Speaker 1: On the Bechdel Cast.
Speaker 2: The questions asked if movies have women and them, are
Speaker 2: all their discussions just boyfriends and husbands or do they
Speaker 2: have individualism? It's the patriarchy, Zephyn Beast. Start changing it
Speaker 2: with the Bechdel Cast. Hello Bechdel Cast listeners, who Jamie
Speaker 2: and Caitlin?
Speaker 1: Here a little plug at the top.
Speaker 2: It's all coming together. It's all happening. I am going
Speaker 2: to be going on a book tour for the paperback
Speaker 2: release of my book Raw Dog, The Naked Truth about
Speaker 2: Hot Dogs. Ever heard of it? It is coming out
Speaker 2: in soft cover this may. If you're hearing this, it
Speaker 2: is out right now. If you are the kind of
Speaker 2: person that doesn't want to spend twenty eight dollars out
Speaker 2: of book, fair enough, we have a more affordable option.
Speaker 2: And if you haven't purchased the book and you know,
Speaker 2: maybe you're able to now, you know, it's also a
Speaker 2: great gift. I've sound so desperate. The thing is, it's
Speaker 2: a soft cover book, and people love us and.
Speaker 1: I love a flaccid book.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a floppy little book. And if you do
Speaker 2: have the hardcover and you're a completionist, there is also
Speaker 2: a brand new ForWord that I wrote, and also the
Speaker 2: acknowledgments have been adjusted to acknowledge that my agents were Zionists,
Speaker 2: so I don't really thank them anymore. So there's a
Speaker 2: thrilling edition there as well. But there is new stuff
Speaker 2: in the book and it costs less, and we love that.
Speaker 2: I will be going on tour throughout the country to
Speaker 2: promote the new book, and if you're a Bechdel head
Speaker 2: and you're in the area, this is a really great
Speaker 2: chance to come and hang out. It's all I'm at bookstores.
Speaker 2: I did kind of bigger shows the first time around,
Speaker 2: but this time we're just chilling. So kitling with your permission,
Speaker 2: I'm just going to rattle off some dates. What if
Speaker 2: I was like, no, no, click, yeah, the zoom, I'm
Speaker 2: going to go pee.
Speaker 1: No please, by all means tell us okay.
Speaker 2: May thirteenth, twenty twenty five, almost my birthday. So I
Speaker 2: know I'm missing your birthday. It's an act of violence.
Speaker 2: I will be at North Fig Bookshop in Los Angeles,
Speaker 2: hosted by friend of the cast, Julia Clair, May fourteenth.
Speaker 2: I will be at Carmichael's Bookstore in Louisville, Kentucky on
Speaker 2: May fifteenth, I will be at the Cambridge Public Library
Speaker 2: in Massachusetts with the Harvard Bookstore, and I will be
Speaker 2: in conversation with one of my dear friends, PBS's own
Speaker 2: Tory Bedford. On the nineteenth of May, I will be
Speaker 2: in Portland, Maine at Longfellow Books, hosted by friend of
Speaker 2: the cast Mayo Williams. I am very very excited. On
Speaker 2: the twentieth, I will be going down to Harrisburg, Pennsylvania,
Speaker 2: my home state. Know they're going to be begging, They're like,
Speaker 2: where are they? I will be at the Midtown Scholar
Speaker 2: Bookstore and Cafe in conversation with Joe Piazza. Then on
Speaker 2: May twenty first, I will be at the Fountain Bookstore
Speaker 2: in Richmond, Virginia. And on May twenty second, I will
Speaker 2: be at Coppersfield Books in Pedaluma, California. And finally, on
Speaker 2: May thirty first, I will be at Marin Country Mart,
Speaker 2: which is also with Coppersfield's book in Larkspur, California. So
Speaker 2: if you live in those areas, please come out. I
Speaker 2: would love to see you. I'd love to chat. Please
Speaker 2: recommend your favorite hot dog. Let's talk becktel Cast, Let's
Speaker 2: do whatever. And there will be dates announced later in
Speaker 2: the summer. So if you would like a show or
Speaker 2: a signing to happen in your town, please reach out
Speaker 2: and I will send it to my publisher and be like, see,
Speaker 2: I should go there. Anyways, that's a great it's begging
Speaker 2: works sometimes, and we'll link this full thing in the description.
Speaker 2: But see you soon. I'm making a little outfit and
Speaker 2: that's the Jamie Loftus promise.
Speaker 1: I can't wait to see.
Speaker 2: So if you click the link in the description, it
Speaker 2: will take you to the full page where you can
Speaker 2: register to go to these events. They are all free events,
Speaker 2: so come and hang out and provided that I get
Speaker 2: my shit together in time, there will also be speakers
Speaker 2: from local unions at all of these signings, So come out,
Speaker 2: make some friends, come hang out, and uh, let's eat.
Speaker 3: Some hot dogs.
Speaker 1: Beautiful. We'll throw the link to be able to access
Speaker 1: registration for the events on our link tree as well
Speaker 1: link tree slash Bechdel Cast, so there's no excuse not
Speaker 1: to come.
Speaker 2: It's free, it's fun. I'll be wearing a little outfit.
Speaker 2: Come buy the book, yay, enjoy the episode.
Speaker 1: About three things I was absolutely certain, Oh my god. First,
Speaker 1: the Bechdel Cast is a podcast, okay. Second, and there
Speaker 1: was a part of the podcast and I didn't know
Speaker 1: how potent that part might be. Yeap that thirsted for
Speaker 1: knowledge and amazing discourse. And Third, the hosts, Caitlin and
Speaker 1: Jamie were unconditionally and irrevocably in love with each other.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I like it. Thank you, Wow, thank you Stephanie Meyer.
Speaker 2: She's a Mormon, and they're pretty homophobic. I don't know
Speaker 2: if she would endoors what.
Speaker 1: Was just said. I don't think so.
Speaker 2: But it's what I want. It's what a lot of
Speaker 2: Twilight fans want. Every fan community wants a queer romance.
Speaker 2: But sometimes you just end up with Bella and Edward
Speaker 2: and you got to project the rest. And that's what
Speaker 2: we're here to talk about today. Welcome to the Bechtel Cast,
Speaker 2: the podcast where we take your favorite movies and talk
Speaker 2: about them from an intersectional feminist lens, using the Bechdel
Speaker 2: Test as a jumping off point for discussion. This is
Speaker 2: I think one of a handful of episodes that of
Speaker 2: where we were covering a movie for a second time.
Speaker 2: We first covered this movie, I did not realize how
Speaker 2: long ago it was. My brain was not fully developed
Speaker 2: the last time we covered this movie, were you like
Speaker 2: how old I was? Twenty four? Whoa as bravely twenty
Speaker 2: four years old? I was just the last synapses were
Speaker 2: snapping into place, And so I cannot be held accountable
Speaker 2: for anything I said in twenty seventeen. You can be
Speaker 2: held accountable.
Speaker 1: I am repulsed to even think about what might have
Speaker 1: happened on that episode. I am afraid to go back
Speaker 1: and listen to it. We may or may not keep
Speaker 1: it up, we might delete it. Our guest was my
Speaker 1: best friend JT, and we just it was only like
Speaker 1: a few months into the US doing the podcast.
Speaker 2: I don't think we need to apologize for something we
Speaker 2: did in twenty seventeen. The reason we're recovering it is because,
Speaker 2: like a lot of early you know, this was before
Speaker 2: podcasting was our full time job. We didn't have the
Speaker 2: time nor the resources to put in as much research
Speaker 2: as we put into the show now, and most of you,
Speaker 2: I'm assuming we're not listening back then. So while it
Speaker 2: was a fun episode, I did not really listen to it.
Speaker 2: I don't care what I had to say in twenty seventeen,
Speaker 2: nor should you. But I also think that you know,
Speaker 2: like intersectional feminist discourse has evolved, thankfully, quite a bit
Speaker 2: since twenty seventeen. So we have grown, as has the world.
Speaker 2: I mean, you know whatever, There's been a lot of regression,
Speaker 2: but on a personal level, there's been growth. Yeah, and
Speaker 2: there's also been just like, this is the series people
Speaker 2: will never shut the fuck up about. It's really interesting
Speaker 2: to watch in the last and I say that would
Speaker 2: love because I've watched all of it. Yeah, Twilight discourse
Speaker 2: is something that just as it begins to die down,
Speaker 2: there's a new angle, and baby, we're going with it.
Speaker 2: Like in the last I would say two to three
Speaker 2: years Twilight discourse, I think because of like the twenty
Speaker 2: year popularity cycle of things. Sure, people were getting nostalgic
Speaker 2: for the Twilight years, and now we're talking about it
Speaker 2: again and there's new things to talk about.
Speaker 1: We're back in the Twilight zone.
Speaker 2: We're in the Twilight zone today. And so anyways, if
Speaker 2: you listen to our first episode, we don't know what
Speaker 2: it said. We hope we did an okay job. But
Speaker 2: today we're here to do a better job because we're
Speaker 2: grown ups now and our brains are working better than ever.
Speaker 1: Well, I wouldn't say that necessary.
Speaker 2: Well not Caylyn, Mine's better than no, I'm kidding.
Speaker 1: Mine is descending into mush.
Speaker 2: Okay, so maybe we were working on the same amount
Speaker 2: of brain power cumulatively that we were in twenty seventeen,
Speaker 2: but the thoughts will be different. Yeah, okay, but we're
Speaker 2: using the Benal tests and jumping off point. Caitlin, what
Speaker 2: is that? I forget?
Speaker 1: Well, my amazing memory will tell you. It's a media
Speaker 1: metric created by cartoonist Alice and Bechdel, sometimes called the
Speaker 1: Bechdel Wallace Test. There's many versions of it. We require that,
Speaker 1: in order to pass, two characters of a marginalized gender
Speaker 1: must have names, they must speak to each other, and
Speaker 1: their conversation has to be about something other than a man.
Speaker 1: But you know, it's just a jumping off point. It's
Speaker 1: not the end all be all. There's much more to discuss,
Speaker 1: and in the case of the Twilight Saga, so much
Speaker 1: to discuss.
Speaker 2: We talked about it, I'm sure a lot of things
Speaker 2: in our first episode, but it turns out there's actually
Speaker 2: fifty more things to talk about than we initially realized,
Speaker 2: and so we have brought in an expert, an enthusiast,
Speaker 2: someone who has spent time in the trenches with the
Speaker 2: twyhards to come and educate us.
Speaker 1: Today, she's a poet an educator. She's the author of
Speaker 1: two poetry collections, former poet Laureate of Portsmouth, New Hampshire,
Speaker 1: a host of Bread and Poetry podcast It's Danelli Antigua.
Speaker 1: Hello and welcome.
Speaker 3: Hello, Hello, Hi, Hi, Hi God.
Speaker 1: Tell us what is your relationship to Twilight?
Speaker 3: Oh? Where shall I begin? I think my relationship with
Speaker 3: Twilight first came from the books. I started reading the
Speaker 3: books when I was a teenager and fell in love
Speaker 3: with those first. And I had a really strange upbringing.
Speaker 3: I was raised in a cult, and around the years
Speaker 3: where I started reading the Twilight books, I was starting
Speaker 3: to emerge from the kind of like sheltered cocoon that
Speaker 3: I was in for so many years. So I was
Speaker 3: about eighteen nineteen years old, and when the movies came out,
Speaker 3: I was just like first experiencing life in the world,
Speaker 3: in the secular world, and Twilight was my I almost
Speaker 3: like my rum spring on. It was my like coming
Speaker 3: out into society. And I remember when I watched Twilight,
Speaker 3: I went to the midnight premiere because I was one
Speaker 3: of those like midnight premiere bitches. I was wearing my
Speaker 3: Team Edward shirt. I was wearing a Tutu leg warmers.
Speaker 2: We saw the pictures. They're incredible.
Speaker 3: Yeah, thank you. I was wearing fingerless gloves that I
Speaker 3: got a hot topic, like, I just like went all out,
Speaker 3: and I remember buying a Noss from like the gas station,
Speaker 3: and I went to and I went to the midnight
Speaker 3: premiere and it was like just life changing for me
Speaker 3: at the time, and many many years have passed since then.
Speaker 3: I definitely have a different relationship to Twilight at this point,
Speaker 3: but there's still like that little girl, that like nineteen
Speaker 3: year old girl who is madly in love with Edward
Speaker 3: and has you know, posters of him in her bedroom
Speaker 3: and shit, like I was so obsessed. That might be,
Speaker 3: but I'm sure there's more. I'm sure there's more.
Speaker 1: Well share whatever comes up.
Speaker 2: Yeah, truly, don't hesitate. This is a safe space for twyhearts.
Speaker 3: Thank you, Thank you, Jamie.
Speaker 1: Remind us what's your relationship?
Speaker 2: Oh gosh, I wonder if I said anything defensive in
Speaker 2: my first when we talked about this movie like eight
Speaker 2: years ago.
Speaker 1: I mean, you were twenty four, so I.
Speaker 2: Can't be accountable for what I did when I was
Speaker 2: twenty four years old, a full grown adult. So I
Speaker 2: read the books. I think, maybe not right when they
Speaker 2: came out, but like they definitely were gathering steam in
Speaker 2: the middle school contingency as they were coming out. I
Speaker 2: remember my mom introduced me to them because my mom
Speaker 2: was both really into Twilight and Fifty Shades of Gray,
Speaker 2: And to this day, I'm positive she has no idea
Speaker 2: that Fifty Shades is Horny or Twilight for like non
Speaker 2: Mormon Twilight fanfit. Basically yes, but she was really into
Speaker 2: both series and so she I think that there was
Speaker 2: like this bizarre shame feedback loop going on between the
Speaker 2: two of us where she would get She got the
Speaker 2: boxed set of I think the first three Twilight books
Speaker 2: that were out at the time, and then read them
Speaker 2: herself and then gave them to me as if to say, like,
Speaker 2: these are yours. You bought these and then I read them,
Speaker 2: and I don't know. Weirdly, it feels sort of in
Speaker 2: conversation with Beliswan herself, where I was very invested in
Speaker 2: I think, as a lot of tweens are in being
Speaker 2: not like other girls, and part of being not like
Speaker 2: other girls to me was not liking Twilight. And part
Speaker 2: of being not like other girls to me was not
Speaker 2: liking high school musical, even though I very much enjoyed
Speaker 2: both of these things in total privacy, like I was
Speaker 2: completely I vividly remember blowing through the first Twilight book
Speaker 2: in like this gnarl the old hammock we had in
Speaker 2: our backyard during the summer when I couldn't be seen
Speaker 2: or be accounted for, and then literally going to school
Speaker 2: the next year and being like what's that ew? And
Speaker 2: then like going the same thing with the Jonas brothers.
Speaker 2: I went to a Jonas Brothers concert and I was
Speaker 2: like what is this? Meanwhile I bought a ticket, like
Speaker 2: I don't know, like it just it's something that young
Speaker 2: people do.
Speaker 1: And we can talk about that, like the shame that
Speaker 1: like culture attaches to do you like something like Twilight,
Speaker 1: You're a freaking loser because that's for girls.
Speaker 2: It was a big thing, and I think that it's yeah,
Speaker 2: it's tied up and like how not like other girl
Speaker 2: stuff is like internalized misogyny to some extent. Yeah, So
Speaker 2: I was I was writing high on that meanwhile reading
Speaker 2: Twilight books, like my life depended on it. By the
Speaker 2: time the movies came out, I was I saw the
Speaker 2: first movie. I remember, like I think seeing the first movie.
Speaker 2: I was in high school by that point, and I
Speaker 2: was at the tail end of my like so weird
Speaker 2: that I'm at this movie the day it comes out.
Speaker 2: How could this have happened? But I did see it
Speaker 2: the day come out. I kind of fell off after that.
Speaker 2: I moved on to whatever the fuck I was doing,
Speaker 2: So I didn't see the other movies. I don't think
Speaker 2: in theaters, and I'm not even sure to this day
Speaker 2: if I've seen all of them. I feel like I've
Speaker 2: only seen one of the because the last one's in
Speaker 2: two parts. Yes, I don't think i've seen one of them.
Speaker 2: I'm not sure. I read all the books. I haven't
Speaker 2: seen all the movies.
Speaker 3: That might be blasphemy, but I do feel like revisiting
Speaker 3: the first book.
Speaker 2: So also, I really over prepared for this episode. I
Speaker 2: reread the book.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Wow, I walked fourteen miles yesterday just pacing around listening
Speaker 2: to the audio book, sweating my ass off, being like
Speaker 2: I gotta get it all in. And then there's also
Speaker 2: been so much Twilight discourse that there are so many essays.
