Twilosophy – Sad enough to quit reading the Twilight Saga?
Dear Twilosophy Majors-
I recently had an email conversation with an old friend who has just finished reading Twilight. I was excited (of course! a new convert!) and asked her if she’d finished the entire saga. She told me no, and that she decided to stop at the end of Twilight because it was consuming her thought life, her real life and making her depressed and sad. I was quite taken aback and wasn’t really sure what to say because OF COURSE I had been emotionally affected by the series how could you not be? And isn’t that normal? But that never once made me want to quit, in fact quite the opposite. I HAD to know how it ended. I had to know that even through it all: the drama, the conflict, the separation the October, November, December, January for God’s sake, that Bella and Edward would be together in the end. That they really would make it.
Which got me to thinking… can a book (or any work of art for that matter) be “good” if it doesn’t make you feel something?
Think about your favorite song, your favorite movie, your favorite piece of art… why do you like it? Sure music can be fun to listen to, movies entertaining, and art “pretty” but at the end of the day if it’s emotionally vacant it doesn’t stay with you. The stuff you connect with, the stuff that becomes your favorite speaks to you! I’ve always said what matters most to me about a piece of music are the lyrics. They’re the heart of the song for me because that’s what I remember and what gives me something to relate to. When I’m sad I wanna listen to Joni Mitchell for a reason, when I’m nostalgic for home I listen to Jimmy Eat World for a reason.
It’s the same with the Twilight Saga, it has all those components that we can relate to in our lives: Twilight has that first love jitters, New Moon has the deep dark sadness of losing someone, Eclipse has that feeling of being torn between two things you really care about and finally Breaking Dawn takes us in about every direction. But that’s why we love it! If it was a bland sugar coated fairy tale we wouldn’t all be sitting around here every day shooting the shit. God knows there’s a lot of other stuff to be doing, but because we’ve somehow all been personally touched by the Saga we want to discuss it and find other people like us here who can relate.
Don’t get me wrong I commend my friend for knowing herself enough to stop if something, even a book, was being personally destructive for her… but I also wonder if we don’t have those kinds of reactions to art or life in general what would the world be like? A lot of lukewarm moments, boring taupe walls and Kenny G songs?
Painting this wall red!
Themoonisdown
PS Stay tuned for the next Twilosophy installment when I break down the rest of my email discussion, involving relationships in and out of the Twi-dom
PPS Read other Twilosophy lectures
What do you think? Too emotional, must quit? Or must go on?
Update: LTT & LTR were mentioned (along w/ some of our other fav blogs) in the Greek version of Glamour mag. Weird? Crazy? Awesome! Whatever.. we love it! LTT/LTR mention in Greek Glamour
Tags: , art, Bella, Breaking Dawn, Eclipse, Edward, edward cullen, emotions, film, Jimmy Eat World, Joni Mitchell, literature, movies, Music, New Moon, Philosophy, relationships, Sad, Stephenie Meyer, Twilight, Twilosophy
