is untouchable and he can do whatever he wants; who would not want to be him. Gemma, Ann, Felicity and Pippa form a club centered on a diary, which Gemma discovered by following one of her visions. This diary was written by a former student at Spence named Mary Dowd. From the diary the girls learn about a magical world, the Realms, and a group of powerful women, the Order, which maintained order within the realms. Gemma soon discovers that, in addition to her visions, she also has the ability to enter the Realms and even bring people with her. Here Gemma and her friends experience a world unlike the Victorian England they know, a world in which they have power. Needless to say, with the discovery of the Realms Gemma and her friends have far more to worry about than tea and dances. Particularly once Circe and the forces of the Winterlands come after them. (To be continued …)

Great Books That Do Not Have Harry Potter as Part of Their Titles

This year will forever be remembered by fantasy readers as the year in which the final Harry Potter came out. I do not expect, in my lifetime, to see the Potter phenomenon repeated. I suspect that, for better or for worse Potter will remain the pink elephant in the room whenever people talk about fantasy. In this spirit, here are some other notable pieces of fantasy literature that came out this past year. Some of these books have been discussed before on this blog, others have not.

Lady Friday: This is the fifth book in Garth Nix’s Keys to the Kingdom series. This series is, without doubt, the greatest work of allegorical fiction in modern times. And when I say this I am including Narnia. Nix has completely reinvented the traditional morality play. You will never think of the Seven Deadly Sins the same way again.

Eclipse: This is the third book in Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight series. I have already devoted several long posts to these books. (See here and here) These books have, deservedly, become major bestsellers. More than any other series of books being printed right now, these have the ability to repeat Potter’s success. Meyer has not said how many books she intends to write. She is set to come out with a fourth book in the series, Breaking Dawn, this summer. Let us see what kind of publicity gets generated.

The Sweet Far Thing: This is the third and final book of Libba Bray’s Reader’s Circle series. It just came out last week. I am actually in middle of it right now. I read the first two books at the end of the summer. I had decided to wait until I have finished this one in order to write a post on the series as a whole. Stay tuned.

Fatal Revenant: This is the second book of the Final Chronicles of Thomas Covenant and the eighth book overall of the Covenant series. (See here and here for my review)

Name of the Wind: This is the first book of Patrick Rothfuss’ Kingkiller Chronicles. I saved this one for last. Fantasy, unlike science fiction, does not have a Hugo or a Nebula award for best book of the year. If it did, Name of the Wind would certainly have my vote. (See here for my review) I feel a need to say more about this work. I will probably simply wait until book two, Wiseman’s Fear, comes out.

Well I am looking forward to a wonderful year of fantasy. Considering that all but one of these books have sequels coming out, there definitely is much to be waiting in giddy anticipation for.

Sex, Power and Albus Dumbledore II

There was no reason to make Dumbledore gay and doing so seriously harms the character. Why did Rowling feel that she had to give Dumbledore a sexual side? The fact that she felt that Dumbledore must have a sexual side, to me, shows a fundamental misunderstanding, on the part of Rowling, as to nature of fantasy.

In fantasy characters are faced with temptations beyond mere sex. In the Twilight series, Bella asks Edward if vampires were capable of having sex as humans do. Edward responds “… most of those human desires are there, just hidden behind more powerful desires.” (Twilight pg. 310) Normal vampires focus on their thirst for blood. The Cullens, who one can argue are meant to stand in for the Ex-Gay movement, are focused on being able to transcend their nature and avoiding causing harm to anyone. I would see this confrontation with power, as encapsulating what happens to almost all characters in fantasy. Fantasy, more than any other genre, is about characters dealing with extreme powers and extreme responsibilities. It is normal in fantasy to have characters, who possess supernatural powers and or find themselves in situations where they quite literally find themselves carrying the fate of the world. Such characters have far greater temptations and far greater concerns than mere sex. As such, it makes perfect sense for characters in fantasy to not be particularly concerned with sex. Not only that but to have them become interested in sex “just like any normal person” would in most cases be a letdown.

