In Defense of Twilight

Retrospective for a post-Kristen-Stewart's-Vanity-Fair-interview America

Sometime in the early aughts, a Mormon housewife had a fateful dream: a boy and a girl lay side by side in a meadow. The boy, a vampire, sparkled in the sun as the girl looked on in awe, and Twilight was born.

I’ve written about Twilight as an adaptation of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice (the supernatural as capital, if you even care), which according to the author, it is. I’ve subjected friends and romantic partners to the movies and my takes on them, and even written fanfiction. I love it in all its embarrassing, silly, pacific-northwest-gothic glory.

Beyond the trite criticism that the relationship between a human and a vampire is unhealthy (grow up), Twilight has issues. The werewolf love interest did not need to fall in love with the newborn baby, Quiliute tribal legends shouldn’t have been used without compensation or the consent of the tribe, and the love triangle between Bella, Edward, and Jacob always felt forced to me. The dialogue and pacing can be awkward and the plot is full of holes, but Twilight remains a global phenomenon and not for nothing.

One of the most frequent criticisms I’ve encountered is that the protagonist is boring or lacks personality. Bella is positioned as a regular girlTM, though Meyer takes care to note that Bella is considered unusual by her peers. She goes to school, she does chores (this actually takes up about ⅓ of the book). Though normal on the surface, a seventeen year old girl running her household (doing all of the cooking, cleaning, grocery shopping, and laundry) is unusual.

As a parentified child, I related to Bella when I read Twilight as a teenager. None of my peers were doing all of their own grocery shopping when I was in high school besides me. None of them had to maintain their own households while their parents left them alone for extended periods of time, and I felt weird for it.

Additionally, Bella expresses that she’s always struggled to connect with others, that she’s always felt like a loner. Her interests make her stand out or at least not fit in. I concede that Bella, like my high school self, suffers from chronic Not Like Other Girls syndrome, legible in her characterization of Jessica and the other human girls.

She’s not like other girls, she can read.

We have to remember when looking at Twilight, though, that it’s Stephenie Meyer’s very first novel. Clumsy characterization is to be expected from a fledgling writer. The intent behind Bella’s interest in nineteenth-century literature is to reveal something anachronistic about her, which positions her both to connect with Edward and as a weirdo among human teenagers. As a former teen and classic literature fan, I can confirm that it’s not something that makes a person popular in high school.

Bella has friends, but she expresses frequently feeling more like an object of interest than a genuine friend to her classmates. We see this in the movie adaptation as well when Jessica says, “it’s like first grade all over again, you’re the shiny new toy.”

Contrary to her popularized characterization as “normal ™” it’s revealed throughout the series that Bella is actually a straight up freak. In response to Edward explaining that he is a predatory vampire intent on killing her, her internal monologue is… turned on. During her mental breakdown in New Moon, she fully hallucinates her ex boyfriend (this is never discussed again) while Evil-Kinevaling her way into escalating near-death experiences (which Alice astutely calls “life-threatening idiocy,”) that culminate in her jumping off a cliff. Her primary objectives throughout the series are to have sex with Edward (on pain of death), and to become immortal.

Her thrill-seeking tendencies stick post-New Moon, and Bella’s defining character trait in books 3 and 4 is brave to the point of stupid. Bella has a short temper and a big heart, revealed to the reader (if clumsily) through her relationships with Jacob, the Cullens, and her father.

She’s messy, she’s a bad friend, and ultimately, while she errs on the static side, she’s a well–rounded character with virtues, faults, and idiosyncrasies.

The most exciting feature of Twilight for me, however, is not Bella (as much as I love her), but the Cullens. Vampire fiction has traditionally held up some sort of mirror to the society in which it’s set. Stoker’s Dracula comments on the aristocracy leeching resources from the masses. The titular Carmilla is a predator who’s able to camouflage using her femininity and beauty, not unlike the Cullens.

The Cullens embody a unique horror which I’ve always felt very acutely: fear of the cookie-cutter, the suburbs, the too-clean-cut (and Mormons). While drawn to their vampiric beauty, in Edward’s narration in Midnight Sun, he notes several instances of human characters experiencing something like the uncanny valley effect around his family and himself. Bella alone seems to be immune. Whether we attribute this immunity to resolute horniness or hubris, I think we would be remiss in overlooking the possibility that Bella has simply fallen under the vampires’ spell.

In Twilight, Edward tells Bella that, “[His charms are] camouflage. [He’s] the world’s most dangerous predator. Everything about [him] invites [her] in: [his] voice, [his] face, even [his] smell. As if [he] would need any of that; as if [she] could outrun [him], as if [she] could fight [him] off. [He’s] designed to kill.”

While Bella disregards these comments by saying “[she doesn’t] care,” I’m inclined to take Edward’s words at face value. Vampires typically have some sort of control or “charm” mechanism which functions to enthrall humans which they can then feed on, turn, or both. The Cullens of course reject traditional vampirism, but there are still residual aspects they’re unable to circumvent. They still need blood (human or animal) to survive, they still can’t go out in the sun lest they risk exposure, and this speech of Edward’s inclines me to believe they have some sort of vampiric charm.

