Twilight with Diannely Antigua

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
On the Bechdel Cast.

Speaker 2 (00:02):
The questions asked if movies have women and them, are
all their discussions just boyfriends and husbands or do they
have individualism? It's the patriarchy, Zephyn Beast. Start changing it
with the Bechdel Cast. Hello Bechdel Cast listeners, who Jamie
and Caitlin?

Speaker 1 (00:20):
Here a little plug at the top.

Speaker 2 (00:22):
It's all coming together. It's all happening. I am going
to be going on a book tour for the paperback
release of my book Raw Dog, The Naked Truth about
Hot Dogs. Ever heard of it? It is coming out
in soft cover this may. If you're hearing this, it
is out right now. If you are the kind of

(00:42):
person that doesn't want to spend twenty eight dollars out
of book, fair enough, we have a more affordable option.
And if you haven't purchased the book and you know,
maybe you're able to now, you know, it's also a
great gift. I've sound so desperate. The thing is, it's
a soft cover book, and people love us and.

Speaker 1 (01:00):
I love a flaccid book.

Speaker 2 (01:01):
Yeah, it's a floppy little book. And if you do
have the hardcover and you're a completionist, there is also
a brand new ForWord that I wrote, and also the
acknowledgments have been adjusted to acknowledge that my agents were Zionists,
so I don't really thank them anymore. So there's a
thrilling edition there as well. But there is new stuff

(01:24):
in the book and it costs less, and we love that.
I will be going on tour throughout the country to
promote the new book, and if you're a Bechdel head
and you're in the area, this is a really great
chance to come and hang out. It's all I'm at bookstores.
I did kind of bigger shows the first time around,
but this time we're just chilling. So kitling with your permission,

(01:48):
I'm just going to rattle off some dates. What if
I was like, no, no, click, yeah, the zoom, I'm
going to go pee.

Speaker 1 (01:57):
No please, by all means tell us okay.

Speaker 2 (02:01):
May thirteenth, twenty twenty five, almost my birthday. So I
know I'm missing your birthday. It's an act of violence.
I will be at North Fig Bookshop in Los Angeles,
hosted by friend of the cast, Julia Clair, May fourteenth.
I will be at Carmichael's Bookstore in Louisville, Kentucky on
May fifteenth, I will be at the Cambridge Public Library

(02:23):
in Massachusetts with the Harvard Bookstore, and I will be
in conversation with one of my dear friends, PBS's own
Tory Bedford. On the nineteenth of May, I will be
in Portland, Maine at Longfellow Books, hosted by friend of
the cast Mayo Williams. I am very very excited. On

(02:44):
the twentieth, I will be going down to Harrisburg, Pennsylvania,
my home state. Know they're going to be begging, They're like,
where are they? I will be at the Midtown Scholar
Bookstore and Cafe in conversation with Joe Piazza. Then on
May twenty first, I will be at the Fountain Bookstore
in Richmond, Virginia. And on May twenty second, I will

(03:09):
be at Coppersfield Books in Pedaluma, California. And finally, on
May thirty first, I will be at Marin Country Mart,
which is also with Coppersfield's book in Larkspur, California. So
if you live in those areas, please come out. I
would love to see you. I'd love to chat. Please
recommend your favorite hot dog. Let's talk becktel Cast, Let's

(03:33):
do whatever. And there will be dates announced later in
the summer. So if you would like a show or
a signing to happen in your town, please reach out
and I will send it to my publisher and be like, see,
I should go there. Anyways, that's a great it's begging

(03:54):
works sometimes, and we'll link this full thing in the description.
But see you soon. I'm making a little outfit and
that's the Jamie Loftus promise.

Speaker 1 (04:06):
I can't wait to see.

Speaker 2 (04:08):
So if you click the link in the description, it
will take you to the full page where you can
register to go to these events. They are all free events,
so come and hang out and provided that I get
my shit together in time, there will also be speakers
from local unions at all of these signings, So come out,
make some friends, come hang out, and uh, let's eat.

Speaker 3 (04:29):
Some hot dogs.

Speaker 1 (04:30):
Beautiful. We'll throw the link to be able to access
registration for the events on our link tree as well
link tree slash Bechdel Cast, so there's no excuse not
to come.

Speaker 2 (04:43):
It's free, it's fun. I'll be wearing a little outfit.
Come buy the book, yay, enjoy the episode.

Speaker 1 (04:51):
About three things I was absolutely certain, Oh my god. First,
the Bechdel Cast is a podcast, okay. Second, and there
was a part of the podcast and I didn't know
how potent that part might be. Yeap that thirsted for

(05:11):
knowledge and amazing discourse. And Third, the hosts, Caitlin and
Jamie were unconditionally and irrevocably in love with each other.

Speaker 2 (05:27):
Yeah, I like it. Thank you, Wow, thank you Stephanie Meyer.
She's a Mormon, and they're pretty homophobic. I don't know
if she would endoors what.

Speaker 1 (05:34):
Was just said. I don't think so.

Speaker 2 (05:37):
But it's what I want. It's what a lot of
Twilight fans want. Every fan community wants a queer romance.
But sometimes you just end up with Bella and Edward
and you got to project the rest. And that's what
we're here to talk about today. Welcome to the Bechtel Cast,
the podcast where we take your favorite movies and talk
about them from an intersectional feminist lens, using the Bechdel

(06:01):
Test as a jumping off point for discussion. This is
I think one of a handful of episodes that of
where we were covering a movie for a second time.
We first covered this movie, I did not realize how
long ago it was. My brain was not fully developed
the last time we covered this movie, were you like
how old I was? Twenty four? Whoa as bravely twenty

(06:23):
four years old? I was just the last synapses were
snapping into place, And so I cannot be held accountable
for anything I said in twenty seventeen. You can be
held accountable.

Speaker 1 (06:35):
I am repulsed to even think about what might have
happened on that episode. I am afraid to go back
and listen to it. We may or may not keep
it up, we might delete it. Our guest was my
best friend JT, and we just it was only like
a few months into the US doing the podcast.

Speaker 2 (06:54):
I don't think we need to apologize for something we
did in twenty seventeen. The reason we're recovering it is because,
like a lot of early you know, this was before
podcasting was our full time job. We didn't have the
time nor the resources to put in as much research
as we put into the show now, and most of you,
I'm assuming we're not listening back then. So while it

(07:16):
was a fun episode, I did not really listen to it.
I don't care what I had to say in twenty seventeen,
nor should you. But I also think that you know,
like intersectional feminist discourse has evolved, thankfully, quite a bit
since twenty seventeen. So we have grown, as has the world.
I mean, you know whatever, There's been a lot of regression,

(07:37):
but on a personal level, there's been growth. Yeah, and
there's also been just like, this is the series people
will never shut the fuck up about. It's really interesting
to watch in the last and I say that would
love because I've watched all of it. Yeah, Twilight discourse
is something that just as it begins to die down,
there's a new angle, and baby, we're going with it.

(08:00):
Like in the last I would say two to three
years Twilight discourse, I think because of like the twenty
year popularity cycle of things. Sure, people were getting nostalgic
for the Twilight years, and now we're talking about it
again and there's new things to talk about.

Speaker 1 (08:15):
We're back in the Twilight zone.

Speaker 2 (08:17):
We're in the Twilight zone today. And so anyways, if
you listen to our first episode, we don't know what
it said. We hope we did an okay job. But
today we're here to do a better job because we're
grown ups now and our brains are working better than ever.

Speaker 1 (08:31):
Well, I wouldn't say that necessary.

Speaker 2 (08:34):
Well not Caylyn, Mine's better than no, I'm kidding.

Speaker 1 (08:37):
Mine is descending into mush.

Speaker 2 (08:40):
Okay, so maybe we were working on the same amount
of brain power cumulatively that we were in twenty seventeen,
but the thoughts will be different. Yeah, okay, but we're
using the Benal tests and jumping off point. Caitlin, what
is that? I forget?

Speaker 1 (08:54):
Well, my amazing memory will tell you. It's a media
metric created by cartoonist Alice and Bechdel, sometimes called the
Bechdel Wallace Test. There's many versions of it. We require that,
in order to pass, two characters of a marginalized gender
must have names, they must speak to each other, and

(09:15):
their conversation has to be about something other than a man.
But you know, it's just a jumping off point. It's
not the end all be all. There's much more to discuss,
and in the case of the Twilight Saga, so much
to discuss.

Speaker 2 (09:32):
We talked about it, I'm sure a lot of things
in our first episode, but it turns out there's actually
fifty more things to talk about than we initially realized,
and so we have brought in an expert, an enthusiast,
someone who has spent time in the trenches with the
twyhards to come and educate us.

Speaker 1 (09:51):
Today, she's a poet an educator. She's the author of
two poetry collections, former poet Laureate of Portsmouth, New Hampshire,
a host of Bread and Poetry podcast It's Danelli Antigua.
Hello and welcome.

Speaker 3 (10:07):
Hello, Hello, Hi, Hi, Hi God.

Speaker 1 (10:11):
Tell us what is your relationship to Twilight?

Speaker 3 (10:16):
Oh? Where shall I begin? I think my relationship with
Twilight first came from the books. I started reading the
books when I was a teenager and fell in love
with those first. And I had a really strange upbringing.
I was raised in a cult, and around the years

(10:37):
where I started reading the Twilight books, I was starting
to emerge from the kind of like sheltered cocoon that
I was in for so many years. So I was
about eighteen nineteen years old, and when the movies came out,
I was just like first experiencing life in the world,
in the secular world, and Twilight was my I almost

(11:00):
like my rum spring on. It was my like coming
out into society. And I remember when I watched Twilight,
I went to the midnight premiere because I was one
of those like midnight premiere bitches. I was wearing my
Team Edward shirt. I was wearing a Tutu leg warmers.

Speaker 2 (11:18):
We saw the pictures. They're incredible.

Speaker 3 (11:21):
Yeah, thank you. I was wearing fingerless gloves that I
got a hot topic, like, I just like went all out,
and I remember buying a Noss from like the gas station,
and I went to and I went to the midnight
premiere and it was like just life changing for me
at the time, and many many years have passed since then.

(11:43):
I definitely have a different relationship to Twilight at this point,
but there's still like that little girl, that like nineteen
year old girl who is madly in love with Edward
and has you know, posters of him in her bedroom
and shit, like I was so obsessed. That might be,
but I'm sure there's more. I'm sure there's more.

Speaker 1 (12:02):
Well share whatever comes up.

Speaker 2 (12:05):
Yeah, truly, don't hesitate. This is a safe space for twyhearts.

Speaker 3 (12:10):
Thank you, Thank you, Jamie.

Speaker 1 (12:12):
Remind us what's your relationship?

Speaker 2 (12:15):
Oh gosh, I wonder if I said anything defensive in
my first when we talked about this movie like eight
years ago.

Speaker 1 (12:22):
I mean, you were twenty four, so I.

Speaker 2 (12:24):
Can't be accountable for what I did when I was
twenty four years old, a full grown adult. So I
read the books. I think, maybe not right when they
came out, but like they definitely were gathering steam in
the middle school contingency as they were coming out. I
remember my mom introduced me to them because my mom

(12:46):
was both really into Twilight and Fifty Shades of Gray,
And to this day, I'm positive she has no idea
that Fifty Shades is Horny or Twilight for like non
Mormon Twilight fanfit. Basically yes, but she was really into
both series and so she I think that there was
like this bizarre shame feedback loop going on between the

(13:07):
two of us where she would get She got the
boxed set of I think the first three Twilight books
that were out at the time, and then read them
herself and then gave them to me as if to say, like,
these are yours. You bought these and then I read them,
and I don't know. Weirdly, it feels sort of in

(13:28):
conversation with Beliswan herself, where I was very invested in
I think, as a lot of tweens are in being
not like other girls, and part of being not like
other girls to me was not liking Twilight. And part
of being not like other girls to me was not
liking high school musical, even though I very much enjoyed

(13:48):
both of these things in total privacy, like I was
completely I vividly remember blowing through the first Twilight book
in like this gnarl the old hammock we had in
our backyard during the summer when I couldn't be seen
or be accounted for, and then literally going to school
the next year and being like what's that ew? And

(14:11):
then like going the same thing with the Jonas brothers.
I went to a Jonas Brothers concert and I was
like what is this? Meanwhile I bought a ticket, like
I don't know, like it just it's something that young
people do.

Speaker 1 (14:25):
And we can talk about that, like the shame that
like culture attaches to do you like something like Twilight,
You're a freaking loser because that's for girls.

Speaker 2 (14:36):
It was a big thing, and I think that it's yeah,
it's tied up and like how not like other girl
stuff is like internalized misogyny to some extent. Yeah, So
I was I was writing high on that meanwhile reading
Twilight books, like my life depended on it. By the
time the movies came out, I was I saw the
first movie. I remember, like I think seeing the first movie.

(14:56):
I was in high school by that point, and I
was at the tail end of my like so weird
that I'm at this movie the day it comes out.
How could this have happened? But I did see it
the day come out. I kind of fell off after that.
I moved on to whatever the fuck I was doing,
So I didn't see the other movies. I don't think
in theaters, and I'm not even sure to this day

(15:19):
if I've seen all of them. I feel like I've
only seen one of the because the last one's in
two parts. Yes, I don't think i've seen one of them.
I'm not sure. I read all the books. I haven't
seen all the movies.

Speaker 3 (15:30):
That might be blasphemy, but I do feel like revisiting
the first book.

Speaker 2 (15:34):
So also, I really over prepared for this episode. I
reread the book.

Speaker 1 (15:40):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (15:41):
Wow, I walked fourteen miles yesterday just pacing around listening
to the audio book, sweating my ass off, being like
I gotta get it all in. And then there's also
been so much Twilight discourse that there are so many essays.
There's one essay I'll be citing a intensively today from

(16:01):
Capacious journal Wow that is called still not as Gay
as Twilight, postmodern affect, nostalgia and queer Twilight renaissance during
the COVID nineteen pandemic, And that is where I think
it was during the initial lockdown period where you saw
this kind of resurgence of Twilight discourse that has I

(16:22):
think was going on well into last year because there
was a very popular ContraPoints video that came out on
that topic. So I think it went on for nearly
five years. But I think because so many people became
nostalgic for comfortable feelings during Lockdown, that all of a sudden,
Twilight was back. And I watched and engaged with a

(16:44):
lot of that, and I don't know, I just like
I'm constantly engaging with Twilight. While I would consider myself
a casual fan at best. Anyways, rewatching the first movie,
it's a good movie. Like I don't know what to say.
It's like, there's a lot of issues with it. But
when it comes to like do I understand why people

(17:04):
absolutely love this movie? And do I feel like it
captures this very specific not like other Girls Fantasy one
hundred percent, and the soundtrack is still great.

