Flanagan Strikes Again

[yendi]

There's a lot of stupidity in this essay by Caitlin Flanagan on Twilight.

That's pretty much a given, seeing that the essay is by Flanagan. Likewise, it shouldn't be a surprise that the real point of the essay is Yet Another Example of how Fucked Up Flanagan Is. That said, there are many special examples of stupidity, as she continues to think that she has any insight whatsoever into contemporary teen girls by virtue of once having been a teen girl herself (a trait she shares with billions of others, most of whom are a lot less self-involved than she is).

That said, my favorite part (although far from the dumbest in the essay) is this bit:

"Reading the book, I sometimes experienced what I imagine long-married men must feel when they get an unexpected glimpse at pornography: slingshot back to a world of sensation that, through sheer force of will and dutiful acceptance of life’s fortunes, I thought I had subdued."

Yes, Cait, it's true. Being married means giving up porn, and even giving up sex. All of us hubbies have this vague recollection of porn, and when we accidentally encounter it -- say, after clicking on the wrong item in some spam, or while raiding our children's room looking for their secret pot stash -- we instantly flash back, like Nick Nolte in The Prince of Tides, to a time when we were younger, more innocent, and on a voyage of discovery towards the magical concept of an orgasm.

Comments

[brendastarr.livejournal.com]

Nah, being married means that you're not watching porn alone anymore.

[littlefrogling.livejournal.com]

"Twilight is fantastic. It’s a page-turner that pops out a lurching, frightening ending I never saw coming." Holy crap.

I admit it, I read Twilight. I read the whole series. They're predictable, shallow, dull, and truly without plot or character development. And I *like* young adult fiction. The only part of the book that makes it mildly a page-turner is because Meyer is a complete cock-block, and you keep racing ahead for the hot lusty girl-on-vampire sex scene that you know must be coming (and which totally doesn't).

Oh, and this gem: "Bella is an old-fashioned heroine: bookish, smart, brave, considerate of others’ emotions, and naturally competent in the domestic arts..." Great, Bella is the modern role-model. Indecisive, completely self-sacrificing, and no educational or career goals. Half the plot is her and Edward arguing about how she doesn't want to go to college, she just wants to be his undead sex-kitten.

(*gag*)

[cissa.livejournal.com]

I read "Twilight" and despite its fabulous effects on my chronic insomnia, I will not read any more.

I was a stupid, self-involved and self-indulgent teen girl... and I'm pretty sure that EVEN THEN, Bella would have irritated the piss out of me. Let alone Edward being a creepy stalker.

Terrible, terrible book. And Bella is no sort of heroine at all, to my thinking.

[pixelfish.livejournal.com]

Man, I think you are right in that we are seeing Flanagan project her own issues. In the second paragraph, she bemoans divorce, because all other things aside, oh noes, a kid must confront their parents as sexual beings, and that it introduces into the household passions and jealousies that have long gone to ground in middle-aged parents. Um. Yeah. You don't get to have passions UNLESS you get a divorce, apparently. (My parents are fucked up in their own way, but guess what, I knew they boinked on a regular basis, and strangely enough this idea didn't disturb me. In fact, it made me feel LESS worried about divorce.) The subtext of THAT paragraph is Don't let your kids understand about mature passions until they have to deal with it by themselves as adults. What-the-fuck-ever. Protect them from any hint of the negotiation mature adults have to do to even get a relationship off the ground in the first place. Make them believe that married relationships spring up perfectly from the ground, like Athena from Zeus's head, fully formed. Pretty much hide all the infrastructure and seams of being an adult in a relationship from your kids. That's what that paragraph says to me, and I think it's as weirdly sheltering as any other notion about protecting kids from sexuality.

And that's JUST the second paragraph. I mostly skimmed the rest, and my brain stuttered over the final paragraph where she describes the "useless side-angle-side" theorem in geometry --which coincidentally my boyfriend and I were using just last week in order to animate something in 3DSMax--and how that bit of knowledge is useless in comparison to how she and her boyfriend felt ditching school and I sigh. I'd bang my head against the desk, but I have a ferocious head and chest cold and my sinuses are already killing me. Dissing geometry, clinging to the notion that married adults should hide all evidences of sexuality and relationship infrastructure, glorifying boys noticing you as the validation you need....argh. There was a bit where she described reading as being essential for girls to work out the big problems and develop emotional landscapes in their heads, but I couldn't applaud her for that because she patently denied that guys could ever work that way too. In fact, she seems to view the internal male landscape as a mythical beast. God forbid guys get lost in books too.

So much wrong here.

[kizlj.livejournal.com]

the thing that puzzleconfuses me is that Flanagan started sane. Her early writing had an interestingly nuanced take on modern domestic/feminist issues. But her all her recent stuff is just headbangingly wrong, and anyone who *seriously* thinks Twilight had an unexpected, "lurching, frightening ending" is just not operating with all brain lobes.

[kizlj.livejournal.com]

"Twilight centers on a boy who loves a girl so much that he refuses to defile her ..."

*chokes* Oh dear god. wait till poor Cait reads book 4.

[nishar.livejournal.com]

And here I thought the point of marriage was to have sex more often. :P