DOOM! Magazine

Posted by PanasonicYouth on Thursday, October 7th, 2010

In the fourteenth chapter of New Moon, Stephenie Meyer reaches new literary heights by writing pages and pages of exposition for what appears to be a really bad porn. Or slashfic. Something like that. But seriously, there are half naked boys in a forest wrestling while other half naked boys bet on which one will bleed and then there are half naked boys who make a Bella sandwich in her car and…no, it’s really bad. Really really bad. And then we meet Jacob’s family and it’s weird and full of bizarre displays of homoerotic masculinity, leading to one conclusion: this is glorified fanfiction. Intrigued? Then it’s time for Mark to read New Moon.

CHAPTER 14: FAMILY

I have rewritten the start of this review about 12 times now. I can’t do this.

First of all, my initial plan was to mock this horrible chapter by writing slashfic or a porn script based on the highly homoerotic and sexual undertones that Meyer includes. However, after much consultation with my resident expert on all things involving fanfiction, I realized that if I started writing slashfic, I would have to get detailed. Really detailed. Like…I’d have to talk about lubrication. And I’d have to described Jacob’s penis or Bella’s nether regions. And the real truth is that I’d really like to have a job tomorrow.

Some other time, maybe.

I’ve lost inspiration (temporarily) mostly out of shock. I’m at a point where I truly do not understand how this got published. As I read page after page of shirtless boys getting SO INCREDIBLY ANGRY OVER A GIRL that their clothes explode off their bodies, I wonder how much of this gender-normative, homoerotic, ridiculous bullshit I can take.

But no, seriously. Their clothes explode off their bodies. Does that mean if you could see things in slow motion you can see their naughty bits? Why am I even thinking about this?

So Jacob turns into a wolf and goes off to fight with another dude-wolf called Paul simply because Bella exists and knows they are all werewolves. Yes, this makes absolutely no sense, but Meyer does nothing to help me even try to suspend my belief for a moment. If anything, it seems to exist solely to have all the males in this story prove they are men and nothing more. These ridiculously stupid displays of masculinity offer nothing to the story except to prove that Meyer wants to fuck her own characters.

There. I said it. I’ll say it louder.

STEPHENIE MEYER DESIRES NOTHING MORE THAN FOR HER FICTIONAL CREATIONS TO BECOME SENTIENT BEINGS AND HAVE FILTHY SEX WITH HER.

Jesus. But I’m not done.

There’s something disturbing to me about how Meyer deals with gender in her novels; it’s not only reminiscent of fanfiction/slashfiction writers, but of people who have fairly damaging views about the gender binary. And in this chapter, we’re presented with some pretty heavy archetypes and stereotypes all relating precisely to gender.

There’s the Quileute tribe, who are all full of perfectly muscular, overly masculine, courageous men. The only women we’re introduced to thusfar is Emily, Sam Uley’s fiance, who appears in chapter 14. And what’s she doing when we finally meet her?

She’s cooking for everyone else.

I know I’ll hear it, so let’s just deal with it now: Yes, women can cook and choose to cook. Yes, women can choose to be a trillion things in the world and, as Meyer repeats ad infinitum to everyone, the real basis of women’s rights is about retaining the freedom to choose. I agree with that.

However, these are fictional characters. They’re not real people. (Though my sparkly text certainly wishes that these were real people.) So that defense of her writing is pretty moot. She ultimately controls what these characters do and what they are.

We’re presented with a set of characters who are built by their author to subscribe to virtually every stereotype that has ever existed for men and women. It was the same way with the Cullens and, as we’re introduced to the werewolves, the same themes present themselves again: females are subject, at any moment, to the violent whims of all the men in the book. (An important note to those who have not read this: half of Emily’s face is deeply scarred and disfigured and it’s insinuated she got this from being a non-werewolf hanging around werewolves.)

This book was published in 2006. Our society is so richly diverse, in terms of ethnicity, religion, gender, sex, etc., yet Meyer has so little creativity, she can’t seem to resist painting her characters with flourishes of 1950s societal norms. What the fuck?

I’m not asking for a complete re-imagining of the series. (Actually, I am, but that’s a different point.) I’m just asking for some honest representation of the world we live in. Again, as I said before: writing a fantastic world and writing realistic characters are not mutually exclusive.

Originally published on Mark Reads New Moon

Missed Mark Reads New Moon? Read it here on DOOM! Magazine from the beginning… Mark Will Read the Entire Twilight Series (so you don’t have to)

Related posts:

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 7th, 2010 at 1:50 PM. It is filed under Literature and tagged with markreadstwilight, New Moon, Twilight. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.