Twilight

[music]

0:00:04.1 Landry Ayres: Welcome to Pop and Locke. I’m Landry Ayres. You better hold on tight Spider Monkeys because today we are discussing one of my favorite pieces of cinema and literature ever. Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart, maybe Art House characters and Oscar’s nominees today, but it all started here. Joining me to sink our teeth into Stephenie Myers still beloved series, Twilight, are Richard L. Moral Chair in Ethics and Democratic Values at the University of Richmond, Dr. Jess Flanigan.

0:00:37.4 Dr. Jessica Flanigan: Hi.

0:00:37.6 Landry Ayres: And who else, but our good old pal, Deputy Managing Editor at Reason, Natalie Dowzicky. Natalie, how are you?

0:00:46.0 Natalie Dowzicky: Happy to be back. [chuckle]

0:00:48.2 Landry Ayres: I feel like there’s so much that we could talk about in this movie. This might be a three-​parter for all we know. I don’t know if I can contain myself, but… Where to begin? Is it the Mormonism? Is it the pentaeroticism, inherent in that, is it the depiction of found family and prejudice? I think where we should start though is the sort of relationship dynamics that are going on here, because that I think is the real heart of the story is how these characters treat each other. And I think because of the generally pretty heteronormative dynamics going on at play here, we have to talk about the difference between male and female characters. What does it mean to be Team Jacob or Team Edward? How are the male characters in this, and how do they relate to specifically Bella. Are they well-​written? If they’re not well written, are they flawed in a sort of complicated and interesting way, or just in a bad way? Where do you go from here?

0:01:56.6 Natalie Dowzicky: So there’s two… I would make two distinctions. I’m gonna talk about the movie characters and the way they were written different from the book, just partially because the book characters are slightly different, and it’s been a hot minute since I read all three books. Well, yeah, four. [chuckle]

0:02:12.4 Landry Ayres: Wow, do you even know Twilight, Natalie?

0:02:15.4 Natalie Dowzicky: Yes, I grew up in the prime age of Twilight. I was one of those that went to the movies the day they were released.

0:02:22.8 Landry Ayres: Wait, so you were a Twi-​hard? I just wanna confirm, you were a Twi-​hard?

[chuckle]

0:02:27.4 Natalie Dowzicky: Maybe not. I would not self-​proclaim myself that way.

0:02:30.6 Landry Ayres: Well, we’re proclaiming it now, but please continue.

0:02:34.0 Natalie Dowzicky: So, I think there’s an interesting dynamic going on here because Robert Pattinson, he is very paternalistic. It really creeps me out that he like… No one seems to care that he watches Bella while she sleeps. And he basically… This is before they were ever… “Before they’re in a relationship,” and he watched her when she sleeps, he stalks her and it’s just like a very, very creeper vibe. And then on the flip side, Team Jacob, the werewolves, and the beloved Sharkboy from Sharkboy and Lava girl, Taylor Lautner. [laughter] He is very… He’s also a paternalistic, but it’s a different style. It’s more so like he doesn’t think Bella can protect herself, so he’s interested in being Bella’s protector, which is why Team Jacob and Team Edward clash because they both have the common interest of Bella. But yet no one seems to ask Bella how she feels about this weird dynamic. So I think that’s kind of the dynamic that’s at play, and I just think there’s a lot of questionable male characters. If I were to see one of these male characters in the wild in real life, I’d be like, No, this man isn’t attractive because he looks like a vampire. He’s just creepy. [chuckle] Yeah.

0:04:03.4 Dr. Jessica Flanigan: So just to warn you, I’m just going to completely overthink all of these cultural products because I think… [chuckle]

0:04:09.6 Landry Ayres: Please, do. That’s our bread and our butter.

0:04:12.1 Natalie Dowzicky: That is the whole point.

0:04:13.5 Dr. Jessica Flanigan: It’s such a stand-​in for things that I think are going on in the broader moment when it comes to gender politics. So I agree that the Jacob, Edward dichotomy are supposed to be these kinds of archetypes, and I would think Jacob is sort of a stand-​in for a conception of male entitlement, which is like the friend zone type view, where it’s like the men think that they are entitled to romantic partnership because they’re treating a woman like a person in a friendship-​like way. As well as kind of the dark side of the kind of, thing that people I think is valuable, which is in a relational egalitarian marriage, the companion marriage, where it’s like people come to the relationship on equal terms, and they sort of negotiate it like a friendship.

0:05:02.4 Dr. Jessica Flanigan: And so the Jacob character, I think, is showing that the kind of contemporary liberal egalitarian approach to romantic partnership does have this kind of sneaky dark side of also smuggling in a kind of male entitlement that we don’t really acknowledge, and then the Edward character is the kind of sense of male entitlement of hierarchy, elitism, the man has the money, the man is rich, that kind of sugar daddy type thing, that’s like very stigmatized in society. But then the author is trying to show that there’s a flip side to that conception of masculinity, which is actually like, that could be really liberating for women to be able to free themselves from… With both the emotional labor of the friendship companion at marriage type stuff and to let themselves be subject to a kind of caregiving relationship with their romantic partners, and that that doesn’t necessarily have to be like a problematic expression of patriarchy, and so she’s trying to… I think that those two archetypes are kind of like a critique of the sort of liberal egalitarian approach to heterosexual relationships to just way over think it, but I do think that’s going on. [chuckle]