Speaker 3 (17:18):
Oh my god, yes, yeah, so rock and roll.

Speaker 2 (17:20):
Oh my god, super massive black hole, baseball scene. I'm like,
you can't do all that.

Speaker 3 (17:26):
Oh my goodness.

Speaker 2 (17:27):
The baseball scene is is so hot cinema, It's so good.
I love the baseball scene. Everything, Like, the baseball scene's
the best part. But I get it. And I also
have really enjoyed going through people's you know, reflections on
this because there's also a massive queer fan base for
this essentially Mormon movie, so we'll get into it. But anyways,

(17:51):
Caitlin remind us, what is your history with Twilight?

Speaker 1 (17:54):
Oh gosh, I'm sure I had a better memory of
it on the first episode. But again, I will not
be going back to listen to that, and I don't
think our listeners should either.

Speaker 2 (18:04):
Please don't well and just take it down.

Speaker 1 (18:07):
I mean maybe we will anyway.

Speaker 2 (18:08):
Yeah, what are you edging like Dubella and Edwards?

Speaker 1 (18:12):
Yeah, anyway, so I the first few books came out,
I don't really know the timeline of like what was
published when.

Speaker 2 (18:21):
Two thousand and five, six, seven and eight.

Speaker 1 (18:24):
Okay, and then thank you so much, and then so
the first movie came out in two thousand and eight, right, yeah, okay,
so it wasn't until probably twenty ten, I would say, again,
memory is murky, but it was well after the books
had come out, and probably the first one or two

(18:46):
movies had come out before. And of course I heard
people talking about I have a distinct memory of chatting
with some people when I moved to New York, which
was in two thousand and eight, and I was talking
to a friend and her sister, and it was like
a sister older than me, so she was she would
have been like in her mid twenties at the time,
and she's like, yeah, Twilight is the best thing I've

(19:08):
ever read. I want to date Edward Da da da.
And I was just like, what are you talking about?
What's this Twilight thing? And then the movie started coming out,
and because I hate books and I love movies, I
was like, Okay, fine, I'll check this out. And I
think I don't remember if this was the case or not,
but it might have been jt our guest on the

(19:29):
first episode that we did on this movie that kind
of got me into it. I don't know if he
like showed me the first movie.

Speaker 2 (19:37):
Again, massive queer fan base.

Speaker 1 (19:39):
Like yeah, yeah, either he showed me the first one
or I definitely started watching the other ones with him,
to the point where I think I saw Eclipse Breaking
Down Part one and two in theaters with him.

Speaker 2 (19:53):
Oh so you saw you were like on the other half,
you're a late Twilight bloomer. Yeah, what did you think
of the mo some of these at the time, I'm
so cue because that would have been like well into
Twilight backlash.

Speaker 1 (20:04):
Era too, and I was a part of that. I
was like, these movies suck. They're bad, and yet I
was going to see them.

Speaker 2 (20:13):
I mean, you're not wrong, but I mean they're not.

Speaker 1 (20:17):
Okay. Here's the thing. There's a distinction between I like
it and this is good, and both of those All
of these things are subjective, right right, that's camp. I
was like, this is not good and I don't necessarily
like it, but I do. There's some weird like I'm
compelled by these, I'm entertained by these. I can't stop

(20:39):
watching them. I'm not really enjoying myself or am I
I don't know, there's like this I cannot explain how
I experience.

Speaker 3 (20:48):
Yeah, yeah, that's like Edward himself, Like everything about him
draws you in his voice is smell, the way he
looks exactly.

Speaker 1 (20:57):
But I know that he's dangerous, yeah, and that there's
something to be feared about it.

Speaker 2 (21:03):
What do you think you could outrun him? Do you
think you could fight back? Because you couldn't, because you're
never gone up.

Speaker 1 (21:10):
I couldn't. He's killed people.

Speaker 3 (21:12):
He's like a drug to you. He's like a drug
to you.

Speaker 1 (21:15):
He is my own personal brand of heroine, and I him.

Speaker 2 (21:19):
That scene is the most hot topic codd scene that
has ever been committed to film.

Speaker 1 (21:25):
It's completely blue.

Speaker 2 (21:27):
Like this whole movie is blue, and I support it. Yeah,
you know you were team Edward?

Speaker 3 (21:32):
Yes?

Speaker 2 (21:33):
I was. Yeah. And then Kaitlyn, did you ever choose
a team or were you just team Hater?

Speaker 1 (21:38):
No? I was hardcore team Jacob.

Speaker 2 (21:41):
I was team Jacob as well. Yeah, which is canonically,
I mean Jacob ends up marrying a baby, yes, yes,
which ContraPoints argues is a way of the series having
it always of like, hmm, he falls in love with
an extent Bella, and this is how they're able to

(22:02):
like justify this like polycule that they create.

Speaker 3 (22:05):
Yeah, he like loved her egg, you know, yeah, and
you're like.

Speaker 2 (22:09):
That's well, that's disgusting. It got harder and harder to
be team Jacob as the books went on. I will
say definitely, because I don't remember very much about Breaking
Down at all, but I vividly remember the scene where
he's like, I'm in love with your unborn baby and
being like, no, my team is down. My team is

(22:30):
my team. We've lost, We've lost, he's in love with
the baby. We're cooked.

Speaker 1 (22:35):
Yeah, And I think I went back and read. I
don't know if I finished the first Twilight book or
just read a good enough of a chunk of it
where I did. Basically, I just wanted to confirm that
the writing was as bad as I had heard that
it was, and I did confirm that. But I didn't
read any of the other books. But I have seen

(22:57):
I would say I've seen the first Twilight movie probably
a good fifteen times. Whoa yeah, and then it tapers
off like I've only seen Breaking Dawn Part two that
one time in theaters. I'm pretty sure.

Speaker 3 (23:09):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (23:10):
I was like, I think I've seen it like at
least five times, and I don't think I've seen a
few of the movies ever.

Speaker 1 (23:15):
Yeah, really it's weird, Like there are movies that I
considered to be my favorite, like among my favorite movies,
that I have seen fewer times, and I've seen Twilight,
which I would not consider at all to be one
of my favorite movies. I cannot explain this phenomenon, and
yet it exists. So I have a weird relationship with Twilight.
I think it's trash and yet I know it very well.

Speaker 2 (23:38):
But I think that's like a very common experience.

Speaker 3 (23:41):
Yeah, don't humans love trash? Though, Like don't we love trash?
Like reality TV is trash? Sackly, I love McDonald's.

Speaker 2 (23:50):
That's trash, but it's good trash, but it's delicious trash.

Speaker 1 (23:54):
Yeah, except boycott McDonald's.

Speaker 2 (23:56):
But right, right, right, But yes, but the idea behind yes, Yeah,
I don't know. There's been a lot of I think
in this like most recent past five years, discourse around
Twilight have like moved forward the conversation around this franchise
in an interesting way of like almost getting back to
the shame and like projection that was beneath some but

(24:20):
not all, of the Twilight backlash. That's the thing is,
like it's just very complicated because there's a billion very
valid critiques of this franchise, many of which we'll discuss today. Yes,
and we'll just place here we're not discussing the entire
franchise today because we would never leave the zoom call

(24:40):
if that were the case, right, So we're discussing the
first movie, the book, the you know, cultural sensation at
the time of the first movie today and then we
will cover subsequent movies on the show down the line,
just because it's just like such a broad topic that, Yeah,
if there are certain elements of this franchise you would

(25:02):
like to hear us talk more about, please let us know,
and we will make a point to discuss that in
future installments. But there's just there really is just like
so so so much to.

Speaker 1 (25:14):
Talk about, truly, and let's try to begin. But first
we'll take a quick break and then we'll come back
for the recap and we're back, all right. I'm really

(25:35):
mean during this recap so apology in advance.

Speaker 2 (25:41):
Like I like that You're like, I'm a Twilight hater
to the grave, Caitlin, You're not like other she theys You're.

Speaker 1 (25:47):
Just not I'm not I am an intellectual no, just kidding.

Speaker 3 (25:52):
Didn't you get a film degree somewhere right?

Speaker 1 (25:55):
Thank you so much for bringing something up that I
would never mention, which is that I do have a
master's degree in screenwriting from Boston University.

Speaker 3 (26:05):
Oh yeah, that's what I thought.

Speaker 1 (26:07):
Yeah, but again, would never mention it. So I actually
don't even know how anybody knows that because I've never
said it before.

Speaker 2 (26:13):
I didn't. I just learning.

Speaker 1 (26:14):
Yeah. Anyway, content warning at the top for abusive relationship dynamics, stalking, gaslighting,
things of that nature. And here we go. We open
on a deer in the woods pray if you will,

(26:37):
and there's also a predator something or someone is chasing
the deer and grabs.

Speaker 2 (26:45):
It, and then it goes me. This court of this
movie is a real earworm. Shout out Carter Burwell. There's
It's wild how many like really generationally talented people worked
on this movie because Carter Burwell is like iconic. He's
so good.

Speaker 1 (27:04):
My favorite part is when it starts out being non
diegetic and then suddenly it's diagetic because Edward is playing
it on the piano the score of the movie, and
you're just like, WHOA.

Speaker 2 (27:18):
I like it because I think Carter Burrell is probably
the most famous for being like the Coen Brothers go
to guy. But also he did Twilight, and I support that.
It's a good score.

Speaker 1 (27:28):
It's pretty good. Okay, So there's this deer. Then we
cut to Bella Swan played by Kristin Stewart, who is
moving from Phoenix, Arizona because her mom wants to travel
around with her brosif of a husband instead of raise
her teenage daughter.

Speaker 2 (27:49):
So, yeah, Renee, Renee's a real piece of work.

Speaker 3 (27:53):
Yeah she is.

Speaker 1 (27:54):
So Bella gets shipped off to Forks, Washington to live
with her dad, Arlie Swan.

Speaker 2 (28:01):
And while he's hot, a cav includes Charlie Swan, It
really does, because he's the chief of police of Forks, Washington.

Speaker 1 (28:10):
Okay, so he and Bella have a very awkward relationship,
but he does buy her a truck off of Billy
Black played by Gil Birmingham. His son is Jacob Black
played by Taylor Lautner, a childhood friend of Bella's. He

(28:31):
mentions that he goes to school on the reservation because
he is a member of the Quillute nation. Even though,
and this is one of the very many valid criticisms
of this movie, Taylor Latner is not an indigenous actor,
and the representation of Quillute people lots to discuss there.

Speaker 2 (28:52):
Well, we'll talk about that further.

Speaker 1 (28:54):
Yeah, yes, any case, he lives and goes to school
on the will You Reservation, and Bella's like, oh darn,
you were my only friend here, Like it would have
been nice to know someone at school, but she's not
even gonna know him.

Speaker 2 (29:10):
And Jacob in Twilight Part one Sweetie Pie.

Speaker 1 (29:14):
Yes. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (29:15):
Also Taylor Lautner bad Wig not even in the top
ten problems, but did really strike me in this viewing.
I'm like, oh, it's doing a lot of work. It's
like a nicole kidman grade wig.

Speaker 1 (29:30):
Yeah. Anyway, So Bella has this new truck and she
loves this busted, rusty gass truck from the nineteen seventies
because she's not like the other girls. Then Bella heads
to school, a bunch of students are like, oh my god,
who are you? You're the coolest and most interesting person

(29:53):
I've ever seen.

Speaker 2 (29:55):
This is I think, like, in retrospect, one of the
most interesting dream fulfillments like aspects of the story that
probably made it so appealing, where it's like, what if
you were truly the most normal person with no distinct features,
and yet everyone was obsessed with you.

Speaker 3 (30:15):
Yeah, like who is Bella Swan? Like we don't know
anything about her hobbies, We don't know really what she likes. Truly,
She's just like blank canvas. But everyone loves that they
can just project whatever they want onto this, like very
boring Bella Swan blank canvas.

Speaker 2 (30:30):
Which is like not incredibly like yeah, it's like that's
very common for protagonists. But it's like glaring with Belli
because literally we see her just like sitting in a
room staring into the middle distance when she's not like
talking to Edward Colin. You're like, all right, there's I
know we have. This is a self insert character, but
you got to give her an interest, like it is wild.

Speaker 1 (30:53):
Sometimes she reads a book.

Speaker 2 (30:54):
Sometimes she does read a book, and they are interestingly
the exact books that Stephanie Meyer's love sorry Stephanie Meyer
singular myyr yeah one Meyer, one Meyer. But yeah, Bella.
I mean that's a very common criticism of her husband
for twenty years. But like it is true.

Speaker 1 (31:12):
You know, she doesn't have a personality.

Speaker 3 (31:16):
Oh unless clumsy is part of a personality.

Speaker 2 (31:19):
Which, oh my god, which in the book is exacerbated
to like such an absurd degree. I clocked literally over
forty mentions in the book of her being like what
if I fall? And Edward's like, I know there's a
big chance you'll fall.

Speaker 3 (31:35):
Can you watch where you're going.

Speaker 2 (31:38):
I'll make sure you don't trip and die? Like it
just it really is, like it's it's so silly. Yeah,
but it's I mean again, that's the pulling from the
Lizzie Maguire school of heroine. You're like, well, sure she's
conventionally beautiful, but she false.

Speaker 1 (31:59):
Yeah, but that doesn't stop everyone at school being obsessed
with her, including such characters as Eric, Mike Tyler, Jessica
played by Anna Kendrick, and Angela played by Christian Serrados.
So now she has all these new friends immediately, so

(32:20):
her concerns about not having any friends at school where
she didn't have to worry. Then at lunch, Bella spots
a group of hot thirty five year olds, and her
new friends tell her that these are the Cullens, a
family of foster kids who were adopted by doctor Cullen

(32:44):
and who are dating each other, including Rosalie and Emmett.
Are a couple. Alice and Jasper are a couple, although
one of them is single. And this is Edward Cullen
because he's not like other vampires. One of the things
that I don't think I ever fully registered because she

(33:05):
looks so different in this movie, but that I appreciated
because the other Catherine Hardwick movie we've covered on this
show is thirteen, and Nikki Reid, the star of thir
and co writer of thirteen, plays Rosalie, which I never
noticed because again wig like, I just didn't know.

Speaker 3 (33:23):
And the makeup, it's the makeup in this movie is horrible,
Like all of the vampires, like you can even tell
if you look at their like collar and their neck,
you can tell that it hasn't been blended correctly.

