Love it? Hate it? Meh? It’s a bit hard to totally ignore this week, just sayin’.
My daughter and her friends, one of whom is a recovering Twihard, went along to see it hoping to enjoy the pointing and the mocking. They found it too intense for that, but didn’t find the intensity much fun either.
Linkage (sarcastic and serious) below the pic (obviously, Spoilers Alert (but I doubt that many folks who haven’t read the books will actually go to the movie anyway (I just read the Wikipedia novel summaries (and lots of blog movie recaps) myself (caught the first movie on cable and haven’t bothered seeing the rest (just how many parentheses can one nest anyway?))))):
Potter: Sorry about the whole letting you die thing | Diggory: Dude, have you been living under a rock? Being un-dead has done wonders for my street cred, plus, duh, Kristin Stewart. | Potter: Oh. | Diggory: *Sparkles*
Hi Bella. I am Edward.
(these articles should be taken as read in sarcasm font)
- Can a Grown Werewolf Falling in Love With a Newborn Not Be Creepy? (And Seven Other Things About Breaking Dawn)
having seen the film, we can say the sex and the birth scenes (especially the sex scene — more sex, Twilight, come on!) were just the tip of the iceberg (or, vampire fang, if you will)
- Twilight: Breaking Wind
when I walked away from Breaking Dawn, Part 1, my biggest complaint was the last 2 words of the title: Part One.This movie did *not* need to be made in two parts. I know that in terms of size, the Breaking Dawn novel is about the same as the last Harry Potter book. That doesn’t mean it has enough story to serve 2 movies. […] Breaking Dawn simply doesn’t have enough content. This movie could EASILY have been cut down to include the entire book in a single movie.
SEVEN things happen in this movie. Seven. That’s it. Don’t believe me? Fine. Let’s do this:
- Breaking Dawn: The Dress, the Vampire, the Fetus, and the Headboard
– recap with slightly more squee than sarcasm
Movie Poster of Bella pregnant
(these articles are more serious)
- Breaking Dawn: Part 1—An Anti-Abortion Message in a Bruised-Apple Package
The movie only decorates her with a few tiny bruises on her arm and shoulder, a diminishment that can be seen as an improvement given that it does not romanticize a bruised and battered body to the same extent as the book.
But another narrative thread in Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight saga that is problematic from a feminist perspective–the latent anti-abortion message—is heightened, not diminished, in the film.
- Our Bella, Ourselves
This is an uncomfortable place for feminists, because this heroine is not particularly good at actualizing herself. Bella waits, she wallows, she thinks, and feels, and worries, and wonders. She does not actualize in the sense we have come to expect from our heroines, an expectation that, I might point out, is quite often based on a masculinist understanding of what being effective in the world looks like. […] Though Bella’s pregnancy in Breaking Dawn provides the final piece of the series’ conservative triptych of marriage, sex, baby, it also (somewhat unfashionably) emphasizes just how much women’s bodies matter.
- Funding Oppression Ironically
Every time you see these films, purchase these books, or buy merchandise related in some way, you are putting money into the pocket of Meyer and therefore, the church which sees me and my girlfriend as subhuman creatures deserving less than equal rights.
- The Spoiler Interview: Breaking Dawn’s Screenwriter Discusses the Sex Scene, the Bloody Birth, and Feminism
Vulture asked screenwriter Melissa Rosenberg (who’s also scripted the previous three films in the franchise) to give us the lowdown on how she and director Bill Condon conceived the movie’s two most major set pieces — the love scene and Bella’s bloody birth
Categories: arts & entertainment, gender & feminism
Wonder Woman movie marketing machine tied up in knots 
100 books by women in 2016 
2016 Hoydens: Debbie Reynolds and Carrie Fisher 
Podcast: “Decommodifying Feminism” Panel at #FWF16 
Hoyden About Town 
Saw it this weekend, used gift cards so I didn’t have to pay. Honestly I think my boyfriend was more excited to see it than I was, if only to confirm how bad it was.
It was bad.
It was scary for all the wrong reasons – there’s the obvious anti-abortion message, stalker, jealous, controlling boyfriends, Jacob bonding with an infant.
One other theme that I picked up on relates to Edward’s insistence on sex within marriage. Well, okay, you’re married, you had sex.
Bella desires more sex. She makes it clear that she wants to have sex on her honeymoon. But when it doesn’t work out perfectly, Edward just gives up. He doesn’t try to compromise or have any other kind of sex besides het PIV. Like he wasn’t interested in how Bella felt about that or else maybe that’s just another way he acts controlling.
Honestly, whenever I see the trailers I just think how happy Stewart and Pattinson must be that the filming of the last one is all done, and that after this latest premiere they can go back to long days at a time of forgetting all about it. They’ve both made it quite clear that they really thought the first movie would flop and that it would just be a CV blip and a pay-check.
I love this pic (from this post):
Pattinson: In this shot, I remember I had a piece of wire inside the collar, so it can look rumpled, however you want it. The most intense form of pretentious dishevelment I’ve ever seen in my life.
Is that…a real movie poster? Because this:
is super-creepy. I mean, even for Twilight.
My home internet access is deep-sixed for the forseeable future, so I’m here from the local library. And I can’t help like feeling it’s a commentary on Twilight that most of the linked articles – on what’s meant to be a romance – set off its violent content filters.*
[* Granted it’s also a commentary on the filters being overzealous]