0:06:19.0 Landry Ayres: For sure. I agree, and it’s really interesting because the other thing that a lot of people, I mean, especially in hindsight point out when looking at these movies is they’re like, they’re just so Mormon, like Stephenie Meyer, when the books were written and when the movies came out, she was still pretty involved in the process of consulting from what I understand. The sort of pent up eroticism and the metaphor of turning someone into a vampire and refraining from that in the self-​control sort of being in allegory for abstinence and the sexual relations with these teenagers that are going on, it got a lot of push back, ’cause it was just like, Another conservative person who only cares about telling kids that it’s bad to have sex. And sure, you could take it that way, but I think the parallels to Mormonism actually go much, much deeper than that, and it was actually… I did not know this before we started researching for this episode, these parallels go way, way more in depth.

0:07:30.4 Landry Ayres: Like when you look at the character specifically of Carlisle, who is the head vampire here in Forks Washington that has basically created this little coven, he’s the one that turned Edward and then his wife Esme, and then all of the subsequent other vampire children, and he was part of the Volturi, the up top boys, and it’s very much like they’ve got this Roman Catholic vibe, it’s very ornate. The visual coding of them in the movies is very much supposed to mirror that, Michael Sheen is killing it, serving 100% committed Michael Caine in the Muppet Christmas Carol realness.

0:08:14.8 Natalie Dowzicky: Oh my God.

0:08:15.9 Landry Ayres: And they have this ornateness, and it also separates them and creates an even larger power dynamic between humans and vampires. But they are not afraid to enact violence upon these people. Whereas Carlisle sees the flaws in this process as he’s in the background, trying to ascend there and very much is a stand-​in for a Joseph Smith character, a person who goes to the New World establishes this religion that is persecuted by the old guard and sets out travels far west and creates a very, first of all, family-​driven dynamic, and it even happens at the same time historically as Joseph Smith. It parallels between the two. And his focus is the… This is evident in a lot of Christianity, but it’s codified in a really specific called out way in Mormonism of overcoming the natural man. The constant resisting of your mortal urges and whatever temptations may come your way to sin in the eyes of God. And in doing so, he’s refraining from indulging in human blood drinking and the using the standing of animals to say that he has chosen a harsher, more difficult life where his family is the center rather than pursue this indulgent desire.

0:10:01.5 Landry Ayres: And so it was really, really interesting to me to see… You could certainly take… It seems like it could be very easily understood as paternalism bad. Edward is like he doesn’t trust Bella to be strong enough and he’s just going to devour her or something. It’s this very inherently… It starts out deterministic, but then by the end, you have Bella who comes into herself and by joining with Edward and starting a family together, which becomes this new center for them. They’re both redeemed, which the sort of celestial marriage idea in Mormonism is very, very popular. It’s not just like that marriage is a sacred thing, but it is a truly a spiritual act. And so what could have easily been a very well-​trod and sort of surface level thing is actually much more complex and influential and shows Stephenie Meyers influences as a storyteller than people give her credit for. And she got the stigma of being called just a Mormon housewife when this book came out a lot, which was really condescending for a lot.

0:11:27.3 Natalie Dowzicky: Yeah, that’s really… That’s messed up.

0:11:29.0 Landry Ayres: And even though she was a stay-​at-​home mom, as far as I’m aware, and Mormon and those greatly influenced her life, while the books are technically not well written, there’s a lot of poorly written stilted dialogue, Kristen Stewart did her best with that first script. She gets a lot of grief, but it wasn’t her fault. I mean, you just gotta bite your lip when you don’t know what words you’re saying. But she does tell a compelling story, even if it is not well-​written and I think she’s even said that I consider myself a story teller not a writer. So what does that make you think about the underpinnings there and how Stephenie Meyer was treated as a woman, but also maybe how that influenced the character of Bella. We’ve talked a lot about the male characters, what do we think of the writing of Bella?

0:12:21.7 Dr. Jessica Flanigan: Well, yeah, I’m so glad that you brought up the Mormon angle before we talk about the Bella angle, because… I also think that this is like a thing that people overlook which is the time that these books came out was also the beginning of the Mormon mommy blog craze. Where there are all of these very influential Mormon mommy blogs that really shaped how contemporary motherhood is played out thinking about… There early on, thinking of the performance of motherhood online and which we have now more on social media but Mormons have this long tradition of journaling, so they were really at the forefront of it, like the Nienie dialogues and [0:13:00.2] ____ Shout out to the people who used to read those blogs.

[laughter]

0:13:04.8 Dr. Jessica Flanigan: Dowz was one. And I really think like… Thinking about, this is also a Mormon text in the same way as those Marmon mommy blogs, and people easily disparage the Mormon mommy blogs as being female trivia, they disparaged this work as well. But low key, she’s like The Penelope Fitzgerald of our time. Women who are just like doing domestic labor, but then also engaging in these really ambitious creative projects, like that gives you so much respect, and then it is a very deeply Mormon text and so not just the stuff you were saying about like the thousand-​year marriage which is the song from the movies. But Mormonism has this idea unlike other Christian doctrines of like, it’s not about predestination, your life is not predetermined. They believe in agent causation, you really are free. And the way that you can exercise your freedom is by not being subject to your heteronomous desires, you’re not a slave to your desires, you get freedom through the rules.