Speaker 2 (33:35):
Oh brutal.

Speaker 3 (33:36):
Yeah, you can still see like the pink of their
flesh when they're supposed to be pale as fuck. So
I don't know who the makeup artist was, but you
got to blend all the way down to the neck, honey,
all the way down down.

Speaker 1 (33:47):
I wonder if that's why there's so much blue color
correction in the movie, because it's like we got to
hide the bad makeup.

Speaker 2 (33:54):
Job, make it blue. Make it blue. Maybe that'd be incredible.
I forget what two thousand movie we were discussing recently
where I also think that the teen fashion of the
late two thousands are doing nobody any favors in this
because I feel like teen fashions of the late two
thousands really aged teenagers. There are so many pictures of

(34:16):
me as like a junior in high school where I'm like,
my aunt could be wearing this, Like I'm wearing these
like ponchos and like long vests and You're like, why
am I wearing what teachers were wearing? But also these
like big fake Victoria's Secret bras that my cousin would
give me, So it's like huge fake titties in like
the most clothing possible.

Speaker 3 (34:37):
Yeah, the bombshell bra adds two cups, honey.

Speaker 2 (34:41):
I used to work in Victoria's Secrets, so I know
all the secrets that was thea My cousin worked there,
and so she's like, Okay, this is going to change
your life, and it didn't. They do look old, though,
they do, yeah with all dudes. Not the actor's fault,
because I think the actors actually are younger than they
look in the movie. They're all in their twenties.

Speaker 1 (35:02):
Oh really, because they come on screen and I'm like,
those people are my contemporaries currently right now as someone
in their late thirties.

Speaker 2 (35:10):
No, I think that they're all it's I mean, they're
not high schoolers. I think Kristen Stewart is one of
the only actual high school age actors. Yeah, most of
them are in their twenties, but I think I don't know,
like they were just done dirty.

Speaker 1 (35:23):
Yeah. In any case, there's one single Cullen, and it's Edward,
and he and Bella make eyes at each other. Then
they get paired up as lab partners in science class.
Except Edward is repulsed by Bella, although he also can't
stop staring at her. It's this weird like disgust slash

(35:47):
fascination thing that with understand why soon, and she notices
how repulsed he is by her, and she plans to
confront him about the except Edward doesn't show up at
school for days on end, so she can't confront him
right away. Meanwhile, cut to the woods, there's some dangerous

(36:12):
creature who's attacking people on the outskirts of town, so
that's looming over the story. Finally, Edward shows up at
school again, and he's no longer acting completely repulsed by Bella.
He's actually being kind of friendly. And so now they're
looking at an onion under a microscope and we're like,

(36:34):
wait a minute, onions have layers. Shrek, Shrek, Shrek.

Speaker 2 (36:39):
Wow, I didn't pick up on that. That's why you
have the master's degree. Yeah, that's exactly right. Yes, Okay,
So they're like now talking kind of about nothing. He
also says something like, you're very difficult for me to
read because he loves making creepy declarations like that.

Speaker 3 (36:59):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (36:59):
And also that's so, you know, argublate because there's nothing
going on. There's nothing, there's no that was fella hatred. No,
I like Bella, but what is going on behind those
hazel eyes? To borrow a song title?

Speaker 1 (37:14):
Yeah, and speaking of eye color, she notices that Edward's
eyes are a different color than the last time she
saw him, and he makes an excuse about the fluorescent lighting. Aka,
this is the beginning of him gaslighting her.

Speaker 2 (37:29):
And kind of the most egregious ways possible In the movie,
and just having reread the book, they really turn up
the casualness with which the gaslighting happens up to like
a fourteen because also Robert Pattinson's deliveries are so mean sounding,
and I guess the way I imagined it was a

(37:50):
little more like no, no, it couldn't have been. I
mean that more the way I've experienced gaslight of like, no, no,
girl with tiny brain. But he's like, no, it's de
ferorescent lights.

Speaker 1 (38:04):
She's a fucking casshle.

Speaker 2 (38:06):
Anyways, I do love him. I would marry him.

Speaker 3 (38:10):
He talks to her about the weather, and he's like,
why did you move to the Like well, she says
she hates the rain, any cold wet thing, Yeah, she hates.
And then he like giggles.

Speaker 1 (38:21):
About it afterward because he's like, I'm cold and wet, yes,
and you're about to fall in love with him, yeah,
So they have really rivet in conversations about such things
as the weather and onions. Anyway, So one day, Tyler,
one of the friends in Bella's friend group, is cruising

(38:44):
through the school parking lot at about sixty miles per
hour and he loses control of his van and nearly
Krene's into Bella, but suddenly Edward is there to save her,
even though he was just fifty feet away from her
like one second ago. But Edward is there and he

(39:06):
stops the van with what seems like superhuman strength. So
Bella is taken to the hospital where she meets doctor
Daddy Cullen. Edward is there too, and Bella is like,
what the hell happened? How did you get to me
so fast? And then he proceeds to gaslight her more
and says that he was already right next to her.

Speaker 2 (39:27):
He said, you bunked your head real hard.

Speaker 1 (39:30):
You're confused.

Speaker 2 (39:31):
It really is like gaslighting one oh one lines like
you fell, Yeah, you must have wonked your head. It's
the lights. You're like, you've had one hundred years to
get better at gaslighting than you are, sir.

Speaker 1 (39:44):
Yeah, okay. So from this point onward, now Bella is
like dreaming about Edward, partly because he is fully stalking
her and sneaking into her bedroom and watching her sleep.
He's also eavesdropped on her conversations. He's being generally cruel
and abusive to her, saying things like we shouldn't be friends,

(40:09):
but also I want to be friends, but you should
stay away from me because I'm not the hero. I'm
the bad guy, and She's like, no, you're a good guy.
Come to the beach with me and my friends. And
he's like, I DK probably not.

Speaker 2 (40:25):
He's like, I can't. I can't go to that.

Speaker 1 (40:28):
Whatever man, And we're about to find out why because
we cut to the beach called.

Speaker 3 (40:34):
La Push La Push La push Baby, which is a
real place, which is.

Speaker 1 (40:38):
A real place where the quill Yet people live. Edward
does not show up, but Jacob and his friends do
and they're like, oh, yeah, the Cullens don't come here,
and Jacob proceeds to tell Bella that the quilt people
are descended from wolves, the Cullens are descended from an

(41:01):
enemy clan, but they've established a treaty as long as
the Cullens stay off Quillute land. So Bella is like,
what's that all about? And she starts investigating. She finds
a book, a Belle Quilliute Mythology, and goes with her
friends to Port Angelis Ever heard of It? No to

(41:25):
buy this book while her friends, Jess and Angela go
prom dress shopping because everyone is gearing up for prom,
although Bella is not going to prom because she'll be
out of town that weekend.

Speaker 2 (41:37):
Well, van Alsa thinkause she's not like other girls.

Speaker 1 (41:40):
She's not like the other girls.

Speaker 3 (41:42):
She doesn't dance.

Speaker 2 (41:43):
She would and if she went to prom, you know,
she would be wearing Chuck Taylor. She's yes, because she
is not like, Oh god, I did have the I mean,
girls were wearing Chucks like no one's business at that time.

Speaker 3 (41:55):
I was wearing Chucks.

Speaker 1 (41:57):
I still do, as in.

Speaker 2 (41:59):
Really, I just I really appreciated when that fad pass
because they're just not I think my arches are too
high or something. They're just not comfortable to me.

Speaker 1 (42:08):
I mean, they're not the most comfortable shoe.

Speaker 2 (42:10):
I bravely wear crocs everywhere I go, every single day.

Speaker 1 (42:14):
I also want to point out that we see on
screen that Bella could have bought this book from Amazon,
but instead she opts to go to a whole other
city and buy it from a local independent bookstore.

Speaker 2 (42:28):
Yeah that's Bela Swan praxis y right there, buys from
an independent bookseller, Yes, who we see in a single shot, right,
but she does support local businesses.

Speaker 1 (42:40):
Good for Bella indeed.

Speaker 2 (42:42):
But name a second thing about her.

Speaker 1 (42:45):
She read one book one time. What was the book?
We don't know?

Speaker 2 (42:48):
Yeah, she still ends up mostly googling, which I thought
was funny that she went so far out of her
way to get the book. She still mostly googles the answers,
which is relatable. I've done that. I've been like, oh,
I've made a big deal of getting the books and
then been like, huh, well, I actually have run the
clock and I have three days to read this paper.

Speaker 1 (43:07):
I made note of that. Though she reads exactly one
sentence from the book and then proceeds to google everything else.

Speaker 2 (43:14):
I felt seen like, that's what teenagers do.

Speaker 1 (43:18):
It's amazing. Okay, So she's hanging out in Port Angelis
buying books locally. Meanwhile, there is a group of scary
people and I wonder if they're vampires. They are James,
Laurent and Victoria. They're on the loose and they attack
a guy who we've met before. It's a friend of

(43:40):
Bella's dad's. He's presumably murdered. Then a different set of
scary people start bothering Bella on her way back from
the bookstore, but Edward comes to her rescue because he
had followed her to Port Angelis.

Speaker 2 (44:02):
Yeah no, but it's a good thing he did kill
him right right, because because he.

Speaker 1 (44:07):
Saved her from those scary people who were about to
assault her.

Speaker 2 (44:11):
He rescues her from so many bizarre predicaments.

Speaker 3 (44:15):
Yeah yeah, he heard what those low lifes were thinking.

Speaker 1 (44:19):
Yeah, yes, yeah. So then Edward takes Bella to dinner,
where he admits that he had been stalking her and
also tells her that he can read every person's thoughts
in the room except for hers. And if you're wondering
if she has any kind of reaction to this, well

(44:40):
she barely does.

Speaker 2 (44:42):
We're being hard on Bella. I feel bad.

Speaker 3 (44:45):
Well, she thinks that something's wrong with her because you
can't read her mind, which is like so sad. It's like, no, honey,
there's nothing wrong with you other than the regulate that
you're boring. But there's nothing wrong with you.

Speaker 2 (45:00):
What's the thing is like her boringness is her power
question mark that I kept writing that down being like
it's her absolute blankness that which which we'll get into too,
because I think that, like both of the lead actors
of this movie were like pretty thoroughly dragged through the
mud in the press for something that has way more

(45:21):
to do with the source material than the performances, where
for years, I mean, I kind of remember this where
people were like, Kristin Stewart can't act. You know, she's
like a total blank slate. She's just like and I'm
just like, read the book. She's not given very much. Yeah,
and then a bunch of very homophobic, coded criticism of
Edward and Robert Pattinson because he's too sparkly and vampires

(45:44):
are famously straight. Like I don't even know where people
are going with that because that's never been a thing.
But like in any case, I was sort of like
revisiting that period of like Christian Stewart's a bad actor,
which you know, fifteen years on, you're like, yeah, monstrably untrue.
She's not just a great actor, she's a queer icon.

Speaker 3 (46:04):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (46:05):
Yeah, I find it interesting that both she and Robert
Pattinson have gone on to have like pretty prolific careers
as actors. And then Taylor Latner, I would say, not
so much.

Speaker 2 (46:16):
I am always buying the wrong stocks. I tell you what.
I was all in for Taylor Latner and he did
buy me a three dollars beer once.

Speaker 1 (46:27):
Wow.

Speaker 2 (46:28):
Yeah, I think I told that story on the first version.
Is like right after I moved to La went to
this cheap o bar called the Cha Chaw Lounge, and
for some reason, Taylor and his wife to be also
named Taylor were there and he was like, next round
on me. But all the beers cost three dollars, so
he couldn't have spent more than like thirty dollars. But

(46:49):
it was nice of him. I appreciated it. Yeah, So
I guess I got a three dollar return on setting
all my style and Taylor Latner three dollars plus tip.

Speaker 1 (46:58):
I hope, wow, I mean could be worse.

Speaker 2 (47:02):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (47:03):
Anyway, So Bella returns home and this is the scene
where she looks through her book for one second and
then looks everything else up online.

Speaker 2 (47:14):
I love a good googling montage. It's so pat but
I find it comforting.

Speaker 1 (47:20):
M hm. And what she's looking up is information about vampires,
and she realizes that Edward is probably a vampire based
on his super speed and strength, his cold skin, his
ability to read people's minds, since that's famously a vampire quality.

Speaker 2 (47:42):
I love how they just wave aside the I do
appreciate Stephanie Meyer just waves off the tropes about vampires
she's disinterested in and adds the stuff that she wants
You're like, yeah, sure, it's your book.

Speaker 1 (47:52):
I guess She's like, they can be out in the daylight.
It's just that their skin is sparkly.

Speaker 2 (47:57):
They just have this body glitter kind of thing.

Speaker 3 (48:00):
Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 1 (48:01):
And they're also Professor Xavier from x Men.

Speaker 2 (48:06):
I've never seen an x man. Wow, I'm not like
you've never seen an x man. Oh, I was gonna say,
I made a special note in a very late two
thousand's not. The Papyris font is indeed featured in oh
Bella's googling sequence, which it wouldn't have been in two
thousand and eight if she hadn't come across you know,

(48:26):
homespun HTML layout papyrus font website. So I appreciated that.

Speaker 1 (48:32):
That was important visibility.

Speaker 2 (48:34):
Yes for the papyrus part. Well, No, the papyrus font's
one year away from being the avatar logo. So the
Papyrus font did oh perfectly fine for herself.

Speaker 1 (48:43):
True. Okay, So one day at school, Bella and Edward
go into the nearby woods together and she's like, so,
you're a vampire, right, and he's like TI, yes, and
she's like, don't worry, I'm not afraid of you. Even
though you desperately want to kill me and drink my blood.

(49:07):
You're a killing machine who has previously murdered people.

Speaker 2 (49:10):
This is the skin of a killer Bella.

Speaker 3 (49:12):
Oh yeah that light I so, y'all. I didn't tell you,
but I'm wearing a shirt. This is the skin of
a killer. I will show you. It has like the
meme of Probert Pattinson. Incredible And yeah, it's a T
shirt and I made it into a half shirt because
I love me some half shirts. And this isn't the
only Twilight half shirt that I own. I also own

(49:35):
one that is New Moon based. It's the scene where
Jacob says, Bella, where the hell have you been? Loca?

Speaker 2 (49:43):
Yes, that is that half shirt.

Speaker 3 (49:46):
So yeah, I do rock some some Twilight apparel still,
even though it's not a Team Edward shirt.

