Let there be vampires!

I dont like vampires much. The Bram Stoker and Stephen King vampires were downright scary, and while Anne Rice's wonderfully graphic and philosophical Vampire Chronicles were intriguing enough, it wasnt until Hollywood made Rice's vision *ing Tom Cruise, Brad Pitt and Antonio Banderas, fanged, long-locked, in period costumes and frankly mouthwateringly gawh-gus that I began to rethink my aversion. I watched the movie with wide eyes, slack-jaws, flushed cheeks and maybe even the hint of drool pooling at the corners of my mouth. Cruise as the Vampire Lestat still retains a special place in my imagination.

But that was it wrt vamps until about a year and a half ago I started reading romance. And noticed a trend among the staid bookshelves of my library. Apparently, while I was in the mystery aisles, vampires had become pop culture phenomena, they were sexy and nobody was bothered by blood breath ala Count Dracula anymore. The paranormal romances outnumbered all the other romance genres being stocked and checked out, vampires had even invaded chick-lit, while the teen market was catered to by shows like Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel.

I'm not that interested in vampire romance mainly because most of them follow the formula of centuries-old vamp meeting the love of his life in a modern woman. Most romance genres are unrealistic towards propagating the stereotype of true love and soulmates, but the immortal who mopes or broods around until said partner appears is difficult for me to stomach. And frankly it seems very lonely too. Not to mention all the sucking and slurping of blood (one wonders which STD class people missed). But I digress.

So, anyway, since it looked like the adults and teen markets were already cornered along came writer Stephanie Meyer who felt that the tweenie age group deserved some of the fun too and penned the Twilight saga, a series which has enjoyed success much like Rowlings' Potter series. Obviously, with all the hype I had to check it out and finally, a couple of weeks ago, I received my copy of Twilight...And was appalled. Meyer's writing is terrible, there is no character development, no dialogue, no action, no impetus to the story.

The story of Twilight is as follows: Bella Swan moves to Forks, Washington to live with her father and is attracted to Edward Cullen, who just happens to be a vampire. Bella and Edward take one look at each other and know they are meant to be together .. the forewer and ewer kinds. There's just the little problem of Edward wanting to kill Bella, more specifically drink her blood, each time he smells her.

Ms. Meyer reduces her characters to cardboard cutouts with animal instincts - Bella exuding the pheromones that attract the male, while Edward, much like a male peacock or more accurately a carnivorous flower has all the flamboyant physical attributes to make him a successful in attracting her. Intellectual stimulation doesnt play any part in this couple's courtship. So, Bella loves Edward for being beautiful, he sparkles, people (cho pwetty)!! While Edward loves Bella for smelling good. Also, Bella's character is awkward, whiny, selfish, and cannot lift a finger for herself. This is a character who has to have the seat-belt fastened for her and constantly be told when to eat and drink.

There's a lot written about how the books are anti-feminist, abusive and narrow minded with the values and examples she is setting with her characters' behavior and her writing. Parents value Meyer's writing because she apparently (like the Bush government's policies) preaches abstinence, but I don't like the way she endorses it, literally it's do AND die. Again lots of criticism can be found online so I wont go into that - let's just say I agree.

Anyway, I found that I kept reading it just because the story is likeable. The big disconnect for me came towards the end when Bella starts to nag Edward constantly to kill her so she can be with him forewer and .... right we've been here before. And I was shocked to find a character with no goals or aspirations other than suicide in a book purportedly for kids, whatever be the justification - the most popular one being it's mind candy, leave your brain behind. Either way, it's irresponsible.

So, I didnt like Twilight. And I will not read the rest of the series. The IMDB pages for the movie has most fans saying that the book was a whole lot better than the movie, so off I went to Youtube. I didnt watch completely but what I noticed was that they kept the cheesy bits of the dialogue in, the acting was uniformally bad, the chemistry between the lead pair non-existent. And the story remained the same, dull and vapid. And the less said about the Goth lipstick for the 'pale' vamps the better. Despite my disapproval, the movie did very well worldwide, what were they thinking ??!!

It's written at the perfect time, culturally, when there is an unprecedented fascination with vampires, this might explain the number of adult women drawn to the story, even to Meyer's heavily neutered vampires. It deals with true love and forbidden love which are best-selling themes for romance and it might just be that no one has written a novel with these themes for teens before, but I might be mistaken in this bit.

And teenage girls seem to think that if Bella who is an apparently shy and awkward (the apparently is because this is the author's description, within moments of moving to Forks Bella actually has 5 boys hitting on her) teenager, can get the coolest, handomest, strongest boy in school then there's hope for them too. Couple that with the fact that a vampire is the quintessential bad boy and being helpless and rescued and reforming the male plays on female fantasies somewhere.

Also, Twilight looks pretty fat at 500 pages, but these pages are covered with large font writing and double-spaced paragraphs. Reading the simplistic language and completing such a huge number of pages does give the non-readers a sense of accomplishment and again this is something that can have contributed to the wide scale sales of the book.

In effect, Meyer's success is due to her making use of the opportunity presented to her, and having a decent story idea for fertile imaginations to run away with, it is in no way a tribute to her writing skills. If there are any male fans, it beats me why.

I was explaining to a friend why I didn't like Chetan Bhagat's writing and pat came the accusation 'Or you might just be jealous?' Sure, I'm jealous of Bhagat and Meyer and their franchises while being only admiring of Rowling's much, much, MUCH larger franchise, one which has popular as well as critical acclaim. You have to start small, I guess. So to clarify, the only thing in common between Meyer and Rowling's series is Robert Pattinson, who played Cedric Diggory in the Harry Potter movies and plays Edward Cullen in Twilight.