WHY TWILIGHT IS GOOD for YOU How the Uncanny Can Make Us More Christ-Like
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46-50_chadwick_Uncanny:a_chandler_kafka 4/18/2011 7:56 PM Page 46 SUNSTONE Walpole, Stoker, Bronte . Meyer? WHY TWILIGHT IS GOOD FOR YOU How the Uncanny Can Make Us More Christ-like By Tyler Chadwick AST SUMMER, AS I FLIPPED THROUGH THE I could go on quoting similar comments from any five-hundred-plus-page novel my wife and I had number of websites I’ve come across in my efforts to un - L borrowed from our sister-in-law, I thought, “A derstand the Twilight phenomenon. But I need look no Mormon writing vampire stories? This should be an inter - farther than my own household to observe the gravita - esting read.” Almost everyone we’d talked to about the tional pull of Meyer’s world. We were latecomers to book and its sequel s— Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight Sag a— Meyer’s reception, walking in only after Breaking Dawn had nothing but praise for Meyer, a BYU graduate, and her had come out in 2008. But once my wife picked up the se - flawed-enough-to-be-human fantasy. Some said, “It’s bril - ries, there was no looking back. She ingested all four liant! Stephenie Meyer is a great storyteller.” Others re - books in five days. Then, after a day or two of rest, during marked, in words similar to these from one Twihard (as which she couldn’t shake the specters of Edward and Bella some obsessive fans call themselves), “These books really from her consciousness, she went back for seconds, this make you feel like they’re happening[;] they’re realisti c— time reading the series more slowly, she said, in prepara - love happens. And that makes them even more likeable, tion for the November 2008 release of the film adaptation too.” 1 of the first book. But the draw to Meyer’s world may not simply be like - Because Meyer’s romantic epic sprawls across 2,458 able characters. The stories also seem narcotic in that they pages in four roughly six-hundred page tomes, my wife’s evoke a physiological response that ties readers to the reading was no small feat. But as many others have, she sensual experience of the fantasy. “I feel a little lost now admits she just couldn’t put the books down. She just had that the series is over and I have nothing left to read,” to follow Isabella “Bella” Swan and her vegetarian vam - writes one Twihard. “Nothing else interests me except for pire beau, Edward Cullen, as they first meet in Forks, Bella and Edward[’]s story.” 2 Yet another confesses, Washington, fall into forbidden love, and, after con - “Twilight is my brand of heroin. The first time I read it, I quering a series of increasingly threatening obstacle s— fell in love with the book [...] I became obsessed [...] It’s most of which involve confrontations with vampires of definitely addicting.” 3 the non-vegan strip e— live happily ever after as immortal husband and wife. My wife and I are active Latter-day Saints, so surely the prospect of seeing Edward and Bella TYLER CHADWICK is a husband, father, poet, teacher, and scholar. He is currently pursuing doctoral studies in become eternal companions increased my wife’s motiva - English at Idaho State University, where he works as an tion to keep reading. Such a Mormon ideal, as Jonathan editorial assistant on JAC , an interdisciplinary journal Green points out, makes the Sag a— particularly Breaking of rhetoric, writing, culture, and politics. He blogs at Daw n—“a sustained and vividly imagined answer” to chasingthelongwhitecloud.blogspot.com and is a contributor to the some “very Mormon questions,” including: “What will it Mormon arts and culture blog, A Motley Vision . be like to have a marriage continue past death into the PAGE 46 DECEMBER 2009 46-50_chadwick_Uncanny:a_chandler_kafka 4/18/2011 7:56 PM Page 47 SUNSTONE eternities? What does it mean to have a perfected body, or morality of Mormon youth and Meyer’s possible influence to love an eternal being?” 4 on their attitudes toward sexuality. So even if readers Despite this apparently unabashed Mormon cosmology don’t understand the historical literary connection be - and the implicit cultural approval of the fantasy, I was still tween vampirism, sensuality, and sex (as many do not), a bit chagrined at the LDS-vampire combo as I waded into this tension between a hygienic surface and an implicitly Twilight ’s cinematic narrative. Considering the book’s “dirty” core leads one letter writer to ask why Mormon black cover, I may have even asked myself, “What might readers insist on “glamoriz[ing]” and “splitting hairs with this brush with the dark and ungodly realm of vampires evil” by giving Twilight due consideration. For as the do to my soul? Am I giving way to the devil by wading writer sermonizes, “The Savior does not split hairs[;] into Meyer’s world?” wrong is wrong, evil is evil. Dress it up or slice it any way Well, one critic writes, you want to [...], the Meyer’s “novels are truly Prophets of the Lord [...] Mormon novels and are contrary to Ms. could not be anything Meyer[’]s story lines else” 5—so surely they’re [sic].” 