0:14:14.8 Dr. Jessica Flanigan: And then there’s also this kind of attitude in Christianity more generally, but I think it’s also, we see a lot in Mormonism, particularly of this idea of maturity, adults versus children, and thinking about what it is to be a child as this unencumbered-​ness, which is how the vampires and the werewolves both view the humans as having a kind of… The humans never talk about their religion, they never talk about their national identity or the political affiliation, they’re just these unencumbered innocent type people, and that’s seen as a kind of naivete which is both worth protecting and preserving, but also a condition of helpless ignorance, and that’s their attitude, which is, I think has a kind of Mormon theological foundation. But then just culturally, how the paradigm family, the Cullens, how they’re really into playing sports and being doctors, that’s definitely BYU energy there.

[laughter]

0:15:18.0 Dr. Jessica Flanigan: Like, “Oh, we’re gonna play baseball.”

[laughter]

0:15:24.0 Dr. Jessica Flanigan: Just the cultural signifier.

0:15:25.5 Natalie Dowzicky: Strong BYU energy vibes.

0:15:26.2 Dr. Jessica Flanigan: Yeah.

[laughter]

[music]

0:15:30.1 Natalie Dowzicky: Well, I was also thinking too, like culturally speaking, the way that family is prioritized in the saga in general is very signifying of Mormonism. Also there’s this weird… Now I think about it, I was reading this one article that was saying that how weird it is that people viewed Edward as both a father figure to Bella and a lover, which seems is obviously gross and I hate that comparison. But I could see why that was an emphasis because of the huge plot line that is family that runs throughout this saga. And then when we get to the point where Edward doesn’t want Bella having a child, and we can… We’re gonna jump into that whole saga. But I think that too, that was a very important plot turning point, again, that centered around the idea of family. And I think Mormonism in particular, compared to other religions, has much… The family is a central role in your life.

0:16:36.0 Dr. Jessica Flanigan: And also there’s a sign of, just to bring the kind of libertarian subtext here, you know how Lee Tyler, Cullen, and Megan McCarter are always talking about, “What’s up with Utah? Why are the Mormons seemingly so much more like… Why is this such a functioning society?” And there is this sort of like, how Tyler becomes very suspicious of alcohol, and then the Mormonism, the Church of LDS people, they have this kind of informal welfare state where it’s all outside of the state, and they have this presumptive suspicion of the government, partly ’cause people from the government tried to murder them a long time ago, and so now they’re really paranoid about that. [chuckle]

0:17:12.1 Natalie Dowzicky: Rightfully so, the suspicion.

0:17:13.2 Dr. Jessica Flanigan: Do you see their point?

0:17:15.0 Natalie Dowzicky: The suspicion.

0:17:15.1 Dr. Jessica Flanigan: Yeah. But there is a self-​help ideology that’s running through that, and I think that also is showing up in the book, both with thinking about the Cullens, but also just looking at how even from a very early time Bella’s engaged in a bunch of domestic labor, like taking care of Charlie, and there’s this sort of, an independence that is prized in her even when she’s a teenager, and participating in domestic labor in this kind of informal caregiving apparatus which I think is close to that culture.

0:17:51.0 Natalie Dowzicky: And Bella doesn’t… Not that… She doesn’t really have that family structure without the Cullens, she has her dad who came back, and doesn’t really have a mom. And so I could see her seeking out that type of family structure because she feels it was something that she was missing. That’s interesting too, ’cause she’s kind of coming into it as partially orphan, even though she has a dad, but he’s like an absent dad type.

0:18:18.8 Landry Ayres: When I was thinking about this, I was like, we’re talking a lot about how the books are actually really clever in the way that they sort of parallel Mormonism, but I was like… But we also know that the Mormon church historically as an institution, not always on personal levels, doesn’t treat people’s individual liberty in certain other social aspects with as much respect. My question at first was gonna be like, well, obviously we’re getting… It is somewhat of a biased framing of that metaphor going on there. But if you wanna take the libertarian angle with it, perhaps you could say, and I’m curious about what you think about this, is that Carlisle in creating his coven and framing this Mormon vehicle separate from the highly institutionalized Volturi vampire community going on elsewhere, it’s still relatively isolated, and while it is highly communal and wants to… He’s a doctor, he’s not just saving other vampires, he works a day job where he helps humans all the time, the kids they just go to high school and dress in all white and walk around and act cooler than everyone and look 30 years old.

[laughter]

0:19:41.0 Natalie Dowzicky: Yeah, that was… The casting, the casting.

0:19:42.4 Landry Ayres: What can you… It’s…

0:19:45.5 Natalie Dowzicky: These high-​schoolers.