Like any teenage girl in love for the first time, Bella is willing to overlook Edward’s shortcomings, even with bloodlust among them. Unlike any other teenage girl, she is so drawn to Edward that after hanging out a handful of times, she professes “[unconditional] and [irrevocable]” love for him. We might attribute her quick attachment to her parents’ emotional neglect: being shown devotion, however unhealthy, feels like a dream come true when you’ve never experienced it before (been there). But I don’t think Twilight is that self-aware.

I’m inclined to attribute the timeline and intensity of Edward and Bella’s relationship to the supernatural, which brings me to my true favorite thing about Twilight: reading it in a way Stephenie Meyer definitely didn’t intend, and probably wouldn’t like.

To me, Twilight is a horror story with an unreliable narrator.

Every character aside from Bella, including Edward, regards it as such, and tells her so throughout the narrative. Edward expresses that turning Bella into a vampire would “end [her] life,” and calls it, “a tragedy.” Jacob and Charlie, the two people closest to Bella outside the Cullen family, seem to concur.

Looking at Bella’s story from the outside, a loner girl moves to town and is enveloped by the creepy family who only hang out with each other (and are..dating? I feel like that was overlooked a little too quickly by the denizens of Forks). Bella proceeds to adhere herself to Edward at the expense of her other friendships, returns from several extended absences from school with severe injuries including a broken leg, turns into a ghost when they leave temporarily, and seems perfectly restored when they return. Once again, she and Edward are attached at the hip. Now, there’s another guy in the picture (Jacob), Edward’s behavior turns controlling, and just after graduation, they’re engaged.

After their shotgun wedding, Bella disappears entirely, and the whole family is never seen again in Forks. During this time, Bella speedruns a nightmare pregnancy that ends with her demon baby (who is fully sentient in the womb, by the way) clawing its way out of her, breaking her spine in the process.

If any element of Twilight evinces its identity as a work of horror, it’s the birth of Renesmee. This gruesome scene includes Edward performing a c-section with his teeth, vampire teeth being the only material strong enough to break the amniotic sack.

In the book, this scene is told from Jacob’s perspective as follows:

BELLA’S BODY, STREAMING WITH RED, STARTED TO TWITCH, jerking around in Rosalie’s arms like she was being electrocuted. All the while, her face was blank—unconscious. It was the wild thrashing from inside the center of her body that moved her. As she convulsed, sharp snaps and cracks kept time with the spasms… The room I followed them to looked like an emergency ward set up in the middle of a library. The lights were brilliant and white. Bella was on a table under the glare, skin ghostly in the spotlight. Her body flopped, a fish on the sand. Rosalie pinned Bella down, yanking and ripping her clothes out of the way, while Edward stabbed a syringe into her arm… with a shriek that clawed at my eardrums.

“Get [her] OUT!” [Bella] screamed. “[She] can’t BREATHE! Do it NOW!” I saw the red spots pop out when her scream broke the blood vessels in her eyes. “The morphine—,” Edward growled. “NO! NOW—!” Another gush of blood choked off what she was shrieking. He held her head up, desperately trying to clear her mouth so that she could breathe again...In the bright light, Bella’s skin seemed more purple and black than it was white. Deep red was seeping beneath the skin over the huge, shuddering bulge of her stomach. Rosalie’s hand came up with a scalpel.

“Let the morphine spread!” Edward shouted at her. “There’s no time,” Rosalie hissed. “[Renesmee is] dying!” Her hand came down on Bella’s stomach, and vivid red spouted out from where she pierced the skin. It was like a bucket being turned over, a faucet twisted to full. Bella jerked, but didn’t scream. She was still choking…

“CPR?” Edward growled at me, fast and demanding… “Get her breathing! I’ve got to get [her] out before—” Another shattering crack inside her body, the loudest yet, so loud that we both froze in shock waiting for her answering shriek. Nothing. Her legs, which had been curled up in agony, now went limp, sprawling out in an unnatural way. “Her spine,” he choked in horror.

…I couldn’t look away from Bella’s face. She blinked and then stared, finally seeing something. She moaned out a strange, weak croon. “Renes… mee. So… beautiful.” And then she gasped—gasped in pain. By the time I looked, it was too late. Edward had snatched the warm, bloody thing out of her limp arms. My eyes flickered across her skin. It was red with blood—the blood that had flowed from her mouth, the blood smeared all over the creature, and fresh blood welling out of a tiny double-crescent bite mark just over her left breast. “No, Renesmee,” Edward murmured, like he was teaching the monster manners.

Renesmee, who is born with a full set of teeth (No thanks!), bites Bella, the final nail in the proverbial–and Bella’s literal–coffin. Bella dies an emaciated Rosemary, succumbing to her parasitic hellspawn, a creature alien even to the supernatural world of Twilight. But what’s even more horrifying is that unlike Rosemary, Bella feels nothing but devotion toward the creature tearing her apart from the inside. She is willing to die this gruesome death, to endure starvation, broken bones, and a toothy c-section sans anesthesia if it means Renesmee’s survival.