Take Lord of the Rings for example. I never seriously wondered about the sex lives of Bilbo Baggins and Frodo Baggins. If the hobbits had been living in any other genre of fiction, the fact that both of these characters live by themselves as bachelors for decades in Bag End would raise questions. What precisely was the nature of Bilbo’s adoption of Frodo? What precisely is Frodo’s relationship with Sam? The reason why I never wondered about such things is because both Bilbo and Frodo have to deal with the Ring of Power. I do not imagine Bilbo and later Frodo, during all the decades that they spend alone in Bag End, scoring on young hobbit girls or boys, jerking off or reading porno. I imagine them obsessing about the Ring. Either sitting around and looking at it or thinking about it. Once the story gets going and Frodo finds the fate of the entire Middle Earth resting on his shoulders and the Ring literally eating his soul out, Frodo is not in a position to consider wither he has sexual feelings for Sam or anyone else in the Fellowship. Sam can still dream about going home and marrying Rosie. Destroying the Ring is not his responsibility and the Ring is not destroying his soul.

Now imagine if J.R.R. Tolkien would have gotten up in front of a crowd of his adoring hippie fans and told them: You all thought I was some stuffed up professor of Anglo-Saxon but guess what. Frodo was gay and he really had a crush on Sam. So you see I am really a hip person, bravely fighting against the Man. Besides for thinking that Tolkien must have been smoking too much of the hobbit’s pipe-weed, I would feel let down because now the whole character of Frodo makes so much less sense. The whole point of Frodo was that he finds himself utterly consumed by the quest and his struggle with the Ring. If Frodo is able to take a time out and indulge in having a sexual nature then we have no all-consuming struggle and I have no reason to be interested in him.

Alice Cullen Learns About Mormonism

For all those people like me who cannot say no to free books, you can go to the LDS Church's website and give them your name and address and they will send you a free copy of the book of Mormon. When I was in high school I got myself one through them. I am not sure what happened to it but it disappeared for some strange reason. Either I lost it or, more likely, my parents found it and threw it out. I recently decided that, considering all the time I am spending studying Christian theology, I should get myself another copy. So I went to the website and put my information down. Then I figured, since I have no real interest in telling the LDS Church about myself, that I might as well have some fun with this. So I decided I was a 27 year old female named Alice Cullen and that my phone number was (614) 770-6660. As readers of this blog know, Alice Cullen is one of the vampires in Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight series. I was thinking of doing Esme Cullen since Esme was originally from Columbus. Alice though is the character that I am really in love with. I figured that since the Twilight books were written by a Mormon anyone in the church looking closely at my information would get the joke.
I come back to my room after the first days of Succot and find a post-it note on my door saying:
Alice,
We stopped by to drop off your free copy of the Book of Mormon that you ordered. Please give us a call when you know of a good time for us to come back.
Thanks,
Elders G_
& M_
It seems that instead of simply delivering a copy of their holy books to Alice they had sent missionaries to deliver it to her in person. How nice of them.
Still wanting my book of Mormon I called the phone number they had left. But what to do about Alice? I am in no position to pass as a female even over the phone. So I told them that my name was Ben and that I was a friend of Alice’s and that as a joke she had ordered a book of Mormon and sent it to my address. I then asked them if they would be so kind as to send me a book of Mormon so that I could give it to her.
Elder G suggested that I come down to the Mormon center on campus. Oh Goodie, an opportunity to expand my religious horizons and talk to two friendly Mormons! Maybe the answers will surprise me. So I went down there and talked to Elders G and M. I tend to wear an OSU baseball cap around campus so it is usually not immediately obvious that I am Jewish. When I sat down to elders G and M they asked me what I knew about Mormonism. I think I did a pretty good job at going through the basics. I then started asking them about their theology. This is a game I often play with Christians, who usually do not have a clear idea what such notions as grace, transubstantiation and the incarnation are supposed to mean. Since one of my areas of interest is medieval Christian thought, I usually can count on knowing more on the topic than they do.
What I was not counting on was for my two Mormon missionaries to know nothing about predestination, Augustine of Hippo or John Calvin. So I took it as my good Christian duty to fill them in. I even went into a whole defense of the doctrine of predestination. Despite its very cynical view of human nature, that we are all such corrupt sinners that we are incapable of even accepting Jesus as our savior on our own and that God simply chooses to bestow grace on certain individuals allowing them to be saved, believing in predestination allows you to be very tolerant of non-believers. While they may be going to Hell, it is not their fault. They are not actively choosing to follow Satan. Because of this, despite the fact that Calvin himself was a rabid anti-Semite, there is a long history of Calvinist philo-Semitism. Predestination also very neatly solves the problem of little black unbaptized babies dying in Africa. For some strange reason, my Mormon missionaries had no idea what I meant by this. This is a very famous challenge posed to Christians. What do they do with babies in Africa where it would have been physically impossible for them to have been baptized before they died? If you accept predestination, this is not a problem. Those babies were not amongst the chosen elect, who receive grace, and are therefore doomed with the rest of humanity.
Now, these Mormons have an excuse to be so ignorant of Christianity. Mormons believe, to quote a Mormon friend of mine, that the entire Church went to pot soon after Paul anyway. So Augustine and Calvin are not part of their religious tradition. This though raises an interesting challenge to the claim that Mormons are Christians. Mormons are completely outside the Christian tradition. Protestants and Catholics, despite their doctrinal differences, have a common religious tradition. They can sit down together over an Origen, a Tertullian, an Augustine or an Aquinas just as Orthodox Jews can sit down with Reform and Conservative Jews over a Gemara, Rashi and Tosfot. What do Mormons mean when they call themselves Christians? It would seem that, as they purposely put themselves outside of the Christian tradition, they should drop the label of Christianity and that it is dishonest of them to maintain it.