Speaker 2: There's one essay I'll be citing a intensively today from
Speaker 2: Capacious journal Wow that is called still not as Gay
Speaker 2: as Twilight, postmodern affect, nostalgia and queer Twilight renaissance during
Speaker 2: the COVID nineteen pandemic, And that is where I think
Speaker 2: it was during the initial lockdown period where you saw
Speaker 2: this kind of resurgence of Twilight discourse that has I
Speaker 2: think was going on well into last year because there
Speaker 2: was a very popular ContraPoints video that came out on
Speaker 2: that topic. So I think it went on for nearly
Speaker 2: five years. But I think because so many people became
Speaker 2: nostalgic for comfortable feelings during Lockdown, that all of a sudden,
Speaker 2: Twilight was back. And I watched and engaged with a
Speaker 2: lot of that, and I don't know, I just like
Speaker 2: I'm constantly engaging with Twilight. While I would consider myself
Speaker 2: a casual fan at best. Anyways, rewatching the first movie,
Speaker 2: it's a good movie. Like I don't know what to say.
Speaker 2: It's like, there's a lot of issues with it. But
Speaker 2: when it comes to like do I understand why people
Speaker 2: absolutely love this movie? And do I feel like it
Speaker 2: captures this very specific not like other Girls Fantasy one
Speaker 2: hundred percent, and the soundtrack is still great.
Speaker 3: Oh my god, yes, yeah, so rock and roll.
Speaker 2: Oh my god, super massive black hole, baseball scene. I'm like,
Speaker 2: you can't do all that.
Speaker 3: Oh my goodness.
Speaker 2: The baseball scene is is so hot cinema, It's so good.
Speaker 2: I love the baseball scene. Everything, Like, the baseball scene's
Speaker 2: the best part. But I get it. And I also
Speaker 2: have really enjoyed going through people's you know, reflections on
Speaker 2: this because there's also a massive queer fan base for
Speaker 2: this essentially Mormon movie, so we'll get into it. But anyways,
Speaker 2: Caitlin remind us, what is your history with Twilight?
Speaker 1: Oh gosh, I'm sure I had a better memory of
Speaker 1: it on the first episode. But again, I will not
Speaker 1: be going back to listen to that, and I don't
Speaker 1: think our listeners should either.
Speaker 2: Please don't well and just take it down.
Speaker 1: I mean maybe we will anyway.
Speaker 2: Yeah, what are you edging like Dubella and Edwards?
Speaker 1: Yeah, anyway, so I the first few books came out,
Speaker 1: I don't really know the timeline of like what was
Speaker 1: published when.
Speaker 2: Two thousand and five, six, seven and eight.
Speaker 1: Okay, and then thank you so much, and then so
Speaker 1: the first movie came out in two thousand and eight, right, yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: so it wasn't until probably twenty ten, I would say, again,
Speaker 1: memory is murky, but it was well after the books
Speaker 1: had come out, and probably the first one or two
Speaker 1: movies had come out before. And of course I heard
Speaker 1: people talking about I have a distinct memory of chatting
Speaker 1: with some people when I moved to New York, which
Speaker 1: was in two thousand and eight, and I was talking
Speaker 1: to a friend and her sister, and it was like
Speaker 1: a sister older than me, so she was she would
Speaker 1: have been like in her mid twenties at the time,
Speaker 1: and she's like, yeah, Twilight is the best thing I've
Speaker 1: ever read. I want to date Edward Da da da.
Speaker 1: And I was just like, what are you talking about?
Speaker 1: What's this Twilight thing? And then the movie started coming out,
Speaker 1: and because I hate books and I love movies, I
Speaker 1: was like, Okay, fine, I'll check this out. And I
Speaker 1: think I don't remember if this was the case or not,
Speaker 1: but it might have been jt our guest on the
Speaker 1: first episode that we did on this movie that kind
Speaker 1: of got me into it. I don't know if he
Speaker 1: like showed me the first movie.
Speaker 2: Again, massive queer fan base.
Speaker 1: Like yeah, yeah, either he showed me the first one
Speaker 1: or I definitely started watching the other ones with him,
Speaker 1: to the point where I think I saw Eclipse Breaking
Speaker 1: Down Part one and two in theaters with him.
Speaker 2: Oh so you saw you were like on the other half,
Speaker 2: you're a late Twilight bloomer. Yeah, what did you think
Speaker 2: of the mo some of these at the time, I'm
Speaker 2: so cue because that would have been like well into
Speaker 2: Twilight backlash.
Speaker 1: Era too, and I was a part of that. I
Speaker 1: was like, these movies suck. They're bad, and yet I
Speaker 1: was going to see them.
Speaker 2: I mean, you're not wrong, but I mean they're not.
Speaker 1: Okay. Here's the thing. There's a distinction between I like
Speaker 1: it and this is good, and both of those All
Speaker 1: of these things are subjective, right right, that's camp. I
Speaker 1: was like, this is not good and I don't necessarily
Speaker 1: like it, but I do. There's some weird like I'm
Speaker 1: compelled by these, I'm entertained by these. I can't stop
Speaker 1: watching them. I'm not really enjoying myself or am I
Speaker 1: I don't know, there's like this I cannot explain how
Speaker 1: I experience.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, that's like Edward himself, Like everything about him
Speaker 3: draws you in his voice is smell, the way he
Speaker 3: looks exactly.
Speaker 1: But I know that he's dangerous, yeah, and that there's
Speaker 1: something to be feared about it.
Speaker 2: What do you think you could outrun him? Do you
Speaker 2: think you could fight back? Because you couldn't, because you're
Speaker 2: never gone up.
Speaker 1: I couldn't. He's killed people.
Speaker 3: He's like a drug to you. He's like a drug
Speaker 3: to you.
Speaker 1: He is my own personal brand of heroine, and I him.
Speaker 2: That scene is the most hot topic codd scene that
Speaker 2: has ever been committed to film.
Speaker 1: It's completely blue.
Speaker 2: Like this whole movie is blue, and I support it. Yeah,
Speaker 2: you know you were team Edward?
Speaker 3: Yes?
Speaker 2: I was. Yeah. And then Kaitlyn, did you ever choose
Speaker 2: a team or were you just team Hater?
Speaker 1: No? I was hardcore team Jacob.
Speaker 2: I was team Jacob as well. Yeah, which is canonically,
Speaker 2: I mean Jacob ends up marrying a baby, yes, yes,
Speaker 2: which ContraPoints argues is a way of the series having
Speaker 2: it always of like, hmm, he falls in love with
Speaker 2: an extent Bella, and this is how they're able to
Speaker 2: like justify this like polycule that they create.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he like loved her egg, you know, yeah, and
Speaker 3: you're like.
Speaker 2: That's well, that's disgusting. It got harder and harder to
Speaker 2: be team Jacob as the books went on. I will
Speaker 2: say definitely, because I don't remember very much about Breaking
Speaker 2: Down at all, but I vividly remember the scene where
Speaker 2: he's like, I'm in love with your unborn baby and
Speaker 2: being like, no, my team is down. My team is
Speaker 2: my team. We've lost, We've lost, he's in love with
Speaker 2: the baby. We're cooked.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I think I went back and read. I
Speaker 1: don't know if I finished the first Twilight book or
Speaker 1: just read a good enough of a chunk of it
Speaker 1: where I did. Basically, I just wanted to confirm that
Speaker 1: the writing was as bad as I had heard that
Speaker 1: it was, and I did confirm that. But I didn't
Speaker 1: read any of the other books. But I have seen
Speaker 1: I would say I've seen the first Twilight movie probably
Speaker 1: a good fifteen times. Whoa yeah, and then it tapers
Speaker 1: off like I've only seen Breaking Dawn Part two that
Speaker 1: one time in theaters. I'm pretty sure.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I was like, I think I've seen it like at
Speaker 2: least five times, and I don't think I've seen a
Speaker 2: few of the movies ever.
Speaker 1: Yeah, really it's weird, Like there are movies that I
Speaker 1: considered to be my favorite, like among my favorite movies,
Speaker 1: that I have seen fewer times, and I've seen Twilight,
Speaker 1: which I would not consider at all to be one
Speaker 1: of my favorite movies. I cannot explain this phenomenon, and
Speaker 1: yet it exists. So I have a weird relationship with Twilight.
Speaker 1: I think it's trash and yet I know it very well.
Speaker 2: But I think that's like a very common experience.
Speaker 3: Yeah, don't humans love trash? Though, Like don't we love trash?
Speaker 3: Like reality TV is trash? Sackly, I love McDonald's.
Speaker 2: That's trash, but it's good trash, but it's delicious trash.
Speaker 1: Yeah, except boycott McDonald's.
Speaker 2: But right, right, right, But yes, but the idea behind yes, Yeah,
Speaker 2: I don't know. There's been a lot of I think
Speaker 2: in this like most recent past five years, discourse around
Speaker 2: Twilight have like moved forward the conversation around this franchise
Speaker 2: in an interesting way of like almost getting back to
Speaker 2: the shame and like projection that was beneath some but
Speaker 2: not all, of the Twilight backlash. That's the thing is,
Speaker 2: like it's just very complicated because there's a billion very
Speaker 2: valid critiques of this franchise, many of which we'll discuss today. Yes,
Speaker 2: and we'll just place here we're not discussing the entire
Speaker 2: franchise today because we would never leave the zoom call
Speaker 2: if that were the case, right, So we're discussing the
Speaker 2: first movie, the book, the you know, cultural sensation at
Speaker 2: the time of the first movie today and then we
Speaker 2: will cover subsequent movies on the show down the line,
Speaker 2: just because it's just like such a broad topic that, Yeah,
Speaker 2: if there are certain elements of this franchise you would
Speaker 2: like to hear us talk more about, please let us know,
Speaker 2: and we will make a point to discuss that in
Speaker 2: future installments. But there's just there really is just like
Speaker 2: so so so much to.
Speaker 1: Talk about, truly, and let's try to begin. But first
Speaker 1: we'll take a quick break and then we'll come back
Speaker 1: for the recap and we're back, all right. I'm really
Speaker 1: mean during this recap so apology in advance.
Speaker 2: Like I like that You're like, I'm a Twilight hater
Speaker 2: to the grave, Caitlin, You're not like other she theys You're.
Speaker 1: Just not I'm not I am an intellectual no, just kidding.
Speaker 3: Didn't you get a film degree somewhere right?
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for bringing something up that I
Speaker 1: would never mention, which is that I do have a
Speaker 1: master's degree in screenwriting from Boston University.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, that's what I thought.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but again, would never mention it. So I actually
Speaker 1: don't even know how anybody knows that because I've never
Speaker 1: said it before.
Speaker 2: I didn't. I just learning.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Anyway, content warning at the top for abusive relationship dynamics, stalking, gaslighting,
Speaker 1: things of that nature. And here we go. We open
Speaker 1: on a deer in the woods pray if you will,
Speaker 1: and there's also a predator something or someone is chasing
Speaker 1: the deer and grabs.
Speaker 2: It, and then it goes me. This court of this
Speaker 2: movie is a real earworm. Shout out Carter Burwell. There's
Speaker 2: It's wild how many like really generationally talented people worked
Speaker 2: on this movie because Carter Burwell is like iconic. He's
Speaker 2: so good.
Speaker 1: My favorite part is when it starts out being non
Speaker 1: diegetic and then suddenly it's diagetic because Edward is playing
Speaker 1: it on the piano the score of the movie, and
Speaker 1: you're just like, WHOA.
Speaker 2: I like it because I think Carter Burrell is probably
Speaker 2: the most famous for being like the Coen Brothers go
Speaker 2: to guy. But also he did Twilight, and I support that.
Speaker 2: It's a good score.
Speaker 1: It's pretty good. Okay, So there's this deer. Then we
Speaker 1: cut to Bella Swan played by Kristin Stewart, who is
Speaker 1: moving from Phoenix, Arizona because her mom wants to travel
Speaker 1: around with her brosif of a husband instead of raise
Speaker 1: her teenage daughter.
Speaker 2: So, yeah, Renee, Renee's a real piece of work.
Speaker 3: Yeah she is.
Speaker 1: So Bella gets shipped off to Forks, Washington to live
Speaker 1: with her dad, Arlie Swan.
Speaker 2: And while he's hot, a cav includes Charlie Swan, It
Speaker 2: really does, because he's the chief of police of Forks, Washington.
Speaker 1: Okay, so he and Bella have a very awkward relationship,
Speaker 1: but he does buy her a truck off of Billy
Speaker 1: Black played by Gil Birmingham. His son is Jacob Black
Speaker 1: played by Taylor Lautner, a childhood friend of Bella's. He
Speaker 1: mentions that he goes to school on the reservation because
Speaker 1: he is a member of the Quillute nation. Even though,
Speaker 1: and this is one of the very many valid criticisms
Speaker 1: of this movie, Taylor Latner is not an indigenous actor,
Speaker 1: and the representation of Quillute people lots to discuss there.
Speaker 2: Well, we'll talk about that further.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yes, any case, he lives and goes to school
Speaker 1: on the will You Reservation, and Bella's like, oh darn,
Speaker 1: you were my only friend here, Like it would have
Speaker 1: been nice to know someone at school, but she's not
Speaker 1: even gonna know him.
Speaker 2: And Jacob in Twilight Part one Sweetie Pie.
Speaker 1: Yes. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Also Taylor Lautner bad Wig not even in the top
Speaker 2: ten problems, but did really strike me in this viewing.
Speaker 2: I'm like, oh, it's doing a lot of work. It's
Speaker 2: like a nicole kidman grade wig.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Anyway, So Bella has this new truck and she
Speaker 1: loves this busted, rusty gass truck from the nineteen seventies
Speaker 1: because she's not like the other girls. Then Bella heads
Speaker 1: to school, a bunch of students are like, oh my god,
Speaker 1: who are you? You're the coolest and most interesting person
Speaker 1: I've ever seen.
Speaker 2: This is I think, like, in retrospect, one of the
Speaker 2: most interesting dream fulfillments like aspects of the story that
Speaker 2: probably made it so appealing, where it's like, what if
Speaker 2: you were truly the most normal person with no distinct features,
Speaker 2: and yet everyone was obsessed with you.
Speaker 3: Yeah, like who is Bella Swan? Like we don't know
Speaker 3: anything about her hobbies, We don't know really what she likes. Truly,
Speaker 3: She's just like blank canvas. But everyone loves that they
Speaker 3: can just project whatever they want onto this, like very
Speaker 3: boring Bella Swan blank canvas.
Speaker 2: Which is like not incredibly like yeah, it's like that's
Speaker 2: very common for protagonists. But it's like glaring with Belli
Speaker 2: because literally we see her just like sitting in a
Speaker 2: room staring into the middle distance when she's not like
Speaker 2: talking to Edward Colin. You're like, all right, there's I
Speaker 2: know we have. This is a self insert character, but
Speaker 2: you got to give her an interest, like it is wild.
Speaker 1: Sometimes she reads a book.
Speaker 2: Sometimes she does read a book, and they are interestingly
Speaker 2: the exact books that Stephanie Meyer's love sorry Stephanie Meyer
Speaker 2: singular myyr yeah one Meyer, one Meyer. But yeah, Bella.
Speaker 2: I mean that's a very common criticism of her husband
Speaker 2: for twenty years. But like it is true.
Speaker 1: You know, she doesn't have a personality.
Speaker 3: Oh unless clumsy is part of a personality.
Speaker 2: Which, oh my god, which in the book is exacerbated
Speaker 2: to like such an absurd degree. I clocked literally over
Speaker 2: forty mentions in the book of her being like what
Speaker 2: if I fall? And Edward's like, I know there's a
Speaker 2: big chance you'll fall.
Speaker 3: Can you watch where you're going.
Speaker 2: I'll make sure you don't trip and die? Like it
Speaker 2: just it really is, like it's it's so silly. Yeah,
Speaker 2: but it's I mean again, that's the pulling from the
Speaker 2: Lizzie Maguire school of heroine. You're like, well, sure she's
Speaker 2: conventionally beautiful, but she false.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but that doesn't stop everyone at school being obsessed
Speaker 1: with her, including such characters as Eric, Mike Tyler, Jessica
Speaker 1: played by Anna Kendrick, and Angela played by Christian Serrados.
Speaker 1: So now she has all these new friends immediately, so
Speaker 1: her concerns about not having any friends at school where
Speaker 1: she didn't have to worry. Then at lunch, Bella spots
Speaker 1: a group of hot thirty five year olds, and her
Speaker 1: new friends tell her that these are the Cullens, a
Speaker 1: family of foster kids who were adopted by doctor Cullen
Speaker 1: and who are dating each other, including Rosalie and Emmett.
Speaker 1: Are a couple. Alice and Jasper are a couple, although
Speaker 1: one of them is single. And this is Edward Cullen
Speaker 1: because he's not like other vampires. One of the things
Speaker 1: that I don't think I ever fully registered because she
Speaker 1: looks so different in this movie, but that I appreciated
Speaker 1: because the other Catherine Hardwick movie we've covered on this
Speaker 1: show is thirteen, and Nikki Reid, the star of thir
Speaker 1: and co writer of thirteen, plays Rosalie, which I never
Speaker 1: noticed because again wig like, I just didn't know.
Speaker 3: And the makeup, it's the makeup in this movie is horrible,
Speaker 3: Like all of the vampires, like you can even tell
Speaker 3: if you look at their like collar and their neck,
Speaker 3: you can tell that it hasn't been blended correctly.
