Twilight is a four part romance-fantasy themed novel. The author Stephanie Meyers penned the four part series in the following order; Twilight, New Moon, Eclipse and Breaking Dawn. Three of the four novels have already turned into motion pictures and have generated a following like no other. Teenagers and young adults everywhere go through fanatical lengths to be a part of the phenomenon, attending Twilight conferences or joining fan groups. The young actors that play the main characters have essentially become bigger than life over night due to the cult-like following of the Twilight series.
The story is set in Forks Washington, and Isabella Swan (Bella) moves in with her father Charlie in this rainy, dreary American small town. In her high school is the Cullen clan, a group of adopted children to the town’s resident doctor. The group seems tight knit and they stick to themselves, they appear snobby and weird to the rest of the town. However Bella is intrigued by this and very much infatuated with Edward Cullen. The feeling is mutual but much to the dismay of the Cullen clan who seem very adamant about getting close to others. This is because if people got close to them, they would get close to the long guarded secret of them being vampires. Young love prevails and Edward and Bella stand against all adversaries, she becomes accepted by the modern aged vegan vampires. Being a fragile human in a world full of vampires has its share of life threatening risk, and this is what Edward, Bella and the Cullen clan have to face to keep their secret safe.
The characters may change, but the love stories remain the same. From the fairytale love of Cinderella, Rapunzel to Romeo and Juliet, our society is in love with being in love. Young girls have graduated from the cliché Disney fairytales to fantasies such as Twilight. This enormous following proves that young girls are still being deceived into believing one day they’ll find their knight in shining armour. The distressing part about this is some young ones cannot differentiate fantasy and reality. They go through great lengths to obtain a love like Romeo and Juliet or Bella and Edward, only to find it’s essentially impossible. Love within itself is not impossible, but there are real life obstacles that have to be faced in order to reach this level of affection and admiration for another person. The fairytales are misleading when they depict the quality of undying love that these young people have for each other virtually overnight. The struggles they do face throughout the movie are ones that are no match for the young love the two characters exert. Twilight feeds the idea of taming the “bad guy” or the guy out of reach, girls will attempt to swoon guys because they like the idea of them, instead of the individual himself. Girls don’t realize that this trend has its own repercussions because it’s continuing to kill what they really crave, chivalry. They date the guys they know will break their hearts, in hopes they’ll be the one that makes them change their ways.
These fantasies do nothing but provide young girls with unrealistic expectations of what a boy should do and how he should act, eliminating the real life struggles a relationship involves. Men are stuck in love purgatory while woman continue to merge realities of love and fantasy.