More on My Favorite Friendly Neighborhood Vampires: Alice Cullen and a Bit on Sin and Damnation.

My favorite character in the Twilight series is, without a doubt, Alice Cullen. She is small, dark-haired and is constantly described in the books as having pixie-like features. She is a high energy almost manic individual. Think of her as the very sweet but pushy rich girl, who is devoted to remaking other people’s lives, particularly Bella’s, and is convinced that she knows what is best for everyone else. In Alice’s case though she sort of really does know what is best for everyone else as she has the knack for seeing glimpses of the future. Amongst other things, this gives her quite a talent for picking stocks. Meyer does an effective job in handling Alice’s talent, focusing mostly on the holes in Alice’s sight and how things go wrong. Werewolves are completely outside of her line of vision. As the Cullens are living next door to a whole pack of werewolves this is a pretty serious limitation. Alice’s other limitation is that her sight is dependent upon choices that have already been made. Because of this, she cannot predict anyone making spur of the moment decisions. Anyone can avoid her sight as long as they do not make any actual plans, but simply shoot from the hip.

Alice’s background story is a sitting question mark which suggests that it is going to be an important plot point for later books. What we know about her is that she woke up in an insane asylum sometime during the 1920s as a vampire. She has no memories of having ever been human nor does she know how she ended up in the asylum or how she ended up as a vampire. The chief villain in the first book, James, indicates that he knows something about Alice’s background. Since Alice foresaw that she would one day meet the Cullens and join them, she was able from the very beginning to live in accordance with their lifestyle and never went after humans. While in search of the Cullens she found Jasper, whom she later married, and brought him along.

Of all the Cullens Jasper has the most blood-soaked history. He served as a sort of vampire “recruiting sergeant” during the nineteenth century, helping to create armies of newbie vampires which could then be used to go after rival groups. Jasper, on his own, came to reject the life that he was leading. He abandoned his comrades and tried to live cleanly. Despite the guilt that he felt over his actions he was never able to succeed at this until he met Alice and became one of the Cullens.

