Week Two: Vampires

For this week’s reading, I decided to read Twilight. I was a huge fan of the movies when I was in middle and high school, but it has been a long time since I read the first book of the saga. It was interesting returning to a book after so many years. I had to have been in 7th grade the last time I read this particular book. It was not my favorite of the series, so I only read it the once.

              Reading Twilight as a kid and an adult is a completely different experience. As a kid, like I said, I was a huge fan. I accepted it all, holding onto every word, like Bella’s love life was as important as the book made it out to be. Don’t get me wrong, I am a huge sentimentalist and still adore these movies, although now acknowledging and even sharing the opinions of the critics. But, when reading the book last week, I was able, as an adult, to really separate myself from the book and try to analyze it for what it is really saying.

              Twilight, at face value, is a modern novel that is purposefully showing these horror icons, vampires, in a different and better light, even turning these staples of horror classics into romantic figures. While this movie is trying to be different and is categorized as a romance horror, it holds the same underlying story themes as the classic Gothic horror:
1. Setting in a castle or old mansion.
2. An atmosphere of mystery and suspense.
3. An ancient prophecy.
4. Omens, portents, visions.
5. Supernatural or otherwise inexplicable events.
6. High, even overwrought emotion.
7. Women in distress.
8. Women threatened by a powerful, impulsive, tyrannical male.
9. The metonymy of gloom and horror.

These nine things are found in every gothic horror novel. Can you not find these elements to be the backbone of this teen romance novel? I don’t know If the author, Stephanie Meyer, meant for this or it just happened. Never the less, this teen romance may have more in common with Frankenstein than with any romance of our time.

Comments

  1. Kat MullenFebruary 23, 2018 at 2:51 AM

    I think it's really interesting how you did connect Twilight back to Gothic themes. I think that people often disregard everything about the films/ books because of the issues that they do have. It's also cool getting to read your reaction to it now in comparison to when you were younger. It's not an experience I would personally choose to repeat so I'll just experience it through your post. Do you think you were more neutral on how you looked at the film because you did enjoy it when you were younger?

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Week Three: Old Horror

Reading the short stories of Kwaidan was not the experience I was expecting. As an American, when someone says horror, some of the first things that come to mind are, Jason Voorhees, Insidious, and Saw. All gory and or demonic; purely created to disturb its viewers. These do not even belong in the same category as Kwaidan . Looking back, my views on what “horror” is were closed minded. Kwaidan was not gory, demonic and dark, but more like classic fairytales, similar to Grimm’s fairytales in which the stories had some sort of a moral at the end and that was the point. Classic fairytales were made to teach lessons and scare kids into doing what was right. The story, the journey, did not have to make complete sense as long as it was interesting, memorable, and had that lesson. That was the important part. That is exactly what Kwaidan is and even though that surprised me, I really enjoyed the read. I would much rather experience something that makes me think and see the
Read more

Week Ten: The Fiction of Ideas

The Three Stigmata of Palmer Aldrich I found The Three Stigmata of Palmer Aldrich a very ambiguous book packed full of many subplots and extraneous themes. There was a lot going on. As a person who is really bad with names, I found it hard to keep up with which character was which; Myerson, Bulero, Eldritch. Also, this was compounded by the fact that they all seemed to be very similar in character traits. Maybe this was on purpose. Maybe it adds to the confusing story filled with alternate universes and time travel. Even though I had problems with the story, I cannot say I hated this book. I found it very interesting and I enjoyed reading it. I cannot pretend to be a good writer, I am not, but I just cannot help but wonder what the story would be like when it was stripped of some of the themes that felt unimportant to the main plot. For example, the bit about the neo-Christian woman on Mars. That whole subplot was unnecessary.   The story took a detour for this story point a
Read more