Speaker 2 (49:53):
Our producer Sophie is a big fan or like was
a huge twyhard back in the day, and they recently
screened near her and the like the whole audience in
Unison did the bello where have you been? Look up together? Ah.
There is something just so powerful about the memes that
keep us together. This is the skin of a killer Bella.

(50:15):
That line read really holds up. It's so funny.

Speaker 3 (50:20):
She's like, you're beautiful skins like diamonds.

Speaker 2 (50:23):
Diamonds, everything about me draws you in. Like, we'll talk
about like how Robert Pattinson, I feel like, almost in
a defensive way, came out against the Twilight movies because
he wanted to have a quote unquote serious career. In
starring in movies that are marketed at teen girls is
quote unquote unserious. And so he would sort of be like,
these movies suck, but I'm in them. They but I

(50:45):
hate them. But he would do it in a funny
enough way that it's hard for me to be mad
at him. But yeah, imagine having to perform that monologue.
It's really really wild that he basically pulls it up.

Speaker 1 (51:01):
Yeah, So now Bella and Edward are irrevocably in love
with each other. He tells her some of his backstory,
which I forgot to write down.

Speaker 3 (51:12):
He am in start of the flu Yeah, he had
Spanish influenza and Carlyle saved him and yeah bit him
and turned him into into a vampire.

Speaker 2 (51:21):
Right, and something that really struck me on this And
we can we can and should talk about this later.
But that Carle. Like Carlyle's code of honor is that
he'll only turn people into vampires when they are already
about to die. But as ties into a lot of
the like undertones of white supremacy and like Mormonism specifically

(51:44):
in this franchise, he mysteriously only ever seems to have
an interest in saving white vampires or eventual vampires specifically,
including even though I think that this is a discussion
for a future episode because it doesn't come up I
don't think in this movie. But Jasper's fighting on the
wrong side of the Civil War canonically.

Speaker 3 (52:04):
Yeah, he's a Confederate soldier.

Speaker 2 (52:07):
Yeah, and there is really I mean, we'll talk about
it in I don't know if it's the second or
third movie where that like there's like a full flashback
sequence I remember, and it is just not drawn attention
to as something that's wrong. And I know Princess Weeks
made a great video about how Confederate Vampire's Soldiers is
like this very scary trope that exists across vampire media.

(52:32):
But yeah, doctor Daddy only ever saves white people on
the verge of death.

Speaker 1 (52:41):
Yeah, so we learn that as Edward's backstory, we also
learn that the Cullens have kind of sworn this oath
to never hunt or attack or kill humans. They live
off of the blood of animals, but there are other
like vampire clans who do kill people, and that's what's

(53:05):
going on with James and Victoria.

Speaker 3 (53:08):
And you can tell by their eye color too, of
the vampires. Their eye color, you can tell if they
are vegetarian vampires or if they hunt humans, because the
vegetarian vampires have like golden eyes, and then the human
hunting ones have red eyes.

Speaker 2 (53:24):
So like, yeah, yes.

Speaker 1 (53:25):
Yes, exactly. So Edward tells Bella all of this. Then
he invites her to his house to have dinner with
his vampire family. Rosalie has a little outburst about it.

Speaker 2 (53:40):
She breaks a salad.

Speaker 1 (53:42):
We're gonna be tension between her and Bella throughout the series.

Speaker 3 (53:47):
Oh boy.

Speaker 1 (53:48):
Also, Jasper is thirsty as fuck for Bella's blood, but
he's exercising restraint. Then we get the spider monkey scene.

Speaker 2 (53:59):
Great that was added for the movie. Also amazing that
Robert Pattinson says it without laughing, so good.

Speaker 3 (54:06):
That's a skill.

Speaker 1 (54:08):
That's followed by this like montage kind of thing where
they're just sort of like canoodling in the tree tops,
as if that's like so romantic and I'm so afraid
of heights that Like I'm like, who who would find
that romantic? Like is this exciting for people?

Speaker 3 (54:25):
I don't know, I would find that terrifying. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (54:28):
What struck me about that scene was that presumably what's
happening in that scene is they're getting to know each
other better and they don't show us that where it's
like it would actually be I mean, and I know
to some extent and this is like ten years ago
kind of styled this course around Twilight, but I think
it would be nice to see them have more conversations
to lock in what connects them as people.

Speaker 1 (54:51):
Why they like each other, right, Like.

Speaker 2 (54:54):
That's not too much to ask of a romance story.
And it was like, I think we were watching that
scene happening, like we were far away, we couldn't hear it.
It's like, oh, I would have loved to know what
they would what Bella would talk about? Yeah, no, I
read this is so many questions about Twilight if you
google them lead to a Reddit post from five years ago,

(55:14):
and this one is no exception. But later on, Stephanie
Meyer would write sort of rewrite Twilight from Edward's perspective,
called Midnight Sun. I almost was like, should I read it?
And then I saw it was a thirty six hour
long audiobook, and then I thought, maybe I know, there's
only so many days of your life.

Speaker 1 (55:34):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (55:34):
Yeah, But I guess in that she does get into
some of the conversations she has that Bella has with Edward,
and she at one point gives her list of favorite
movies and books, which are baffling given Bella's personality. She
says her favorite movie is Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Interesting,
which is coming from a character I don't think we

(55:55):
ever see laugh, is like so confusing. I was like,
there's no way.

Speaker 1 (56:00):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (56:01):
Anyways, I guess in the source material in the book,
we find out that she reads Jane Austen books, which
you know, they're great books, but there couldn't be a
more bland thing assigned to a teenage girl character than
likes Jane Austen books.

Speaker 1 (56:20):
Oh okay, So then there's a scene where Bella introduces
Edward to Charlie Swan, her dad, and Charlie's like, you
better watch out, young man, I've got a gun. Then
we get the baseball scene, which is an amazing scene,

(56:41):
mostly because it is seven people total playing baseball, which
is not enough people to play baseball.

Speaker 2 (56:49):
And here's two referees but not enough player.

Speaker 1 (56:52):
Yeah, they don't even let Bella play because she's too slow,
so they make her be the umpire. But anyway, this
is when the bad vampires show up. They want to
join in the fun. They want to play baseball, it's
America's pastime. But they notice that a human is among them.
They smell Bella's like blood for something or human flesh,

(57:15):
and James in particular wants to just eat Bella to
death and he is now going to hunt her down.
So Edward and Bella have to leave to lure James
away so that they can basically eventually kill him. They
have to cut him up into pieces and burn the pieces.

Speaker 2 (57:36):
Right, which is always like there's always these like suggestions
of violence like that in Twilight, but they never like
they ordinarily don't really have at least in the first movie.
There's a lot of like, I'm gonna do this, but
then it happens off screen. Yeah, yeah, yeah, because Mormons.

Speaker 1 (57:53):
So then there's a scene where Bella and Edward are fleeing,
Bella goes home and like has to hurt her dad
feelings to protect him. Then Bella and Edward split up
to hopefully trick James into following. Edward and Bella goes
off with Alice and Jasper all the way to Phoenix,

(58:15):
where Bella receives a call from her mother, who James
has kidnapped, and James tells her to meet him at
her old ballet studio. Now Bella shows up, learns that
her mom was not actually kidnapped, it's just James there,
and he's like taunting her and throwing her around. She

(58:38):
gets badly injured and she's bleeding, and Edward shows up
and he and James fight a bit. James bites Bella
and his vampire venom is coursing through her veins.

Speaker 2 (58:52):
And it hurts, but it hurts so good question mark. Yeah,
the gnarliest moment in this movie to me is always
when pony Hill vampire break Bella's leg like that. That
to me is like the actual scariest part of the movie.
It's so yeah, But then how would she go to

(59:13):
prom without her quirky leg cast, So in a way,
it had to happen ponytail vampire had to do so
she could look quirky or from.

Speaker 1 (59:22):
Yes, yes, But before that happens, the rest of the
Cullens show up to deal with James and they kill
him off screen. Meanwhile, Edward goes to suck the venom
out of Bella, but oh no, will he be able
to show restraint and stop in time, or will he

(59:43):
suck all the blood out of her and kill her.

Speaker 2 (59:47):
And give him vampire blue balls? Yeah, this movie is
so edgy.

Speaker 1 (59:53):
Well, he manages not to bust a nut or whatever
the metaphor is, and Bella live.

Speaker 2 (01:00:00):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:00:00):
She wakes up in the hospital. Her mom is there.
Bella doesn't remember what happens, so or she I don't
know if she's like pretending not to or what. But
her mom relays the story that the Cullens probably told her,
which is that Bella fell down two flights of stairs,
broke her leg, and crashed through a window.

Speaker 2 (01:00:21):
Okay, if I'm Bella's mom, I'm like, excuse me, Like
how But I think that because that same excuse is
given in the book. If I'm remembering correctly, it's a
very long book. But I was like, is that why
they mentioned that she's so prone to falling because people
have to believe this ridiculous story that she could just

(01:00:41):
fall down two flights, like a Looney Tune style fall. Sure, Renee,
I'm not her fan. If Renee has one fan, it's
not me, it's not you. I like, your daughter's a junior.
You can wait two years to go on the road
with your sorry whatever. But like, if I was a

(01:01:03):
teen girl and my mom was like, actually I'm going
off to fuck this guy, I'd be like, all right, well,
I hate you, you know.

Speaker 1 (01:01:12):
But now her mom is encouraging her to move to Jacksonville, Florida,
to like hang out with her mom and her new husband,
and Bella's like, no, I want to stay in Forks.
But Edward is like, no, Bella, that's a good idea.
Actually you are safer away from me, and you should move.
And she's like, no, I'm never leaving you and you

(01:01:35):
can never leave me, So don't say things like that,
and that's love. And we cut to prom and Bella
and Edward are there together. Jacob just kind of randomly
pops out of the woods.

Speaker 2 (01:01:50):
He walks out of the woods. They did not do
a good job of making it like Why can't we
see him get out of a car? Why is he
have to I know that he's probably I know, I
know that that's what they're implying, but it looks so silly.

Speaker 1 (01:02:04):
It's goofy as hell.

Speaker 2 (01:02:06):
Yeah, it's so silly. I love it.

Speaker 3 (01:02:09):
And he like dresses up. He's like wearing a button
down shirt and tie, like rolls up sleeves and.

Speaker 1 (01:02:13):
Stuff, as if he's about to go to prom. But
he's not a question.

Speaker 2 (01:02:17):
She's like, no, my dad gave me twenty dollars and
I'm like, okay.

Speaker 1 (01:02:21):
He's like, my dad paid me to tell you to
break up with Edward and that will be watching you.
And we're like cool, cool, cool, tight tight tight.

Speaker 2 (01:02:33):
At very least in the book, Jacob like they danced
together and there's like a clearer friendship established, and not
what happens in the movie, which is like Edward appearing
out of nowhere and being like, get away from me,
and then they gave each other like Bruti boy eyes
monster boy eyes, and then Jacob walks back into the
woods like that's where.

Speaker 1 (01:02:55):
He came from.

Speaker 3 (01:02:56):
So I hope he got that twenty dollars.

Speaker 2 (01:03:01):
Yeah, yeah, I hope. At very least because it's like,
that's a very humiliating task to dispatch your sixteen year
old son to do.

Speaker 1 (01:03:10):
Anyway, So then Bella and Edward are slow dancing and
she's like, you should have let me become a vampire
so that I can be like you. And he's like, no,
I'm not gonna let you be a monster, and she's like,
but this is what I want, and so he moves
like he's about to bite her neck, but JK, he's

(01:03:31):
just teasing slash edging her. And the movie ends with
a shot of Victoria, the bad vampire who's James's his girlfriend,
leering at Bella and Edward from a distance because she
wants revenge, and that's partly going to be what some

(01:03:52):
of the other movies are about.

Speaker 2 (01:03:53):
I think maybe I was really bummed I forgot that
the Vultore don't show up in this movie because they're
so funny. They're the funniest part of all of the
vivies where they're because it's just like this didn't fully
connect for me until like going through the Twilight rehash
discourse that's happened in the last five years. But it's

(01:04:14):
just how Stephanie Meyer views Catholic people, which is like
gay and evil No, Italian gay and evil.

Speaker 3 (01:04:24):
Yes, it's just so.

Speaker 2 (01:04:25):
Weird, I forget. Yeah, yeah, but you're gonna have to
wait for Dakota Fanning Italian villain.

Speaker 1 (01:04:33):
Yeah, yes, indeed. So yeah, that's the movie. Let's take
a quick break and we'll come back to discuss.

Speaker 2 (01:04:50):
And we're back, Daneli, I want to sort of pass
the buck to you here. Where would you like to
start with discourse of Twilight.

Speaker 3 (01:05:01):
I don't know, I don't know. Where's what it feels
like a good place to start, as far as like
things that you all wanted to cover as well.

Speaker 2 (01:05:08):
Yeah, I mean, I think we didn't mention this, Caitlin,
but we also during actually during Lockdown, I want to
say it was summer twenty twenty, we did a fundraiser
where we did a reading of the Twilight script with
past guests from the show. Jess Berwin was a part
of that conversation, and they and many Native writers have

(01:05:32):
been intensely and rightfully critical of the way that Twilight
presents indigenous culture, which I think we reference in our
first episode, but certainly not in depth because we were
also under educated on the issue at the time, So
I think that's a good starting point. And then also
just again for our listener's reference, we're not going to

(01:05:52):
get into every facet of that in this particular episode,
because I believe that it's New Moon that really kind
of doubles and triples down on these really dangerous tropes
around indigenous people, and Jacob is not in this movie
very much. But I think that it is at least

(01:06:13):
to me like the unequivocally valid criticism of this franchise.

Speaker 1 (01:06:20):
Yes, friend of the show Ali Noddy has spoken about
this in depth, and I've learned an awful lot from
posts that she's made and videos that she's made.

Speaker 2 (01:06:33):
She made a great video essay on the topic, definitely.

Speaker 1 (01:06:36):
So Yeah, the glaring thing here because this movie does
go a little bit into some of the lore that's
basically at foreshadows a lot of what happens in New Moon.
But there's a scene where Jacob Black again played by
a non indigenous actor. He is a member of the

(01:07:00):
Quillute Nation. The character is again not the actor, and.

Speaker 2 (01:07:04):
The Quiliate nation really does live in Lapushe. I think
at the time that the movie came out, there were
only about seven hundred members of the nation, so it's
also a quite small nation.

Speaker 1 (01:07:16):
Yes, So what we learned from this movie is and
this is something that Jacob mentions, but that his people
are descended from wolves, which is part of Quiliute mythology,
like that's part of the creation story. But basically what
happened is that Stephanie Meyer probably did one second of research,

(01:07:40):
learned that and then basically conflated that with Quillute people
are where wolves.