To analyze Meyer’s characters from the perspective of sin and salvation one could say that the vampires represent fallen mankind struggling within the grasp of sin. In this case, sin takes the form of attacking humans and drinking their blood. While the main characters in the story are all very flawed individuals, their flaws are also the flipsides of their strengths. Jasper is a man who recognizes that he is a sinner, hates sin, but is still unable to overcome his own desire for sin until he discovers law. Of all the Cullens he is the one at the greatest risk of falling away. There is an ambiguity to his personality. Do we see him as the redeemed penitent who more than any of the Cullens has overcome his nature or do we see him as a ticking bomb waiting to go off? Alice is the prophetess who, even though she did not possess the law, was still able to foresee its coming and live according to it. Carlisle is the lawgiver, who offers the others law as a way to salvation. He is the one Cullen who was able to overcome his thirst for human blood, by himself and through his own will power. Carlisle believes that vampires have souls and that they can therefore still be saved. (Because of Carlisle’s role as the teacher, lawgiver and because he is the father figure here, particularly for Edward, I strongly suspect that he is going to be killed off in the later books, leaving the others to live according to his example even though he is no longer with them.) In contrast to Carlisle, Edward does not believe that vampires have souls and assumes that they are all damned no matter how good they try to be. It is for this reason that Edward is so set on not making Bella a vampire; he wants to save her soul. From his perspective, allowing Bella to be turned into a vampire would be the most selfish thing that he could possibly do. The irony here is that in a sense, because of Edward’s “rejection” of salvation, his motives are purer than even Carlisle’s. Since Edward does not believe that there is any heaven waiting for him if he were to die at some point he has no motive for living as he does and for making the sort of sacrifices that are asked of him except sheer unselfish goodness. This is particularly poignant as he is faced with sacrificing Bella, who means everything in the world to him. Like Edward, the werewolf, Jacob Black is also out to save Bella’s soul. Ironically enough while Black is the character who is unfallen and outside of the threat of sin, of all the major characters he is the most flawed. His attempts at saving Bella’s soul come across as him trying to steal Bella from Edward for himself. Jacob is, on one hand, someone who selflessly gives of himself to others, but his very selflessness comes out as a form of selfishness. Despite all the effort being put into saving her soul, Bella is about to willingly become a vampire herself? She is Eve, willingly placing herself under the power of sin? The interesting thing is that she is doing it for all the right motives. She is acting out of her love for Edward and her desire to protect the Cullens. Whether she will fall or not still, of course, remains to be seen.

What is going to become of Carlisle’s law? This is very speculative on my part but I suspect it is meant to be a form of Old Testament law. It is built around thou shall not. It is able to stop people from sinning but is it truly able to bring salvation, as Carlisle believes? Despite all the Cullens considerable efforts they are still trapped by their vampire selves. Carlisle’s law offers no escape for that. What is needed is a new law that is built, not on though shall or shall not, but on love. Is Edward’s love for Bella meant to be this new redemptive law? To go out on a really big limb, what is behind Bella being impervious to almost all the various vampire knacks? Why are the Volturi so interested in having her made a vampire? By having her willingly join they believe they can corrupt her and use her power for their own benefit. Could it be that Bella is the pure soul who can transcend this fallen world and possibly even save it?

