Bloodsuckers: The Horrifying Banality of Twilight

Oh sure, we still got to get through the TV spin-off, maybe a Saturday morning cartoon, a comic book, a theatrical run on Broadway, posters, dolls, lunchboxes, and whatever else they can slap a "For Sale" sign on. Vampires might be the undead, but this franchise is going to be alive for a while before it mercifully ends.

The "Twilight" phenemenom is junk, but thank the Dark Lord it's temporary.

No, I'm not a snob. As a crazed fanboy who enjoys comic books, sci-fi, and Stephen King, I think there's riches to be found in pulp culture. Not all of it is junk. Judging a novel's validity is easy: If we're still talking about them twenty years from now, then it's time to have a different conversation, because whether it's a book, novel, music, sculpture or whatever, if its a genuine work of art then you can always go back to it, because it never gets old. You can always experience "A Raisin In The Sun", "Citizen Kane", "Great Expectations", or "A Love Supreme" repeatedly and find new aspects of it that you didn't see the last time. Art is deep, it has nuance, it leaves fingerprints in our memories, and it nourishes us. On the other hand, as popular as they once were, is anybody still talking about "Valley of The Dolls", "Love Story" or "Jonathan Livingston Seagull"?

Stephenie Meyer, however, is staggering in the shallowness of her vision. A few critic have praised Meyer as a contemporary Anne Rice for young adults. Really? Meyer's junk isn't a mediocre Buffy The Vampire Slayer episode. Honestly, Bella would be Spike's lunch before the opening credits. Bella's passivity is irritating, pathetic, and anachronistic. Being in an abusive relationship with a dead thing isn't romantic. In the real world, Bella is a Bristol Palin waiting to happen.

As Stephen King observed, "people are attracted by the stories, by the pace and in the case of Stephenie Meyer, it's very clear that she's writing to a whole generation of girls and opening up kind of a safe joining of love and sex in those books. It's exciting and it's thrilling and it's not particularly threatening because it's not overtly sexual." Twilight's thin-blooded vampire mythology is literary street corner cocaine for young women confused about their sexuality, and this is what I find disturbing and irresponsible about her fiction. Young girls already have enough to deal with in a culture that objectifies them, and giving them misinformation about sexuality and how you interact with horny young guys is dangerous.

A scheming dirtbag of a boyfriend telling lies to a naive young woman is more dangerous than a make-believe vampire will ever be. In the movie Fatherhood, a pregnant girl betrayed by her boyfriend says to her mother, "But he said that he loved me!" and her mother replies, "Yeah, guys say that. And then they come." Welcome to reality. Is it a surprise that Meyer is radically pro-life and a card-carrying Mormon? Sure, let's take a giant step backwards and remove the sex eduction courses out of the schools and teach women to cross their legs and say a prayer. We already know how well that works.

Yes, there are monsters waiting to prey on vulnerable young girls, but they're not Edward and they don't live in bad novels.