Speaker 2: Oh brutal.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you can still see like the pink of their
Speaker 3: flesh when they're supposed to be pale as fuck. So
Speaker 3: I don't know who the makeup artist was, but you
Speaker 3: got to blend all the way down to the neck, honey,
Speaker 3: all the way down down.
Speaker 1: I wonder if that's why there's so much blue color
Speaker 1: correction in the movie, because it's like we got to
Speaker 1: hide the bad makeup.
Speaker 2: Job, make it blue. Make it blue. Maybe that'd be incredible.
Speaker 2: I forget what two thousand movie we were discussing recently
Speaker 2: where I also think that the teen fashion of the
Speaker 2: late two thousands are doing nobody any favors in this
Speaker 2: because I feel like teen fashions of the late two
Speaker 2: thousands really aged teenagers. There are so many pictures of
Speaker 2: me as like a junior in high school where I'm like,
Speaker 2: my aunt could be wearing this, Like I'm wearing these
Speaker 2: like ponchos and like long vests and You're like, why
Speaker 2: am I wearing what teachers were wearing? But also these
Speaker 2: like big fake Victoria's Secret bras that my cousin would
Speaker 2: give me, So it's like huge fake titties in like
Speaker 2: the most clothing possible.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the bombshell bra adds two cups, honey.
Speaker 2: I used to work in Victoria's Secrets, so I know
Speaker 2: all the secrets that was thea My cousin worked there,
Speaker 2: and so she's like, Okay, this is going to change
Speaker 2: your life, and it didn't. They do look old, though,
Speaker 2: they do, yeah with all dudes. Not the actor's fault,
Speaker 2: because I think the actors actually are younger than they
Speaker 2: look in the movie. They're all in their twenties.
Speaker 1: Oh really, because they come on screen and I'm like,
Speaker 1: those people are my contemporaries currently right now as someone
Speaker 1: in their late thirties.
Speaker 2: No, I think that they're all it's I mean, they're
Speaker 2: not high schoolers. I think Kristen Stewart is one of
Speaker 2: the only actual high school age actors. Yeah, most of
Speaker 2: them are in their twenties, but I think I don't know,
Speaker 2: like they were just done dirty.
Speaker 1: Yeah. In any case, there's one single Cullen, and it's Edward,
Speaker 1: and he and Bella make eyes at each other. Then
Speaker 1: they get paired up as lab partners in science class.
Speaker 1: Except Edward is repulsed by Bella, although he also can't
Speaker 1: stop staring at her. It's this weird like disgust slash
Speaker 1: fascination thing that with understand why soon, and she notices
Speaker 1: how repulsed he is by her, and she plans to
Speaker 1: confront him about the except Edward doesn't show up at
Speaker 1: school for days on end, so she can't confront him
Speaker 1: right away. Meanwhile, cut to the woods, there's some dangerous
Speaker 1: creature who's attacking people on the outskirts of town, so
Speaker 1: that's looming over the story. Finally, Edward shows up at
Speaker 1: school again, and he's no longer acting completely repulsed by Bella.
Speaker 1: He's actually being kind of friendly. And so now they're
Speaker 1: looking at an onion under a microscope and we're like,
Speaker 1: wait a minute, onions have layers. Shrek, Shrek, Shrek.
Speaker 2: Wow, I didn't pick up on that. That's why you
Speaker 2: have the master's degree. Yeah, that's exactly right. Yes, Okay,
Speaker 2: So they're like now talking kind of about nothing. He
Speaker 2: also says something like, you're very difficult for me to
Speaker 2: read because he loves making creepy declarations like that.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And also that's so, you know, argublate because there's nothing
Speaker 2: going on. There's nothing, there's no that was fella hatred. No,
Speaker 2: I like Bella, but what is going on behind those
Speaker 2: hazel eyes? To borrow a song title?
Speaker 1: Yeah, and speaking of eye color, she notices that Edward's
Speaker 1: eyes are a different color than the last time she
Speaker 1: saw him, and he makes an excuse about the fluorescent lighting. Aka,
Speaker 1: this is the beginning of him gaslighting her.
Speaker 2: And kind of the most egregious ways possible In the movie,
Speaker 2: and just having reread the book, they really turn up
Speaker 2: the casualness with which the gaslighting happens up to like
Speaker 2: a fourteen because also Robert Pattinson's deliveries are so mean sounding,
Speaker 2: and I guess the way I imagined it was a
Speaker 2: little more like no, no, it couldn't have been. I
Speaker 2: mean that more the way I've experienced gaslight of like, no, no,
Speaker 2: girl with tiny brain. But he's like, no, it's de
Speaker 2: ferorescent lights.
Speaker 1: She's a fucking casshle.
Speaker 2: Anyways, I do love him. I would marry him.
Speaker 3: He talks to her about the weather, and he's like,
Speaker 3: why did you move to the Like well, she says
Speaker 3: she hates the rain, any cold wet thing, Yeah, she hates.
Speaker 3: And then he like giggles.
Speaker 1: About it afterward because he's like, I'm cold and wet, yes,
Speaker 1: and you're about to fall in love with him, yeah,
Speaker 1: So they have really rivet in conversations about such things
Speaker 1: as the weather and onions. Anyway, So one day, Tyler,
Speaker 1: one of the friends in Bella's friend group, is cruising
Speaker 1: through the school parking lot at about sixty miles per
Speaker 1: hour and he loses control of his van and nearly
Speaker 1: Krene's into Bella, but suddenly Edward is there to save her,
Speaker 1: even though he was just fifty feet away from her
Speaker 1: like one second ago. But Edward is there and he
Speaker 1: stops the van with what seems like superhuman strength. So
Speaker 1: Bella is taken to the hospital where she meets doctor
Speaker 1: Daddy Cullen. Edward is there too, and Bella is like,
Speaker 1: what the hell happened? How did you get to me
Speaker 1: so fast? And then he proceeds to gaslight her more
Speaker 1: and says that he was already right next to her.
Speaker 2: He said, you bunked your head real hard.
Speaker 1: You're confused.
Speaker 2: It really is like gaslighting one oh one lines like
Speaker 2: you fell, Yeah, you must have wonked your head. It's
Speaker 2: the lights. You're like, you've had one hundred years to
Speaker 2: get better at gaslighting than you are, sir.
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay. So from this point onward, now Bella is
Speaker 1: like dreaming about Edward, partly because he is fully stalking
Speaker 1: her and sneaking into her bedroom and watching her sleep.
Speaker 1: He's also eavesdropped on her conversations. He's being generally cruel
Speaker 1: and abusive to her, saying things like we shouldn't be friends,
Speaker 1: but also I want to be friends, but you should
Speaker 1: stay away from me because I'm not the hero. I'm
Speaker 1: the bad guy, and She's like, no, you're a good guy.
Speaker 1: Come to the beach with me and my friends. And
Speaker 1: he's like, I DK probably not.
Speaker 2: He's like, I can't. I can't go to that.
Speaker 1: Whatever man, And we're about to find out why because
Speaker 1: we cut to the beach called.
Speaker 3: La Push La Push La push Baby, which is a
Speaker 3: real place, which is.
Speaker 1: A real place where the quill Yet people live. Edward
Speaker 1: does not show up, but Jacob and his friends do
Speaker 1: and they're like, oh, yeah, the Cullens don't come here,
Speaker 1: and Jacob proceeds to tell Bella that the quilt people
Speaker 1: are descended from wolves, the Cullens are descended from an
Speaker 1: enemy clan, but they've established a treaty as long as
Speaker 1: the Cullens stay off Quillute land. So Bella is like,
Speaker 1: what's that all about? And she starts investigating. She finds
Speaker 1: a book, a Belle Quilliute Mythology, and goes with her
Speaker 1: friends to Port Angelis Ever heard of It? No to
Speaker 1: buy this book while her friends, Jess and Angela go
Speaker 1: prom dress shopping because everyone is gearing up for prom,
Speaker 1: although Bella is not going to prom because she'll be
Speaker 1: out of town that weekend.
Speaker 2: Well, van Alsa thinkause she's not like other girls.
Speaker 1: She's not like the other girls.
Speaker 3: She doesn't dance.
Speaker 2: She would and if she went to prom, you know,
Speaker 2: she would be wearing Chuck Taylor. She's yes, because she
Speaker 2: is not like, Oh god, I did have the I mean,
Speaker 2: girls were wearing Chucks like no one's business at that time.
Speaker 3: I was wearing Chucks.
Speaker 1: I still do, as in.
Speaker 2: Really, I just I really appreciated when that fad pass
Speaker 2: because they're just not I think my arches are too
Speaker 2: high or something. They're just not comfortable to me.
Speaker 1: I mean, they're not the most comfortable shoe.
Speaker 2: I bravely wear crocs everywhere I go, every single day.
Speaker 1: I also want to point out that we see on
Speaker 1: screen that Bella could have bought this book from Amazon,
Speaker 1: but instead she opts to go to a whole other
Speaker 1: city and buy it from a local independent bookstore.
Speaker 2: Yeah that's Bela Swan praxis y right there, buys from
Speaker 2: an independent bookseller, Yes, who we see in a single shot, right,
Speaker 2: but she does support local businesses.
Speaker 1: Good for Bella indeed.
Speaker 2: But name a second thing about her.
Speaker 1: She read one book one time. What was the book?
Speaker 1: We don't know?
Speaker 2: Yeah, she still ends up mostly googling, which I thought
Speaker 2: was funny that she went so far out of her
Speaker 2: way to get the book. She still mostly googles the answers,
Speaker 2: which is relatable. I've done that. I've been like, oh,
Speaker 2: I've made a big deal of getting the books and
Speaker 2: then been like, huh, well, I actually have run the
Speaker 2: clock and I have three days to read this paper.
Speaker 1: I made note of that. Though she reads exactly one
Speaker 1: sentence from the book and then proceeds to google everything else.
Speaker 2: I felt seen like, that's what teenagers do.
Speaker 1: It's amazing. Okay, So she's hanging out in Port Angelis
Speaker 1: buying books locally. Meanwhile, there is a group of scary
Speaker 1: people and I wonder if they're vampires. They are James,
Speaker 1: Laurent and Victoria. They're on the loose and they attack
Speaker 1: a guy who we've met before. It's a friend of
Speaker 1: Bella's dad's. He's presumably murdered. Then a different set of
Speaker 1: scary people start bothering Bella on her way back from
Speaker 1: the bookstore, but Edward comes to her rescue because he
Speaker 1: had followed her to Port Angelis.
Speaker 2: Yeah no, but it's a good thing he did kill
Speaker 2: him right right, because because he.
Speaker 1: Saved her from those scary people who were about to
Speaker 1: assault her.
Speaker 2: He rescues her from so many bizarre predicaments.
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, he heard what those low lifes were thinking.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yes, yeah. So then Edward takes Bella to dinner,
Speaker 1: where he admits that he had been stalking her and
Speaker 1: also tells her that he can read every person's thoughts
Speaker 1: in the room except for hers. And if you're wondering
Speaker 1: if she has any kind of reaction to this, well
Speaker 1: she barely does.
Speaker 2: We're being hard on Bella. I feel bad.
Speaker 3: Well, she thinks that something's wrong with her because you
Speaker 3: can't read her mind, which is like so sad. It's like, no, honey,
Speaker 3: there's nothing wrong with you other than the regulate that
Speaker 3: you're boring. But there's nothing wrong with you.
Speaker 2: What's the thing is like her boringness is her power
Speaker 2: question mark that I kept writing that down being like
Speaker 2: it's her absolute blankness that which which we'll get into too,
Speaker 2: because I think that, like both of the lead actors
Speaker 2: of this movie were like pretty thoroughly dragged through the
Speaker 2: mud in the press for something that has way more
Speaker 2: to do with the source material than the performances, where
Speaker 2: for years, I mean, I kind of remember this where
Speaker 2: people were like, Kristin Stewart can't act. You know, she's
Speaker 2: like a total blank slate. She's just like and I'm
Speaker 2: just like, read the book. She's not given very much. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and then a bunch of very homophobic, coded criticism of
Speaker 2: Edward and Robert Pattinson because he's too sparkly and vampires
Speaker 2: are famously straight. Like I don't even know where people
Speaker 2: are going with that because that's never been a thing.
Speaker 2: But like in any case, I was sort of like
Speaker 2: revisiting that period of like Christian Stewart's a bad actor,
Speaker 2: which you know, fifteen years on, you're like, yeah, monstrably untrue.
Speaker 2: She's not just a great actor, she's a queer icon.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I find it interesting that both she and Robert
Speaker 1: Pattinson have gone on to have like pretty prolific careers
Speaker 1: as actors. And then Taylor Latner, I would say, not
Speaker 1: so much.
Speaker 2: I am always buying the wrong stocks. I tell you what.
Speaker 2: I was all in for Taylor Latner and he did
Speaker 2: buy me a three dollars beer once.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think I told that story on the first version.
Speaker 2: Is like right after I moved to La went to
Speaker 2: this cheap o bar called the Cha Chaw Lounge, and
Speaker 2: for some reason, Taylor and his wife to be also
Speaker 2: named Taylor were there and he was like, next round
Speaker 2: on me. But all the beers cost three dollars, so
Speaker 2: he couldn't have spent more than like thirty dollars. But
Speaker 2: it was nice of him. I appreciated it. Yeah, So
Speaker 2: I guess I got a three dollar return on setting
Speaker 2: all my style and Taylor Latner three dollars plus tip.
Speaker 1: I hope, wow, I mean could be worse.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Anyway, So Bella returns home and this is the scene
Speaker 1: where she looks through her book for one second and
Speaker 1: then looks everything else up online.
Speaker 2: I love a good googling montage. It's so pat but
Speaker 2: I find it comforting.
Speaker 1: M hm. And what she's looking up is information about vampires,
Speaker 1: and she realizes that Edward is probably a vampire based
Speaker 1: on his super speed and strength, his cold skin, his
Speaker 1: ability to read people's minds, since that's famously a vampire quality.
Speaker 2: I love how they just wave aside the I do
Speaker 2: appreciate Stephanie Meyer just waves off the tropes about vampires
Speaker 2: she's disinterested in and adds the stuff that she wants
Speaker 2: You're like, yeah, sure, it's your book.
Speaker 1: I guess She's like, they can be out in the daylight.
Speaker 1: It's just that their skin is sparkly.
Speaker 2: They just have this body glitter kind of thing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: And they're also Professor Xavier from x Men.
Speaker 2: I've never seen an x man. Wow, I'm not like
Speaker 2: you've never seen an x man. Oh, I was gonna say,
Speaker 2: I made a special note in a very late two
Speaker 2: thousand's not. The Papyris font is indeed featured in oh
Speaker 2: Bella's googling sequence, which it wouldn't have been in two
Speaker 2: thousand and eight if she hadn't come across you know,
Speaker 2: homespun HTML layout papyrus font website. So I appreciated that.
Speaker 1: That was important visibility.
Speaker 2: Yes for the papyrus part. Well, No, the papyrus font's
Speaker 2: one year away from being the avatar logo. So the
Speaker 2: Papyrus font did oh perfectly fine for herself.
Speaker 1: True. Okay, So one day at school, Bella and Edward
Speaker 1: go into the nearby woods together and she's like, so,
Speaker 1: you're a vampire, right, and he's like TI, yes, and
Speaker 1: she's like, don't worry, I'm not afraid of you. Even
Speaker 1: though you desperately want to kill me and drink my blood.
Speaker 1: You're a killing machine who has previously murdered people.
Speaker 2: This is the skin of a killer Bella.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah that light I so, y'all. I didn't tell you,
Speaker 3: but I'm wearing a shirt. This is the skin of
Speaker 3: a killer. I will show you. It has like the
Speaker 3: meme of Probert Pattinson. Incredible And yeah, it's a T
Speaker 3: shirt and I made it into a half shirt because
Speaker 3: I love me some half shirts. And this isn't the
Speaker 3: only Twilight half shirt that I own. I also own
Speaker 3: one that is New Moon based. It's the scene where
Speaker 3: Jacob says, Bella, where the hell have you been? Loca?
Speaker 2: Yes, that is that half shirt.
Speaker 3: So yeah, I do rock some some Twilight apparel still,
Speaker 3: even though it's not a Team Edward shirt.
Speaker 2: Our producer Sophie is a big fan or like was
Speaker 2: a huge twyhard back in the day, and they recently
Speaker 2: screened near her and the like the whole audience in
Speaker 2: Unison did the bello where have you been? Look up together? Ah.
Speaker 2: There is something just so powerful about the memes that
Speaker 2: keep us together. This is the skin of a killer Bella.
Speaker 2: That line read really holds up. It's so funny.
Speaker 3: She's like, you're beautiful skins like diamonds.
Speaker 2: Diamonds, everything about me draws you in. Like, we'll talk
Speaker 2: about like how Robert Pattinson, I feel like, almost in
Speaker 2: a defensive way, came out against the Twilight movies because
Speaker 2: he wanted to have a quote unquote serious career. In
Speaker 2: starring in movies that are marketed at teen girls is
Speaker 2: quote unquote unserious. And so he would sort of be like,
Speaker 2: these movies suck, but I'm in them. They but I
Speaker 2: hate them. But he would do it in a funny
Speaker 2: enough way that it's hard for me to be mad
Speaker 2: at him. But yeah, imagine having to perform that monologue.