Speaker 2 (01:07:48):
Right to like serve the pre which again it's just
I mean, there's so many issues with how Stephanie Meyer
dealt with writing a Qualiute character in general, but the
fact that she's also like equivocating a very real group
of people with a completely made up group of people,

(01:08:08):
you know, inventing a treaty that is presented very matter
of factly, as if most of the treaties that have
been quote unquote made with indigenous tribes have not been
completely disrespected or later renegged on. The movie has no
interest in this. I also was reading that she didn't.
I mean, it reminds me of how we talked about

(01:08:28):
Robert Eggers in the vivich oh where there was that
interview he did where they're like, how did you research
the movie? And he's like, I went to the library
one day like that, and that was all he admitted
to doing. She does seem to be borrowing from the
Robert Egger's School of Higher Education and that she clearly
googled a couple of things, never consulted with the quil Nation, right,

(01:08:53):
it doesn't seem like visited, like did no due diligence
in writing that character. And that also she still somehow
got it wrong where I'm pretty sure that at least
I was seeing this because there's been a lot of
art exhibits and pieces written about it that the tribe
is said to have been turned to people from wolves

(01:09:15):
and not like it's not a back and forth thing, correct,
So she's just projecting, you know whatever, making everything work
in favor of the story. The thing that stood out
to me and the Taylor Lotner thing is absolutely glaring.
And there's also this very I think it was more
in the New Moon press cycle, so we can talk
about it more in that episode. But there was a

(01:09:37):
like round of discourse where Taylor Latner did like a
round of press where he was like, actually, I do
have some indigenous heritage. I just didn't know before. And
on my mom's side, I have some indigenous heritage, which
is like, don't do that. Like, and he's a teenager
at the time, Like, I'm more inclined to blame the

(01:10:00):
producers of Twilight that probably put pressure on him to
do that, to put out a fire. It's all very ugly.
The thing that stuck out to me the most, though,
that I wasn't fully aware of, or I guess I
hadn't been reminded of in some time, was in terms
of how the Quali tribe was able to benefit from

(01:10:20):
the success of Twilight. There was a lot written about this.
The most in depth piece I was able to find
was in Highcountrynews dot com, which is a local paper.
It is from twenty twelve, so towards the end of
the Twilight movies, in which the Quali tribe was holding

(01:10:40):
a public powow and was inviting people to become better
acquainted with their culture. And I think we might have
talked about this years ago. But what the piece illustrates
essentially is the fact that a because the Twilight production
was not required to give the Qualia tribe any sort

(01:11:01):
of public acknowledgment or financial compensation, they opted not to,
and that this tribe, which again consists of around seven
hundred people, had to in response to the success from
Twilight and have all of a sudden all of this tourism,
which we should just link the piece because it is
very interesting. On one hand, they're like, you know, having

(01:11:24):
tourism money come in is a net positive, But on
the other hand, they're coming in because of misinformation, and
so they had to develop, you know, for a small
group of people who have been historically persecuted, they had
to develop a pr job within the nation to sort
of not overtly condemned Twilight, but also work to correct

(01:11:47):
the misinformation that Twilight had created. And it's created this
entire like net of issues. And something that isn't mentioned
in this twenty twelve piece but feels worth mentioning is
the fact of, like, why do indigenous groups have to
rely on tourism money from you know, majority non indigenous

(01:12:07):
people because of the same capitalist system that is disenfranchising
them in the first place, And it's cost all of
this genocide and the fact that that is even something
that tribes need to interface with is like the result
of something far uglier. So just I have one quick passage.
I'm sorry, I know him going along. It's just no

(01:12:29):
I love it. This piece is I want to shout
out the writer that not an indigenous writer, but who
attended this powo and spent a lot of time and
spoke with the pr advocates. All this stuff from writer
Brint Nelson in July twenty twelve, rites the Quilliad has
struggled for centuries to retain their land and culture amid
outside threats. In eighteen eighty nine, the same year a

(01:12:52):
treaty squeezed the tribe onto a fraction of its ancestral lands.
A settler who had fraudulently claimed the remaining plots burned
all twenty six houses to the ground. By nineteen twenty,
the last of the peninsula's wolves had been poisoned, shot
or trapped, severing another vital link to the past. They
also mentioned how there are many places in the surrounding areas,

(01:13:14):
but not on their reservation or land, that profit off
of the twilight. You know what it was the word
being adjacent adjacent fairness. In twenty ten, a volunteer advisor
Angela Riley, director of the American Indian Studies Center at
UCLA wrote an editorial in The New York Times, Sucking
the Quill Dry, which blasted the ongoing exploitation. In perhaps

(01:13:35):
the worst instance, an MSN dot com film crew working
on a virtual Twilight tour filmed the reservation cemetery without permission,
pairing grainy images of the gravesites of respected elders with
a creepy soundtrack. Deeply offended, the tribe secured a quick
published ecology and removal of the footage, but the incident
prompted a new level of vigilance. Now the Quilliut Nation

(01:13:58):
has an etiquette guide and photography policy, both prominently displayed
on its website. So it's just this examination of how
this small tribe has had to respond, deal with and
try to essentially make the best of this situation that's
been thrust onto them by this franchise. And I don't know, Yeah,

(01:14:19):
I'm curious what you both feel about that. I mean,
it's obviously very gross and it takes Stephanie Meyer kind of,
I think, a very nasty amount of time to even
acknowledge this.

Speaker 1 (01:14:31):
I had come across a piece called Truth Versus Twilight,
which was a collaboration between the Burke Museum of Natural
History and Culture and the Quilute tribe. And it goes
through a bunch of different talking points, many of which
revolve around the representation of the Quillut nation, and one

(01:14:54):
of the big points made was that the tribe received
no compensation to bite. The movie, making over four hundred
million dollars at the box office, made back its budget,
like by over tenfold, Like made so much money. Obviously
we know what a cultural phenomenon this saga is, and

(01:15:17):
the Quilli nation saw no direct compensation from that. Again,
there was no consultation that Stephanie Meyer did, and I
meant to look into this further, but I would doubt
that the film production did much in the way of consultation.

Speaker 2 (01:15:37):
So from what I can tell, no, So there's actually
it's mentioned in this piece, okay, from the same High
Country news piece. When the Twilight craze first erupted, the
Quillia lacked a public relations contact and events coordinator and
Penn Trials, a community leader who helps run the weekly

(01:15:57):
drum and healing circle, says producer of the first movie
randomly called villagers in hopes of securing permission to film
a scene on First Beach it was ultimately shot on
the Oregon coast instead. The producers eventually visited so eventually,
well into production, the producers eventually visited La Push to
get a better sense of the community. Tribal Secretary Naomi

(01:16:19):
Jacobson says their idea of Qulio kids were upended when
they visited her cousin's home. They didn't expect them to
be modernized teenagers with iPods and we she says, So
this was just like, as with so many depictions of
Indigenous culture well into now and thankfully there has been

(01:16:39):
more representation of but nowhere near what satisfactory, as we've
talked about in many episodes. But just like this is
an overwhelmingly white crew coming in based on I'm assuming
the false version of history they learned and never re
examined in American schools. Yeah, there was no compensation given
that I was a well to find and it seems

(01:17:01):
like the first literal person to say hey, could we
come to the Push and speak with you was well
into the production of the movie, which would have been
at least three years after the book came out.

Speaker 3 (01:17:15):
And it's like just the age old story of like
appropriation and benefiting from you know, other people's culture. It
saddens me, it outrages me that, you know, the Quiliit
people were not consulted, they were not compensated, and like
that happens so often, especially as a person of color,
like we often are not compensated for our work, for

(01:17:38):
our labor. And this could have been an opportunity for
the production crew to be educated on the Quiliad tribe
and they could have been compensated for their time and
for their information. But it is sad that the research
was well into production and Stephanie Meyer didn't do a

(01:17:59):
lot of that work on her which is again, like
I'm so outraged by that, and like I I think
that when I was younger, I didn't I didn't know
this information, yeah, you know, and I just thought about like, oh,
the romance, the story of you know, Edward and and
Bella falling in love, and there's so much I mean,

(01:18:21):
this is a problematic fave, sadly, but there's there's so
much to really dive into. And again, like so many,
so many issues that could be discussed about this movie.
And you know, the books that made this movie happen,
you know, absolutely.

Speaker 2 (01:18:38):
I mean, and and well this is like an issue
well return to as we cover more Twilight movies, because
it's like Twilight is a problematic fave for millions of people,
and again, like we're our show is an every fun
about like if with very few exceptions, there's a few
movies where it's like, if you like this movie, you
might be a horrible person, but The Twilight is not

(01:18:59):
one of them. I don't think. I think that there
is so much important, valid criticism that was not being
had at the time that is important to have now.
And I'm I mean that's why it's like Ali Natty's
work is so wonderful and yeah, well we'll revisit that
in our New Moon episode. But just to establish like
I know for sure, I was not educated to the

(01:19:22):
point where I could have told you when this movie
came out if the Clearly tribe was a tribe that
was based on real people or not, because we're so
under educated about indigenous issues. And also, Indigenous people aren't
a monolith as this movie. I think there's a lot
of stuff in New Moon that really, you know, turns

(01:19:43):
Indigenous Americans into a monolith. So we'll go back to that.
But did anyone else have anything on that issue before
we forge ahead to the five hundred other things to
talk about.

Speaker 1 (01:19:57):
Let's forge ahead, I suppose so well. I think a
big talking point on our first episode was the discussion
around the predatory romance between Edward and Bella being framed
as this grand, romantic, beautiful love story and the effect

(01:20:17):
that that had on its audience. Sure, now watching this
movie eight years later and like having done this podcast
for eight years and like talking about so many movies
that do just that as far as framing an abusive
relationship or a predatory romance as being romantic, watching this

(01:20:41):
again for the first time in a long time, it
felt so heavy handed to me that it almost felt
like I was watching satire or like some kind of
farcical thing, because I was like, oh my gosh, because
I think that we have come long enough of away culturally,
like the initial release of these books in these movies

(01:21:04):
that I think, or at least I hope most people
watch this relationship now and realize just how predatory it
is and they're like ooh oh, no, yeah, Because I
feel like on our first watch, I was kind of
still in the mindset of like, well, I don't know,

(01:21:25):
I've always been conditioned that if a man stalks me
and love bombs me, and.

Speaker 2 (01:21:32):
To me, fair, I don't think that we were like,
it's actually cool that he's we weren't that brand dead
in twenty seventeen.

Speaker 1 (01:21:38):
There no, but we were coming off of being conditioned
by other media that, at least for me, I was
like kind of still in the process of like undoing, sure,
unlearning a lot of that, and now I'm like, oh
my gosh, like WOWI wow, this seems this is so
outlandish that it feels satirical to me almost. But yeah,

(01:22:02):
I mean, obviously, there's all the things of Edward gaslighting her,
incessantly stalking her, showing up in her bedroom unannounced, watching
her sleep, love bombing her, blaming her for his reaction,
like kind of like any angry outburst he has, he's like, well,

(01:22:23):
you made me so angry. The implication that he's intrigued
by her because she's the only person whose thoughts he
can't hear, but he's still desperate to know what she's thinking.
And just like all these weird, bizarro, predatory, scary, abusive
relationship dynamics. Also that he's like one hundred years old

(01:22:44):
and she's seventeen. You know, the list goes on.

Speaker 2 (01:22:48):
Yeah, yeah, I mean that's honestly, the main initial criticism
that we had of this movie that doesn't hold up
for me is the age gap, because well, I do
agree that a hundred year old shouldn't date seventeen year olds.
That's not something that happens, and I don't think it's
like something that we're risk to do. I guess there

(01:23:09):
were a few things that as I was like revisiting
some of the criticisms that I pre I mean the
fact like, it's to me impossible to and this is
not a brave stance. It's impossible to look at this
relationship and be like, seems healthy. Yeah, it's definitely not.
There's absolutely stocking. The gaslighting, like you're saying, Caitlin is

(01:23:30):
like so over the top that it feels like literally
a handout of like this is what a gas lighter
might say of like you don't know what you're talking about.
You must have bonked your head, like you know, just
really really unsophisticated stuff. And the thing is, like I
still feel that way. I know that there's been a
lot of history that looks at the original backlash I

(01:23:53):
guess I'm curious, Yeah, where we all stand on that,
because there are still a lot of the initial criticisms
that I felt about this movie. I still feel like, I,
you know, I'm not gonna be like after eight years,
I think that they actually have a great relationship. And
also the thing that is never gonna sit quite right
with me, even with the reflection on some of I

(01:24:14):
think the more extreme criticisms of Twilight at the time
is that this is media that's you know, marketed at
middle schoolers and high schoolers, so it's marketed at impressionable people,
right and with all due respect to the youth, I
saw Juno and my takeaway was I have to get
pregnant right now because I like Juno and Juno was pregnant,

(01:24:38):
and so if there's even a risk that someone is
like that and this is, you know, something that you're
very emotionally invested in, I think that that is very
up for debate, despite what the intent of the author
might have been. I think that something I've moved on

(01:24:59):
is movies that a very clearly marketed and intended for
adults having unhealthy relationship dynamics, where it's like, Okay, you know,
if a movie is fully intended for adults and mainly
being consumed by adults, and you see an unhealthy relationship
dynamic and you say, I want that. To some extent,
that's on you because you're a grownup, and not every
movie can model perfect relationship dynamics, But when you're modeling

(01:25:21):
them to an audience that are probably entering their first relationships,
it is I think still right. You know, I stand
by and I think it is a valid discussion to have.

Speaker 3 (01:25:33):
Yeah, absolutely, I think, like definitely, Like when I first
read the books, and then also when I first watched
the movie, I was completely convinced that this was a
beautiful love story. And I was convinced then too that
everything that he was doing was because he loved her,
And I didn't find it to be controlling or gas lighty.

(01:25:56):
But really, you know, what I mentioned before at the
beginning is that I grew up in a very sheltered environment.
I grew up in a religious cult, very like Pentecostal adjacent.
So the misogyny was, you know, real thick. And you know,
for me, this was not so far off from what

(01:26:17):
I had known and already experienced, so it was easy
for me to make that leap from this very religious
upbringing to then you know, Edward being very controlling and
gaslighting and stocking her. It just was an easy transition
for me. I didn't really question it, which is when

(01:26:39):
I look back at it, very scary to think about,
and you know, like it was you know, not only
was I a part of a religious system, I also
lived in an abusive household. So these were you know,
things that I was seeing often and it was just
a mirror of my own experience and that was really

(01:26:59):
all that I knew. But it's it's sad that this
is what was being sold to, you know, young girls
and being told that this is what true love looks like.
You know, if he loves you, he'll he'll follow you
and make sure that you're protected. Oh nayneh.

