Stephanie Meyer,
There was a time when the supernatural was once thought of as terrifying.
Remember when the notion of a vampire draining you of blood without mercy was a nightmare? Or if a full moon was near, how you’d shudder at the stories of werewolves prowling the woods at night? The horror stories from when we were children have been warped, and the youth of today will not grow up fearing such creatures. We have Stephenie Meyer to thank for this, because she has written the glorified fanfiction that is the “Twilight” series.
The four books mainly consist of this: human teenage girl, Bella Swan, is in love with “vampire” Edward Cullen, and he loves her back. She has a friend who is also in love with her, Jacob Black; he happens to be a “werewolf.” These terms are to be taken lightly, due to the gross liberties Meyer has taken with them.
What do you remember about vampires from when you were in elementary school? Well, first of all, they vant to suck your blood, BLAH! Transylvanian accent aside, vampires do crave human blood, are allergic to garlic and crucifixes, sleep in coffins, turn into bats, and can die either by a stake to the heart or being exposed to sunlight (which cremates them instantly). Nearly every portrayal of vampires I can remember from my childhood possessed these qualities. Now let’s look at Edward Cullen. He’s a “vegetarian vampire,” meaning he drinks the blood of animals rather than humans. Still somewhat contradictory, seeing as animals are also living beings and have souls just as humans do. Wouldn’t a vegetarian vampire mean drinking, I don’t know, blood orange juice? On top of this, Edward isn’t bothered by garlic or crucifixes, doesn’t sleep in a coffin (or, in fact, sleep), doesn’t turn into a bat, is impervious to stakes, and when HE steps into the sun…he sparkles. That’s right. Sparkles. What would Bela Lugosi and Max Schreck think? Okay, I kind of fudged the truth on the drinking-human-blood bit. Some of the Meyer-pires drink human blood: the evil vampires. The good vampires are too pretentious to resort to such horrific behavior (and here I grew up thinking that ALL vampires were supposed to be horrific, silly me).
On to werewolves. It was fairly common knowledge when I was a child that werewolves were humans who had been bitten by other werewolves and turned into horrible beasties on full moon nights and went on killing sprees, and only silver bullets could kill them. Meyer has made lycanthropy something of a genetic happenstance, as Jacob develops it at a certain point in his life. He also has the ability to transform whenever he pleases, particularly if he becomes angry (“The Incredible Hulk” much?). Being a werewolf in Meyer’s universe also, apparently, makes you allergic to shirts, as Jacob never seems to wear one anymore. At least, this is what I’m led to believe from the shirtless pictures of Taylor Lautner that run rampant on the Internet and, ironically, on shirts that Hot Topic sells. And the one time he IS wearing a shirt, he almost immediately transforms into what seems to be a wolf the size of a Hummer. What is scary about that, I ask you? Seriously, Lon Chaney Jr. in “The Wolf Man” looked scarier than that, and that movie was made in 1941.
I assume that Stephenie Meyer will soon jump on the zombie bandwagon and find some way to royally mess them up as well. She would make them incredibly articulate for zombies as opposed to normal zombies who can only moan for brains. Oh, and Meyer-zombies wouldn’t eat brains, either (only the bad zombies would); the GOOD zombies would receive their sustenance from eggs, based off of the “This is your brain; this is your brain on drugs” Public Service Announcement. Meyer would also find some way to make decaying flesh attractive, if not eliminate the decaying flesh all together. Her zombies would really be humans with some zombie-like characteristics.
I’m probably not going to make people very happy with this article, because a lot of people do genuinely like “Twilight.” However, with the impending release of the latest movie installment, “New Moon,” something needed to be said. When someone takes recognizable supernatural figures such as vampires and werewolves and skews them to the point of being unrecognizable, someone needs to call them out on it.
