The Count isn't taking your sh*t, Edward!

The Count isn't taking your sh*t, Edward!
The Count isn't taking your shit, Edward.

Tuesday 14 June 2011

Deconstructing Twilight Part Two - Why Imprinting is Fucking Creepy

This time - Bella belongs to Edward (not in the romantic way. LITERALLY.) and teenage boys falling in twoo wuv with babies. Hooray!

Edward’s reaction to Bella’s pregnancy in Breaking Dawn is an example of the lack of choice of the female characters, and also how the women of Twilight are objectified. When Bella refuses to abort the foetus that is killing her from the inside out, Edward secretly visits his love rival for Bella’s affections, Jacob Black, and asks Jacob to persuade Bella to abort the current child and become pregnant with him instead, resulting in a healthier pregnancy. Jacob is sickened but eventually (it doesn't take a lot of persuading, because, as we know, EVERYONE WITH A PENIS IS AUTOMATICALLY IN LOVE WITH BELLA!) agrees: ‘Borrowing Bella for the weekends and then returning her Monday morning like a rental movie? So messed up. So tempting.’ (Meyer 2008, 166) Bella is her husband’s possession, with her choices and rights dismissed because he and Jacob believe they know what is best, showing that even on the rare occasion when a woman finally makes a choice in Twilight, this choice is overruled by the male figures in her life.

This objectification of Bella is common throughout the books, dehumanising her as property: ‘Then he turned back to Jacob. “But if you ever bring her back damaged again – if you ever return her to me in less than the perfect condition that I left her in…’ (Meyer 2007, 340). Bella, as usual, sits silently (like the dead-eyed lump of pudding that she is) through this exchange; either flattered that the men are fighting over her, or ignoring it altogether. When she is hurt by the villain towards the end of Twilight, her words to Edward seem less an apology for making him worry and more an apology for putting herself in danger because she belongs to him:

“What should I apologise for?”
“For very nearly taking yourself away from me forever.”
“I’m sorry,” I apologised again.
“I know why you did it.” His voice was comforting. “It was still irrational, of course. You should have waited for me, you should have told me.” (Meyer 2005, 401)




Silly, irrational little woman! Don't you know you're supposed to let The Amazing Doucheman do everything for you? You can't do anything by yourself! Silly!

Another example of both the illusion of choice and women being ‘owned’ by the men is found in the reproductive ‘imprinting’ practice of the Quileute shape shifters. Imprinting – the finding of one’s soul mate through love at first sight – is performed only by male shape shifters, and is both paedophilic and sexist. Leah, a shape shifter, admits in Breaking Dawn that unlike the rest of her male pack, she cannot imprint. Jacob tells us of Leah’s distress when her periods stopped:

She’d realised that her body wasn't following normal patterns anymore. The horror--what was she now? … Had her body changed because she'd become a werewolf? Or had she become a werewolf because her body was wrong? … The only female werewolf in the history of forever. Was that because she wasn't as female as she should be? (Meyer, 2008, 291)

This depiction of women who cannot or choose not to get pregnant as ‘abnormal’, ‘wrong’, and ‘not as female as they should be’ perpetuates the stereotype that a woman’s only function is to bear children, her identity solely dependent on their ability to do so. This message comes from the mouth of a female character, thereby normalising it:

You know why Sam thinks we imprint, she thought, calmer now. To make a bunch of new little werewolves. Survival of the species, genetic override. You're drawn to the person who gives you the best chance to pass on the wolf gene. If I was any good for that, Sam would have been drawn to me. There's something wrong with me. I don't have the ability to pass on the gene...so I become a freak--the girlie-wolf--good for nothing else. I'm a genetic dead end. I'm…I'm menopausal. (Meyer 2008, 291)

The male shape shifters are only attracted to the women that can provide them with children. This is similar to the subjugated treatment of women in the dystopian novel The Handmaid’s Tale – their bodies are regarded as instruments, and they are treated as ‘nothing more than a set of ovaries’[1]. While The Handmaid’s Tale presents this totalitarian thinking as wrong, Twilight promotes it. Menopausal women are dismissed as ‘freaks’ and ‘genetic dead ends’ who, having lost their ability to reproduce, are inferior because they have no purpose and are not attractive to men (Fuck you, Meyer. Fuck you.). Biologically and evolutionarily speaking, if imprinting is done only for the purposes of reproduction, then it defies logic for Leah’s eggs to lose their viability following her transformation, while the male shape shifters remain fertile. By removing Leah’s fertility, Meyer presents her as ostracised from every other woman on the reservation as well as the rest of her pack, and removes her choice to imprint, while the male members of the pack suffer no ill-effects of transformation, and are granted an endless supply of viable sperm and the ability to carry on their genes. The only possible excuse for this is to present Leah as yet another female character who, along with Rosalie Hale, is ‘unfulfilled when not pregnant’ (Millett 1969/70, 218), and whose petulant moods are endured by her family, who suffer her presence as if her infertility has rendered her nothing more then a useless, whining burden to them. (Seriously, I never came across anyone who was so bloody sexist against her own gender!! Would it really kill you not to inflict and normalise every possible negative female stereotype we have spent the last fifty years trying to break, Meyer?!)