Friendly Vampires: A Review of the Twilight Series

I have had a very special place in my heart for vampires ever since I first read Dracula back when I was in third grade. I read it over the course of several weeks during the morning bus ride to school. I have very fond memories of trying to read via streetlight in the early morning hours. I guess there is a reason why I wear glasses today. If you are thinking that Dracula is not exactly suitable material for a third-grade son of a rabbi, well I turned out the way that did for a reason.
To say that I like vampires does not mean that I particularly care for books and films about vampires which are by and large dreadful. The question is what did Dracula do right that has not, by and large, been reproduced by others? Keep in mind that I am talking about the Bram Stoker novel not any of the dozens of films that it spawned. The conclusions that I reached a long time ago were as following.
1) Vampires need to be satanic creatures. Dracula is irredeemably evil. He seeks to drink the blood of as many people as possible (particularly if they are beautiful women), change them into vampires and make them his servants. He is of interest in that he serves as the evil incarnate against which the characters in the story must come face to face with. Any attempt to give vampires redeeming virtues defeats the purpose and reduces the story to a helpless muddle. This is one of the problems with Ann Rice’s Vampire Chronicles, Interview with a Vampire and its sequels. Her main vampires Louis, Lestat and Armand seem to sift their modes of thinking from one page to the next. What do they think about killing humans and under what circumstances? Because of this one fails to connect to the character and the books become nothing more than a bloody mush.
2) Vampires require rules and limitations. Dracula is incredibly powerful. Besides for the fact that he is physically capable of overpowering any human, he can turn himself into a bat or a wolf and even travel as mist. Above all he is immortal. He cannot be killed or even harmed except by very specific means. That being said, Dracula operates under some very severe limitations. He cannot go out in the day. Sunlight is one of the things that can kill him. He must sleep every day in a coffin filled with earth from his native country. His reflection does not appear in mirrors. He cannot enter the dwellings of the living unless he has first been invited in. He can be repelled by garlic, crosses and holy water. Daylight will turn him into dust and ashes, but he can also be killed by a wooden stake hammered through his heart. Pretty much every vampire story I know of at some point goes into a litany of how most of what is said about vampires is a myth and then proceeds to get rid of various things just listed. The important thing is not so much that vampires operate specifically by these rules but that they have firmly set rules in place that limit what they can do and make it possible for humans to hurt them. Having rules in place changes the nature of the conflict and makes it more of a chess match rather than a formal fight. Abraham Van Helsing and the rest of the group that goes after Dracula do not physically fight him; they out-think him. Rather than seek Dracula in a head to head confrontation they go after his hiding places and try to flush him out. Rather than seek them out, Dracula lurks in the shadows and tries to go after their loved ones.
3) Vampires should not take center stage but should rather lurk in the background. This may come as a shock to those who have not read the book, but Dracula is not the main focus of the story and has very little actual “screen time.” He appears at the beginning of the book when Jonathan Harker comes to Transylvania to finalize the details of Dracula’s purchases of various estates in England and his move there. For the rest of the book, starting from when Dracula comes to England, he only appears in brief glimpses. The story is about Jonathan Harker, his wife Mina, Van Helsing, Dr. John Seward and others who come to take on Dracula. The book is written as an epistolary novel, a style of writing that has died out in modern times. It consists of letters and journal entries written by the various humans in the story. This pushes Dracula into the background. Where he affects the story not as a physical presence but as the unseen darkness.
Joss Whedon’s Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel are excellent examples of how to handle vampires. While there is a lot that one can criticize these series for (they do not compare to Firefly), the vampires, in of themselves, work perfectly.
While keeping all that I have said in mind, I would like to introduce you to the Cullen family of Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight series. So far three books have been written, Twilight, New Moon and Eclipse with more on the way. According to the Cullens’ cover story, Dr. Carlisle Cullen and his wife Esme, despite the fact that they appear to be only in their late twenties are the parents of five teenage children due to the fact that they adopted Esme’s three orphaned nieces and nephews, Edward, Alice and Emmett plus another two children Jasper and Rosalie. The truth is that they are a group of vampires who live together. They move every few years to a different place, preferably somewhere that is overcast most of the year, in order to hide the fact that none of them age. To make matters even more interesting, the Cullens live within several miles of an Indian reservation, which contains a number of werewolves who live in an uneasy truce with the Cullens.
This group of seven vampires tramples all over the first two rules. They are, to use their own expression, “vegetarian” vampires. They do not attack humans but instead live off of animals. The vampires in this series are not limited by the traditional vampire limitations. They are able to operate in daylight; they just glow in the sun. They do not sleep in coffins and they are able to enter the homes of the living without permission. Nothing has been said about garlic or crosses but I assume that these things also do not apply.