Speaker 2: It's really really wild that he basically pulls it up.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So now Bella and Edward are irrevocably in love
Speaker 1: with each other. He tells her some of his backstory,
Speaker 1: which I forgot to write down.
Speaker 3: He am in start of the flu Yeah, he had
Speaker 3: Spanish influenza and Carlyle saved him and yeah bit him
Speaker 3: and turned him into into a vampire.
Speaker 2: Right, and something that really struck me on this And
Speaker 2: we can we can and should talk about this later.
Speaker 2: But that Carle. Like Carlyle's code of honor is that
Speaker 2: he'll only turn people into vampires when they are already
Speaker 2: about to die. But as ties into a lot of
Speaker 2: the like undertones of white supremacy and like Mormonism specifically
Speaker 2: in this franchise, he mysteriously only ever seems to have
Speaker 2: an interest in saving white vampires or eventual vampires specifically,
Speaker 2: including even though I think that this is a discussion
Speaker 2: for a future episode because it doesn't come up I
Speaker 2: don't think in this movie. But Jasper's fighting on the
Speaker 2: wrong side of the Civil War canonically.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he's a Confederate soldier.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and there is really I mean, we'll talk about
Speaker 2: it in I don't know if it's the second or
Speaker 2: third movie where that like there's like a full flashback
Speaker 2: sequence I remember, and it is just not drawn attention
Speaker 2: to as something that's wrong. And I know Princess Weeks
Speaker 2: made a great video about how Confederate Vampire's Soldiers is
Speaker 2: like this very scary trope that exists across vampire media.
Speaker 2: But yeah, doctor Daddy only ever saves white people on
Speaker 2: the verge of death.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so we learn that as Edward's backstory, we also
Speaker 1: learn that the Cullens have kind of sworn this oath
Speaker 1: to never hunt or attack or kill humans. They live
Speaker 1: off of the blood of animals, but there are other
Speaker 1: like vampire clans who do kill people, and that's what's
Speaker 1: going on with James and Victoria.
Speaker 3: And you can tell by their eye color too, of
Speaker 3: the vampires. Their eye color, you can tell if they
Speaker 3: are vegetarian vampires or if they hunt humans, because the
Speaker 3: vegetarian vampires have like golden eyes, and then the human
Speaker 3: hunting ones have red eyes.
Speaker 2: So like, yeah, yes.
Speaker 1: Yes, exactly. So Edward tells Bella all of this. Then
Speaker 1: he invites her to his house to have dinner with
Speaker 1: his vampire family. Rosalie has a little outburst about it.
Speaker 2: She breaks a salad.
Speaker 1: We're gonna be tension between her and Bella throughout the series.
Speaker 3: Oh boy.
Speaker 1: Also, Jasper is thirsty as fuck for Bella's blood, but
Speaker 1: he's exercising restraint. Then we get the spider monkey scene.
Speaker 2: Great that was added for the movie. Also amazing that
Speaker 2: Robert Pattinson says it without laughing, so good.
Speaker 3: That's a skill.
Speaker 1: That's followed by this like montage kind of thing where
Speaker 1: they're just sort of like canoodling in the tree tops,
Speaker 1: as if that's like so romantic and I'm so afraid
Speaker 1: of heights that Like I'm like, who who would find
Speaker 1: that romantic? Like is this exciting for people?
Speaker 3: I don't know, I would find that terrifying. Yeah.
Speaker 2: What struck me about that scene was that presumably what's
Speaker 2: happening in that scene is they're getting to know each
Speaker 2: other better and they don't show us that where it's
Speaker 2: like it would actually be I mean, and I know
Speaker 2: to some extent and this is like ten years ago
Speaker 2: kind of styled this course around Twilight, but I think
Speaker 2: it would be nice to see them have more conversations
Speaker 2: to lock in what connects them as people.
Speaker 1: Why they like each other, right, Like.
Speaker 2: That's not too much to ask of a romance story.
Speaker 2: And it was like, I think we were watching that
Speaker 2: scene happening, like we were far away, we couldn't hear it.
Speaker 2: It's like, oh, I would have loved to know what
Speaker 2: they would what Bella would talk about? Yeah, no, I
Speaker 2: read this is so many questions about Twilight if you
Speaker 2: google them lead to a Reddit post from five years ago,
Speaker 2: and this one is no exception. But later on, Stephanie
Speaker 2: Meyer would write sort of rewrite Twilight from Edward's perspective,
Speaker 2: called Midnight Sun. I almost was like, should I read it?
Speaker 2: And then I saw it was a thirty six hour
Speaker 2: long audiobook, and then I thought, maybe I know, there's
Speaker 2: only so many days of your life.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, But I guess in that she does get into
Speaker 2: some of the conversations she has that Bella has with Edward,
Speaker 2: and she at one point gives her list of favorite
Speaker 2: movies and books, which are baffling given Bella's personality. She
Speaker 2: says her favorite movie is Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Interesting,
Speaker 2: which is coming from a character I don't think we
Speaker 2: ever see laugh, is like so confusing. I was like,
Speaker 2: there's no way.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Anyways, I guess in the source material in the book,
Speaker 2: we find out that she reads Jane Austen books, which
Speaker 2: you know, they're great books, but there couldn't be a
Speaker 2: more bland thing assigned to a teenage girl character than
Speaker 2: likes Jane Austen books.
Speaker 1: Oh okay, So then there's a scene where Bella introduces
Speaker 1: Edward to Charlie Swan, her dad, and Charlie's like, you
Speaker 1: better watch out, young man, I've got a gun. Then
Speaker 1: we get the baseball scene, which is an amazing scene,
Speaker 1: mostly because it is seven people total playing baseball, which
Speaker 1: is not enough people to play baseball.
Speaker 2: And here's two referees but not enough player.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they don't even let Bella play because she's too slow,
Speaker 1: so they make her be the umpire. But anyway, this
Speaker 1: is when the bad vampires show up. They want to
Speaker 1: join in the fun. They want to play baseball, it's
Speaker 1: America's pastime. But they notice that a human is among them.
Speaker 1: They smell Bella's like blood for something or human flesh,
Speaker 1: and James in particular wants to just eat Bella to
Speaker 1: death and he is now going to hunt her down.
Speaker 1: So Edward and Bella have to leave to lure James
Speaker 1: away so that they can basically eventually kill him. They
Speaker 1: have to cut him up into pieces and burn the pieces.
Speaker 2: Right, which is always like there's always these like suggestions
Speaker 2: of violence like that in Twilight, but they never like
Speaker 2: they ordinarily don't really have at least in the first movie.
Speaker 2: There's a lot of like, I'm gonna do this, but
Speaker 2: then it happens off screen. Yeah, yeah, yeah, because Mormons.
Speaker 1: So then there's a scene where Bella and Edward are fleeing,
Speaker 1: Bella goes home and like has to hurt her dad
Speaker 1: feelings to protect him. Then Bella and Edward split up
Speaker 1: to hopefully trick James into following. Edward and Bella goes
Speaker 1: off with Alice and Jasper all the way to Phoenix,
Speaker 1: where Bella receives a call from her mother, who James
Speaker 1: has kidnapped, and James tells her to meet him at
Speaker 1: her old ballet studio. Now Bella shows up, learns that
Speaker 1: her mom was not actually kidnapped, it's just James there,
Speaker 1: and he's like taunting her and throwing her around. She
Speaker 1: gets badly injured and she's bleeding, and Edward shows up
Speaker 1: and he and James fight a bit. James bites Bella
Speaker 1: and his vampire venom is coursing through her veins.
Speaker 2: And it hurts, but it hurts so good question mark. Yeah,
Speaker 2: the gnarliest moment in this movie to me is always
Speaker 2: when pony Hill vampire break Bella's leg like that. That
Speaker 2: to me is like the actual scariest part of the movie.
Speaker 2: It's so yeah, But then how would she go to
Speaker 2: prom without her quirky leg cast, So in a way,
Speaker 2: it had to happen ponytail vampire had to do so
Speaker 2: she could look quirky or from.
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, But before that happens, the rest of the
Speaker 1: Cullens show up to deal with James and they kill
Speaker 1: him off screen. Meanwhile, Edward goes to suck the venom
Speaker 1: out of Bella, but oh no, will he be able
Speaker 1: to show restraint and stop in time, or will he
Speaker 1: suck all the blood out of her and kill her.
Speaker 2: And give him vampire blue balls? Yeah, this movie is
Speaker 2: so edgy.
Speaker 1: Well, he manages not to bust a nut or whatever
Speaker 1: the metaphor is, and Bella live.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: She wakes up in the hospital. Her mom is there.
Speaker 1: Bella doesn't remember what happens, so or she I don't
Speaker 1: know if she's like pretending not to or what. But
Speaker 1: her mom relays the story that the Cullens probably told her,
Speaker 1: which is that Bella fell down two flights of stairs,
Speaker 1: broke her leg, and crashed through a window.
Speaker 2: Okay, if I'm Bella's mom, I'm like, excuse me, Like
Speaker 2: how But I think that because that same excuse is
Speaker 2: given in the book. If I'm remembering correctly, it's a
Speaker 2: very long book. But I was like, is that why
Speaker 2: they mentioned that she's so prone to falling because people
Speaker 2: have to believe this ridiculous story that she could just
Speaker 2: fall down two flights, like a Looney Tune style fall. Sure, Renee,
Speaker 2: I'm not her fan. If Renee has one fan, it's
Speaker 2: not me, it's not you. I like, your daughter's a junior.
Speaker 2: You can wait two years to go on the road
Speaker 2: with your sorry whatever. But like, if I was a
Speaker 2: teen girl and my mom was like, actually I'm going
Speaker 2: off to fuck this guy, I'd be like, all right, well,
Speaker 2: I hate you, you know.
Speaker 1: But now her mom is encouraging her to move to Jacksonville, Florida,
Speaker 1: to like hang out with her mom and her new husband,
Speaker 1: and Bella's like, no, I want to stay in Forks.
Speaker 1: But Edward is like, no, Bella, that's a good idea.
Speaker 1: Actually you are safer away from me, and you should move.
Speaker 1: And she's like, no, I'm never leaving you and you
Speaker 1: can never leave me, So don't say things like that,
Speaker 1: and that's love. And we cut to prom and Bella
Speaker 1: and Edward are there together. Jacob just kind of randomly
Speaker 1: pops out of the woods.
Speaker 2: He walks out of the woods. They did not do
Speaker 2: a good job of making it like Why can't we
Speaker 2: see him get out of a car? Why is he
Speaker 2: have to I know that he's probably I know, I
Speaker 2: know that that's what they're implying, but it looks so silly.
Speaker 1: It's goofy as hell.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's so silly. I love it.
Speaker 3: And he like dresses up. He's like wearing a button
Speaker 3: down shirt and tie, like rolls up sleeves and.
Speaker 1: Stuff, as if he's about to go to prom. But
Speaker 1: he's not a question.
Speaker 2: She's like, no, my dad gave me twenty dollars and
Speaker 2: I'm like, okay.
Speaker 1: He's like, my dad paid me to tell you to
Speaker 1: break up with Edward and that will be watching you.
Speaker 1: And we're like cool, cool, cool, tight tight tight.
Speaker 2: At very least in the book, Jacob like they danced
Speaker 2: together and there's like a clearer friendship established, and not
Speaker 2: what happens in the movie, which is like Edward appearing
Speaker 2: out of nowhere and being like, get away from me,
Speaker 2: and then they gave each other like Bruti boy eyes
Speaker 2: monster boy eyes, and then Jacob walks back into the
Speaker 2: woods like that's where.
Speaker 1: He came from.
Speaker 3: So I hope he got that twenty dollars.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I hope. At very least because it's like,
Speaker 2: that's a very humiliating task to dispatch your sixteen year
Speaker 2: old son to do.
Speaker 1: Anyway, So then Bella and Edward are slow dancing and
Speaker 1: she's like, you should have let me become a vampire
Speaker 1: so that I can be like you. And he's like, no,
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna let you be a monster, and she's like,
Speaker 1: but this is what I want, and so he moves
Speaker 1: like he's about to bite her neck, but JK, he's
Speaker 1: just teasing slash edging her. And the movie ends with
Speaker 1: a shot of Victoria, the bad vampire who's James's his girlfriend,
Speaker 1: leering at Bella and Edward from a distance because she
Speaker 1: wants revenge, and that's partly going to be what some
Speaker 1: of the other movies are about.
Speaker 2: I think maybe I was really bummed I forgot that
Speaker 2: the Vultore don't show up in this movie because they're
Speaker 2: so funny. They're the funniest part of all of the
Speaker 2: vivies where they're because it's just like this didn't fully
Speaker 2: connect for me until like going through the Twilight rehash
Speaker 2: discourse that's happened in the last five years. But it's
Speaker 2: just how Stephanie Meyer views Catholic people, which is like
Speaker 2: gay and evil No, Italian gay and evil.
Speaker 3: Yes, it's just so.
Speaker 2: Weird, I forget. Yeah, yeah, but you're gonna have to
Speaker 2: wait for Dakota Fanning Italian villain.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yes, indeed. So yeah, that's the movie. Let's take
Speaker 1: a quick break and we'll come back to discuss.
Speaker 2: And we're back, Daneli, I want to sort of pass
Speaker 2: the buck to you here. Where would you like to
Speaker 2: start with discourse of Twilight.
Speaker 3: I don't know, I don't know. Where's what it feels
Speaker 3: like a good place to start, as far as like
Speaker 3: things that you all wanted to cover as well.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I think we didn't mention this, Caitlin,
Speaker 2: but we also during actually during Lockdown, I want to
Speaker 2: say it was summer twenty twenty, we did a fundraiser
Speaker 2: where we did a reading of the Twilight script with
Speaker 2: past guests from the show. Jess Berwin was a part
Speaker 2: of that conversation, and they and many Native writers have
Speaker 2: been intensely and rightfully critical of the way that Twilight
Speaker 2: presents indigenous culture, which I think we reference in our
Speaker 2: first episode, but certainly not in depth because we were
Speaker 2: also under educated on the issue at the time, So
Speaker 2: I think that's a good starting point. And then also
Speaker 2: just again for our listener's reference, we're not going to
Speaker 2: get into every facet of that in this particular episode,
Speaker 2: because I believe that it's New Moon that really kind
Speaker 2: of doubles and triples down on these really dangerous tropes
Speaker 2: around indigenous people, and Jacob is not in this movie
Speaker 2: very much. But I think that it is at least
Speaker 2: to me like the unequivocally valid criticism of this franchise.
Speaker 1: Yes, friend of the show Ali Noddy has spoken about
Speaker 1: this in depth, and I've learned an awful lot from
Speaker 1: posts that she's made and videos that she's made.
Speaker 2: She made a great video essay on the topic, definitely.
Speaker 1: So Yeah, the glaring thing here because this movie does
Speaker 1: go a little bit into some of the lore that's
Speaker 1: basically at foreshadows a lot of what happens in New Moon.
Speaker 1: But there's a scene where Jacob Black again played by
Speaker 1: a non indigenous actor. He is a member of the
Speaker 1: Quillute Nation. The character is again not the actor, and.
Speaker 2: The Quiliate nation really does live in Lapushe. I think
Speaker 2: at the time that the movie came out, there were
Speaker 2: only about seven hundred members of the nation, so it's
Speaker 2: also a quite small nation.
Speaker 1: Yes, So what we learned from this movie is and
Speaker 1: this is something that Jacob mentions, but that his people
Speaker 1: are descended from wolves, which is part of Quiliute mythology,
Speaker 1: like that's part of the creation story. But basically what
Speaker 1: happened is that Stephanie Meyer probably did one second of research,
Speaker 1: learned that and then basically conflated that with Quillute people
Speaker 1: are where wolves.
Speaker 2: Right to like serve the pre which again it's just
Speaker 2: I mean, there's so many issues with how Stephanie Meyer
Speaker 2: dealt with writing a Qualiute character in general, but the
Speaker 2: fact that she's also like equivocating a very real group
Speaker 2: of people with a completely made up group of people,
Speaker 2: you know, inventing a treaty that is presented very matter
Speaker 2: of factly, as if most of the treaties that have
Speaker 2: been quote unquote made with indigenous tribes have not been
Speaker 2: completely disrespected or later renegged on. The movie has no
Speaker 2: interest in this. I also was reading that she didn't.
