Let’s talk about Breaking Dawn for a brief moment. Humour me here, you guys. It’s a sickness I tell you.
We all know I am in deep real love with RPattz, and even more so with KStew. It is no secret that I have read the Twilight series, quite a few times, and quite a few times been disgraced at myself for reading them and actually enjoying them.
Of course I have been to the cinema to see all the films (bar Eclipse) and if somebody was to, oh I don’t know, by me the special edition box set of them all that is sure to be released one day, I wouldn’t argue!
But this film…this film. I just don’t know how much more I can cope with these films. Because here is the thing, I love the series, I think they are terribly written but gloriously imagined, but I am 28. I can see the misogynistic overtones for what they are. It scares me that I sat in an audience with 14/15 year old girls who really (most probably) can’t.
Aside from the asinine acting/pacing/make up of the film, the blatant anti-abortion message that came across in it was so incredibly uncomfortable to watch, it went past being a film that is fun to see so you can rip the shit out of it after.
Because when you sit in a theatre full of teens and the words ‘foetus’ and ‘baby’ are being thrown around on screen, the reality of this series hits home. It is no longer this YA fantasy novel that I read in the solitude of my bedroom, blankets pulled around me whilst I filtered out the Mormon subtext of the novel and fell in love with the Cullen family. No, it is a billion dollar creature that is not so subtly telling girls they can’t have sex unless they are married, and they shouldn’t have abortions because it is a baby from the minute you understand within yourself that you have something growing within your self.
Reading a novel is such a deeply personal experience that I guess you can pretend the rest of the world hasn’t experienced it the same way. Despite the New York Best Seller list suggesting otherwise.
But when you see those themes and beliefs displayed on a screen, with no way to interpret things than the black and white they are portrayed in. That is when I realised… there really should be better than this. It is too dangerous for this film to be the defining idea of romance and love and life.
No matter how much I love RobSten.