0:19:45.7 Landry Ayres: Those movies, there was an era where they were… And it’s still going on today where it’s like, you gotta be at least 25 to play a 14-​year-​old or something like that. But they… There is an air of them being… It is not a highly institutionalized thing, it is not like he wanted to create a completely separate parallel Volturi rise in power structure, he’s like, “I wanna be left alone to do my own thing and help my community separate and informally.” In this very libertarian friendly way, where they take care of themselves and without being interfered from by other people, they are able to do that. So do you buy that? Do you think that that is… First of all, do we lose something by sort of framing the Mormon angle in that way? Or does it benefit that? And does it make it more sort of libertarian friendly?

0:20:46.2 Dr. Jessica Flanigan: Framing it in terms of the pioneer separatist spirit, that definitely makes sense, of thinking of it as a break from the mainstream religious movements of the time. I also think that there’s… And maybe this is just because the culture war has like rotted all of our brains, but I think that there is something… That there’s a kind of subversive critique. And so there used to be this debate… Actually, it was in Reason maybe like 15 years ago or so. Which was like, “Should libertarians… Should people be cultural conservatives or cultural liberals? What does libertarianism say about the culture?” And you might think like, “Well, nothing.” But then you might think, “Well, actually, many of the same political principles are also going to apply to like how you arrange your culture.” And so politically, the Cullens are just… Have this pioneer separatist, self help, plus domestic labor being valued type view. But then there is this, as you were saying, internal to the religion, there’s a kind of conservatism about gender and there’s a conservativism about family.

0:21:57.7 Dr. Jessica Flanigan: And I think that this is sort of trying to… We all understand what the problems are with those approaches to organizing society, which is very patriarchal. People might feel like they don’t have a choice in it. But because it has this kind of, you’re free through the rules, agent causation, everybody’s making choices here at this really strong value of choice. I think something that’s the message of this book is, sometimes it really can be a voluntary choice. And if you really are going to believe in respecting women’s choices and deferring to women about their choices, you might have to accept things that you think reflect a kind of culture of patriarchy. And you can’t have it both ways. You can’t say, on one hand, “Yes, we believe women and women get to decide what happens to their bodies, what happens to themselves.” And then when a woman makes decisions that you think is reflecting patriarchy or that you disagree with to say, “Well, that’s an adaptive preference. We’re not gonna countenance that decision. We’re not gonna believe women when it comes to deciding to live in a conservative way.” And I think that’s a very powerful point that’s made through these types of choices, where it’s… Or these stylistic choices that she’s communicating.

0:23:14.3 Dr. Jessica Flanigan: Which is to say, “Look, there’s a fundamental tension within the kind of dominant progressive narrative of like, on one hand, having extreme amounts of deference towards the testimony of women, but on the other hand, accusing women who make decisions you disagree with of having adaptive preferences in some way.” And so maybe I’m reading too much into that, but even if I’m reading too much into it, [chuckle] I also think the point just stands more generally, which is that that’s a problem for the critique of conservative culture.

0:23:44.7 Natalie Dowzicky: I also think it’s interesting that, so these are… This is obviously a young adult story. But, so I’m just thinking back through everything that we’ve talked about is that, when I was reading the books, I had to… I was probably in late elementary school, early middle school when I was reading these books. And I obviously just very surface level read it as a vampire novels, and that was that. But it is funny that it’s kind of stuck through time, and even… Well, me and my housemates joke now, where we’re like, “Let’s watch Twilight.” But I… It’s one of those stories that, going back and watching it as a 20 year old, or… Has been so strange. ‘Cause when I watched it when it first came out, it was like, yeah, team werewolves versus vampires and whatever. But then watching it in college or now it’s been very, very, very clear that there was a whole other story going on, that, Y… And YAs wouldn’t pick up on. And I think it’s interesting that she chose to go through that, the young adult avenue to tell this story, just because, 15 or let’s say 13-​year-​olds who are reading it. I don’t even think 13-​year-​olds are reading Twilight anymore, I could be wrong. But would not pick up on. Are 13-​year-​olds still reading Twilight?

0:25:18.5 Dr. Jessica Flanigan: I think so, yeah.

0:25:19.0 Natalie Dowzicky: I’m like… Okay, all right.

0:25:21.5 Landry Ayres: I’m sure there are some young moms out there who are like, “You gotta read this book.” I’m sure there are.

0:25:28.2 Natalie Dowzicky: Right, yeah. They’re the moms that are my age now that are like, “This was definitive in my upbringing. You must read it now.”

0:25:34.8 Landry Ayres: I’m sure. My dad was like, “You got to read The Hobbit when I was a kid.” He was like, “This is a great fantasy book.” I’m sure there are moms who are like, “Twilight.”

0:25:42.5 Dr. Jessica Flanigan: And this is why it holds up, ’cause, yeah, ’cause it’s got layers. The things that they are going to endure are the things that you could write a dissertation on. And this is one of those texts. Both the films and the books are extremely culturally layered, and they’re bringing up really timeless tropes in ways that are new and interesting.

[music]

0:26:06.2 Dr. Jessica Flanigan: Movies hold up too.

0:26:08.2 Landry Ayres: If we’re ranking them, well, we’re going… In terms of actual quality, Breaking Dawn part two, Breaking Dawn part one, New Moon, Twilight, Eclipse.

0:26:19.8 Natalie Dowzicky: New Moon.

0:26:20.8 Dr. Jessica Flanigan: Yeah.