Speaker 2 (01:27:16):
He'll cut you off from any potential friendship that you
could possibly have with anyone of any gender, which is
like so egregious, right exactly.

Speaker 3 (01:27:27):
And there's just this you know codependence that they have.
I mean, thinking about like the end of the movie,
the thought of moving to Jacksonville just completely like Bella's
like freaking out. She's like absolutely like you could never
never leave me, and I think about the line in
the movie you know, so the lion fell in love

(01:27:49):
with the lamb, and it's like so so predatory in nature,
you know, he is he is a lion and she
is this this lamb, And I'm thinking about how I
don't know if you all knew, but there were a
lot of hot topic came up with like a line
of like jewelry around the movie.

Speaker 2 (01:28:10):
Oh I bet they did.

Speaker 3 (01:28:12):
You'll notice some of the jewelry, like in the scene
in the science class when Edward like moves the kind
of the slides over to Bella. He's wearing this like
leather bracelet with the colin like crest on it. So
hot topic was selling all of this jewelry to young kids.
So not only was there a jewelry with the crest,

(01:28:34):
there was also a pair of rings that had lion
and lamb on them. And who owned them? I did.
My first boyfriend gave them to me. And like most
like first relationships, it was not a healthy relationship at all.
There was so much you know, codependence and controlling behavior

(01:28:56):
from both of us. But we were again a part
of a system that just ingrained that in us, So
it was that much more I guess dangerous for that
message to be continually like drilled into my brain. So
like when I think about like my relationship to the
movie now, it's it's very strange, and it's layered and

(01:29:20):
it's convoluted, and I have to think about, like again
my experiences that I had before watching the movie, and
then how I was as a young adult watching this
movie thinking that this was, you know, the love that
I was chasing, and then now after as an adult,
fully understanding that that type of love is so damaging.

(01:29:45):
And I myself have been in you know, abusive relationships
later on in my adulthood where there was stocking and
like restraining orders and it was just a really really
difficult time for me. And this movie, I do feel,
like what you said, Caitlin, you have to watch it
with the eye of that this is satire. Otherwise, like

(01:30:09):
the indoctrination is again a very very damaging thing.

Speaker 1 (01:30:15):
Right, But that's the thing, Like it only feels like
satire now in like twenty twenty five because when it
came out in two thousand and eight, right, it was
coming out in the context of this culture that's still
very much normalized this type of relationship dynamic, which is
very abusive and predatory as being actually romantic. It was

(01:30:39):
coming out in a culture that rewarded men's predatory behavior
like that. So it doesn't fly now it feels so ridiculous,
at least to me now, But in the context of
it coming out, it was different enough that it did
feel very like, oh my gosh, well this is love.

(01:31:01):
I have to model my relationship after this.

Speaker 2 (01:31:03):
Yeah, and I hope it say something positive that this
does Riada's satire now, I really hope it does, because
I think about, even though Twilight wasn't a complete like
hallmark of my youth, I think of like, how many
abuse of dynamics that you end up with in your life,
And you're like, what was modeled to me that made

(01:31:26):
this okay? And then you can trace that up as
far as you like of like, if this is something
I saw modeled in someone in my life, what was
modeled to them? Was it? Media? Was that people? What
was it like? And you just and it's usually some
really bizarro mix of everything, like media that's withheld from
you with media that's given to you. At dynamics, you

(01:31:46):
see dynamics, you see projected like it's also very like
extremely complicated, and this is like not the relationship as
a twelve year old to aspire to like that is
so clear, and I think that that is like a
lot of who was reading this book is people who
had not you know, I generally feel like media about

(01:32:10):
seventeen year old girls is mainly being consumed by twelve
year old girls because they're looking for a model of
who do I want to become? Right and what? I
don't know. It's so tricky because I think that like
Stephanie Meyer is a piece of shit for so many reasons.
But I always sort of, I guess, struggle with all

(01:32:30):
of these cultural issues that have been around for literally
hundreds of years falling onto the back of one work
like which I do think there is a tendency to
do that I know I've definitely been guilty of. Is
like there is this very broad, clickable take of like
Twilight is making a generation of young women want to

(01:32:54):
enter abusive relationships, where it is a facet of a
much larger problem, which I feel like ties into Stephanie
Meyer's background, which is as a devout Mormon, and I
didn't know anything about Mormon culture in twenty seventeen when
we recorded this episode, and I wish I could go back,

(01:33:16):
but I can't. And I do know a lot more
about Mormonism now and about how a lot of Mormon
values are sort of telegraphed in this work, and how
Stephanie Meyer, you know, I think like a lot of
authors who are women. We literally just talked about it
last week with Judy Bloom, but she was a stay

(01:33:38):
at home mom when she wrote this book, was not
anticipated to be successful. It was wildly successful. But you
can see a lot of sort of themes of her
life come out in this book in a way that
is presented as romance, because that's how Stephanie Meyer has
been conditioned to understand romance. So the way Stephanie Meyer

(01:34:00):
talks about indigenous people is a completely different issue that
I think there's absolutely no defense of her on definitely
in the romance department. I do think that there is
a like multi generational thing going on. I don't think
Stephanie Meyer is sitting in her in like Dexter's lab,
petting a cat, being like I'm gonna write the most

(01:34:20):
toxic story ever. I do think that this, like she
would repeatedly say this is a story that came to
me in a dream, and that to some extent, this
is an expression of a fantasy that she has based
on her lived experience. As I mean, she went to
Brigham Young University, like she was full Mormon, And you

(01:34:41):
can see I think in the like edging like relationship
between Bella and Edward, through which a lot of the
violent and controlling things we're talking about comes through, are
pulled from this, Like I mean, I didn't I knew
very little about Stephanie Meyer's biography, but she met her
future husband as a child and they had this like

(01:35:04):
long standing crush on each other, but they did not
spend any time alone until they were twenty. So it's
a very like chastity until marriage kind of culture. Yeah,
you can see that in Bella and Edward very clearly,
absolutely down to the point where if he quote unquote busts,

(01:35:25):
Bella will die.

Speaker 3 (01:35:29):
That's what happens when you have sex, you.

Speaker 2 (01:35:31):
Die, right, like because they're not married. But then when
she's married, she becomes a vampire, and then she doesn't
die if he busts, right, but you still don't see
him bust but it's implied, you know, like it is bizarre.
I mean, and there's a lot of the contra Points
video essay that came out on this topic sort of
gets into the history of romance novels and how there

(01:35:53):
has been you know, I think those just like really
really complicated, really and it's so tricky because it's like
I I look at a lot of this and I'm like,
I still feel basically the same way I did in
twenty seventeen. I think this is a toxic relationship that
is mainly being modeled at preteens, and I don't like that.
And the one thing I do like is that this

(01:36:14):
sort of wave of pop culture gave way to like
dystopian teen fiction, which tended to have women characters in
more politically aware, active roles and not bella swan who's
like a human screensaver, no offense. But then also the
whole idea that there was this undeniable appeal to this

(01:36:37):
story to a lot of very sweet, wonderful normal people
people on this call included.

Speaker 1 (01:36:44):
And people of multiple ages, because I mean, your mom,
yeah read these books as a full adult.

Speaker 2 (01:36:51):
There were moms specific Twilight forums because moms didn't want
their kids knowing how they felt about Edward Cohen. This
is like the history of romance novels too, is like
there's always been an implied shame and enjoying them and
the ContraPoints video I say, God, Lover, it's so long,
but I rewatched a portion of it to get ready

(01:37:13):
for this, and the thing that stuck out to me
that kind of like shifted the way I view this
a little bit is the sort of like push and
pull that happens between and this is like a pretty
heteronal root of structure, but like of feminine fantasy versus
what men tend to take away from feminine fantasies. She

(01:37:37):
talks a lot about the idea of surrender as a
theme in romance fiction, and you know that is sort
of predicated on this idea of there is this expectation
of women to take care of everybody. And the part
of the idea behind surrender is, you know, while it

(01:37:58):
does read as someone telling you what to do, it
can be interpreted and a lot of the appeal of it,
based on research, is the idea of not having to
do things for everybody, and that explains a lot of
the moms who are into this. Right, is like someone
who spends a lot of their time, likely because of

(01:38:21):
how domestic work tends to be split up taking care
of everyone else, having someone be like, this is what
we're doing, and your pleasure is the priority. And so
while the romantic dynamics, if you're a twelve year old
and you have no understanding of how a relationship you know, should,
quote unquote be, can be very dangerous, I do understand

(01:38:43):
the appeal of it in a different context, and like,
so that's part of why it's so hard to talk about.

Speaker 1 (01:38:50):
Right, So I watched the whole ContraPoints video bravely, all
three hours, basically the same length as Titanic. It's hard
to summarize because of its length and how in depth
it is, but basically, it looks at Twilight through the
lens of sexual desire and fantasy by way of prescribed

(01:39:16):
gender roles, social conditioning, power dynamics, human psychology, and how
nuanced and complicated all of those things are. Where yes,
she acknowledges, the relationship dynamics portrayed in Twilight can easily
be considered problematic and predatory. But when you take all

(01:39:38):
of these different things into consideration, and you especially consider
patriarchy and something that she calls default heterosexual sadomasochism. I'm
not sure if that's a term that she coins or
if that's an existing thing, but it's basically this division
of sexuality in sexual dynamic into these binary roles such

(01:40:03):
as like masculine and feminine, top and bottom, dominant and submissive,
lover and beloved, predator and pray, like all these things,
but lumping several of them together in a way that
is very very prescriptive of cist gender roles, which is
extremely reductive and problematic and ignores the fact that like

(01:40:28):
people can be both masculine and feminine, people can be
a switch. They're not just submissive or dominant, you know,
you can be both, Like all these things, like all
the facets that one person can be or that a
relationship can be, where it's not just like this person
assumes this role and this person assumes this opposing role,

(01:40:49):
and that's how it has to be, Like things are
far more fluid than that, And counterpoints basically comes to
the conclusion that maybe actually Twilight is kind of a
rejection of this, which like I don't know if I
fully agree with. But and then also for me, like
it is all about the audience consuming this.

Speaker 2 (01:41:10):
Right, That's the main thing that was like hard for me, Right.

Speaker 1 (01:41:13):
If you are a full adult who has come to
probably not peak emotional intelligence because you know, we're all
on a journey constantly, no one's there. Yeah, it depends
a lot on the age and maturity level of the
person consuming this. And because this saga the series is
directed primarily toward children slash tweens slash young teens. Again,

(01:41:40):
it's like, yes, the source material is a product of
Stephanie Meyers and so many people's conditioning as far as
what a relationship is supposed to look like. But then
this movie like reinforces that in a way that's incredibly problematic,
where we hopefully and definitely now are seen a lot

(01:42:00):
more media that rejects a lot of the very abusive
relationship dynamics we see in Twilight and posits healthier versions
of young people and people of all ages in relationships.
But we just weren't there in the you know, mid
two thousands and did the late two thousands and stuff

(01:42:21):
when these movies and books were coming out.

Speaker 2 (01:42:23):
Or really for like ten years after that, Like right, yeah,
and maybe arguably now, like we're living in a time
of regression unfortunately.

Speaker 1 (01:42:32):
Yeah, I mean the total trad wife thing that's coming
back around.

Speaker 3 (01:42:36):
Oh trad wives. Don't even get me started on trad wife.

Speaker 2 (01:42:39):
Yeah. So, oh god, I agree with you, Caitlin. I
think that like, I really enjoyed the ContraPoints take on it,
and I learned I learned a lot about the way
that romance has been Again, then I think that like
does pull in a valid point that I want to
get into, is like the idea that media that is

(01:43:03):
targeted at any like, any group that isn't CIS men
and CIS white men specifically, will be presented as a
danger to society, and that it really requires a close
look at the source material to determine is that actually so?
But I think that what I learned more from her

(01:43:24):
piece on it was understanding why moms liked it and
that actually wasn't too weird. But I didn't feel satisfied
as to like, well, but what if you're you know, twelve,
and you are years away from having any sort of
romantic connection with someone, and this is like consuming your life,

(01:43:46):
which was true for hundreds of thousands of young people.

Speaker 1 (01:43:50):
Right.

Speaker 2 (01:43:51):
I did appreciate seeing it, but I think it did
sort of not quite get to like. But who was
this targeted at. Yeah, that brought me to sort of
something that I wanted to touch on callback that capacious
journal assay I was talking about about not just being

(01:44:11):
ashamed of liking the Twilight Yes series and being like, no,
I would never like a popular thing that everyone likes,
and specifically where there was a resurgence during the early
days of lockdown with queer communities in re embracing this.
I saw this firsthand with Wait, actually, I'm going to

(01:44:34):
read my friend's letterboxed review of Twilight Please to illustrate
this point. I feel like Cam will be okay with it. Okay,
this is my friend Cameron's review from January nineteenth, twenty
twenty five. Okay, yeah, and Cam's about my age and

(01:44:56):
they're I mean, they're the best. I can't believe I've
never rated this, obviously, this is one of my favorite
films in the entire world. I cannot truly explain what
this film did to me as a seventeen year old
virgin high school senior who had never kissed anyone and
was depressed out of their gourd because they were unknowingly
transcend gay and also had an undiagnosed mood disorder. The
books in this film were integral to my survival, and

(01:45:16):
I owe Stephanie Meyer's untalented sicko ass mind a whole lot.
I think that this encapsulates a lot of people's experience
with Twilight.

Speaker 3 (01:45:27):
Honestly, Yes, Oh my goodness, thank you.

Speaker 2 (01:45:31):
Cam.

Speaker 3 (01:45:31):
Cam is their name?

Speaker 2 (01:45:32):
Cam? Yeah?

Speaker 3 (01:45:33):
Cameron, Yeah, Cameron. I feel this absolutely, like completely, I
am grateful for like Sephanie Meyer's sick oh mind, because
I it is like this weird nostalgic like comfort Watch
that I continue to like return to again and again
and again. And I think, Caitlyn, you said that you've

(01:45:54):
watched the movie like fifteen times or something like that. Yeah,
and I think, like fifteen that's how much I maybe
watched the movie in a matter of like two months.
Like I this movie is always on my TV. It's like, oh,
i'm folding laundry, let me put on Twilight. Oh I'm
having a really bad day.

Speaker 2 (01:46:10):
Twilight.