Another problem with imprinting is who is imprinted on, and exactly what the process entails. One character, Quil, imprints on a two year-old toddler named Claire (to this day I'm trying to work out if the Claire Quilty reference was A) accidental and the most hilarious, apt coincidence ever or B) because Meyer really, really, really misunderstood Lolita). Another, Jacob, imprints on a newborn baby, Renesmee. (Yeah, you heard right. Jacob can't have Bella, so he falls in love with her minutes-old baby daughter instead. Yes, it is as stupid and gross as it sounds).





Because a two year old wasn't young enough for you?

Both Quil and Jacob are young adults when they imprint, but so as to dismiss any accusations of paedophilia, Meyer states that there is no sexual act or thought in the process and up until the imprintee grows up, the imprinter will be to her ‘whatever is needed, whether that’s a brother or uncle or father.’[2] This explanation of deliberate actions taken by an adult in order to form a trusting bond with a child, with the ultimate intention of a sexual relationship, sounds alarmingly similar to child grooming. This exactly describes the actions being taken by Quil and Jacob – taking an authoritative, protective, trustworthy role in Claire and Renesmee’s lives with the expectation of eventually having sex with them; another case of sexualisation and objectification of Twilight’s females.

The process of imprinting is for the purposes of reproduction, and so is inherently sexual in nature – making it repugnant that teenage boys should imprint on infant girls. It could be argued that the process is not sexist because it demeans both sexes equally – the men have no choice over who they imprint upon (it is an involuntary act) and after imprinting they remain hopelessly infatuated with the imprintee, powerless to stop their feelings and slaves to their devotion. However, the males are still at an advantage. They are in love with their partner, harbouring strong feelings toward them and having no doubt over the relationship, while the imprintee, the woman, is granted no so such reciprocal feelings or choice in the matter, and might be disgusted or uncomfortable with the match. It is implied that the women are under no obligation to turn the relationship into anything sexual once they come of age, but this is only the illusion of choice.

Because imprinting is considered a natural and acceptable practice, the parents of the child will raise her to believe that an adult’s man’s fixation on her and her eventual role as his lover or wife is also natural and acceptable, and she will not see any inequality in the situation. After a lifetime of trusting their imprinters and viewing them as authority figures, the child is likely to grow up believing that the sexual relationship which is expected between them two of them is as inevitable as any arranged marriage – in the words of Arzim’s Rebuttals: ‘a fact, not a choice’[3]. Meyer denies the females the chance of refusing the match by suggesting ‘It’s hard to resist that level of commitment and devotion’ (Meyer 2007, 123), presenting Twilight’s women – even from birth – as resigned to having no say in their romantic relationships or future decisions, because they have already been ‘destined’ for certain men.

[1] http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/handmaid/themes.html [Accessed 22/5/11]

[2] Cited at: http://www.fanpop.com/spots/critical-analysis-of-twilight/articles/29723/title/anti-feminism-bella-swan-illusion-choice [Accessed 25/5/11]

[3] http://www.fanpop.com/spots/critical-analysis-of-twilight/articles/29723/title/anti-feminism-bella-swan-illusion-choice [Accessed 23/5/11]

*takes slow, deep, cleansing breaths* Next up: paternalism, or why a guy who acts more like your dad than your boyfriend is apparently very sexy.

4 comments:

  1. There's also the fact that as a hybrid, Nessie is mostly likely like the mule, infertile. Which makes the imprinting even more pointless and creepy.

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  2. It's intensely, disturbingly creepifying. I suppose Meyers couldn't just be content to have Jacob have an unhappy ending and try to move on with his life? Couldn't let him be the one character in Twilight who actually has to grow up? Had to turn him into a pedophile instead? Really?

    I'm also not at all convinced that the love that an imprinted wolf feels for their imprintee is in any way related to actual love. But then, I'm with Tim Minchin on this one: "love is nothing to do with destined perfection. The connection is strengthened, the affection simply grows over time like a flower, or a mushroom, or a guinea pig, or a vine, or a sponge, or bigotry, or a banana. And love is made my powerful by the ongoing drama of shared experience, and the synergy of a kind of symbiotic empathy or... something."

    Which is to say, a blind 'love at first sight' that cares nothing at all for the opinions, thoughts, and feelings of the beloved, but simply springs into being fully formed and indestructible no matter what the beloved might want and in such a way that the lover literally has no choice and cannot want anything else... is not love. That's something much, much darker.

    Consider also: Sam and Emily, with Emily, who previously wanted nothing to do with him, 'suddenly realizing' that Sam is her one true love after he's gone completely nuts, turned into a werewolf in front of her, and permanently disfigured her face.

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