Speaker 2: I mean, it reminds me of how we talked about
Speaker 2: Robert Eggers in the vivich oh where there was that
Speaker 2: interview he did where they're like, how did you research
Speaker 2: the movie? And he's like, I went to the library
Speaker 2: one day like that, and that was all he admitted
Speaker 2: to doing. She does seem to be borrowing from the
Speaker 2: Robert Egger's School of Higher Education and that she clearly
Speaker 2: googled a couple of things, never consulted with the quil Nation, right,
Speaker 2: it doesn't seem like visited, like did no due diligence
Speaker 2: in writing that character. And that also she still somehow
Speaker 2: got it wrong where I'm pretty sure that at least
Speaker 2: I was seeing this because there's been a lot of
Speaker 2: art exhibits and pieces written about it that the tribe
Speaker 2: is said to have been turned to people from wolves
Speaker 2: and not like it's not a back and forth thing, correct,
Speaker 2: So she's just projecting, you know whatever, making everything work
Speaker 2: in favor of the story. The thing that stood out
Speaker 2: to me and the Taylor Lotner thing is absolutely glaring.
Speaker 2: And there's also this very I think it was more
Speaker 2: in the New Moon press cycle, so we can talk
Speaker 2: about it more in that episode. But there was a
Speaker 2: like round of discourse where Taylor Latner did like a
Speaker 2: round of press where he was like, actually, I do
Speaker 2: have some indigenous heritage. I just didn't know before. And
Speaker 2: on my mom's side, I have some indigenous heritage, which
Speaker 2: is like, don't do that. Like, and he's a teenager
Speaker 2: at the time, Like, I'm more inclined to blame the
Speaker 2: producers of Twilight that probably put pressure on him to
Speaker 2: do that, to put out a fire. It's all very ugly.
Speaker 2: The thing that stuck out to me the most, though,
Speaker 2: that I wasn't fully aware of, or I guess I
Speaker 2: hadn't been reminded of in some time, was in terms
Speaker 2: of how the Quali tribe was able to benefit from
Speaker 2: the success of Twilight. There was a lot written about this.
Speaker 2: The most in depth piece I was able to find
Speaker 2: was in Highcountrynews dot com, which is a local paper.
Speaker 2: It is from twenty twelve, so towards the end of
Speaker 2: the Twilight movies, in which the Quali tribe was holding
Speaker 2: a public powow and was inviting people to become better
Speaker 2: acquainted with their culture. And I think we might have
Speaker 2: talked about this years ago. But what the piece illustrates
Speaker 2: essentially is the fact that a because the Twilight production
Speaker 2: was not required to give the Qualia tribe any sort
Speaker 2: of public acknowledgment or financial compensation, they opted not to,
Speaker 2: and that this tribe, which again consists of around seven
Speaker 2: hundred people, had to in response to the success from
Speaker 2: Twilight and have all of a sudden all of this tourism,
Speaker 2: which we should just link the piece because it is
Speaker 2: very interesting. On one hand, they're like, you know, having
Speaker 2: tourism money come in is a net positive, But on
Speaker 2: the other hand, they're coming in because of misinformation, and
Speaker 2: so they had to develop, you know, for a small
Speaker 2: group of people who have been historically persecuted, they had
Speaker 2: to develop a pr job within the nation to sort
Speaker 2: of not overtly condemned Twilight, but also work to correct
Speaker 2: the misinformation that Twilight had created. And it's created this
Speaker 2: entire like net of issues. And something that isn't mentioned
Speaker 2: in this twenty twelve piece but feels worth mentioning is
Speaker 2: the fact of, like, why do indigenous groups have to
Speaker 2: rely on tourism money from you know, majority non indigenous
Speaker 2: people because of the same capitalist system that is disenfranchising
Speaker 2: them in the first place, And it's cost all of
Speaker 2: this genocide and the fact that that is even something
Speaker 2: that tribes need to interface with is like the result
Speaker 2: of something far uglier. So just I have one quick passage.
Speaker 2: I'm sorry, I know him going along. It's just no
Speaker 2: I love it. This piece is I want to shout
Speaker 2: out the writer that not an indigenous writer, but who
Speaker 2: attended this powo and spent a lot of time and
Speaker 2: spoke with the pr advocates. All this stuff from writer
Speaker 2: Brint Nelson in July twenty twelve, rites the Quilliad has
Speaker 2: struggled for centuries to retain their land and culture amid
Speaker 2: outside threats. In eighteen eighty nine, the same year a
Speaker 2: treaty squeezed the tribe onto a fraction of its ancestral lands.
Speaker 2: A settler who had fraudulently claimed the remaining plots burned
Speaker 2: all twenty six houses to the ground. By nineteen twenty,
Speaker 2: the last of the peninsula's wolves had been poisoned, shot
Speaker 2: or trapped, severing another vital link to the past. They
Speaker 2: also mentioned how there are many places in the surrounding areas,
Speaker 2: but not on their reservation or land, that profit off
Speaker 2: of the twilight. You know what it was the word
Speaker 2: being adjacent adjacent fairness. In twenty ten, a volunteer advisor
Speaker 2: Angela Riley, director of the American Indian Studies Center at
Speaker 2: UCLA wrote an editorial in The New York Times, Sucking
Speaker 2: the Quill Dry, which blasted the ongoing exploitation. In perhaps
Speaker 2: the worst instance, an MSN dot com film crew working
Speaker 2: on a virtual Twilight tour filmed the reservation cemetery without permission,
Speaker 2: pairing grainy images of the gravesites of respected elders with
Speaker 2: a creepy soundtrack. Deeply offended, the tribe secured a quick
Speaker 2: published ecology and removal of the footage, but the incident
Speaker 2: prompted a new level of vigilance. Now the Quilliut Nation
Speaker 2: has an etiquette guide and photography policy, both prominently displayed
Speaker 2: on its website. So it's just this examination of how
Speaker 2: this small tribe has had to respond, deal with and
Speaker 2: try to essentially make the best of this situation that's
Speaker 2: been thrust onto them by this franchise. And I don't know, Yeah,
Speaker 2: I'm curious what you both feel about that. I mean,
Speaker 2: it's obviously very gross and it takes Stephanie Meyer kind of,
Speaker 2: I think, a very nasty amount of time to even
Speaker 2: acknowledge this.
Speaker 1: I had come across a piece called Truth Versus Twilight,
Speaker 1: which was a collaboration between the Burke Museum of Natural
Speaker 1: History and Culture and the Quilute tribe. And it goes
Speaker 1: through a bunch of different talking points, many of which
Speaker 1: revolve around the representation of the Quillut nation, and one
Speaker 1: of the big points made was that the tribe received
Speaker 1: no compensation to bite. The movie, making over four hundred
Speaker 1: million dollars at the box office, made back its budget,
Speaker 1: like by over tenfold, Like made so much money. Obviously
Speaker 1: we know what a cultural phenomenon this saga is, and
Speaker 1: the Quilli nation saw no direct compensation from that. Again,
Speaker 1: there was no consultation that Stephanie Meyer did, and I
Speaker 1: meant to look into this further, but I would doubt
Speaker 1: that the film production did much in the way of consultation.
Speaker 2: So from what I can tell, no, So there's actually
Speaker 2: it's mentioned in this piece, okay, from the same High
Speaker 2: Country news piece. When the Twilight craze first erupted, the
Speaker 2: Quillia lacked a public relations contact and events coordinator and
Speaker 2: Penn Trials, a community leader who helps run the weekly
Speaker 2: drum and healing circle, says producer of the first movie
Speaker 2: randomly called villagers in hopes of securing permission to film
Speaker 2: a scene on First Beach it was ultimately shot on
Speaker 2: the Oregon coast instead. The producers eventually visited so eventually,
Speaker 2: well into production, the producers eventually visited La Push to
Speaker 2: get a better sense of the community. Tribal Secretary Naomi
Speaker 2: Jacobson says their idea of Qulio kids were upended when
Speaker 2: they visited her cousin's home. They didn't expect them to
Speaker 2: be modernized teenagers with iPods and we she says, So
Speaker 2: this was just like, as with so many depictions of
Speaker 2: Indigenous culture well into now and thankfully there has been
Speaker 2: more representation of but nowhere near what satisfactory, as we've
Speaker 2: talked about in many episodes. But just like this is
Speaker 2: an overwhelmingly white crew coming in based on I'm assuming
Speaker 2: the false version of history they learned and never re
Speaker 2: examined in American schools. Yeah, there was no compensation given
Speaker 2: that I was a well to find and it seems
Speaker 2: like the first literal person to say hey, could we
Speaker 2: come to the Push and speak with you was well
Speaker 2: into the production of the movie, which would have been
Speaker 2: at least three years after the book came out.
Speaker 3: And it's like just the age old story of like
Speaker 3: appropriation and benefiting from you know, other people's culture. It
Speaker 3: saddens me, it outrages me that, you know, the Quiliit
Speaker 3: people were not consulted, they were not compensated, and like
Speaker 3: that happens so often, especially as a person of color,
Speaker 3: like we often are not compensated for our work, for
Speaker 3: our labor. And this could have been an opportunity for
Speaker 3: the production crew to be educated on the Quiliad tribe
Speaker 3: and they could have been compensated for their time and
Speaker 3: for their information. But it is sad that the research
Speaker 3: was well into production and Stephanie Meyer didn't do a
Speaker 3: lot of that work on her which is again, like
Speaker 3: I'm so outraged by that, and like I I think
Speaker 3: that when I was younger, I didn't I didn't know
Speaker 3: this information, yeah, you know, and I just thought about like, oh,
Speaker 3: the romance, the story of you know, Edward and and
Speaker 3: Bella falling in love, and there's so much I mean,
Speaker 3: this is a problematic fave, sadly, but there's there's so
Speaker 3: much to really dive into. And again, like so many,
Speaker 3: so many issues that could be discussed about this movie.
Speaker 3: And you know, the books that made this movie happen,
Speaker 3: you know, absolutely.
Speaker 2: I mean, and and well this is like an issue
Speaker 2: well return to as we cover more Twilight movies, because
Speaker 2: it's like Twilight is a problematic fave for millions of people,
Speaker 2: and again, like we're our show is an every fun
Speaker 2: about like if with very few exceptions, there's a few
Speaker 2: movies where it's like, if you like this movie, you
Speaker 2: might be a horrible person, but The Twilight is not
Speaker 2: one of them. I don't think. I think that there
Speaker 2: is so much important, valid criticism that was not being
Speaker 2: had at the time that is important to have now.
Speaker 2: And I'm I mean that's why it's like Ali Natty's
Speaker 2: work is so wonderful and yeah, well we'll revisit that
Speaker 2: in our New Moon episode. But just to establish like
Speaker 2: I know for sure, I was not educated to the
Speaker 2: point where I could have told you when this movie
Speaker 2: came out if the Clearly tribe was a tribe that
Speaker 2: was based on real people or not, because we're so
Speaker 2: under educated about indigenous issues. And also, Indigenous people aren't
Speaker 2: a monolith as this movie. I think there's a lot
Speaker 2: of stuff in New Moon that really, you know, turns
Speaker 2: Indigenous Americans into a monolith. So we'll go back to that.
Speaker 2: But did anyone else have anything on that issue before
Speaker 2: we forge ahead to the five hundred other things to
Speaker 2: talk about.
Speaker 1: Let's forge ahead, I suppose so well. I think a
Speaker 1: big talking point on our first episode was the discussion
Speaker 1: around the predatory romance between Edward and Bella being framed
Speaker 1: as this grand, romantic, beautiful love story and the effect
Speaker 1: that that had on its audience. Sure, now watching this
Speaker 1: movie eight years later and like having done this podcast
Speaker 1: for eight years and like talking about so many movies
Speaker 1: that do just that as far as framing an abusive
Speaker 1: relationship or a predatory romance as being romantic, watching this
Speaker 1: again for the first time in a long time, it
Speaker 1: felt so heavy handed to me that it almost felt
Speaker 1: like I was watching satire or like some kind of
Speaker 1: farcical thing, because I was like, oh my gosh, because
Speaker 1: I think that we have come long enough of away culturally,
Speaker 1: like the initial release of these books in these movies
Speaker 1: that I think, or at least I hope most people
Speaker 1: watch this relationship now and realize just how predatory it
Speaker 1: is and they're like ooh oh, no, yeah, Because I
Speaker 1: feel like on our first watch, I was kind of
Speaker 1: still in the mindset of like, well, I don't know,
Speaker 1: I've always been conditioned that if a man stalks me
Speaker 1: and love bombs me, and.
Speaker 2: To me, fair, I don't think that we were like,
Speaker 2: it's actually cool that he's we weren't that brand dead
Speaker 2: in twenty seventeen.
Speaker 1: There no, but we were coming off of being conditioned
Speaker 1: by other media that, at least for me, I was
Speaker 1: like kind of still in the process of like undoing, sure,
Speaker 1: unlearning a lot of that, and now I'm like, oh
Speaker 1: my gosh, like WOWI wow, this seems this is so
Speaker 1: outlandish that it feels satirical to me almost. But yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, obviously, there's all the things of Edward gaslighting her,
Speaker 1: incessantly stalking her, showing up in her bedroom unannounced, watching
Speaker 1: her sleep, love bombing her, blaming her for his reaction,
Speaker 1: like kind of like any angry outburst he has, he's like, well,
Speaker 1: you made me so angry. The implication that he's intrigued
Speaker 1: by her because she's the only person whose thoughts he
Speaker 1: can't hear, but he's still desperate to know what she's thinking.
Speaker 1: And just like all these weird, bizarro, predatory, scary, abusive
Speaker 1: relationship dynamics. Also that he's like one hundred years old
Speaker 1: and she's seventeen. You know, the list goes on.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I mean that's honestly, the main initial criticism
Speaker 2: that we had of this movie that doesn't hold up
Speaker 2: for me is the age gap, because well, I do
Speaker 2: agree that a hundred year old shouldn't date seventeen year olds.
Speaker 2: That's not something that happens, and I don't think it's
Speaker 2: like something that we're risk to do. I guess there
Speaker 2: were a few things that as I was like revisiting
Speaker 2: some of the criticisms that I pre I mean the
Speaker 2: fact like, it's to me impossible to and this is
Speaker 2: not a brave stance. It's impossible to look at this
Speaker 2: relationship and be like, seems healthy. Yeah, it's definitely not.
Speaker 2: There's absolutely stocking. The gaslighting, like you're saying, Caitlin is
Speaker 2: like so over the top that it feels like literally
Speaker 2: a handout of like this is what a gas lighter
Speaker 2: might say of like you don't know what you're talking about.
Speaker 2: You must have bonked your head, like you know, just
Speaker 2: really really unsophisticated stuff. And the thing is, like I
Speaker 2: still feel that way. I know that there's been a
Speaker 2: lot of history that looks at the original backlash I
Speaker 2: guess I'm curious, Yeah, where we all stand on that,
Speaker 2: because there are still a lot of the initial criticisms
Speaker 2: that I felt about this movie. I still feel like, I,
Speaker 2: you know, I'm not gonna be like after eight years,
Speaker 2: I think that they actually have a great relationship. And
Speaker 2: also the thing that is never gonna sit quite right
Speaker 2: with me, even with the reflection on some of I
Speaker 2: think the more extreme criticisms of Twilight at the time
Speaker 2: is that this is media that's you know, marketed at
Speaker 2: middle schoolers and high schoolers, so it's marketed at impressionable people,
Speaker 2: right and with all due respect to the youth, I
Speaker 2: saw Juno and my takeaway was I have to get
Speaker 2: pregnant right now because I like Juno and Juno was pregnant,
Speaker 2: and so if there's even a risk that someone is
Speaker 2: like that and this is, you know, something that you're
Speaker 2: very emotionally invested in, I think that that is very
Speaker 2: up for debate, despite what the intent of the author
Speaker 2: might have been. I think that something I've moved on
Speaker 2: is movies that a very clearly marketed and intended for
Speaker 2: adults having unhealthy relationship dynamics, where it's like, Okay, you know,
Speaker 2: if a movie is fully intended for adults and mainly
Speaker 2: being consumed by adults, and you see an unhealthy relationship
Speaker 2: dynamic and you say, I want that. To some extent,
Speaker 2: that's on you because you're a grownup, and not every
Speaker 2: movie can model perfect relationship dynamics, But when you're modeling
Speaker 2: them to an audience that are probably entering their first relationships,
Speaker 2: it is I think still right. You know, I stand
Speaker 2: by and I think it is a valid discussion to have.
Speaker 3: Yeah, absolutely, I think, like definitely, Like when I first
Speaker 3: read the books, and then also when I first watched
Speaker 3: the movie, I was completely convinced that this was a
Speaker 3: beautiful love story. And I was convinced then too that
Speaker 3: everything that he was doing was because he loved her,
Speaker 3: And I didn't find it to be controlling or gas lighty.
Speaker 3: But really, you know, what I mentioned before at the
Speaker 3: beginning is that I grew up in a very sheltered environment.
Speaker 3: I grew up in a religious cult, very like Pentecostal adjacent.
Speaker 3: So the misogyny was, you know, real thick. And you know,
Speaker 3: for me, this was not so far off from what
Speaker 3: I had known and already experienced, so it was easy
Speaker 3: for me to make that leap from this very religious
Speaker 3: upbringing to then you know, Edward being very controlling and
Speaker 3: gaslighting and stocking her. It just was an easy transition
Speaker 3: for me. I didn't really question it, which is when
Speaker 3: I look back at it, very scary to think about,
Speaker 3: and you know, like it was you know, not only
Speaker 3: was I a part of a religious system, I also
Speaker 3: lived in an abusive household. So these were you know,
Speaker 3: things that I was seeing often and it was just
Speaker 3: a mirror of my own experience and that was really
Speaker 3: all that I knew. But it's it's sad that this
Speaker 3: is what was being sold to, you know, young girls
Speaker 3: and being told that this is what true love looks like.
