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kiki_engNote: Spoilers for the Twilight films, Dracula (1931), The Black Cat, The Raven (1935), The Wolf Man, Murders in the Rue Morgue, She-Wolf of London (1946), the third season of N.C.I.S., and Monty Python and the Holy Grail.
Twilight is something that I really enjoy, but I'm necessarily interacting with the text in a way that matches up with authorial intent. I'm a fan of the films, not the books - I haven't read them and don't intend to - and, I just wrote that I was a fan of Twilight. It will all be okay. The thing is that I am a fan of the Twilight films. I saw the last two films in theatre and really, genuinely enjoyed that viewing experience. There are a lot of things that I find problematic about Twilight, though. While I enjoy the films it is equally true that I find them horrifying.
Horror's kind of a key word there and how I watch Twilight has a lot in common with how I watch a good chunk of old horror films. Bela Lugosi, for anyone who doesn't know, was an actor. He was famous for playing Dracula and was typecast as a horror villain. He died in 1956 and one of the things about watching his films now, and other films of that same period and genre that he's known for, is that a lot of the things that I find terrible and horrifying about those films aren't things that were intended to be; they're the racism and sexism and so on that are present in those films.
Bela Lugosi's 1931 Dracula and Twilight film 4a have a similar scene actually, where watching it I went something like, Noooooooo. Why isn't she being included in this discussion? Why are you excluding her from discussions about her health and safety? What is this?
Twilight and that genre also both have this amazing cheese factor. The first Twilight film is full of so many things that are technically terrible - my mind's flashing to the visible lines in the actors' make-up and the jarring editing of Bella's hospital scene with the dancing oxygen lines - and there's a kind of similar feeling to be had with older techniques or special effects. Lon Chaney Jr.'s transformation in The Wolf Man is something where I'm very aware of the process of putting that sequence together.
There are also lines and moments in these films that are just so cheesy. I have the same kind of feelings when Boris Karloff pulls out his Satanist's bible in The Black Cat as I do when suddenly all the pews at the wedding are empty. Boris Karloff is a bad guy, you guys! It is like Edward and Bella are the only ones there! It is amazing and delicious.
You know that the male protagonist in Murders in the Rue Morgue is clever, because he thinks that there might be something to eccentric professor Bela Lugosi's evolution thing. Edward is sensitive because he plays the piano and likes classical music and James Dean faces at everything in the first film.
There's this whole thing about blood in Rue Morgue, where eccentric professor Bela Lugosi is trying to find good blood for his wacky experiments, and you know what? He doesn't find good blood until he goes after an upperclasswoman. Frankly, I think they are trying to say something about purity and shit. There are too many white flowy dresses in that film for that not to be an angle. Also: there is torture porn. It's kind of impressive, like the unexpected blood bath in film 4a. When I watched the trailer for that shit I kept waiting for the blood bath to begin and then it never did. In the film it totally does. Edward gnaws through her flesh to assist in the whole child-birthing procedure, which is going terribly wrong, and then when she dies he just has so many feelings and is so unable to accept this development that he starts biting Bella at evenly placed intervals, mutilating her corpse serial-killer-style. (Does anyone remember that episode of N.C.I.S. where Tony's being framed and they lift his teeth marks off of this lady's leg?) He just wants her to wake up! (But still.)
There's also this thing in a few films where Bela Lugosi creeps on this woman that is much younger than him and involved with someone else. [He does this in The Raven (1935) and that thing with Karloff where shit explodes and he dies nobly*.] He stares, broodily. It is kind of a familiar look.
One of my favorite parts of 4a was the credits that, assinesofinsanity pointed out at the time, have really jarring light shifts. The screen goes between black, red, and white backgrounds. It reminds me a little bit of the llama section of Holy Grail's opening credits.
My imaginary version of film 4b is nothing but Bella on a killing rampage. I am looking forward to it, though I suspect that I'm going to be disappointed by it in the same way I was by She-Wolf of London (1946). (I wanted to see the young woman transform into a bloodthirsty monster and then she didn't and it was so disappointing. She's engaged and pulls a thing similar to Edward, actually, where she is all "No! I am a monster! We can not be!" There's also some serious gender skeeviness in She-Wolf, especially when compared to other werewolf films- which already have their own skeeviness.)
I feel so weird having written that I'm a fan of the Twilight films, when, okay, the highlight for me of seeing the third film in theatre (alone, opening night, in a packed room) was when the small child sitting in front of me mocked the dialogue. I don't feel like I have a very conventional fannish relationship with the films, because I am so aware of there being things that are problematic about them and I mostly make fun of them. They make me gleeful and happy most of the time, though, so I don't really know how else to describe it. It's complicated. Some of those things that make me laugh or grin are things that are intended to do that.
There are some really strong similarities between Twilight and a number of old horror films, and I feel like I'm really only skimming the surface here, that there are so many more things that can be pulled out and examined in this comparison and a lot more detail to be gone into with this. It's a comparison that feels really dead on; the Twilight franchise and that genre of horror that Bela Lugosi spent a fair amount of his career acting in have a lot in common. They're both deeply problematic, especially with respect to their treatment of women. They're both cheesy and contain an intended thread of the weird - the supernatural or the horrific. They both feel very genre-y, very entrenched in what they are, and terrible things happen in them. They're also unintentionally cheesy and horrifying. The Twilight films for all that they are a romance series and have a very different intended focus than that genre of horror have a lot in common with it. It's a very similar viewing experience for me, which is to say that I spend a lot of time both grinning ridiculously and face-palming.
