“Is that something you might be interested in?” I asked my newly-ringed fiancée. I knew it was a question I would gain points for asking, somewhat prematurely, before she inevitably broached the topic later on.
“Yes. I would,” she said.
Figures.
I walked over to our iMac and pulled up my Netflix queue. I had a movie to add. That movie was Twilight. For the first time in my experience with the mail-rental service, a pop-up window blooped into frame.
“Really?” it asked.
I dimpled the bubble next to “yes.”
Bloop. A new pop-up window.
“You sure?”
Yes, again.
Bloop.
“Whipped?”
Yes, the third.
“Would you like Twilight moved to the top of your queue?”
Yea. You better. Sorry Milk. Your day will come.
As a mass media consumer, there is nothing I find more aggravating than opinion by osmosis: people who have not seen this movie or that TV show who still find themselves brimming with commentary about its worth or lack thereof. The typical reaction of these critics is outrage, and they shield themselves from informed opinions with a particularly pious brand of self-righteousness. I had allowed myself some shots at the Twilight behemoth (mainly because two of my favorite writers – Roger Ebert and Stephen King – had torn it up), but having never read the books or watched the movie, I was all to aware of my descent into the dark waters of hypocrisy. I would have to watch this movie.
Having seen it now, what can I say about the film? It was not for me. It was for teenage girls. It was competent and unexceptional. I’m sure it was a thrill for those predisposed to liking that sort of thing (like the Passion of the Christ for the training bra set), but being that I am about fifteen years and one uterus outside of the target demographic I didn’t necessarily expect to be moved.
But I was intrigued, as I commonly am by works with even the faintest whiff of mythology. And I knew we had the rest of the series waiting to be consumed on our bookshelves.
So, on my next trip to the water closet I took the second book in the series, New Moon, along.
I made it seven pages. Seven pages of pedestrian prose and maudlin yammering before deciding that no mythology, no matter how fascinating, could be worth trudging through the most juvenile, unsophisticated prose I’d encountered since See Spot Run. I had just finished Michael Chabon, Gregory Maguire, and Cormac McCarthy in succession before my experience with Ms. Meyer. I’m sure that didn’t help, but damn.
Still, I was curious. What twists were in store for Bella as things progressed? So, I went to Wikipedia to see if I could find a more succinct outline of the saga. Thus, I was able to make my way through the entire plot of the Twilight saga in about fifteen sentences.
So now, after my brief trip into the world of this tween blockbuster, only one question remains: How can so many people go through two thousand pages of insipid text for fifteen sentences of plot?