Speaker 3: You know, if he loves you, he'll he'll follow you
Speaker 3: and make sure that you're protected. Oh nayneh.
Speaker 2: He'll cut you off from any potential friendship that you
Speaker 2: could possibly have with anyone of any gender, which is
Speaker 2: like so egregious, right exactly.
Speaker 3: And there's just this you know codependence that they have.
Speaker 3: I mean, thinking about like the end of the movie,
Speaker 3: the thought of moving to Jacksonville just completely like Bella's
Speaker 3: like freaking out. She's like absolutely like you could never
Speaker 3: never leave me, and I think about the line in
Speaker 3: the movie you know, so the lion fell in love
Speaker 3: with the lamb, and it's like so so predatory in nature,
Speaker 3: you know, he is he is a lion and she
Speaker 3: is this this lamb, And I'm thinking about how I
Speaker 3: don't know if you all knew, but there were a
Speaker 3: lot of hot topic came up with like a line
Speaker 3: of like jewelry around the movie.
Speaker 2: Oh I bet they did.
Speaker 3: You'll notice some of the jewelry, like in the scene
Speaker 3: in the science class when Edward like moves the kind
Speaker 3: of the slides over to Bella. He's wearing this like
Speaker 3: leather bracelet with the colin like crest on it. So
Speaker 3: hot topic was selling all of this jewelry to young kids.
Speaker 3: So not only was there a jewelry with the crest,
Speaker 3: there was also a pair of rings that had lion
Speaker 3: and lamb on them. And who owned them? I did.
Speaker 3: My first boyfriend gave them to me. And like most
Speaker 3: like first relationships, it was not a healthy relationship at all.
Speaker 3: There was so much you know, codependence and controlling behavior
Speaker 3: from both of us. But we were again a part
Speaker 3: of a system that just ingrained that in us, So
Speaker 3: it was that much more I guess dangerous for that
Speaker 3: message to be continually like drilled into my brain. So
Speaker 3: like when I think about like my relationship to the
Speaker 3: movie now, it's it's very strange, and it's layered and
Speaker 3: it's convoluted, and I have to think about, like again
Speaker 3: my experiences that I had before watching the movie, and
Speaker 3: then how I was as a young adult watching this
Speaker 3: movie thinking that this was, you know, the love that
Speaker 3: I was chasing, and then now after as an adult,
Speaker 3: fully understanding that that type of love is so damaging.
Speaker 3: And I myself have been in you know, abusive relationships
Speaker 3: later on in my adulthood where there was stocking and
Speaker 3: like restraining orders and it was just a really really
Speaker 3: difficult time for me. And this movie, I do feel,
Speaker 3: like what you said, Caitlin, you have to watch it
Speaker 3: with the eye of that this is satire. Otherwise, like
Speaker 3: the indoctrination is again a very very damaging thing.
Speaker 1: Right, But that's the thing, Like it only feels like
Speaker 1: satire now in like twenty twenty five because when it
Speaker 1: came out in two thousand and eight, right, it was
Speaker 1: coming out in the context of this culture that's still
Speaker 1: very much normalized this type of relationship dynamic, which is
Speaker 1: very abusive and predatory as being actually romantic. It was
Speaker 1: coming out in a culture that rewarded men's predatory behavior
Speaker 1: like that. So it doesn't fly now it feels so ridiculous,
Speaker 1: at least to me now, But in the context of
Speaker 1: it coming out, it was different enough that it did
Speaker 1: feel very like, oh my gosh, well this is love.
Speaker 1: I have to model my relationship after this.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I hope it say something positive that this
Speaker 2: does Riada's satire now, I really hope it does, because
Speaker 2: I think about, even though Twilight wasn't a complete like
Speaker 2: hallmark of my youth, I think of like, how many
Speaker 2: abuse of dynamics that you end up with in your life,
Speaker 2: And you're like, what was modeled to me that made
Speaker 2: this okay? And then you can trace that up as
Speaker 2: far as you like of like, if this is something
Speaker 2: I saw modeled in someone in my life, what was
Speaker 2: modeled to them? Was it? Media? Was that people? What
Speaker 2: was it like? And you just and it's usually some
Speaker 2: really bizarro mix of everything, like media that's withheld from
Speaker 2: you with media that's given to you. At dynamics, you
Speaker 2: see dynamics, you see projected like it's also very like
Speaker 2: extremely complicated, and this is like not the relationship as
Speaker 2: a twelve year old to aspire to like that is
Speaker 2: so clear, and I think that that is like a
Speaker 2: lot of who was reading this book is people who
Speaker 2: had not you know, I generally feel like media about
Speaker 2: seventeen year old girls is mainly being consumed by twelve
Speaker 2: year old girls because they're looking for a model of
Speaker 2: who do I want to become? Right and what? I
Speaker 2: don't know. It's so tricky because I think that like
Speaker 2: Stephanie Meyer is a piece of shit for so many reasons.
Speaker 2: But I always sort of, I guess, struggle with all
Speaker 2: of these cultural issues that have been around for literally
Speaker 2: hundreds of years falling onto the back of one work
Speaker 2: like which I do think there is a tendency to
Speaker 2: do that I know I've definitely been guilty of. Is
Speaker 2: like there is this very broad, clickable take of like
Speaker 2: Twilight is making a generation of young women want to
Speaker 2: enter abusive relationships, where it is a facet of a
Speaker 2: much larger problem, which I feel like ties into Stephanie
Speaker 2: Meyer's background, which is as a devout Mormon, and I
Speaker 2: didn't know anything about Mormon culture in twenty seventeen when
Speaker 2: we recorded this episode, and I wish I could go back,
Speaker 2: but I can't. And I do know a lot more
Speaker 2: about Mormonism now and about how a lot of Mormon
Speaker 2: values are sort of telegraphed in this work, and how
Speaker 2: Stephanie Meyer, you know, I think like a lot of
Speaker 2: authors who are women. We literally just talked about it
Speaker 2: last week with Judy Bloom, but she was a stay
Speaker 2: at home mom when she wrote this book, was not
Speaker 2: anticipated to be successful. It was wildly successful. But you
Speaker 2: can see a lot of sort of themes of her
Speaker 2: life come out in this book in a way that
Speaker 2: is presented as romance, because that's how Stephanie Meyer has
Speaker 2: been conditioned to understand romance. So the way Stephanie Meyer
Speaker 2: talks about indigenous people is a completely different issue that
Speaker 2: I think there's absolutely no defense of her on definitely
Speaker 2: in the romance department. I do think that there is
Speaker 2: a like multi generational thing going on. I don't think
Speaker 2: Stephanie Meyer is sitting in her in like Dexter's lab,
Speaker 2: petting a cat, being like I'm gonna write the most
Speaker 2: toxic story ever. I do think that this, like she
Speaker 2: would repeatedly say this is a story that came to
Speaker 2: me in a dream, and that to some extent, this
Speaker 2: is an expression of a fantasy that she has based
Speaker 2: on her lived experience. As I mean, she went to
Speaker 2: Brigham Young University, like she was full Mormon, And you
Speaker 2: can see I think in the like edging like relationship
Speaker 2: between Bella and Edward, through which a lot of the
Speaker 2: violent and controlling things we're talking about comes through, are
Speaker 2: pulled from this, Like I mean, I didn't I knew
Speaker 2: very little about Stephanie Meyer's biography, but she met her
Speaker 2: future husband as a child and they had this like
Speaker 2: long standing crush on each other, but they did not
Speaker 2: spend any time alone until they were twenty. So it's
Speaker 2: a very like chastity until marriage kind of culture. Yeah,
Speaker 2: you can see that in Bella and Edward very clearly,
Speaker 2: absolutely down to the point where if he quote unquote busts,
Speaker 2: Bella will die.
Speaker 3: That's what happens when you have sex, you.
Speaker 2: Die, right, like because they're not married. But then when
Speaker 2: she's married, she becomes a vampire, and then she doesn't
Speaker 2: die if he busts, right, but you still don't see
Speaker 2: him bust but it's implied, you know, like it is bizarre.
Speaker 2: I mean, and there's a lot of the contra Points
Speaker 2: video essay that came out on this topic sort of
Speaker 2: gets into the history of romance novels and how there
Speaker 2: has been you know, I think those just like really
Speaker 2: really complicated, really and it's so tricky because it's like
Speaker 2: I I look at a lot of this and I'm like,
Speaker 2: I still feel basically the same way I did in
Speaker 2: twenty seventeen. I think this is a toxic relationship that
Speaker 2: is mainly being modeled at preteens, and I don't like that.
Speaker 2: And the one thing I do like is that this
Speaker 2: sort of wave of pop culture gave way to like
Speaker 2: dystopian teen fiction, which tended to have women characters in
Speaker 2: more politically aware, active roles and not bella swan who's
Speaker 2: like a human screensaver, no offense. But then also the
Speaker 2: whole idea that there was this undeniable appeal to this
Speaker 2: story to a lot of very sweet, wonderful normal people
Speaker 2: people on this call included.
Speaker 1: And people of multiple ages, because I mean, your mom,
Speaker 1: yeah read these books as a full adult.
Speaker 2: There were moms specific Twilight forums because moms didn't want
Speaker 2: their kids knowing how they felt about Edward Cohen. This
Speaker 2: is like the history of romance novels too, is like
Speaker 2: there's always been an implied shame and enjoying them and
Speaker 2: the ContraPoints video I say, God, Lover, it's so long,
Speaker 2: but I rewatched a portion of it to get ready
Speaker 2: for this, and the thing that stuck out to me
Speaker 2: that kind of like shifted the way I view this
Speaker 2: a little bit is the sort of like push and
Speaker 2: pull that happens between and this is like a pretty
Speaker 2: heteronal root of structure, but like of feminine fantasy versus
Speaker 2: what men tend to take away from feminine fantasies. She
Speaker 2: talks a lot about the idea of surrender as a
Speaker 2: theme in romance fiction, and you know that is sort
Speaker 2: of predicated on this idea of there is this expectation
Speaker 2: of women to take care of everybody. And the part
Speaker 2: of the idea behind surrender is, you know, while it
Speaker 2: does read as someone telling you what to do, it
Speaker 2: can be interpreted and a lot of the appeal of it,
Speaker 2: based on research, is the idea of not having to
Speaker 2: do things for everybody, and that explains a lot of
Speaker 2: the moms who are into this. Right, is like someone
Speaker 2: who spends a lot of their time, likely because of
Speaker 2: how domestic work tends to be split up taking care
Speaker 2: of everyone else, having someone be like, this is what
Speaker 2: we're doing, and your pleasure is the priority. And so
Speaker 2: while the romantic dynamics, if you're a twelve year old
Speaker 2: and you have no understanding of how a relationship you know, should,
Speaker 2: quote unquote be, can be very dangerous, I do understand
Speaker 2: the appeal of it in a different context, and like,
Speaker 2: so that's part of why it's so hard to talk about.
Speaker 1: Right, So I watched the whole ContraPoints video bravely, all
Speaker 1: three hours, basically the same length as Titanic. It's hard
Speaker 1: to summarize because of its length and how in depth
Speaker 1: it is, but basically, it looks at Twilight through the
Speaker 1: lens of sexual desire and fantasy by way of prescribed
Speaker 1: gender roles, social conditioning, power dynamics, human psychology, and how
Speaker 1: nuanced and complicated all of those things are. Where yes,
Speaker 1: she acknowledges, the relationship dynamics portrayed in Twilight can easily
Speaker 1: be considered problematic and predatory. But when you take all
Speaker 1: of these different things into consideration, and you especially consider
Speaker 1: patriarchy and something that she calls default heterosexual sadomasochism. I'm
Speaker 1: not sure if that's a term that she coins or
Speaker 1: if that's an existing thing, but it's basically this division
Speaker 1: of sexuality in sexual dynamic into these binary roles such
Speaker 1: as like masculine and feminine, top and bottom, dominant and submissive,
Speaker 1: lover and beloved, predator and pray, like all these things,
Speaker 1: but lumping several of them together in a way that
Speaker 1: is very very prescriptive of cist gender roles, which is
Speaker 1: extremely reductive and problematic and ignores the fact that like
Speaker 1: people can be both masculine and feminine, people can be
Speaker 1: a switch. They're not just submissive or dominant, you know,
Speaker 1: you can be both, Like all these things, like all
Speaker 1: the facets that one person can be or that a
Speaker 1: relationship can be, where it's not just like this person
Speaker 1: assumes this role and this person assumes this opposing role,
Speaker 1: and that's how it has to be, Like things are
Speaker 1: far more fluid than that, And counterpoints basically comes to
Speaker 1: the conclusion that maybe actually Twilight is kind of a
Speaker 1: rejection of this, which like I don't know if I
Speaker 1: fully agree with. But and then also for me, like
Speaker 1: it is all about the audience consuming this.
Speaker 2: Right, That's the main thing that was like hard for me, Right.
Speaker 1: If you are a full adult who has come to
Speaker 1: probably not peak emotional intelligence because you know, we're all
Speaker 1: on a journey constantly, no one's there. Yeah, it depends
Speaker 1: a lot on the age and maturity level of the
Speaker 1: person consuming this. And because this saga the series is
Speaker 1: directed primarily toward children slash tweens slash young teens. Again,
Speaker 1: it's like, yes, the source material is a product of
Speaker 1: Stephanie Meyers and so many people's conditioning as far as
Speaker 1: what a relationship is supposed to look like. But then
Speaker 1: this movie like reinforces that in a way that's incredibly problematic,
Speaker 1: where we hopefully and definitely now are seen a lot
Speaker 1: more media that rejects a lot of the very abusive
Speaker 1: relationship dynamics we see in Twilight and posits healthier versions
Speaker 1: of young people and people of all ages in relationships.
Speaker 1: But we just weren't there in the you know, mid
Speaker 1: two thousands and did the late two thousands and stuff
Speaker 1: when these movies and books were coming out.
Speaker 2: Or really for like ten years after that, Like right, yeah,
Speaker 2: and maybe arguably now, like we're living in a time
Speaker 2: of regression unfortunately.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean the total trad wife thing that's coming
Speaker 1: back around.
Speaker 3: Oh trad wives. Don't even get me started on trad wife.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So, oh god, I agree with you, Caitlin. I
Speaker 2: think that like, I really enjoyed the ContraPoints take on it,
Speaker 2: and I learned I learned a lot about the way
Speaker 2: that romance has been Again, then I think that like
Speaker 2: does pull in a valid point that I want to
Speaker 2: get into, is like the idea that media that is
Speaker 2: targeted at any like, any group that isn't CIS men
Speaker 2: and CIS white men specifically, will be presented as a
Speaker 2: danger to society, and that it really requires a close
Speaker 2: look at the source material to determine is that actually so?
Speaker 2: But I think that what I learned more from her
Speaker 2: piece on it was understanding why moms liked it and
Speaker 2: that actually wasn't too weird. But I didn't feel satisfied
Speaker 2: as to like, well, but what if you're you know, twelve,
Speaker 2: and you are years away from having any sort of
Speaker 2: romantic connection with someone, and this is like consuming your life,
Speaker 2: which was true for hundreds of thousands of young people.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: I did appreciate seeing it, but I think it did
Speaker 2: sort of not quite get to like. But who was
Speaker 2: this targeted at. Yeah, that brought me to sort of
Speaker 2: something that I wanted to touch on callback that capacious
Speaker 2: journal assay I was talking about about not just being
Speaker 2: ashamed of liking the Twilight Yes series and being like, no,
Speaker 2: I would never like a popular thing that everyone likes,
Speaker 2: and specifically where there was a resurgence during the early
Speaker 2: days of lockdown with queer communities in re embracing this.
Speaker 2: I saw this firsthand with Wait, actually, I'm going to
Speaker 2: read my friend's letterboxed review of Twilight Please to illustrate
Speaker 2: this point. I feel like Cam will be okay with it. Okay,
Speaker 2: this is my friend Cameron's review from January nineteenth, twenty
Speaker 2: twenty five. Okay, yeah, and Cam's about my age and
Speaker 2: they're I mean, they're the best. I can't believe I've
Speaker 2: never rated this, obviously, this is one of my favorite
Speaker 2: films in the entire world. I cannot truly explain what
Speaker 2: this film did to me as a seventeen year old
Speaker 2: virgin high school senior who had never kissed anyone and
Speaker 2: was depressed out of their gourd because they were unknowingly
Speaker 2: transcend gay and also had an undiagnosed mood disorder. The
Speaker 2: books in this film were integral to my survival, and
Speaker 2: I owe Stephanie Meyer's untalented sicko ass mind a whole lot.
Speaker 2: I think that this encapsulates a lot of people's experience
Speaker 2: with Twilight.
Speaker 3: Honestly, Yes, Oh my goodness, thank you.
