Friends don't let friends date monsters.
June 30, 2010 is turning out to be something of a lovefest for the Twi-hards among us, as teen girls and teen-girl wannabes flock to first-run showings of Eclipse, the latest film in the Twilight series. In the interest of full disclosure, I'll admit I've never seen any of the Twilight films, or indeed read any of the books in the series except Twilight—and then only because I wanted to be well informed about the contents of a book my teenage niece desperately wanted to read. A cursory look at Twilight revealed nothing more than basic teen wish-fulfillment fantasy, indifferently written. While I guessed the story might be attractive to a certain readership, it did nothing for me; in fact, there were specific aspects of Twilight that I found outright disturbing. Edward, pseudo-teen heartthrob with fangs, claims to love and care for Bella, yet he fights with the constant desire to kill her and drink her delicious-smelling blood. Is it just me, or does anyone else find this disquieting? Would you seriously want to date a guy who considers your natural Eau-de-Happy-Meal musk to be your greatest charm? The kind who says "You look good enough to eat" and really means it? And yet Hot Topic keeps moving "Team Edward" merchandise out the door.
It's not just Twilight, though. I had much the same experience five years earlier, when my husband and I went to see the film version of the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical The Phantom of the Opera. We'd seen the musical many times on stage and wanted to see how the film version compared. Gerard Butler's portrayal of the Phantom stripped away any of the stage pretensions; he had no angelic singing voice to seduce, no magical charisma to enchant his audience, other than the undeniable good looks behind his partially-masked face. It became obvious almost from the outset that this character was monstrous, a psychopath who was willing to do anything—including murder—to get what he wanted. Behind the mask, he was ancient, ugly, cruel, horrifying. And yet as we left the theater, I heard one teenage girl saying to another, "If I were Christine, I SO would have gone with the Phantom. He was way hotter than Raoul!"
What's going on here? Why are the media choosing to tell stories like these to teenagers, and why do teenage girls consume them like Hershey bars? Why do we choose to idealize monsters, recasting them as perfect companions, to the point that young girls are primed to choose such monsters over real men?
It's not as though the theme of monster-as-boyfriend is anything new. In the 1980s and '90s, horror-comedy films such as My Demon Lover and My Boyfriend's Back mocked the idea, as hapless women fell for a part-time demon and a zombie prom date, respectively. The difference between these and the newest crop of stories is that the latter actually takes the concept seriously, encouraging young girls to swoon over the very creatures that made their parents scream.
Do I believe the movers and shakers in the mass media are out to cause deliberate harm to teen girls? Not particularly. I think they simply perceive young women as being a fertile target market—a large, easily-led target market, with copious amounts of disposable income and the will to spend it. In the course of researching this market, I think the media have simply discovered some specific characteristics common to the demographic, to wit: they have a strong desire to strike out on their own, to forge an identity separate from that of their parents; they are attracted to adventure and taking risks; they are naive and ignorant of the world and its dangers; they tend to be in love with the idea of being in love, having had little or no prior experiences with romance; they have a desire to save misunderstood outcasts, to fix those who are lost or in pain; they feel like tragic heroines whom no one understands; they melt at the thought of being admired from afar by a mysterious stranger, never considering who and what that stranger might be; they still secretly harbor a childlike belief in magic. The people responsible for producing movies, books and music for teenage girls know that if they can provide songs and stories that hook into and exploit these characteristics, it'll be like catnip to teenage girls, and they're likely to make millions.
Perhaps you're thinking, "Why should we care? After all, the media are just giving teenagers what they want." Well, unfortunately, all these specific qualities that make teen girls so easy to cater to also make teen girls particularly susceptible to sexual predation, whether in person or online. What media moguls carelessly exploit for profit, others who are even less scrupulous will exploit for personal gratification. A girl who dreams of a clandestine meeting in a subterranean grotto with a mysterious masked man is primed and ready to respond to the carefully-chosen, honeyed words of a chatroom pedophile who lurks behind the half-mask of an online alias. A teenager who dreams of a lover with superhuman powers, immortal good looks and a taste for blood is far more likely to flirt with danger when she meets an attractive stranger who claims to love her, playing her as a fly fisherman plays a trout. Real-life handsome monsters like serial killer Ted Bundy might have made far more headway in their acts of murder and mayhem if supernatural "romances" like Twilight had been popular among their victims.
Let's consider the supposed romantic moments of the two media monsters I've mentioned thus far. First, the Phantom. Though he is undeniably brilliant, a polymath of epic proportions, the Phantom's repulsive appearance drives him away from humanity. Rather than using his multitudinous talents for good, he broods and sulks in subterranean chambers, choosing to feed off others through acts of terrorism and extortion. He uses Christine, a girl many years his junior, taking advantage of her youth and loneliness, convincing her he is an angel who will comfort and teach her. When she shows interest in another man, he at first flies into a rage, then takes her down to his caverns, intending to keep her prisoner indefinitely. When Christine removes his mask, she is horrified—yet she remains fascinated by the Phantom's intelligence, passion and voice. He continues to wreak havoc on all around her, killing to get what he wants; it is not until the end of the story, after Christine kisses him, that he proves himself truly capable of showing love. He puts Christine's future happiness before his own, allowing the lovers to escape, then vanishing away forever. The story does not dwell on Christine's life after the Phantom, but a real woman who had survived such an ordeal would probably be haunted by phobias and have difficulty with trusting men for many years to come.
Then there's Edward Cullen. Where to begin? Well, he's over a century old with a thirst for human blood, but he's managed to keep it under control by feeding on animals. Like the Phantom, he possesses numerous talents in music; due to many years of attending high school, he is very knowledgeable, and he is also a perfect physical specimen with the ability to read minds. Despite these qualities, he falls for Bella, a teenage girl with no personality to speak of; the only thing about her that interests him is the intoxicating smell of her blood. At first he keeps away from her, then seemingly changes his mind and spends more and more time around her. At some point, despite many attempts to warn her both subtly and overtly, he decides to bring his torment to an end by taking Bella deep into the woods, showing her what he truly is, making her so afraid of him that she attempts to run away, then stalking and catching her, killing her, drinking her blood and making sure her broken, lifeless body is never found. Things don't turn out this way only because Stephenie Meyer was ostensibly writing a romance, not a horror novel. However, even after she's saved from certain death by the shameless machinations of her author, Bella continues to place herself in constant danger—not just from other vampires, but from the very being who claims to love her, sneaks into her room at night, watches her as she sleeps, etc., etc. If he looked his true age, Bella would be horrified of him; if he were not possessed of Adonis-like beauty, she would see him as the creepy, pedophilic stalker he truly is. There's a reason why this book is called Twilight: it is only in the gloaming of a mental dusk that beings like Edward can appear lovable and trustworthy.
So what are concerned parents of Team Edward girls supposed to do? Simply put, they do what all parents do: temper teenage fantasies with a healthy helping of reality. They show through words and actions the difference between love and lust, between truth and perception, between those who appear to be good and those who actually are good. They warn their children about time spent online in chat rooms or social media, encouraging them to stay as far as possible from the seamy side of the Net, and help them understand that the real world, with all its problems, trumps the phony perfection of cyber-life every time. They might also choose to encourage their daughters to wait until they are older (and hopefully wiser) to start dating, and to begin with group dates. And they need to remind their teens what they should have been taught as young children: never give a stranger, no matter how nice that stranger seems to be, contact information of any kind.
Movie monsters aren't real. But our society harbors its share of charming monsters that are only too real, and eager to prey on the young and inexperienced. Parents are meant to warn their children not to adore the predatory monsters that lurk at the twilit corners of society, but to abhor them.