I should mention before I begin that I've never read Twilight or any of its sequals. Don't particularly want to either, so this is going to be "second hand" feelings I'm discussing.
With that out of the way, I came to a rather distressing realisation last night. One of those realisations where one peice of logic you believe in disproves another. You see, a lot of people complain about Twilight's 'message': girls should make themselves totally subserviant to the dominant males in their lives and as long as they're submissive enough, respect marriage and, perhaps most importently, a virgin said males will fight over them. It has been argued that the novels and now movies are teaching girls and young women that they are not as importent as the local men are and the only way thier lives have meaning is to attatch themselves to a convinient Y chromasone.
Up until now I've always agreed with this argument, after all we as a culture are beyond this.. arn't we? Well yes we are and it would seem a very bad thing to raise a generation of powerless women who don't even realise what a shame it is that they are not contributing to the human race and Twilight should be critisised for teaching this.
Except, there's one problem with that critisism. It's a problem we as gamers all know very well: "violent videogames don't make children into serial killers" or put more generally "fictional events don't influence people's lives".
Now don't get me wrong, there are other considerations here and this isn't a black and white topic; for example somebody with a pre-disposition to violence who happens to be playing.. uh.. Blood Money may make their next kill with Fiber Wire. This is the basis for the whole "movies/videogames turn our children evil" argument and I think there may be some sort of reverse interaction here; girls with a predisposision to submission to males may have this movie confirm that it's ok... though no more so than Die Hard confirms it's ok to kill whoever's being mean to you.
Now I know it's the cool thing right now to rage at Twilight and how awful it is, which is why I deliberatly havn't mentioned stories, characters, plot or.. well anything specific, really. As I said I havn't read the books so I'm in no position to discuss whether they stand up on their own as "art" (yes I am one of the people who think you must try something before judging it fully) though I do know that the author is capable of telling a good story (I really liked The Host). I just wanted to share this realisation that although hating Twilight is very popular among most people and especially so among gamers one of if not the only argument we use to defend our hobby can also be used, almost word for word to defend Twilight's "corrupting" influence on girls and young women.
So I guess I'm a little short on discussion value in this thread, sorry about that. If you're running dry on creativity though try answering this: do you think my argument has merit? And perhaps more interestingly, if it doesn't have merit then why does 'teaching' women to be submissive in a book somehow "work" yet 'teaching' children via games to go chop up their friends with a kitchen knife "doesn't work"?
With that out of the way, I came to a rather distressing realisation last night. One of those realisations where one peice of logic you believe in disproves another. You see, a lot of people complain about Twilight's 'message': girls should make themselves totally subserviant to the dominant males in their lives and as long as they're submissive enough, respect marriage and, perhaps most importently, a virgin said males will fight over them. It has been argued that the novels and now movies are teaching girls and young women that they are not as importent as the local men are and the only way thier lives have meaning is to attatch themselves to a convinient Y chromasone.
Up until now I've always agreed with this argument, after all we as a culture are beyond this.. arn't we? Well yes we are and it would seem a very bad thing to raise a generation of powerless women who don't even realise what a shame it is that they are not contributing to the human race and Twilight should be critisised for teaching this.
Except, there's one problem with that critisism. It's a problem we as gamers all know very well: "violent videogames don't make children into serial killers" or put more generally "fictional events don't influence people's lives".
Now don't get me wrong, there are other considerations here and this isn't a black and white topic; for example somebody with a pre-disposition to violence who happens to be playing.. uh.. Blood Money may make their next kill with Fiber Wire. This is the basis for the whole "movies/videogames turn our children evil" argument and I think there may be some sort of reverse interaction here; girls with a predisposision to submission to males may have this movie confirm that it's ok... though no more so than Die Hard confirms it's ok to kill whoever's being mean to you.
Now I know it's the cool thing right now to rage at Twilight and how awful it is, which is why I deliberatly havn't mentioned stories, characters, plot or.. well anything specific, really. As I said I havn't read the books so I'm in no position to discuss whether they stand up on their own as "art" (yes I am one of the people who think you must try something before judging it fully) though I do know that the author is capable of telling a good story (I really liked The Host). I just wanted to share this realisation that although hating Twilight is very popular among most people and especially so among gamers one of if not the only argument we use to defend our hobby can also be used, almost word for word to defend Twilight's "corrupting" influence on girls and young women.
So I guess I'm a little short on discussion value in this thread, sorry about that. If you're running dry on creativity though try answering this: do you think my argument has merit? And perhaps more interestingly, if it doesn't have merit then why does 'teaching' women to be submissive in a book somehow "work" yet 'teaching' children via games to go chop up their friends with a kitchen knife "doesn't work"?