0:26:21.3 Landry Ayres: Eclipse is forgettable, Twilight is up there, but it’s not good. I like it because it’s so bad. New Moon, they’re starting to get a little bit more money, Breaking Dawn one… Part one, and part two, they’ve got me by that point.

0:26:35.5 Dr. Jessica Flanigan: Yeah, Breaking Dawn part one has got to be at the top, because I feel like that is just like an incredible film.

0:26:42.5 Landry Ayres: And I’ll let the listeners in on a little behind the scenes information. If they didn’t… If they don’t follow us on Twitter @popnlockepod. Breaking Dawn part one, Jess tweeted about this film at one point and said, “I could write a dissertation about this film, about all these things.” And I pounced right on it, and I was like, “We got to do an episode about this.” [chuckle] And it was done. It was formulated, it… Out of the ether.

0:27:10.0 Natalie Dowzicky: And here we are.

0:27:10.5 Dr. Jessica Flanigan: They should teach it in film school. Here’s my case just for the history of film and horror film. So Breaking Dawn part one is a horror movie where the plot of the horror movie is that someone gets married after high school, goes on their honeymoon, gets pregnant and has a baby. [laughter] And that is the plot of the horror movie. [laughter]

0:27:34.5 Landry Ayres: That’s the whole… And that’s the whole movie. [laughter]

0:27:37.9 Landry Ayres: And it’s great.

0:27:38.0 Natalie Dowzicky: Literally.

0:27:38.5 Dr. Jessica Flanigan: And it… All of the body horror is just stuff that actually just happens in a regular pregnancy, so it’s kind of like… You know in The Exorcist where the beginning of it is just medical testing and what medicine actually is? And it looks like it’s a horror movie because it’s like, “This is how medicine is. Isn’t it horrific?” And that… It’s like a similar genre as that, where it’s just pointing out how horrifying it is to be an embodied person doing regular embodied person stuff. So, she’s severely anemic. Yeah, that happens in pregnancy. She breaks her back. Yeah, people break their backs when they’re in labor, that’s just… [laughter]

0:28:15.7 Landry Ayres: I was gonna say, when her… Goes a full 90 degree angle in one shot, it’s… I was like, “Oh! Oh!” [laughter] Also, does Dakota Fanning throw children onto pyres of burning flame, is that Breaking Dawn Part One?

0:28:32.3 Dr. Jessica Flanigan: Yeah, it’s in the flashback.

0:28:33.1 Landry Ayres: Does that happen? Does that happen?

0:28:34.7 Dr. Jessica Flanigan: Yes.

0:28:36.6 Landry Ayres: Okay, does that happen during pregnancy?

0:28:37.0 Dr. Jessica Flanigan: Yes.

0:28:37.5 Landry Ayres: Having never had a child myself, I’ve never thrown a child onto a giant burning funeral pyre.

0:28:43.6 Dr. Jessica Flanigan: No, that’s part of the horror movie, that’s not part of ordinary pregnancy. But most of the body horror stuff is [laughter] just pretty regular, ordinary… She gets a C-​section, she needs to be injected with something because she’s losing too much blood. All of that stuff is just things that happen to women very regularly, and it’s presented in this way where everybody’s freaking out about it. And I think that… [laughter] And there is something about the vampires because they’re so alienated from what it is to be an embodied human that leads them to be really freaked out by the process of birth, which I think we’re also seeing now as birth rates fall in society of more and more people have this kind of fear of pregnancy and birth anxiety and anti-​natalist views where they’re freaking out about people having children and… Because they are not around children as much, and they’re alienated from the birth process.

0:29:36.6 Dr. Jessica Flanigan: And I know a lot of women are really afraid of pregnancy and birth in this way. And that’s another way in which the Twilight movies just were ahead of the cultural curve by just kind of capturing that anxiety of creative class elites who are themselves kind of alienated from family structures and human embodiment, having anxiety about pregnancy and birth. And that’s just the vampires, man. Oh my gosh, it’s so good! [laughter] It’s such a good movie. And then there’s all that stuff about reproductive freedom, where Jacob is like, “Oh, that’s disgusting that you’re gonna exercise your sexual autonomy.” And then once she does, she’s seemingly punished for it. But… Which is an old trope, which is like, women are punished for having sex. But actually, she doesn’t see it as punishment, she sees it as a privilege to be able to have kids. And then the vampires are like, “Oh, that’s horrible that you wanna become a mother.” And it’s just turning on its head all the ways that people stigmatize women’s bodily choices. And trying to reclaim again, this kind of domestic labor as having a kind of autonomy behind it and dignity for it.

0:30:43.2 Natalie Dowzicky: I have to say very briefly that just… [chuckle] I have never had a child, but even watching this makes it horrific [laughter] to think about having children. So I’m not sure if that was the intention.

0:30:57.3 Landry Ayres: You gotta drink blood out of a styrofoam cup.

0:31:01.0 Natalie Dowzicky: Yeah.

0:31:01.3 Landry Ayres: When they show the blood…

0:31:02.4 Natalie Dowzicky: That’s disgusting.

0:31:02.5 Landry Ayres: Going up the straw, I was like, “Oh yeah, you’re right, it’s a horror movie.”