Renesmee is born with the uncanny ability to make anyone love her, seemingly including her mother and father. Edward, who initially hates her for starving and ultimately killing Bella, switches to unconditional devotion the moment he hears her thoughts in utero. Bella’s mother Renee, according to Edward’s narration in Midnight Sun, possesses the latent ability to compel others to help her. Since we know would-be vampiric gifts tend to be passed genetically in the Twilight universe, and since Bella seems to have a vestige of this herself, we can infer that Renesmee may actually have inherited this ability as a vampiric gift.

The horror of Renesmee only intensifies after she’s born. Not only does Jacob imprint on her (I’m not touching that plotline with a ten foot pole), she grows at an alarming rate, to the point that the Cullens are unsure how long she’ll live. At birth, her brain is fully developed, and three days out when Bella wakes transformed into a vampire, she remarks that Renesmee already has the proportions of a toddler and waist-length hair.

She also has a father who can read her mind, which is horrifying on its own.

In her recent Vanity Fair interview, Kristen Stewart hit the nail on the head, describing Twilight as, “such a gay movie,” noting, “it’s all about wanting what’s going to destroy you. That’s a very gothic, gay inclination.” Twilight embodies a uniquely early 2000’s American Gothic with its blue tint, all-consuming love, and romanticization of small town American life. It also represents a subtle horror: a vampire that is less overtly monstrous but equally destructive, as evinced by Bella’s fate.

It’s no secret that queer people love horror. Horror’s entry into the space of taboo invites a rich tapestry of expression, so it’s no mystery why queer people tend to gravitate toward it. Despite its khaki-fetish Mormonism, Twilight is not exempt from embodying queerness, if only through proximity of genre

Bella always read bisexual to me, and not just because of the costumer's use of flannel or Kristen Stewart’s portrayal in the movies. In the books, Bella often describes at length how she finds beautiful Alice and Rosalie, while seeming hardly to notice the men on their arms. When she first sees the Cullens, she notes:

​​They didn’t look anything alike. Of the three boys, one was big—muscled like a serious weight lifter, with dark, curly hair. Another was taller, leaner, but still muscular, and honey blond. The last was lanky, less bulky, with untidy, bronze-colored hair. He was more boyish than the others, who looked like they could be in college, or even teachers here rather than students. The girls were opposites. The tall one was statuesque. She had a beautiful figure, the kind you saw on the cover of the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue, the kind that made every girl around her take a hit on her self-esteem just by being in the same room. Her hair was golden, gently waving to the middle of her back. The short girl was pixielike, thin in the extreme, with small features. Her hair was a deep black, cropped short and pointing in every direction…It was hard to decide who was the most beautiful—maybe the perfect blond girl, or the bronze-haired boy.

While her love interest gets a quick “small and ginger,” moniker, Rosalie’s introduction calls her “statuesque” and “a Sports Illustrated model. “Bella finds Rosalie as beautiful as, if not more beautiful than, Edward, and her relationship with Alice only gets gayer as the series progresses.

Even the relationship between Bella and Edward leans sapphic, at least on an aesthetic level.

They show up to their first date in matching outfits, take Bella’s vintage truck to go hiking, tell each other they love each other before they kiss for the first time, and immediately become deeply attached to each other (Uhaul!). Edward’s self-hatred and what he views as a monstrous desire for Bella, both vampirically and sexually, adds a complex and authentic layer to this reading that made their relationship’s success imperative for me as a young queer reader, even if I didn’t have the tools yet to articulate why.

The Cullens are perpetually out of place, not at home with the vampires or the humans of their world, particularly as they repeat high school ad nauseam for eternity. In its reader base which initially comprised pre-teens and teenagers, I suspect this engendered sympathy. In retrospect, it presents a unique and very queer kind of horror: to be stuck in perpetual adolescence.

Bella comments that repeating high school is “kind of miserable.” Edward calls it “purgatory,” which seems dramatic unless you spend every day of your life at a high school. There is something purgatorial about high school, even more so as an adult. I’ve only been through college and graduate school once and I feel it as a teacher; I can only imagine how Edward or Rosalie, both of whom hold more than one medical degree, feel. Fortunately, they have the found family they’ve created in one another to help them endure the centuries.

The Cullens suck at flying under the radar. Not only should several teachers have made phone calls about siblings dating, everyone at Forks High whispers about them. Whether they’re protected by their beauty, charm, wealth, or Carlisle’s status as the best doctor in town, the premise of Twilight is so thin it lends a camp feel to the whole thing, which I find that much more lovable.

This camp feel, the deep love that permeates the dynamics between the characters, the eclectic, atmospheric setting, bizarre Mormon influence, and latent horror render Twilight a masterpiece of queer camp horror. Maybe this accounts for its resurgence among queer Gen Z since 2017. Love or hate Twilight, we’re still talking about it more than a decade after its release. Twilight put YA on the map in a new way, became an international phenomenon, and remains a literary touchstone (however “low-brow”).