by Corey Arterian

It’s hard to ignore the vampire-romance series Twilight written by Stephanie Meyer, even if you want to. It’s even harder for me to wrap my head around the idea that there are people, hordes of them, who revere the book as a superior piece of literature.

The book has sold 17 million copies worldwide and the film adaptation made close to $70 million in its first weekend. This is ridiculous. That is the only word to describe the entire series and its devoted fan following: ridiculous.  You may have seen someone wearing a ‘Team Edward’ or ‘Team Jacob’ shirt, a reference to two of the main characters.  Facebook has also become an outlet for Twilight fans to proclaim their love for Edward Cullen (Status Update: [Name of Twilight Fan] is I WISH I HAD AN EDWARD CULLEN!). One particularly sad blurb on the popular site fmylife.com caught my eye: “Today, my girlfriend dumped me proclaiming she wanted someone more like her ‘Edward.’ I asked her who Edward was. She held up a copy of her ‘Twilight’ book. She was talking about a fictional vampire. FML.

I found the series entertaining, mostly because it made me feel like a superb writer while simultaneously making me laugh out loud at its quality. The writing is mediocre, at best. Stephen King recently said that Stephenie Meyer “can’t write worth a darn.” This statement caused an uproar among Twilight lovers who came to Meyer’s defense via the Internet.

This is a prime example of the blind faith of Meyer’s fan base. I can understand why people would read the book; it is a page-turner in all of its absurdity. As USC sophomore Morgan Dameron put it, “there are no characters in that book, only outlines.” While fellow sophomore Lauren Perez agrees with Dameron, she opines that its popularity might be a good thing, “as long as it gets people into a bookstore.”  But English professor Emily Anderson disagrees with Perez’s sentiment, lamenting “that the mere act of picking up a book and flipping through some pages is something to be celebrated.” She continues, “Stephanie Meyer tapped into something that the public wanted, which is rather disturbing.” So, why are these books so popular?

Freshman Louis Lucero thinks he knows why: “Edward [the hero/vampire] is what all little girls want.” Now, here’s my main problem with the series. I can look past the irrationality of vampires sparkling in sunlight, and I can look past the horrific birth scene in the fourth book, but I cannot accept this idea that the vampire, Edward Cullen, is the ideal boyfriend.

This viewpoint seems to place me in the minority. Many readers overlook the countless times when Edward’s ‘protective love’ of the heroine, Bella Swan, borders on abuse. One example: he takes the engine out of her car so she can’t visit her werewolf friend, Jacob. Most Twilight fans defend this act by saying that Edward was merely protecting her. OK, let me get this straight: Bella is dating a fricken’ vampire, and yet it’s too dangerous for her to visit a werewolf? For those of you who don’t know much about the series, let that idea sink in.

But, there is something more to it than just the fans’ idolatry of Edward. To be painfully blunt, the heroine of the book, Bella Swan, is stupid. Just consider that she has decided to date a bloodthirsty, undead monster. That’s pretty stupid. Professor Anderson states that throughout the book Bella “is always physically weaker than the people around her.” She is also essentially a highly concentrated form of the damsel in distress with no character, unless she has a male hero to give her one. When her beautiful Edward leaves her, she turns to Jacob to give her some kind of personality. In fact, the book skips the months where Bella had to deal with her post-breakup pain alone; the reader jumps back in when Bella rediscovers Jacob. She is merely a counterpart to the male presence…even though she is the supposed protagonist. Sophomore Lauren Perez sums my sentiment up succinctly, “[Twilight] takes a blow at the last 80 years or so of feminism.”

Despite all this, it remains popular and intrigues many. Senior Hannah Kim admitted, “I sort of want to read it because it started such a phenomenon.” And so the madness continues…