0:31:07.6 Dr. Jessica Flanigan: But then it shows how impressive it is. It’s just, the vampires have this kind of alienation from the process, and it’s like, “But look what the human body can do. Isn’t that amazing?” How heroic is Bella in that, that she’s capable of going through pregnancy and creating a whole life worth living? What an incredible thing that she can do. And she’s the hero of that story. And I feel like that’s such a powerful kind of natalist message that’s really overlooked.

[music]

0:31:39.1 Landry Ayres: It’s really interesting too, because you can see it being mistaken by the people who are like, “Poorly written female characters, scared of babies, etcetera, etcetera.” But then you also have people who are taking it the wrong way in the other direction, which I think spawns another very, very influential way that Twilight is a part of the culture now, which is 50 Shades of Grey, which started as Twilight fan fiction. Before it was ever published as a novel, in case our listeners did not know, it was Twilight fan fiction. Where Edward and Bella engaged in this BDSM, light, as far as I’m aware, I haven’t actually read them, sort of type relationship. But in doing so, it is also even… It is also very, very poorly written. I think worse than Stephenie Meyer, from the bits that I have read. And it really does devolve into a not consensual… Labeled as consensual, but not-​consensual-​type relationship between Christian Grey and Anastasia Steele. Which, it also takes place in Washington, I will say, it’s… When you look at them side by side, it’s like they really did very little work here.

0:33:06.4 Natalie Dowzicky: I also just think it’s interesting, the whole sexual narrative that goes on throughout the saga. Because we were talking about earlier on the face of it, people argue, “Oh, this is another film about abstinence and how they shouldn’t act on their sexual desires and how Edward has to hold him back because he’s gonna ‘eat’ Bella.” [chuckle] And all this kind of stuff. And then the fact that they turned that on its head into a BDSM-​type thing is hilarious to me, because the people that probably originally argued that this is another story about abstinence and how it’s great that high schoolers are so young and not 35-​year-​old vampires. And then they turned it into a story that’s very strictly about sex. Which I… Honestly just goes to show that it’s a good cultural story, if it can be morphed into so many different interpretations.

0:34:05.6 Dr. Jessica Flanigan: Well, it shows also how narrow people think… How narrowly people think about the range of acceptable sexuality, even though we think of our culture as being more sexually liberated. If you think that… If you have a conception of sexuality, which thinks that abstinence is really important to you, and that kind of has a purity culture. Oh, well, that’s problematic, and we should not redefine purity culture and we should reject abstinence. And then 50 Shades of Grey is like, “Okay, same story, but now we’re in the kink scene.” And then people are like, “Oh no, the kink scene is super problematic.” And it’s like, “Well, wait a minute. Does the range of sexual experience for people have to be right within this middle ground between purity culture and the kink scene? It seems like both of them should be acceptable in addition to…

0:34:58.0 Landry Ayres: I agree. I think the issue is that Christian Grey while ostensibly engaging in a consensual relationship is, as far as I can tell, overtly controlling outside of this contract that he’s negotiated with Ana Steele. At least this is the criticism I’ve read of the film, is that it is not accurate in its depiction of the BDSM community, which is all about consent. And that he over-​steps that bound even though that they have set their boundaries much further than what other people might have likely said. But I think your argument still stands Jess, which is that there is… I think BDSM and kink, while growing more and more accepted is still relegated to the sidelines, and as long as both parties are consenting, I think anybody who listens to this podcast would likely understand and agree that that should be an acceptable thing.

0:36:02.9 Dr. Jessica Flanigan: Yeah, maybe people object to the way that the execution has been… How… The execution of the portrayal of it. But my sense of it is that the idea is to say, “Oh, this is voluntary because they had a contract, and if you make a contract that’s voluntary, then that’s also an exercise of your will. Which is freedom of contract.” Like, “Yep, that doesn’t just… Freedom of contract, not just for the economy.” [chuckle] So if you take that as the intended message of it, then the critique still stands which is people might think that it looks like adaptive preferences. People might think that the woman is not a reliable narrator of her own will, but that in itself is, I think a impulse of trying to discount women’s testimony, which is inconsistent with the accusation of adaptive preferences.

0:36:55.3 Landry Ayres: That’s true. And I think… Obviously, it becomes very… When you undertake the notion of fantasy in fiction writing, especially, it becomes very easy to discount these kind of stories when you really have no right to. Especially in something that is fiction, you can ostensibly write whatever you like because none of it is real. And while it might be different with real people still pushing away those types of stories simply because it is read with a subtext you have in mind doesn’t fit. It can be condescending and not fully capturing what the story is about. I think you’re absolutely right, and while you could make arguments on a technical level about to where the consent line was crossed. Then you get into issues about the responsibility of the story teller in depictions of a community like BDSM, which I think is completely separate from what we were talking about, which is really within the bounds of the narrative.

0:38:05.0 Dr. Jessica Flanigan: Exactly, yeah, I think we should be suspicious of these responses to cultural products that center on female sexuality, because there are so many cultural products that are about war and some guy going out and doing some killing or vigilante justice and the Batman and stuff. And no one…

0:38:24.4 Natalie Dowzicky: Macho man.