Despite all this, I absolutely adore these characters and cannot praise these books highly enough. If you have great characters then you can overcome almost any problem in a book. Meyer, like J.K Rowling, has that special gift to be able to write books that, while they may not be brilliant in any technical or critical sense, have an incredible charm to them and produce characters that absolutely hook you in. I would be the first to admit that Twilight’s plot is not particularly original. This story of a teenage girl who falls in love with a guy who turns out to be a non-lethal vampire has been done before. One particular example that comes to mind is the Vampire Diaries series. These books are very similar to Twilight. Vampire Diaries even has a werewolf making an appearance. It makes a very useful comparison in that the Vampire Diaries serves to demonstrate how easily Twilight could have gone wrong in the hands of a less talented author.
Twilight manages to violate the above-mentioned rules in ways that work to its advantage. The Cullen family struggle with their desire to kill in ways that make them feel very real and very human. My favorite part in the series so far, and the part that best exemplifies what these books are about, is in the first book when Edward is talking to Bella Swan, a girl he has fallen madly in love with, in a meadow and telling her that he is absolutely in love with her but that he also has an overwhelming desire to kill her and that even at this moment he is not sure if he is going to let her walk away alive. Despite the fact that I think Meyer has made her vampires too powerful to the extent that they almost become godlike, the Cullens manage to put enough personality to themselves that it makes up for their power. Since Meyer puts such a focus on the Cullens acting as human beings she manages to keep them from turning into gods.
While Twilight does not follow my first two rules it does keep the third one, it keeps the focus on a human character. The main character in the story is Bella and the story is told from her perspective using a first-person narrative. Meyer is so willing to entrust the story to Bella that she is even willing to allow the Cullens to drop out of the narrative for long stretches of time, including the majority of the second book. Meyer uses Edward’s absence to bring in Jacob Black, one of the Indian reservation’s resident werewolves, as competition for Bella’s affections. Twilight is tongue in cheek storytelling at its best. Yes it has a sense of humor to it and it plays up the absurdity of the situation, girl loves nice charming boy who happens to be a vampire and while we are at it why not throw in a well-behaved werewolf, for all it is worth. But above all else, this is a powerful love story the likes of which I have not seen in anything written recently.
Despite the hoards of Romance novels out there, it seems that few books succeed as love stories. Twilight is a rare breed in that it is about true unrequited love in all its selfless, irrational, all redeeming glory. Edward and Bella are two people who are compelled by their encounter with each other to be together despite the fact that this is most likely not going to have a happy ending and they both know it. As the ancients understood love is a form of madness; it is a beautiful madness but still madness.
While these books are not explicitly religious I would see them as textbook examples of how religious fiction should be written. These books are not preachy nor are they pushing a message. That being said these books are built around some very distinctive religious values. One of the most central themes underlining Twilight is the moral struggle to overcome one's natural desire and the willingness to deny oneself one's own deepest desires. We can view the vampires of the Cullen family, despite their many flaws, as being righteous and even heroic because they fight to overcome their baser natives and do not take the obvious cope out that they simply are what they are. To appreciate how important this is, keep in mind that we as a society have spent more than a century, one, playing down and even flat out denying the value of self-control; two, we have even gone so far as to turn the abandonment of self-control into a virtue and have declared self-control as the vice. Moral self-control is closely connected to chastity. As with the issue of moral self-control, Meyer does not set out to preach chastity, but she ends up delivering a strongly pro-chastity message simply by taking chastity seriously as a value. We are dealing with a love story now spanning three books in which the two central characters have not slept together despite the fact that guy regularly spends the night with the girl in her bedroom. Edward, as a vampire, does not ever sleep so he is in the habit of spending the night with Bella watching her sleep. Meyer is a religious Mormon so I assume none of this is an accident.
In looking ahead to future books in the series, the big question is will Bella end up becoming a vampire and the eighth member of the Cullen family. The book seems to be heading in that direction. Meyer has placed a long list of problems confronting her characters all of which seem to have the one commonality that their obvious solution seems to be to turn Bella. This though is probably going to turn out to lead to worse problems. Having Bella turn seems to offer the most intriguing possibilities. I would love to see the Cullens dragging Bella off to Alaska for a few years and try to teach her how to function as a vampire. It would be Bella who would now be the one in danger of going haywire. This would also offer a new round of Alice attempting to give Bella’s life a total makeover.
Well, now that Potter is finished I guess I have found a new series of books to really obsess over.