Speaker 3 (01:46:11):
Oh it just got broken up with New Moon because
oh right, this bitch likes to lean into the heartbreak.
Do you know what I'm saying. There's a pity, Yes, yes,
I've even wrote in a Twilight poem or two, and
a friend of mine we really want to edit an
anthology on poems based off of Twilight. And I think

(01:46:35):
for me, like, one of the reasons why I adore
Twilight with all of its problems is because it's so
ridiculous at least you know again now, it's like this
expected ridiculousness that feels very very comfortable to me. It's
so much of a go to to me that I
can't really imagine my life without it, which sounds like

(01:46:59):
really wild, but it's like to me, it's like just
as important to my survival as my wellview trend. Like
I need my Twilight to kind of be a like
healing bomb to the shit of the world, and it's
like a satirical toxicity that I can somehow kind of

(01:47:22):
digest as opposed to the toxicity that is actually happening,
you know, outside of my door right that I you know,
really want to run away from. So like, I'm so
grateful that your friend Cameron wrote that review. It feels
I feel so seen by that. That's gorgeous they were.

Speaker 2 (01:47:41):
Brave enough to say. I mean, then I think that
that is like a very common experience more recently, is
that like, this is also just becoming an adult where
you don't have to give a fuck what others think
quite as much.

Speaker 1 (01:47:53):
But yeah, a beautiful space.

Speaker 2 (01:47:56):
To be in, that sweet release that we've all experienced
mid thirties.

Speaker 3 (01:48:01):
It's great.

Speaker 2 (01:48:02):
Yeah, But there was and again I think this was
about ten years ago. What the conversation stopped at was
that things that are marketed to and this is a
broad umbrellaturn, but at the time that things that are
marketed to teen girls are universally made out to be

(01:48:22):
a societal ill and embarrassing and don't admit that you
like it, and if you admit that you like it,
your cringe, which I do think is true, and that
is I think still to this day true. But that
was sort of where the criticism stopped and where I
appreciate where it's gone, and I feel like where I
hope it continues going is there is clearly an appeal

(01:48:44):
to stories like this to and again teen girls I'm
using very very generally here, but there's still a very
broad appeal to it. And so it's like then the
responsibility of their parents and mentors to talk to them
about why, because again, it's like, it's very easy to
be like Twilight is the problem, or I think like,

(01:49:08):
you know, whichever bout of media is the problem, then
actually interrogating well, where did this come from? Because Stephanie
Meyer is a deeply problematic person, but she had no
idea that this was going to sell millions and millions
of copies. I think the more important question is why
does this sell millions and millions of copies? Why is

(01:49:28):
it so appealing to us? And how can you talk
to the intended audience for this without being an old loser.
I don't have the answers to these questions, but I
feel like they're worth asking instead of being like Twilight
is bad for youth, maybe, but they like it, so
we should figure it out, you know, and like and

(01:49:50):
we liked it. Yeah, So anyways, we're getting into like
the queer fan base, which you know, we've talked about
on this show many times. A lot of aggressively heteronormative
stories have been embrace by queer audiences, and I wanted
to get into I don't think we talked about this
with Twilight last time, and I don't think it was
really talked about because there was still Twilight enjoying stigma

(01:50:12):
at that time. True, So this is from that capacious
journal essay still not as gay as Twilight, which I
guess was a meme. I did not remember that.

Speaker 1 (01:50:23):
Yeah, I didn't see that.

Speaker 2 (01:50:24):
I don't think ever, but I guess it was a
very online meme from the early twenty tens, you know,
And it would often be queer users would post a
photo from like blue is the warmest color and then
be like, still not as gay as Twilight, and that
is that's the meme, basically postmodern affect, nostalgia and queer
Twilight renaissance during the COVID nineteen pandemic, and a lot

(01:50:46):
of this was just sort of analyzing to some extent,
just the broader shame no matter what your identity was
around enjoying Twilight at this time, which we've talked about,
but also their queer fandom. So just to share from
that quote, a focal pillar of this comeback is queer.
Many queer fans within the Twilight renaissance are quote unquote

(01:51:07):
gayifying Twilight in the early twenty twenties, Twilight is gay,
but this time in a good way. One factor that
may have kindled the onset of the Twilight Renaissance is
when Kristen Stewart, the actor who played Bella in the
Twilight film adaptations, publicly came out as bisexual in twenty seventeen.
The Twilight renaissance could also be sustained by former fans

(01:51:28):
resisting years of anti Twilight shame with the realization that
the mass anti Twilight rhetoric was merely misplaced misogyny that
essentially vilified the interests and desires of young women. Another
variable that might explain the fandom's heightened activity during the
pandemic is Stephanie Meyer's release of the fifth installment to
the Novels, which gets into basically Twilight from Edward's perspective,

(01:51:50):
but it also looks into a lot of the queer
fanfic that existed around Twilight, which I do remember was
quite prolific. You know, Edward, Jacob and you can just
kind of let your brain do the math from there.

Speaker 1 (01:52:04):
Why what what happened?

Speaker 2 (01:52:06):
Just kidding killing You're not ready, You can't You're not ready.
I can't tell you.

Speaker 1 (01:52:11):
I'm not old enough to know. I'm not ready.

Speaker 2 (01:52:13):
Yeah, I'll tell you in a couple of years.

Speaker 1 (01:52:15):
Tell you yeah, tell me when I'm older.

Speaker 2 (01:52:16):
Yeah, but yeah, I mean I think that this is
a story we're kind of familiar with, and the fact
that Edward Cullen as portrayed in the books and movies
of again, this very I think confusing, Like, no, vampires
are straight scary guys. I'm like, have you seen interview
with a vampire? Like, what do you mean? Yeah, what

(01:52:38):
do you mean? Have you seen any vampire?

Speaker 1 (01:52:41):
Have you seen Dracula? Have you seen most of them?

Speaker 2 (01:52:45):
Like Edward is actually one of the straighter vampires, right,
But it was literally just because you know, if you're
like a socially conditioned teenage boy, you're like, vampires don't sparkle,
that's not scary, you know, And that was literally it.
And so the way that gaslers were thrown around on
the two thousands, you can imagine how the character Edward

(01:53:08):
Cullin and eventually the actor Robert Pattinson was spoken about,
which we can talk about in future installments because I
know we're going along. But I do think it's interesting
to revisit those press junkets where Robert Pattinson's like, actually,
this movie's fucked up, Yeah, in a way that I'm
sure he did feel to some extent, but it also
does feel like on the defensive of having a future career,

(01:53:31):
because you don't want to be the guy that's like, oh,
I totally understand the appeal of this, and I really
I mean, or not even that, but even just like
I respect the fans of this franchise, which doesn't feel
like too much to ask, but I think it's like,
if he's thinking about wanting to go on to star
in a Christopher Nolan movie, you probably don't want to

(01:53:52):
be Like, the appeal of Twilight makes sense to me.

Speaker 1 (01:53:56):
Would he be Mickey seventeen if you know years ago
he was.

Speaker 2 (01:54:01):
Like Mickey seventeen was mid But yeah, no, I mean
maybe not. I don't know. And that's the last. Sorry,
there's too much. One of the last things I wanted
to touch on was that, as we know, Kristian Stewart
Robert Pattinson go on to be huge movie stars. Yes
they're Mickey seventeen, their Princess Diana, et cetera.

Speaker 1 (01:54:23):
Their love lives bleeding, their love les bleed.

Speaker 2 (01:54:25):
I mean, we love that, but I don't know how
many people saw it, but it's great and we're gonna
talk about it soon. But this movie, for all of
its faults, was written and directed by women, and the director,
as we've said, is Catherine Hardwick, who broke through with
thirteen and this is sort of her big blockbuster movie,

(01:54:49):
and she does not go on to direct any of
the other Twilight movies. I was not sure why this
reason was. I guess it was because this is I'm
pulling from Vanity Fair article from twenty eighteen, but that
she chose not to because of just being burned out,
and if she wanted to direct New Moon, she would

(01:55:10):
have had to basically never stopped working for like five
years or something absurd, and so she opted not to,
thinking I think logically that, well, if the first Twilight
movie does well, I will not have trouble finding work.
And you can imagine how the story goes from here.
Because we've heard it about one trillion women directors, she

(01:55:32):
actually had quite a difficult time finding follow up work.
Even though Twilight made almost half a billion dollars, every
other installment was directed by men, and Katherine Hardwick reflected
on this later. I guess interestingly, the screenwriter that Katherine
Hardwick advocated for, Melissa Rosenberg, who also wrote step up

(01:55:57):
another classic, Oh yes, and wrote on Deck and the
OC so she said two thousands, girly. She went on
to write all of the Twilight movies where Catherine Hardwick
never came back to the franchise and had a lot
of trouble sort of finding comparable directing gigs to this day,

(01:56:17):
which you know, for all of the valid criticisms of Twilight,
I think is like kind of ridiculous. Where you think
about how many male directors we've talked about that have
a movie that breaks even and they never want for
work for their entire lives. Here's someone who has. And
she also, you can argue, quote unquote turned around the

(01:56:37):
script because there was the original version of the script
that was going to be filmed, changed so much about
the source material that in some ways, I'm like, this
could have been cool, but it is a different story.
Bella Swan was a long distance runner, cursed and used
shotguns against vampires who killed her father. Whoa And then

(01:57:00):
she wrote jet skis being chased by the FBI, And
you're like, well, that's not Twilight.

Speaker 1 (01:57:06):
That's not even the Yeah, but.

Speaker 2 (01:57:08):
I would see that movie, but that's not Twilight. Oh yeah,
So that.

Speaker 1 (01:57:14):
Was Katherine Hardwicke's script, Like that was her interpret Oh.

Speaker 2 (01:57:17):
No, no, no, that was some random guy who was
hired to adapt Twilight being told we don't want only
girls to see this movie, so you need to take
this source material and make it appealing to men.

Speaker 1 (01:57:30):
Basically, Wow, so guns and jet skis.

Speaker 2 (01:57:34):
Jet skis from the FBI. Yeah, And I was really
struggling with that because I was like, that sounds like
a fun movie. But yeah, when Catherine Hardwick came on,
she's just like and she read the script and she's like,
I don't love this. And then she read the book
and she was like, I don't understand how this is
the same story. And then she advocated for a woman

(01:57:56):
to write the story and write it more faithfully and
for better and for worse. I think Stephanie Meyer had
a lot of input in the movie during its production.

Speaker 1 (01:58:08):
I mean, she's in cameos.

Speaker 3 (01:58:10):
Yeah. I was about to say, the diner scene, here's
your breakfast, Steffie. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:58:15):
She also in the wedding scene later on in like
the later.

Speaker 3 (01:58:19):
Movies, Yes, she's in the wedding scene. Oh and Breaking
Dawn part one, Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:58:26):
She's m night scheimalaning all over.

Speaker 1 (01:58:29):
She's Alfred Hitchcocking.

Speaker 2 (01:58:31):
Yeah, it is really funny, cause I don't think I
knew it once I was an adult. But the first
time I saw the movie, I definitely didn't know who
Stephie was. Here's your breakfast, Steffie, but it's so obvious
once you know. I enjoyed it anyways. Yeah, Catherine Hardwick,
I think is maybe slightly a better director than this
movie deserved, and I don't appreciate that having directed it

(01:58:54):
seems to have derailed her career to some extent. Twilight
didn't deserve her, but they got her, and I think
that that's why the first movie is a lot of
people's favorites, because she's she's pulling from the indie playbook.
She's playing Radiohead during the damn credits.

Speaker 3 (01:59:11):
The soundtrack is like something else. It really is amazing. So,
you know, as a former cult kid, like I wasn't
allowed to listen to secular music, and then when you know,
I started to leave that system, I was watching Twilight
and the Twilight movie was like the first time I'd
ever listened to Paramore before.

Speaker 2 (01:59:31):
Oh, oh my god.

Speaker 3 (01:59:32):
That was my introduction to Paramour and Muse. It was
just like this again like rum spring U this like revelation,
this epiphany of all this amazing music that I'd never
heard before, and I felt so like rebellious. And yeah,
the soundtrack is amazing. Robert Pattinson is also on the soundtrack.

(01:59:56):
He sings two songs as well.

Speaker 1 (01:59:58):
Wait, what I didn't I don't know this.

Speaker 2 (02:00:00):
I don't think I remember that you did not know this?

Speaker 3 (02:00:03):
Okay, no, no, yes, Robert Pattinson sings he's a musician.

Speaker 2 (02:00:08):
What Yes, I knew he was a musician. I didn't
know he sang in this God.

Speaker 3 (02:00:12):
So there are two of his songs. The first one
is the restaurant scene with the mushroom Ravioli. His song
is playing in the background, Oh my God. And then
the song that is playing in the scene in the
ballet studio when Edward is, you know, sucking the venom
out of Bella's wrist, that's also Robert Pattinson's song playing Whoa.

Speaker 2 (02:00:36):
That's so punk rock, sucking out blood to your own music. Yeah,
so I'm seeing Yeah, never think by Robert Pattinson, never
think Whoa? Good for him? Good for him? This also
got so many teenage girls into Claude Debussy which does
crack me up. Like the girls were playing Debussy in

(02:00:58):
the car this summer, Claire to Loon, let's go it
was yes, Paramore, Lincoln Park, Claude to be.

Speaker 1 (02:01:06):
Yes, oh right, because it's that scene. I feel like
that's the only vaguely specific thing that ever gets mentioned
in the movie where she goes to Edward's bedroom. She's like,
you have so much music, and then we don't know
what any of it is except for she hits play
and it's that, and then she's like, oh wow, yeah, that's.

Speaker 2 (02:01:29):
A good shit.

Speaker 3 (02:01:30):
Claire Daluon is great.

Speaker 2 (02:01:32):
Yeah. Just to revisit the Twilight one soundtrack, we also
have and I think it. I know that like Saint
Vincent and eventually ends up there in future installments. But
we've got muse Paramore, Lincoln Park, Iron and Wine and
Robert Pattinson. Those are the artists that I recognize.

Speaker 3 (02:01:52):
Iron and Wine, Flightless Bird, Like, wow, that is a
song like no other. H yeah, and that song is
actually then there's like a slower version of it that's
then played in the wedding scene in Breaking Dawn Part one.

Speaker 2 (02:02:08):
Why do I feel emotional hearing that? That's the paradox
of Twilight. You're like, I know that this is bad
for me, but it gets me emotional and what is that?
What is that? And we don't know.

Speaker 3 (02:02:23):
I don't know. I think I'm still trying to figure
out why I love this movie so much, Like why
do I prance around the world with like Twilight t shirts?
I'm not completely sure, Like maybe I need to talk
to my therapist about it next week.