Speaker 2: Cam.
Speaker 3: Cam is their name?
Speaker 2: Cam? Yeah?
Speaker 3: Cameron, Yeah, Cameron. I feel this absolutely, like completely, I
Speaker 3: am grateful for like Sephanie Meyer's sick oh mind, because
Speaker 3: I it is like this weird nostalgic like comfort Watch
Speaker 3: that I continue to like return to again and again
Speaker 3: and again. And I think, Caitlyn, you said that you've
Speaker 3: watched the movie like fifteen times or something like that. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and I think, like fifteen that's how much I maybe
Speaker 3: watched the movie in a matter of like two months.
Speaker 3: Like I this movie is always on my TV. It's like, oh,
Speaker 3: i'm folding laundry, let me put on Twilight. Oh I'm
Speaker 3: having a really bad day.
Speaker 2: Twilight.
Speaker 3: Oh it just got broken up with New Moon because
Speaker 3: oh right, this bitch likes to lean into the heartbreak.
Speaker 3: Do you know what I'm saying. There's a pity, Yes, yes,
Speaker 3: I've even wrote in a Twilight poem or two, and
Speaker 3: a friend of mine we really want to edit an
Speaker 3: anthology on poems based off of Twilight. And I think
Speaker 3: for me, like, one of the reasons why I adore
Speaker 3: Twilight with all of its problems is because it's so
Speaker 3: ridiculous at least you know again now, it's like this
Speaker 3: expected ridiculousness that feels very very comfortable to me. It's
Speaker 3: so much of a go to to me that I
Speaker 3: can't really imagine my life without it, which sounds like
Speaker 3: really wild, but it's like to me, it's like just
Speaker 3: as important to my survival as my wellview trend. Like
Speaker 3: I need my Twilight to kind of be a like
Speaker 3: healing bomb to the shit of the world, and it's
Speaker 3: like a satirical toxicity that I can somehow kind of
Speaker 3: digest as opposed to the toxicity that is actually happening,
Speaker 3: you know, outside of my door right that I you know,
Speaker 3: really want to run away from. So like, I'm so
Speaker 3: grateful that your friend Cameron wrote that review. It feels
Speaker 3: I feel so seen by that. That's gorgeous they were.
Speaker 2: Brave enough to say. I mean, then I think that
Speaker 2: that is like a very common experience more recently, is
Speaker 2: that like, this is also just becoming an adult where
Speaker 2: you don't have to give a fuck what others think
Speaker 2: quite as much.
Speaker 1: But yeah, a beautiful space.
Speaker 2: To be in, that sweet release that we've all experienced
Speaker 2: mid thirties.
Speaker 3: It's great.
Speaker 2: Yeah, But there was and again I think this was
Speaker 2: about ten years ago. What the conversation stopped at was
Speaker 2: that things that are marketed to and this is a
Speaker 2: broad umbrellaturn, but at the time that things that are
Speaker 2: marketed to teen girls are universally made out to be
Speaker 2: a societal ill and embarrassing and don't admit that you
Speaker 2: like it, and if you admit that you like it,
Speaker 2: your cringe, which I do think is true, and that
Speaker 2: is I think still to this day true. But that
Speaker 2: was sort of where the criticism stopped and where I
Speaker 2: appreciate where it's gone, and I feel like where I
Speaker 2: hope it continues going is there is clearly an appeal
Speaker 2: to stories like this to and again teen girls I'm
Speaker 2: using very very generally here, but there's still a very
Speaker 2: broad appeal to it. And so it's like then the
Speaker 2: responsibility of their parents and mentors to talk to them
Speaker 2: about why, because again, it's like, it's very easy to
Speaker 2: be like Twilight is the problem, or I think like,
Speaker 2: you know, whichever bout of media is the problem, then
Speaker 2: actually interrogating well, where did this come from? Because Stephanie
Speaker 2: Meyer is a deeply problematic person, but she had no
Speaker 2: idea that this was going to sell millions and millions
Speaker 2: of copies. I think the more important question is why
Speaker 2: does this sell millions and millions of copies? Why is
Speaker 2: it so appealing to us? And how can you talk
Speaker 2: to the intended audience for this without being an old loser.
Speaker 2: I don't have the answers to these questions, but I
Speaker 2: feel like they're worth asking instead of being like Twilight
Speaker 2: is bad for youth, maybe, but they like it, so
Speaker 2: we should figure it out, you know, and like and
Speaker 2: we liked it. Yeah, So anyways, we're getting into like
Speaker 2: the queer fan base, which you know, we've talked about
Speaker 2: on this show many times. A lot of aggressively heteronormative
Speaker 2: stories have been embrace by queer audiences, and I wanted
Speaker 2: to get into I don't think we talked about this
Speaker 2: with Twilight last time, and I don't think it was
Speaker 2: really talked about because there was still Twilight enjoying stigma
Speaker 2: at that time. True, So this is from that capacious
Speaker 2: journal essay still not as gay as Twilight, which I
Speaker 2: guess was a meme. I did not remember that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I didn't see that.
Speaker 2: I don't think ever, but I guess it was a
Speaker 2: very online meme from the early twenty tens, you know,
Speaker 2: And it would often be queer users would post a
Speaker 2: photo from like blue is the warmest color and then
Speaker 2: be like, still not as gay as Twilight, and that
Speaker 2: is that's the meme, basically postmodern affect, nostalgia and queer
Speaker 2: Twilight renaissance during the COVID nineteen pandemic, and a lot
Speaker 2: of this was just sort of analyzing to some extent,
Speaker 2: just the broader shame no matter what your identity was
Speaker 2: around enjoying Twilight at this time, which we've talked about,
Speaker 2: but also their queer fandom. So just to share from
Speaker 2: that quote, a focal pillar of this comeback is queer.
Speaker 2: Many queer fans within the Twilight renaissance are quote unquote
Speaker 2: gayifying Twilight in the early twenty twenties, Twilight is gay,
Speaker 2: but this time in a good way. One factor that
Speaker 2: may have kindled the onset of the Twilight Renaissance is
Speaker 2: when Kristen Stewart, the actor who played Bella in the
Speaker 2: Twilight film adaptations, publicly came out as bisexual in twenty seventeen.
Speaker 2: The Twilight renaissance could also be sustained by former fans
Speaker 2: resisting years of anti Twilight shame with the realization that
Speaker 2: the mass anti Twilight rhetoric was merely misplaced misogyny that
Speaker 2: essentially vilified the interests and desires of young women. Another
Speaker 2: variable that might explain the fandom's heightened activity during the
Speaker 2: pandemic is Stephanie Meyer's release of the fifth installment to
Speaker 2: the Novels, which gets into basically Twilight from Edward's perspective,
Speaker 2: but it also looks into a lot of the queer
Speaker 2: fanfic that existed around Twilight, which I do remember was
Speaker 2: quite prolific. You know, Edward, Jacob and you can just
Speaker 2: kind of let your brain do the math from there.
Speaker 1: Why what what happened?
Speaker 2: Just kidding killing You're not ready, You can't You're not ready.
Speaker 2: I can't tell you.
Speaker 1: I'm not old enough to know. I'm not ready.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'll tell you in a couple of years.
Speaker 1: Tell you yeah, tell me when I'm older.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but yeah, I mean I think that this is
Speaker 2: a story we're kind of familiar with, and the fact
Speaker 2: that Edward Cullen as portrayed in the books and movies
Speaker 2: of again, this very I think confusing, Like, no, vampires
Speaker 2: are straight scary guys. I'm like, have you seen interview
Speaker 2: with a vampire? Like, what do you mean? Yeah, what
Speaker 2: do you mean? Have you seen any vampire?
Speaker 1: Have you seen Dracula? Have you seen most of them?
Speaker 2: Like Edward is actually one of the straighter vampires, right,
Speaker 2: But it was literally just because you know, if you're
Speaker 2: like a socially conditioned teenage boy, you're like, vampires don't sparkle,
Speaker 2: that's not scary, you know, And that was literally it.
Speaker 2: And so the way that gaslers were thrown around on
Speaker 2: the two thousands, you can imagine how the character Edward
Speaker 2: Cullin and eventually the actor Robert Pattinson was spoken about,
Speaker 2: which we can talk about in future installments because I
Speaker 2: know we're going along. But I do think it's interesting
Speaker 2: to revisit those press junkets where Robert Pattinson's like, actually,
Speaker 2: this movie's fucked up, Yeah, in a way that I'm
Speaker 2: sure he did feel to some extent, but it also
Speaker 2: does feel like on the defensive of having a future career,
Speaker 2: because you don't want to be the guy that's like, oh,
Speaker 2: I totally understand the appeal of this, and I really
Speaker 2: I mean, or not even that, but even just like
Speaker 2: I respect the fans of this franchise, which doesn't feel
Speaker 2: like too much to ask, but I think it's like,
Speaker 2: if he's thinking about wanting to go on to star
Speaker 2: in a Christopher Nolan movie, you probably don't want to
Speaker 2: be Like, the appeal of Twilight makes sense to me.
Speaker 1: Would he be Mickey seventeen if you know years ago
Speaker 1: he was.
Speaker 2: Like Mickey seventeen was mid But yeah, no, I mean
Speaker 2: maybe not. I don't know. And that's the last. Sorry,
Speaker 2: there's too much. One of the last things I wanted
Speaker 2: to touch on was that, as we know, Kristian Stewart
Speaker 2: Robert Pattinson go on to be huge movie stars. Yes
Speaker 2: they're Mickey seventeen, their Princess Diana, et cetera.
Speaker 1: Their love lives bleeding, their love les bleed.
Speaker 2: I mean, we love that, but I don't know how
Speaker 2: many people saw it, but it's great and we're gonna
Speaker 2: talk about it soon. But this movie, for all of
Speaker 2: its faults, was written and directed by women, and the director,
Speaker 2: as we've said, is Catherine Hardwick, who broke through with
Speaker 2: thirteen and this is sort of her big blockbuster movie,
Speaker 2: and she does not go on to direct any of
Speaker 2: the other Twilight movies. I was not sure why this
Speaker 2: reason was. I guess it was because this is I'm
Speaker 2: pulling from Vanity Fair article from twenty eighteen, but that
Speaker 2: she chose not to because of just being burned out,
Speaker 2: and if she wanted to direct New Moon, she would
Speaker 2: have had to basically never stopped working for like five
Speaker 2: years or something absurd, and so she opted not to,
Speaker 2: thinking I think logically that, well, if the first Twilight
Speaker 2: movie does well, I will not have trouble finding work.
Speaker 2: And you can imagine how the story goes from here.
Speaker 2: Because we've heard it about one trillion women directors, she
Speaker 2: actually had quite a difficult time finding follow up work.
Speaker 2: Even though Twilight made almost half a billion dollars, every
Speaker 2: other installment was directed by men, and Katherine Hardwick reflected
Speaker 2: on this later. I guess interestingly, the screenwriter that Katherine
Speaker 2: Hardwick advocated for, Melissa Rosenberg, who also wrote step up
Speaker 2: another classic, Oh yes, and wrote on Deck and the
Speaker 2: OC so she said two thousands, girly. She went on
Speaker 2: to write all of the Twilight movies where Catherine Hardwick
Speaker 2: never came back to the franchise and had a lot
Speaker 2: of trouble sort of finding comparable directing gigs to this day,
Speaker 2: which you know, for all of the valid criticisms of Twilight,
Speaker 2: I think is like kind of ridiculous. Where you think
Speaker 2: about how many male directors we've talked about that have
Speaker 2: a movie that breaks even and they never want for
Speaker 2: work for their entire lives. Here's someone who has. And
Speaker 2: she also, you can argue, quote unquote turned around the
Speaker 2: script because there was the original version of the script
Speaker 2: that was going to be filmed, changed so much about
Speaker 2: the source material that in some ways, I'm like, this
Speaker 2: could have been cool, but it is a different story.
Speaker 2: Bella Swan was a long distance runner, cursed and used
Speaker 2: shotguns against vampires who killed her father. Whoa And then
Speaker 2: she wrote jet skis being chased by the FBI, And
Speaker 2: you're like, well, that's not Twilight.
Speaker 1: That's not even the Yeah, but.
Speaker 2: I would see that movie, but that's not Twilight. Oh yeah,
Speaker 2: So that.
Speaker 1: Was Katherine Hardwicke's script, Like that was her interpret Oh.
Speaker 2: No, no, no, that was some random guy who was
Speaker 2: hired to adapt Twilight being told we don't want only
Speaker 2: girls to see this movie, so you need to take
Speaker 2: this source material and make it appealing to men.
Speaker 1: Basically, Wow, so guns and jet skis.
Speaker 2: Jet skis from the FBI. Yeah, And I was really
Speaker 2: struggling with that because I was like, that sounds like
Speaker 2: a fun movie. But yeah, when Catherine Hardwick came on,
Speaker 2: she's just like and she read the script and she's like,
Speaker 2: I don't love this. And then she read the book
Speaker 2: and she was like, I don't understand how this is
Speaker 2: the same story. And then she advocated for a woman
Speaker 2: to write the story and write it more faithfully and
Speaker 2: for better and for worse. I think Stephanie Meyer had
Speaker 2: a lot of input in the movie during its production.
Speaker 1: I mean, she's in cameos.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I was about to say, the diner scene, here's
Speaker 3: your breakfast, Steffie. Yeah.
Speaker 1: She also in the wedding scene later on in like
Speaker 1: the later.
Speaker 3: Movies, Yes, she's in the wedding scene. Oh and Breaking
Speaker 3: Dawn part one, Yeah.
Speaker 2: She's m night scheimalaning all over.
Speaker 1: She's Alfred Hitchcocking.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it is really funny, cause I don't think I
Speaker 2: knew it once I was an adult. But the first
Speaker 2: time I saw the movie, I definitely didn't know who
Speaker 2: Stephie was. Here's your breakfast, Steffie, but it's so obvious
Speaker 2: once you know. I enjoyed it anyways. Yeah, Catherine Hardwick,
Speaker 2: I think is maybe slightly a better director than this
Speaker 2: movie deserved, and I don't appreciate that having directed it
Speaker 2: seems to have derailed her career to some extent. Twilight
Speaker 2: didn't deserve her, but they got her, and I think
Speaker 2: that that's why the first movie is a lot of
Speaker 2: people's favorites, because she's she's pulling from the indie playbook.
Speaker 2: She's playing Radiohead during the damn credits.
Speaker 3: The soundtrack is like something else. It really is amazing. So,
Speaker 3: you know, as a former cult kid, like I wasn't
Speaker 3: allowed to listen to secular music, and then when you know,
Speaker 3: I started to leave that system, I was watching Twilight
Speaker 3: and the Twilight movie was like the first time I'd
Speaker 3: ever listened to Paramore before.
Speaker 2: Oh, oh my god.
Speaker 3: That was my introduction to Paramour and Muse. It was
Speaker 3: just like this again like rum spring U this like revelation,
Speaker 3: this epiphany of all this amazing music that I'd never
Speaker 3: heard before, and I felt so like rebellious. And yeah,
Speaker 3: the soundtrack is amazing. Robert Pattinson is also on the soundtrack.
Speaker 3: He sings two songs as well.
Speaker 1: Wait, what I didn't I don't know this.
Speaker 2: I don't think I remember that you did not know this?
Speaker 3: Okay, no, no, yes, Robert Pattinson sings he's a musician.
Speaker 2: What Yes, I knew he was a musician. I didn't
Speaker 2: know he sang in this God.
Speaker 3: So there are two of his songs. The first one
Speaker 3: is the restaurant scene with the mushroom Ravioli. His song
Speaker 3: is playing in the background, Oh my God. And then
Speaker 3: the song that is playing in the scene in the
Speaker 3: ballet studio when Edward is, you know, sucking the venom
Speaker 3: out of Bella's wrist, that's also Robert Pattinson's song playing Whoa.
Speaker 2: That's so punk rock, sucking out blood to your own music. Yeah,
Speaker 2: so I'm seeing Yeah, never think by Robert Pattinson, never
Speaker 2: think Whoa? Good for him? Good for him? This also
Speaker 2: got so many teenage girls into Claude Debussy which does
Speaker 2: crack me up. Like the girls were playing Debussy in
Speaker 2: the car this summer, Claire to Loon, let's go it
Speaker 2: was yes, Paramore, Lincoln Park, Claude to be.
Speaker 1: Yes, oh right, because it's that scene. I feel like
Speaker 1: that's the only vaguely specific thing that ever gets mentioned
Speaker 1: in the movie where she goes to Edward's bedroom. She's like,
Speaker 1: you have so much music, and then we don't know
Speaker 1: what any of it is except for she hits play
Speaker 1: and it's that, and then she's like, oh wow, yeah, that's.
Speaker 2: A good shit.
Speaker 3: Claire Daluon is great.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Just to revisit the Twilight one soundtrack, we also
Speaker 2: have and I think it. I know that like Saint
Speaker 2: Vincent and eventually ends up there in future installments. But
Speaker 2: we've got muse Paramore, Lincoln Park, Iron and Wine and
Speaker 2: Robert Pattinson. Those are the artists that I recognize.