0:38:25.3 Dr. Jessica Flanigan: Yeah, and no one has ever, has this finely-​tuned moral sensibilities about the men’s choices in these types of cases where we agonize over whether or not the specific portrayal of their inner moral compass is exactly gonna comport with our conceptions of the ethics of male behavior. And so the fact that people stress out so much about these cultural products is itself just further proving the point that what they’re doing that’s so powerful is launching a unstated, or readily stated critique of how we encounter female sexuality.

[music]

0:39:01.9 Dr. Jessica Flanigan: We gotta talk about the part where the werewolves all are talking, but it’s just CGI voice-​over, it’s just like CGI dogs with the voice-​over.

0:39:11.4 Landry Ayres: Do you think they filmed it in front of a green screen? Like they had people in the wolf suits standing around and they were like just vamp. Can we get some Walla going on here? And then they did a separate scene…

0:39:21.5 Natalie Dowzicky: That’s so good.

0:39:23.1 Landry Ayres: My favorite is when it’s in ‘Eclipse.’ Well, it’s not my favorite, it’s one of my favorites, it’s in ‘Eclipse’ when Bella and Jacob are beginning to kindle their romantic feelings after Edward has departed and fled and is distancing himself from Bella, and they’re working on the bikes in the barn, and the montage starts with the music. And Bella goes to pick up some pizza that’s been delivered from the barn, and I think she pays the guy and without even taking the box out of his hands. She opens up the lid, grabs a slice of piping hot, greasy, ‘za, and then spins around and throws it like a frisbee across this barn at Jacob. And then he turns around and he catches a wrench to show the passage of time, but who throws a greasy piece of pizza through the air, no plate, no napkin, right at him. He’s gonna get burned… I will burn my mouth on a piece of pizza, biting into it too fast. Can you imagine if one was hurdling at my face, I would be scarred.

0:40:32.7 Dr. Jessica Flanigan: It takes so many people to make a movie. They needed a prop director, they needed a cinematographer. There was a dozen people that were in on that scene that could have been like, this makes no sense, why is Kristen Stewart throwing a piece of pizza?

0:40:45.3 Natalie Dowzicky: Yeah, exactly.

0:40:45.7 Landry Ayres: They had enough people writing this screenplay that no one thought, “We should clarify or at least give a redemption arc to Jasper,” the Confederate general, who just says, “I was walking away from the civil war, and I was down in Texas and I met some vampires and then I became a vampire person.” And then he meets the psychic one who I can never remember, who I actually really like, she’s a really…

0:41:09.8 Dr. Jessica Flanigan: Alice.

0:41:10.0 Landry Ayres: Yeah, Alice. Who is a great character.

0:41:11.9 Natalie Dowzicky: Alice.

0:41:12.1 Landry Ayres: She’s a lot of fun.

0:41:13.8 Dr. Jessica Flanigan: Yeah, she’s a good character.

0:41:15.7 Landry Ayres: No redemption arc. We never get like, “And I realize the error of my ways,” or something like that. For all we know he still harbors terrible ideas about slavery. Who… I just…

0:41:30.2 Natalie Dowzicky: There are a lot of plot holes where I thought the writers, they watched this and they were like, “Yes, this is the way to go.” And everyone else is sitting in like, “What!”

0:41:40.3 Landry Ayres: Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh.

0:41:41.4 Natalie Dowzicky: We’re just… We’re gonna leave that unaddressed?

[laughter]

0:41:45.1 Natalie Dowzicky: The pizza’s definitely up there as one of those scenes where it was just like, why?

0:41:48.4 Landry Ayres: I will… I will never…

0:41:50.7 Natalie Dowzicky: What in the world?

0:41:50.8 Landry Ayres: I will never look at that scene, also, I just want our listeners to know there is a book that came out on the 10th anniversary of Twilight called Life and Death: Twilight Re-​imagined. That is a gender swapped retelling of the story with Beaufort Swan, who goes by Beau. Also, his name is Beaufort? Is he a Confederate general? Shout out to any Beaufort listeners out there, hope you enjoy the show. And Elise Cullen or something, and it tells the entire same story, as the first novel, but when Beaufort gets bitten by the tracker not named James, it’s a female tracker, they literally swapped everyone’s gender. Because you can’t be killed by, there’s no male on male vampire killing going on apparently, the metaphor would get too messy there.

0:42:44.8 Landry Ayres: They let Beaufort Swan become a vampire. They fake his death and then abscond and Beaufort and Elise Cullen live happily ever after. And they have to go back and cover it all up, and then the werewolves sort of get angry about it, but the story ends there. They don’t exercise the sort of overt paternalism on the male vampire being turned. He’s been expressing the same desires that Bella did in this story, but at the end they go, “You know what, it’s okay. Let these kids have it.” Which I think to me is emblematic of some of the problems of the story that we’re getting here. Even if it does complicate the way that we were talking about, and how the story handles it well previously. I just love that tidbit of information. I’m gonna go back and read it. This is separate from Midnight Sun, which is the retelling of the original Twilight story from Edward’s point of view. There’s a lot of POV changing sort of adaptations here. And all of these are canon as far as we’re aware, these are not fan fiction stories. These are written by Stephenie Meyer.

0:43:52.7 Natalie Dowzicky: Yeah.