9 safe reading. But a In my efforts to under - number of Latter-day stand and interpret the Saints believe otherwise. Twilight Saga as a cultural In an assembly of let - phenomenon, I’ve found ters to the Meridian it useful to situate Magazine editor in re - Twilight in relation to sponse to the magazine’s Gothic literature, that in - positive treatment of the creasingly popular fic - Twilight Saga, several tional realm sometimes readers wonder how labeled “a literature of Mormons, “the [self- nightmare.” 10 The first avowed] children of [...] Gothic novel I read was Light,” 6 can justifiably Mary Shelley’s Frank- indulge themselves by enstein (1818), inspired reading literary works sit - by her vision of a scien - uated in supernatural tist crazed by a desire to realms of darkness and re-animate human life. touching the inherent It’s a tale that has settled sensuality of human ex - into our cultural con - perience. How have so sciousness deeply eno- many Latter-day Saints, ugh that its potential to “the very Elect” of God, strike terror into our one asks, “been hood heart s— as it did to winked [sic] and dazzled Shelley and her contem - by the Adversary” into porarie s— is muted by fa - thinking that Twilight and What might this brush with the dark miliarity and parody. its sequels are “harmless” Some time after reading entertainment? 7 For de - and ungodly realm of vampires do to Frankenstein , I returned spite Twilight ’s squeaky to the tradition’s roots clean façade, the story my soul? Am I giving way to the devil with Horace Walpole’s seethes with what Lev dream-inspired, Castle of Grossman names an by wading into Meyer’s world? Otranto (1764), consid - “erotics of abstinence”: a ered the first Gothic muted sexual interplay novel in English. Otranto that arises as Bella’s hormones and Edward’s bloodlust re - set the generic standard with its haggard castle, animated peatedly interact and their bodies ache to possess one an - portraits, unexplained appearances of colossal body parts, other, often to the point of arousal, though never to twists of identity, and a crazed and incestuous father-king climax until after their marriage in Breaking Dawn .8 whose lust for power brings death crashing down on his In view of LDS teachings on chastity, Meyer’s answer to son, ultimately leaving him personally and politically im - the question, How far can we go without going all the way? potent. Then I read William Beckford’s Vathek, an Arabian may pose valid concerns for those worried about the Tale (1782), Matthew Lewis’s The Monk (1796), Anne DECEMBER 2009 PAGE 47 46-50_chadwick_Uncanny:a_chandler_kafka 4/18/2011 7:56 PM Page 48 SUNSTONE Radcliffe’s The Italian (1797), an d— probably the most neath a burden of vanity, or as wife after Stepford wife is well-known of this lis t— Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights murdered and replaced by an impossibly beautiful and (1847), a tale of passionate yet thwarted love between fawning replica because Stepford insists on perfection. So Catherine and Heathcliff (one of literature’s great mon - when we come upon something uncanny, it shows us sters). The book’s characters haunt England’s Yorkshire “nothing new or alien”; it simply reasserts something Moors, drifting between the natural and supernatural in from which we have “become alienated [...] through a their longing, perhaps, to belong. process of repression.” 14 Something these novels have in common is that, true to The uncanny comes from a source close to hom e— the Gothic tradition, they give “form to amorphous fears much closer, perhaps, than some might care to admit. It and impulses common” to humanity. They take up psy - stands on the threshold between the unfamiliar and fa - chological and relational dysfunctions, the miliar, the imagined and the real. This in-between-ness depths of passion, and the pain of un - allows the uncanny to subversively function requited love as they conjure in psychology, language, literature, culture, up monster s— animated and religion, the systems through which corpses, mad monks, and humans mediate the immaterial and demon s— and invoke material aspects of the world. venue s— the “forbid - ding cliffs and glow - ering buildings, stormy seas and the dizzying The uncanny stands abyss ”— that are signif - icant not just in narra - on the threshold tive terms, but contain “the properties of between the dream symbolism as well.” 11 Consciously or not, Gothic fiction unfamiliar and writers give shape to phantasms and evils we familiar, the imagined generally summon only from our sleep’s deep un - and the real.