Speaker 3: Iron and Wine, Flightless Bird, Like, wow, that is a
Speaker 3: song like no other. H yeah, and that song is
Speaker 3: actually then there's like a slower version of it that's
Speaker 3: then played in the wedding scene in Breaking Dawn Part one.
Speaker 2: Why do I feel emotional hearing that? That's the paradox
Speaker 2: of Twilight. You're like, I know that this is bad
Speaker 2: for me, but it gets me emotional and what is that?
Speaker 2: What is that? And we don't know.
Speaker 3: I don't know. I think I'm still trying to figure
Speaker 3: out why I love this movie so much, Like why
Speaker 3: do I prance around the world with like Twilight t shirts?
Speaker 3: I'm not completely sure, Like maybe I need to talk
Speaker 3: to my therapist about it next week.
Speaker 2: No, I really do think that, like some of the
Speaker 2: most thoughtful, wonderful, progressive people that I know are obsessed
Speaker 2: with Twilight. Yes, so there's something going on, there's something
Speaker 2: in the water.
Speaker 3: It's just so campy.
Speaker 1: It's heroin. It's our own personal brand of heroine cannot
Speaker 1: be explained. I feel like I have a similar It's
Speaker 1: how I feel about Titanic, and that relationship isn't quite
Speaker 1: so problematic, but I would still argue that it's pretty
Speaker 1: problematic between drag and Rose. Sure, and I've seen this
Speaker 1: movie going on two hundred times now and it's my
Speaker 1: comfort movie. And I also love that Contra points in
Speaker 1: her video references Titanic constantly, so that made me feel
Speaker 1: all warm and fuzzy inside.
Speaker 2: But millennial canon, you one must reference Titanic.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm just like, I'm not even generally compelled by
Speaker 1: romantic stories, but every once in a while, something like
Speaker 1: Titanic or something like Twilight, I'm just like, I can't
Speaker 1: stop watching and we just don't know why.
Speaker 2: Whether we like it or not. Twilight is a generational text.
Speaker 2: And that's not to say that it's good, right, but
Speaker 2: it is a generational touch point, and I think that
Speaker 2: it is worth engaging with. Yeah, because there's something about
Speaker 2: it that keeps some of the great minds of our
Speaker 2: generation really really really loving it. Yeah, there's something to it,
Speaker 2: and it is ultimately kind of like a weird Mormon fantasy.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but maybe that's.
Speaker 2: The shit we like and we should be asking why.
Speaker 1: And that's what we've done for two hours here today.
Speaker 2: It does pass the factel tests. It does pass the fact.
Speaker 2: The last thing I want to say is Renee is
Speaker 2: a bad mom. Yeah, sorry, she's a bad mom. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I know that she's supposed to seem quirky, but I'm like, no,
Speaker 2: this is quirky in this context. Is negligent.
Speaker 3: Yeah, she doesn't answer her phone, she like loses her
Speaker 3: phone charger too, Like, how's your kid supposed to contact you. Yeah,
Speaker 3: call them from a payphone.
Speaker 1: Your kid is getting run over by vans in parking
Speaker 1: lots and attacked by vampires constantly.
Speaker 2: Yeah, especially if your kid has a chronic condition of
Speaker 2: falling down. Yeah, you're just gonna We've heard in a
Speaker 2: very slippery climate.
Speaker 1: Slippery it's cold and wet there, slippery place.
Speaker 3: I'm so curious if, like if Bella has what's called
Speaker 3: Ailer's DOWNLM syndrome.
Speaker 1: Mm.
Speaker 3: Yeah, because there's there's different subsets of it, but one
Speaker 3: of them is like hypermobility, and a lot of the
Speaker 3: times people with Ailors downland syndrome are prone to more
Speaker 3: like accidents. I haven't been formally diagnosed with Ailor's downland syndrome,
Speaker 3: but I do have hypermobility, and I do exhibit some
Speaker 3: of the clumsiness that Bella has. Like a lot of
Speaker 3: things fall out of my hands quite easily. So, like,
Speaker 3: I'm so curious about if that's like Ailor's download syndrome,
Speaker 3: like coated you know, in some capacity. Interesting But anyways,
Speaker 3: that's just yeah, fun fact.
Speaker 1: I guess No, I didn't know that, right, I mean
Speaker 1: it makes you wonder about different attributes that certain characters
Speaker 1: are imbued with right, right, that like probably have some
Speaker 1: underlying thing that the author.
Speaker 3: Didn't didn't intend fully.
Speaker 1: Understand, or just like observed in other people but didn't understand,
Speaker 1: like oh that person has a disability, or you know,
Speaker 1: whatever the case may be.
Speaker 2: Speaking of disability. While Gil Birmingham, who plays Billy Black,
Speaker 2: is a native actor, which is better than we can
Speaker 2: say of one Taylor Lautner, he is playing a disabled
Speaker 2: character and is not himself disabled, which I think is
Speaker 2: always worth calling out. Certainly, which isn't a criticism of
Speaker 2: Gil Birmingham, because I know indigenous actors have enough difficulty
Speaker 2: being cast in the first place, but that is again
Speaker 2: just fully a failure of the production to prioritize any
Speaker 2: sort of inclusivity in their casting. And outside of that,
Speaker 2: I mean, it is a very white story. There is
Speaker 2: some diversity in Forks, Washington, but the characters who are
Speaker 2: not white tend to have mysteriously small roles, such as
Speaker 2: I think, Eric, Angela and Tyler I think are the
Speaker 2: three non white students, and they comparatively to like Mike
Speaker 2: and Dana Kendrick I don't remember Jessica, they get way
Speaker 2: more screen time, They get way more focus. It's the
Speaker 2: white students we're paying attention to.
Speaker 1: Yeah, as we were hinting at earlier, the movie does
Speaker 1: pass the Bechdel.
Speaker 2: Test not well, No, but it does not well.
Speaker 1: But it's there. But again, that's that's nothing compared to
Speaker 1: the Nipple scale, the Bechdel cast nipple scale, in which
Speaker 1: we rated the movie examining it through an intersectional feminist
Speaker 1: lens zero to five nipples. M I wonder what we
Speaker 1: gave it on the first episode. I do not remember.
Speaker 2: I'm gonna look it up, but you I won't tell you.
Speaker 2: You have to decide, and then I'll hold this secret.
Speaker 1: Okay, even though we've had a much more nuanced conversation
Speaker 1: than the first go around.
Speaker 2: It's a tricky motherfucker. It really is.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it really is.
Speaker 1: But I still don't think this movie has a net
Speaker 1: good impact on society, or at least not for young
Speaker 1: people watching it. I think for people who maybe watched
Speaker 1: it as a young person and took the messaging from
Speaker 1: it which was reductive and harmful, and then had to
Speaker 1: unlearn a lot of stuff. But again, as we discussed,
Speaker 1: that's not just Twilight's fault. That's a whole cluster of
Speaker 1: movies and other media that were presenting a very similar
Speaker 1: toxic dynamic and framing it as ideal and romantic and
Speaker 1: something to strive for. So this is just one entry
Speaker 1: of many things that did that. But this was so
Speaker 1: popular and so consumed by so many people who were
Speaker 1: adversely affected by it. But it does have this weird
Speaker 1: cultural legacy. I don't know. The representation of Indigenous people
Speaker 1: is absolutely abhorrent and there's no defending it whatsoever, and
Speaker 1: I'm gonna focus on that as the basis for my rating.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, it's an intersectional podcast that makes sense.
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, So it's gonna be one and a half
Speaker 1: for two nipples. I think I'll say one and a
Speaker 1: half nipples, but it is. I'd say it's like an
Speaker 1: eight out of ten on the Caitlin Rompometer.
Speaker 2: I mean the baseball scene hits.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but yeah, one and a half nipples, and I'll
Speaker 1: give them to a spider monkey, no specific spider monkey,
Speaker 1: which is spider monkeys.
Speaker 2: I guess in general, I'm gonna go one nipple. I think,
Speaker 2: and I say that feeling weirdly defensive of this movie
Speaker 2: at different points in the episode. I think that this
Speaker 2: movie is cultural imp I mean, I can't say what
Speaker 2: the cultural impact is on the whole. I do think
Speaker 2: that this franchise has a really weird, interesting history that
Speaker 2: continues to either delight or haunt us, depending on how
Speaker 2: we feel about it. I think that, you know, it's
Speaker 2: clearly going to be with us for a while. People
Speaker 2: still have a lot of interest in talking about it
Speaker 2: and revisiting it. And I also, you know, this is
Speaker 2: something that a lot of young people were ashamed to
Speaker 2: enjoy and therefore could not start a lot of conversations
Speaker 2: about why that was at the time. I think it
Speaker 2: is like really interesting. I mean, Bella, you know, bless
Speaker 2: her heart, she's giving nothing. She never has been, she
Speaker 2: never will be. And I you know, that's who Bella is.
Speaker 2: And I know that someone's gonna yell at me about that.
Speaker 2: And you know, I do think that there is this
Speaker 2: very conservative fantasy to some extent that has played out
Speaker 2: throughout these movies of Bella does find some agency, but
Speaker 2: it's mainly through marriage and motherhood and you know, all
Speaker 2: this stuff. We all we'll talk about this in later episodes.
Speaker 2: For this, you know, I did see myself in Bella
Speaker 2: to some extent as a kid where it was like
Speaker 2: I didn't feel lighting. In the book, they sort of
Speaker 2: harp on this a little more of like Bella has
Speaker 2: never been recognized as attractive or someone who's interesting, and
Speaker 2: all of a sudden, she's somewhere where she's the most interesting,
Speaker 2: attractive person in the world, and who what misfit wouldn't
Speaker 2: be pulled in by that? And I think that a
Speaker 2: lot of people who felt out of place, that fantasy
Speaker 2: is so appealing to be desired and for you to
Speaker 2: be often in a dangerous way, but in a dangerous
Speaker 2: way that not a lot of people understood in our generation,
Speaker 2: but like to be wanted. And I think that that's
Speaker 2: part of why I understand the appeal and part of
Speaker 2: what still doesn't sit well with me because of the
Speaker 2: intended audience, where you know, it's not Stephanie Meyer's job
Speaker 2: to raise us, but I do think it is like
Speaker 2: the responsibility of others and the larger culture to not
Speaker 2: just reinforce someone's horny dreams, worst instincts. But there's still
Speaker 2: so much getting back to what we've been talking about, Yeah,
Speaker 2: I mean, I'm docking mainly for indigenous representation and the
Speaker 2: one visit to the library approach and no further compensation
Speaker 2: or acknowledgement of the people whose culture you are profiting
Speaker 2: off of directly and misunderstanding and misrepresenting. There's just absolutely
Speaker 2: no excuse for that. The feminist discourse around this. I'm
Speaker 2: gonna just be like, go with God, whatever you like there.
Speaker 2: I have read every take in the world, and I
Speaker 2: don't know which is right to me. I liked Bela
Speaker 2: because I was like, I wear these shoes, but ultimately,
Speaker 2: on revisit, I do think she's boring. I think that
Speaker 2: Edward's like, I don't see what you're thinking because she's not.
Speaker 2: But ultimately I think Team Jacob was the right team.
Speaker 2: One nipple and I am going to give that nipple
Speaker 2: to the truck. I thought the truck was cool. Oh sure,
Speaker 2: I liked the truck. I don't care if it's not
Speaker 2: like other girls truck, I would drop that truck.
Speaker 1: Okay, awesome, Dean Ally, how about you nipples?
Speaker 3: Nipples? I'm thinking I think I go for like one
Speaker 3: and a half basically, Like you know, for a lot
Speaker 3: of the reasons that you both have mentioned, you know,
Speaker 3: the indigenous representation is lacking so many different problems with
Speaker 3: this movie. Portraying a toxic relationship as an ideal. It's
Speaker 3: really hard to give this movie anything more than one
Speaker 3: and a half nipples. And I think for me, one
Speaker 3: of the most like iconic scenes in the movie is
Speaker 3: the baseball scene with Alice and her pitch with her leg.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, the little kick, Yes, oh my gosh,
Speaker 1: what is she doing?
Speaker 3: It's honestly, it's fucking beautiful. And I think that's when
Speaker 3: I realized I was bisexual, was when I watched Alice
Speaker 3: pitch during the baseball scene, and I think that's like
Speaker 3: a really beautiful thing. So I think at the end
Speaker 3: of the day, like you know, when I was younger,
Speaker 3: I was team Edward, but in reality, like I'm definitely
Speaker 3: like team Alice.
Speaker 2: Like all the way, Alice is an awesome character.
Speaker 3: I like her, yeah, and like even like when I
Speaker 3: think about her relationship to Jasper, which we didn't really
Speaker 3: talk about, but like I feel like she is kind
Speaker 3: of more of like the dom and the relationship she's like,
Speaker 3: I think she's like takes control and I really like
Speaker 3: that about her. And I see myself more and more
Speaker 3: in in Alice than any other character in the movie. Sadly,
Speaker 3: I cannot lift my leg like that when I pitch.
Speaker 3: I don't even pitch. I don't play sports. I do
Speaker 3: visit the library though. But yeah, I think I'm going
Speaker 3: to give one nipple to Alice and her leg and
Speaker 3: then the other half nipple. I think I'm going to
Speaker 3: give it to mister Molina, the teacher, because it's a
Speaker 3: fellow educator.
Speaker 2: Oh my god, you're so right.
Speaker 1: No relation to Alfred Molina.
Speaker 3: But I know how crazy you are about Alfred Molina. Yes,
Speaker 3: but yeah, I think I'm going to give half a
Speaker 3: nipple to mister Molina because as a fellow educator, like
Speaker 3: he's just so earnest about science and you know, really
Speaker 3: getting these students like invested in STEM. So I really
Speaker 3: appreciate that about mister Molina. Yeah, I think he says
Speaker 3: like compost is cool, and it is compost is cool.
Speaker 3: So I'm gonna give half a nipple to mister Molina.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, hell yeah, amazing, you know, L like, thank you
Speaker 1: so much for joining.
Speaker 3: Us, thank you for having me, yes.
Speaker 2: And thank you for choosing the exact right shirt.
Speaker 3: I mean I always do, but especially today.
Speaker 1: Tell us where people can find you online? Check out
Speaker 1: your work plug.
Speaker 3: Away so You can find a lot of info about
Speaker 3: me on my website at dnlliantigua dot com. You can
Speaker 3: follow me on Instagram at nowfel thirteen and that's n
Speaker 3: e l l f e L L one three And yes,
Speaker 3: I've had that screen name and I've used it for
Speaker 3: everything since I was thirteen. And yeah, I do a
Speaker 3: lot of like poetry readings and events locally, but I'm
Speaker 3: also traveling to like universities, and you can find all
Speaker 3: the info about my events on my website. My upcoming
Speaker 3: events are mass Poetry Festival in Salem, Massachusetts, coming up
Speaker 3: at the end of May, and I don't know when
Speaker 3: this podcast will be coming out, but I think.
Speaker 2: Before then, maybe before then.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's the thing that I do. I'm one of
Speaker 3: the headlining poets. Hey, oh my god, so come and
Speaker 3: listen to my poetry and I'll be on a panel
Speaker 3: as well with some other LATINX writers. So yeah, that's
Speaker 3: where you can find me and learn more about me.
Speaker 3: Oh also, I almost for I have two books. My
Speaker 3: first one is Ugly Music, and my second collection came
Speaker 3: out last year with Copper Canyon Press. It's called Good Monster,
Speaker 3: and you can find those where books are sold be
Speaker 3: like Bella, buy it independent booksellers.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, that's Bella's true triumph of Twilight one. She
Speaker 2: shops local.
Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, she says Amazon, No, thank you, I'm going
Speaker 1: into a brick and mortar store and buying local. The
Speaker 1: best way to support our show is to subscribe to
Speaker 1: our Patreon aka Matreon, where we release two bonus episodes
Speaker 1: every single month, centering an amazing genius Brilliant plus access
Speaker 1: to the entire back catalog, which is nearing two hundred episodes,
Speaker 1: so lots of hashtag content over there at patreon dot
Speaker 1: com slash Bechdel Cast. Also check out our link tree
Speaker 1: link tree slash Bechdel Cast for information about different things.
Speaker 1: If we have upcoming shows that'll be there. If we have,
Speaker 1: we have our letterboxed link on there, all kinds of stuff.
Speaker 1: And with that, let's irrevocably get in our rusty old
Speaker 1: red pickup truck. Uh huh and zoom zoom into the
Speaker 1: Twilight Sky. Okay, I don't know, Bye bye. The Bechdel
Speaker 1: Cast is a production of iHeartMedia, hosted by Caitlin Derante
Speaker 1: and Jamie Loftus, produced by Sophie Lickterman, edited by Mola Board.
Speaker 1: Our theme song was composed by Mike Kaplan with vocals
Speaker 1: by Katherine Voskresenski. Our logo and merch is designed by
Speaker 1: Jamie Loftus and a special thanks to Aristotle Assevedo. For
Speaker 1: more information about the podcast, please visit Linktree Slash Bechtelcast