0:43:53.1 Dr. Jessica Flanigan: Well, the reason that it probably wouldn’t work if you do the full on gender swap, is that there’s so much stuff about female, domestic labor, and pregnancy. And if you do the swapping, those types of cultural signifiers, aren’t gonna carry the same kinda weight. And so then it’s really just gonna be about conceptions of sexuality and gender, but all of the other stuff that’s in the broader patriarchal discourse stuff like that’s all gonna be kind of less relevant if you do the gender swab. So that kind of makes sense.

0:44:24.8 Natalie Dowzicky: I would just like to say, and Jess said this in the notes we left, the Wikipedia page for that book is… What? Okay, so I had never… I didn’t even know it existed. So here I am on Google and it is something else. So if you really need just a quick version of the story, you should go to Wikipedia.

0:44:45.9 Dr. Jessica Flanigan: Yeah. [laughter]

0:44:46.2 Dr. Jessica Flanigan: My knowledge of Life and Death is also from the Wikipedia. And I feel like, I think that’s enough.

0:44:51.5 Landry Ayres: Oh, I fully admit it’s also from Wikipedia for me. I did not read this book, but I read the Wikipedia article and I was stunned. And I had to tell everyone I knew about it.

0:45:02.4 Natalie Dowzicky: Well, do you also think Stephenie Meyer was just like, “Well, how do I keep capitalizing, on this story?

0:45:07.8 Landry Ayres: I’m sure ’cause she’s smart.

0:45:09.5 Natalie Dowzicky: Yeah.

0:45:09.7 Landry Ayres: She was like…

0:45:10.5 Dr. Jessica Flanigan: I know that Mormon value capitalism.

0:45:12.7 Landry Ayres: She was like, I need to make that paper. I gotta get my paycheck and good on her.

0:45:18.8 Natalie Dowzicky: Yeah.

0:45:19.4 Landry Ayres: People bought it.

0:45:20.1 Natalie Dowzicky: Yeah.

0:45:23.1 Natalie Dowzicky: I’ll take some more… I’ll take some more Twilight canon for ya.

0:45:25.1 Landry Ayres: Oh my gosh, I would love it, if they rebooted the movie series and they gender swapped that, oh, I would die. Oh man. But don’t make it good. Don’t make it good. Do the whole first movie, but everyone’s like greenish tints again. Oh, it’s my favorite. Don’t spring on a color correctionist, please.

0:45:46.1 Natalie Dowzicky: Still wondering why this movie didn’t win any Oscars, but…

0:45:49.3 Landry Ayres: It should have won… If there was an Oscar for best original… Or for best compilation soundtrack, it would’ve won because every song in this movie slaps. It is banger after banger after banger.

0:46:02.2 Dr. Jessica Flanigan: Yeah. No, it’s email canon. Whoever made the soundtrack really earned it because that was extremely, well it was just perfect. You’re exactly right. But also important if you’re talking about the teenage experience, because everybody’s musical tastes kind of freeze right around that age. And so you have to have a great soundtrack. If you want it to really stick with people.

0:46:24.7 Natalie Dowzicky: You also have to do a great a soundtrack, if your script isn’t as, you know…

0:46:29.0 Landry Ayres: It’s true. It’s true.

0:46:31.7 Dr. Jessica Flanigan: No. Heresy.

0:46:32.1 Landry Ayres: I mean, we can say they were working with not the greatest, like technical… Like the story of Twilight, I love, the dialogue of Twilight could use some work.

0:46:43.4 Dr. Jessica Flanigan: Poor Taylor Lautner.

0:46:45.7 Landry Ayres: Oh. And when they put him in that wig, in the first movie with the heart.

0:46:49.7 Natalie Dowzicky: Oh, my God, it’s so bad.

0:46:51.2 Landry Ayres: The worst wig I’ve ever seen, it gets better in Eclipse. It gets a little bit better, but then I’m glad when they cut his hair, it’s true.

0:46:58.3 Natalie Dowzicky: So bad.

0:46:58.7 Landry Ayres: Also the werewolves, do they have a dedicated jorts budget? Do they do they scavenge? Because they show them scattering to the wind when they transform. And then they come back all still wearing jorts, all still wearing them. Do you think they have caches hidden around the woods, where as soon as they de-​werewolf, they run around and are like, “Hold on, we gotta go find the cache, and put on pants,” but nobody’s in up one that’s two sizes too big. They go over and no one’s like, “Oh man, we only have large.”

0:47:28.6 Dr. Jessica Flanigan: The forest of Washington State are well stocked with jorts.

0:47:31.8 Landry Ayres: Littered, littered with jorts everywhere.

0:47:38.6 Landry Ayres: Thanks for listening. As always the best way to get more Pop & Locke content is to follow us on Twitter. You can find us at the handle @popnlockepod. That’s pop, the letter N, Locke, with an, E, like the philosopher, pod. Make sure to follow us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen and please rate and review us if you like the show. We look forward to unravelling your favorite show or movie next time. Pop & Locke is a project of lib​er​tar​i​an​ism​.org. It’s produced by me, Landry Ayres, and is co-​hosted by myself and our director and editor, Aaron Ross Powell. To learn more, visit us on the web at lib​er​tar​i​an​ism​.org.