*The Black Cat
Twilight is something that I really enjoy, but I'm necessarily interacting with the text in a way that matches up with authorial intent. I'm a fan of the films, not the books - I haven't read them and don't intend to - and, I just wrote that I was a fan of Twilight. It will all be okay. The thing is that I am a fan of the Twilight films. I saw the last two films in theatre and really, genuinely enjoyed that viewing experience. There are a lot of things that I find problematic about Twilight, though. While I enjoy the films it is equally true that I find them horrifying.
Horror's kind of a key word there and how I watch Twilight has a lot in common with how I watch a good chunk of old horror films. Bela Lugosi, for anyone who doesn't know, was an actor. He was famous for playing Dracula and was typecast as a horror villain. He died in 1956 and one of the things about watching his films now, and other films of that same period and genre that he's known for, is that a lot of the things that I find terrible and horrifying about those films aren't things that were intended to be; they're the racism and sexism and so on that are present in those films.
Bela Lugosi's 1931 Dracula and Twilight film 4a have a similar scene actually, where watching it I went something like, Noooooooo. Why isn't she being included in this discussion? Why are you excluding her from discussions about her health and safety? What is this?
Twilight and that genre also both have this amazing cheese factor. The first Twilight film is full of so many things that are technically terrible - my mind's flashing to the visible lines in the actors' make-up and the jarring editing of Bella's hospital scene with the dancing oxygen lines - and there's a kind of similar feeling to be had with older techniques or special effects. Lon Chaney Jr.'s transformation in The Wolf Man is something where I'm very aware of the process of putting that sequence together.
There are also lines and moments in these films that are just so cheesy. I have the same kind of feelings when Boris Karloff pulls out his Satanist's bible in The Black Cat as I do when suddenly all the pews at the wedding are empty. Boris Karloff is a bad guy, you guys! It is like Edward and Bella are the only ones there! It is amazing and delicious.
You know that the male protagonist in Murders in the Rue Morgue is clever, because he thinks that there might be something to eccentric professor Bela Lugosi's evolution thing. Edward is sensitive because he plays the piano and likes classical music and James Dean faces at everything in the first film.
There's this whole thing about blood in Rue Morgue, where eccentric professor Bela Lugosi is trying to find good blood for his wacky experiments, and you know what? He doesn't find good blood until he goes after an upperclasswoman. Frankly, I think they are trying to say something about purity and shit. There are too many white flowy dresses in that film for that not to be an angle. Also: there is torture porn. It's kind of impressive, like the unexpected blood bath in film 4a. When I watched the trailer for that shit I kept waiting for the blood bath to begin and then it never did. In the film it totally does. Edward gnaws through her flesh to assist in the whole child-birthing procedure, which is going terribly wrong, and then when she dies he just has so many feelings and is so unable to accept this development that he starts biting Bella at evenly placed intervals, mutilating her corpse serial-killer-style. (Does anyone remember that episode of N.C.I.S. where Tony's being framed and they lift his teeth marks off of this lady's leg?) He just wants her to wake up! (But still.)
There's also this thing in a few films where Bela Lugosi creeps on this woman that is much younger than him and involved with someone else. [He does this in The Raven (1935) and that thing with Karloff where shit explodes and he dies nobly*.] He stares, broodily. It is kind of a familiar look.
One of my favorite parts of 4a was the credits that, as
sinesofinsanity pointed out at the time, have really jarring light shifts. The screen goes between black, red, and white backgrounds. It reminds me a little bit of the llama section of Holy Grail's opening credits.My imaginary version of film 4b is nothing but Bella on a killing rampage. I am looking forward to it, though I suspect that I'm going to be disappointed by it in the same way I was by She-Wolf of London (1946). (I wanted to see the young woman transform into a bloodthirsty monster and then she didn't and it was so disappointing. She's engaged and pulls a thing similar to Edward, actually, where she is all "No! I am a monster! We can not be!" There's also some serious gender skeeviness in She-Wolf, especially when compared to other werewolf films- which already have their own skeeviness.)
I feel so weird having written that I'm a fan of the Twilight films, when, okay, the highlight for me of seeing the third film in theatre (alone, opening night, in a packed room) was when the small child sitting in front of me mocked the dialogue. I don't feel like I have a very conventional fannish relationship with the films, because I am so aware of there being things that are problematic about them and I mostly make fun of them. They make me gleeful and happy most of the time, though, so I don't really know how else to describe it. It's complicated. Some of those things that make me laugh or grin are things that are intended to do that.
There are some really strong similarities between Twilight and a number of old horror films, and I feel like I'm really only skimming the surface here, that there are so many more things that can be pulled out and examined in this comparison and a lot more detail to be gone into with this. It's a comparison that feels really dead on; the Twilight franchise and that genre of horror that Bela Lugosi spent a fair amount of his career acting in have a lot in common. They're both deeply problematic, especially with respect to their treatment of women. They're both cheesy and contain an intended thread of the weird - the supernatural or the horrific. They both feel very genre-y, very entrenched in what they are, and terrible things happen in them. They're also unintentionally cheesy and horrifying. The Twilight films for all that they are a romance series and have a very different intended focus than that genre of horror have a lot in common with it. It's a very similar viewing experience for me, which is to say that I spend a lot of time both grinning ridiculously and face-palming.
*The Black Cat