Speaker 2 (02:02:39):
No, I really do think that, like some of the
most thoughtful, wonderful, progressive people that I know are obsessed
with Twilight. Yes, so there's something going on, there's something
in the water.

Speaker 3 (02:02:53):
It's just so campy.

Speaker 1 (02:02:54):
It's heroin. It's our own personal brand of heroine cannot
be explained. I feel like I have a similar It's
how I feel about Titanic, and that relationship isn't quite
so problematic, but I would still argue that it's pretty
problematic between drag and Rose. Sure, and I've seen this
movie going on two hundred times now and it's my

(02:03:15):
comfort movie. And I also love that Contra points in
her video references Titanic constantly, so that made me feel
all warm and fuzzy inside.

Speaker 2 (02:03:25):
But millennial canon, you one must reference Titanic.

Speaker 1 (02:03:29):
Yeah, I'm just like, I'm not even generally compelled by
romantic stories, but every once in a while, something like
Titanic or something like Twilight, I'm just like, I can't
stop watching and we just don't know why.

Speaker 2 (02:03:43):
Whether we like it or not. Twilight is a generational text.
And that's not to say that it's good, right, but
it is a generational touch point, and I think that
it is worth engaging with. Yeah, because there's something about
it that keeps some of the great minds of our
generation really really really loving it. Yeah, there's something to it,

(02:04:06):
and it is ultimately kind of like a weird Mormon fantasy.

Speaker 3 (02:04:13):
Yeah, but maybe that's.

Speaker 2 (02:04:15):
The shit we like and we should be asking why.

Speaker 1 (02:04:18):
And that's what we've done for two hours here today.

Speaker 2 (02:04:24):
It does pass the factel tests. It does pass the fact.
The last thing I want to say is Renee is
a bad mom. Yeah, sorry, she's a bad mom. Yeah.
I know that she's supposed to seem quirky, but I'm like, no,
this is quirky in this context. Is negligent.

Speaker 3 (02:04:38):
Yeah, she doesn't answer her phone, she like loses her
phone charger too, Like, how's your kid supposed to contact you. Yeah,
call them from a payphone.

Speaker 1 (02:04:48):
Your kid is getting run over by vans in parking
lots and attacked by vampires constantly.

Speaker 2 (02:04:53):
Yeah, especially if your kid has a chronic condition of
falling down. Yeah, you're just gonna We've heard in a
very slippery climate.

Speaker 1 (02:05:03):
Slippery it's cold and wet there, slippery place.

Speaker 3 (02:05:08):
I'm so curious if, like if Bella has what's called
Ailer's DOWNLM syndrome.

Speaker 1 (02:05:14):
Mm.

Speaker 3 (02:05:14):
Yeah, because there's there's different subsets of it, but one
of them is like hypermobility, and a lot of the
times people with Ailors downland syndrome are prone to more
like accidents. I haven't been formally diagnosed with Ailor's downland syndrome,
but I do have hypermobility, and I do exhibit some
of the clumsiness that Bella has. Like a lot of

(02:05:34):
things fall out of my hands quite easily. So, like,
I'm so curious about if that's like Ailor's download syndrome,
like coated you know, in some capacity. Interesting But anyways,
that's just yeah, fun fact.

Speaker 1 (02:05:48):
I guess No, I didn't know that, right, I mean
it makes you wonder about different attributes that certain characters
are imbued with right, right, that like probably have some
underlying thing that the author.

Speaker 3 (02:06:02):
Didn't didn't intend fully.

Speaker 1 (02:06:04):
Understand, or just like observed in other people but didn't understand,
like oh that person has a disability, or you know,
whatever the case may be.

Speaker 2 (02:06:13):
Speaking of disability. While Gil Birmingham, who plays Billy Black,
is a native actor, which is better than we can
say of one Taylor Lautner, he is playing a disabled
character and is not himself disabled, which I think is
always worth calling out. Certainly, which isn't a criticism of

(02:06:37):
Gil Birmingham, because I know indigenous actors have enough difficulty
being cast in the first place, but that is again
just fully a failure of the production to prioritize any
sort of inclusivity in their casting. And outside of that,
I mean, it is a very white story. There is
some diversity in Forks, Washington, but the characters who are

(02:07:01):
not white tend to have mysteriously small roles, such as
I think, Eric, Angela and Tyler I think are the
three non white students, and they comparatively to like Mike
and Dana Kendrick I don't remember Jessica, they get way
more screen time, They get way more focus. It's the

(02:07:21):
white students we're paying attention to.

Speaker 1 (02:07:23):
Yeah, as we were hinting at earlier, the movie does
pass the Bechdel.

Speaker 2 (02:07:27):
Test not well, No, but it does not well.

Speaker 1 (02:07:32):
But it's there. But again, that's that's nothing compared to
the Nipple scale, the Bechdel cast nipple scale, in which
we rated the movie examining it through an intersectional feminist
lens zero to five nipples. M I wonder what we
gave it on the first episode. I do not remember.

Speaker 2 (02:07:52):
I'm gonna look it up, but you I won't tell you.
You have to decide, and then I'll hold this secret.

Speaker 1 (02:07:58):
Okay, even though we've had a much more nuanced conversation
than the first go around.

Speaker 2 (02:08:04):
It's a tricky motherfucker. It really is.

Speaker 3 (02:08:07):
Yeah, it really is.

Speaker 1 (02:08:09):
But I still don't think this movie has a net
good impact on society, or at least not for young
people watching it. I think for people who maybe watched
it as a young person and took the messaging from
it which was reductive and harmful, and then had to

(02:08:29):
unlearn a lot of stuff. But again, as we discussed,
that's not just Twilight's fault. That's a whole cluster of
movies and other media that were presenting a very similar
toxic dynamic and framing it as ideal and romantic and
something to strive for. So this is just one entry

(02:08:50):
of many things that did that. But this was so
popular and so consumed by so many people who were
adversely affected by it. But it does have this weird
cultural legacy. I don't know. The representation of Indigenous people

(02:09:12):
is absolutely abhorrent and there's no defending it whatsoever, and
I'm gonna focus on that as the basis for my rating.

Speaker 2 (02:09:20):
Yeah, I mean, it's an intersectional podcast that makes sense.

Speaker 1 (02:09:23):
Yes, yes, So it's gonna be one and a half
for two nipples. I think I'll say one and a
half nipples, but it is. I'd say it's like an
eight out of ten on the Caitlin Rompometer.

Speaker 2 (02:09:38):
I mean the baseball scene hits.

Speaker 1 (02:09:41):
Yeah, but yeah, one and a half nipples, and I'll
give them to a spider monkey, no specific spider monkey,
which is spider monkeys.

Speaker 2 (02:09:49):
I guess in general, I'm gonna go one nipple. I think,
and I say that feeling weirdly defensive of this movie
at different points in the episode. I think that this
movie is cultural imp I mean, I can't say what
the cultural impact is on the whole. I do think
that this franchise has a really weird, interesting history that

(02:10:11):
continues to either delight or haunt us, depending on how
we feel about it. I think that, you know, it's
clearly going to be with us for a while. People
still have a lot of interest in talking about it
and revisiting it. And I also, you know, this is
something that a lot of young people were ashamed to
enjoy and therefore could not start a lot of conversations

(02:10:34):
about why that was at the time. I think it
is like really interesting. I mean, Bella, you know, bless
her heart, she's giving nothing. She never has been, she
never will be. And I you know, that's who Bella is.
And I know that someone's gonna yell at me about that.
And you know, I do think that there is this

(02:10:55):
very conservative fantasy to some extent that has played out
throughout these movies of Bella does find some agency, but
it's mainly through marriage and motherhood and you know, all
this stuff. We all we'll talk about this in later episodes.
For this, you know, I did see myself in Bella
to some extent as a kid where it was like
I didn't feel lighting. In the book, they sort of

(02:11:16):
harp on this a little more of like Bella has
never been recognized as attractive or someone who's interesting, and
all of a sudden, she's somewhere where she's the most interesting,
attractive person in the world, and who what misfit wouldn't
be pulled in by that? And I think that a
lot of people who felt out of place, that fantasy

(02:11:37):
is so appealing to be desired and for you to
be often in a dangerous way, but in a dangerous
way that not a lot of people understood in our generation,
but like to be wanted. And I think that that's
part of why I understand the appeal and part of
what still doesn't sit well with me because of the
intended audience, where you know, it's not Stephanie Meyer's job

(02:12:01):
to raise us, but I do think it is like
the responsibility of others and the larger culture to not
just reinforce someone's horny dreams, worst instincts. But there's still
so much getting back to what we've been talking about, Yeah,
I mean, I'm docking mainly for indigenous representation and the

(02:12:22):
one visit to the library approach and no further compensation
or acknowledgement of the people whose culture you are profiting
off of directly and misunderstanding and misrepresenting. There's just absolutely
no excuse for that. The feminist discourse around this. I'm
gonna just be like, go with God, whatever you like there.

(02:12:43):
I have read every take in the world, and I
don't know which is right to me. I liked Bela
because I was like, I wear these shoes, but ultimately,
on revisit, I do think she's boring. I think that
Edward's like, I don't see what you're thinking because she's not.
But ultimately I think Team Jacob was the right team.
One nipple and I am going to give that nipple

(02:13:07):
to the truck. I thought the truck was cool. Oh sure,
I liked the truck. I don't care if it's not
like other girls truck, I would drop that truck.

Speaker 1 (02:13:15):
Okay, awesome, Dean Ally, how about you nipples?

Speaker 3 (02:13:20):
Nipples? I'm thinking I think I go for like one
and a half basically, Like you know, for a lot
of the reasons that you both have mentioned, you know,
the indigenous representation is lacking so many different problems with
this movie. Portraying a toxic relationship as an ideal. It's
really hard to give this movie anything more than one

(02:13:43):
and a half nipples. And I think for me, one
of the most like iconic scenes in the movie is
the baseball scene with Alice and her pitch with her leg.

Speaker 1 (02:13:55):
Oh my god, the little kick, Yes, oh my gosh,
what is she doing?

Speaker 3 (02:14:00):
It's honestly, it's fucking beautiful. And I think that's when
I realized I was bisexual, was when I watched Alice
pitch during the baseball scene, and I think that's like
a really beautiful thing. So I think at the end
of the day, like you know, when I was younger,
I was team Edward, but in reality, like I'm definitely

(02:14:22):
like team Alice.

Speaker 2 (02:14:23):
Like all the way, Alice is an awesome character.

Speaker 3 (02:14:27):
I like her, yeah, and like even like when I
think about her relationship to Jasper, which we didn't really
talk about, but like I feel like she is kind
of more of like the dom and the relationship she's like,
I think she's like takes control and I really like
that about her. And I see myself more and more

(02:14:50):
in in Alice than any other character in the movie. Sadly,
I cannot lift my leg like that when I pitch.
I don't even pitch. I don't play sports. I do
visit the library though. But yeah, I think I'm going
to give one nipple to Alice and her leg and

(02:15:12):
then the other half nipple. I think I'm going to
give it to mister Molina, the teacher, because it's a
fellow educator.

Speaker 2 (02:15:22):
Oh my god, you're so right.

Speaker 1 (02:15:24):
No relation to Alfred Molina.

Speaker 3 (02:15:26):
But I know how crazy you are about Alfred Molina. Yes,
but yeah, I think I'm going to give half a
nipple to mister Molina because as a fellow educator, like
he's just so earnest about science and you know, really
getting these students like invested in STEM. So I really

(02:15:46):
appreciate that about mister Molina. Yeah, I think he says
like compost is cool, and it is compost is cool.
So I'm gonna give half a nipple to mister Molina.

Speaker 1 (02:15:58):
Absolutely, hell yeah, amazing, you know, L like, thank you
so much for joining.

Speaker 3 (02:16:04):
Us, thank you for having me, yes.

Speaker 2 (02:16:06):
And thank you for choosing the exact right shirt.

Speaker 3 (02:16:09):
I mean I always do, but especially today.

Speaker 1 (02:16:14):
Tell us where people can find you online? Check out
your work plug.

Speaker 3 (02:16:19):
Away so You can find a lot of info about
me on my website at dnlliantigua dot com. You can
follow me on Instagram at nowfel thirteen and that's n
e l l f e L L one three And yes,
I've had that screen name and I've used it for
everything since I was thirteen. And yeah, I do a

(02:16:41):
lot of like poetry readings and events locally, but I'm
also traveling to like universities, and you can find all
the info about my events on my website. My upcoming
events are mass Poetry Festival in Salem, Massachusetts, coming up
at the end of May, and I don't know when
this podcast will be coming out, but I think.

Speaker 2 (02:16:59):
Before then, maybe before then.

Speaker 3 (02:17:01):
Yeah, that's the thing that I do. I'm one of
the headlining poets. Hey, oh my god, so come and
listen to my poetry and I'll be on a panel
as well with some other LATINX writers. So yeah, that's
where you can find me and learn more about me.
Oh also, I almost for I have two books. My
first one is Ugly Music, and my second collection came

(02:17:23):
out last year with Copper Canyon Press. It's called Good Monster,
and you can find those where books are sold be
like Bella, buy it independent booksellers.

Speaker 2 (02:17:33):
Yes, yes, that's Bella's true triumph of Twilight one. She
shops local.

Speaker 1 (02:17:39):
Yes, yeah, she says Amazon, No, thank you, I'm going
into a brick and mortar store and buying local. The
best way to support our show is to subscribe to
our Patreon aka Matreon, where we release two bonus episodes
every single month, centering an amazing genius Brilliant plus access

(02:18:01):
to the entire back catalog, which is nearing two hundred episodes,
so lots of hashtag content over there at patreon dot
com slash Bechdel Cast. Also check out our link tree
link tree slash Bechdel Cast for information about different things.
If we have upcoming shows that'll be there. If we have,

(02:18:25):
we have our letterboxed link on there, all kinds of stuff.
And with that, let's irrevocably get in our rusty old
red pickup truck. Uh huh and zoom zoom into the
Twilight Sky. Okay, I don't know, Bye bye. The Bechdel

(02:18:51):
Cast is a production of iHeartMedia, hosted by Caitlin Derante
and Jamie Loftus, produced by Sophie Lickterman, edited by Mola Board.
Our theme song was composed by Mike Kaplan with vocals
by Katherine Voskresenski. Our logo and merch is designed by
Jamie Loftus and a special thanks to Aristotle Assevedo. For
more information about the podcast, please visit Linktree Slash Bechtelcast

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