Thursday, March 25, 2010

TWILIGHT ROUNDTABLE #1: The Cullens and Moral Culpability

From time to time, I think we need to discuss some of the larger issues surrounding Twilight. I can't always flesh these things out with only one brain, and only 2,000 words or so per entry. Together we are a smart group of adults, and we in no way need to feel bad about discussing the moral implications of YA fiction at length. It's okay, everybody. We're all okay. Post in the comments, and I will reproduce your thoughts here.

Zac:
Hey, here's a question: Edward and Carlisle (at least) were around at the beginning of the 20th century, and thus were around (and were vampires) during WWII. So why didn't they do anything about the Holocaust?

Obviously I'm thinking about Twilight a little too often.

Bridget: It seems kind of inconsistent, doesn't it? Veggie vamps who feel bad about hurting people not doing anything to stop innocent people from being brutally tortured and killed.

But then when you think about it, the Cullens didn't seem to show much concern for other people. They were all too pretty for their classmates at Forks High School, so it doesn't shock me that much.

But then, if Edward spent his early vampire days preying on douchebags, you'd think Hitler would be at the top of his list.

Zac: Especially when you consider that Edward's "adolescent rebellion" came about ten years after he became a vampire, so 1928? Depending on how long it lasted, it would have been a prime era for some Dexter-style vigilante fascist killing! What was he doing instead? Killing child molesters is the suggestion. Not that there's anything wrong with doing that (I mean, morally it is fraught with complication, which is what Dexter is about, but I'm saying once you've decided to become a killer of bad people because you can't help but kill, which is the basic proposition of both Dexter and this period of Edward's life, sort of) but isn't the greater sin genocide? Pretty much always? Edward has a bizarre moral code, or maybe Stephenie Meyer wasn't really thinking about the implications of her time-line.

Kira: dr. cullen seems like the only one who takes a superhero-type approach to caring about humans. none of the rest of them seem to care much either way. at least not enough to go out of their ways to seek out ways to help innocent people. it's sort of an interesting question (not really) - are they morally obligated to use their superhuman powers for good, or is it okay for
them to just not use them for evil? when we learn more about the volturi, we find out there are rules against doing things that reveal the presence of vampires to humans, but you'd think they could fight a bit of crime here and there without breaking too many rules...

the characters as they're written are so christian-y, i bet they all feel kinda nyeh about jews anyway. i mean, carlisle only saved hot white teenagers from dying, right? aside from esme? i'd bet there were plenty of homely jewish and black teenagers who could've been saved, but dr. whitey revealed his true colors with his choices. (and his true colors are white.)

(i think we can exclude alice from this latent, well-meaning racist slant. i'm sure she dated tons of black dudes, especially during the 60s, when you know she was dropping acid and getting freaky all the time at be-ins.)

Zac: Alice still dates black dudes all the the time; she and Jasper have an"open" situation going on. You can't fuck one person for literally eternity.

Renee: While writing a Twilight inspired story several weeks ago, I had a similar thought. I think it's for the same reason that the US didn't get involved much sooner when they easily could have. As selfish as it is, they didn't feel it was their fight. They don't seem very concerned about vampires like James and Victoria killing people either, unless it somehow affects Bella.

Kira: man, the more i think about it, the more i feel like if *I* were a vampire, and i was going to live forever, i would spend at least one human lifetime being a superhero. what an opportunity! even if you didn't have a "power" like some of the vampires, you'd still be a total bad-ass compared to normal humans.

if, hypothetically, i was turned into a vampire, being the person i am now, with all the same moral wiring, i don't think i would be able to just hide in a foggy place and pretend to be a normal citizen. fuck that. i'd go to, like, sudan and kick some mujahideen ass at night, and maybe hide out during the day, so as not to be overly conspicuous.

you could really do a lot of good, on a grander scale, with powers like that. i mean, batman is a force for (mostly) good, using only technology and some martial arts skills. he has no superhuman strength, no icy-yummy smelling [breath], no otherworldly hotness...it would be a piece of (blood) cake!

now that we're talking about it, it's pretty lame that carlisle is the only one doing anything for the humans they all profess to care about, and carlisle is totally doing it on a small scale. dude's been a doctor for longer than any doctor in the world and he's just a small town hospital doctor? lame, carlisle. he should use all his NEVER SLEEPING time to become an expert in something that requires that kind of superhuman time investment and actually make a real difference.

and he should force the rest of the family to, also. they've ALL got 24 hrs a day to devote to something. what the fuck do they do all night? book 4 suggests they fuck a bunch, which is kinda gross to imagine, but we can't just spend all our time fucking and pretending to be normal high school students, cullens and hales. do your parts!

alice and jasper could volunteer with autistic kids or something, since she's very friendly and he can read their thoughts and make them feel safe and happy. he'd have to work on his hunger, since he finds not eating people a challenge, but whatever. does jasper's power work over the phone? because, if so, he would be perfect working a suicide prevention hotline. no face-to-face contact will limit the chances of him accidentally killing someone.

rosalie should work with something not alive, since she's a sour bitch and no man, woman, child or shelter dog wants to deal with that. she can do river clean-up in the middle of the night. or pick up trash by the freeway. she wants to have a baby too much, so we definitely can't give her a job with kids, though she'd probably be a really devoted (and insane) Big Sister.

emmett is sporty and "funny" and fun, so maybe he can coach sports teams for kids and/or recovering drug addicts and the homeless and stuff. he'd be a rad Big Brother, too.

esme is maternal, but not in a creepy way like rosalie is, so she could take care of crack babies, or be a Big Sister, too. what is esme really like? she's not a terribly well fleshed out character, actually.

edward, since he's pretty broody, might need to just cruise around, reading minds and killing rapists, animal abusers and child molesters, probably. he doesn't seem especially good with people. he sure used a weird smothery tactic to woo bella.

it's decided. they are all assholes for not being more involved in making the world a better place. i say avoiding doing bad isn't enough. especially given how weirdly conflicted edward is about his very right to exist, he needs to get his head out of his ass and stop thinking about himself. THEY ALL DO. if there is a judeo-christian god who feels like they're hell-bound abominations, they should do everything in their considerable powers to tip the scale in their favor, right?

Rosanne: Hmm. While it doesn't seem that they do enough volunteering, isn't it like, priority number 1 for vampires not to be noticed? They don't want to be called out with their picture in the paper as "Greater Forks' Volunteer of the Month" and have Rosalie Hale day declared July 22nd. I think the vampire commandments begin and end with "thou shalt maintain a low profile."

Besides, vampires are kind of dicks. Essentially they're just a bunch of addicts looking out for their next score and their own preservation.

Emily:
stephenie meyer might just be too retarded to think of these simple facts. just saying.

Zac: I think Kira pretty much summed it up-- and I don't think the moral questions we've been pointing out are too obscure to have been on Stephenie Meyer's radar. It seems to suggest itself pretty easily, which I know because I started off on this tangent based on something I thought of while I was half awake yesterday morning. Charlie even says that Carlisle could be practicing medicine elsewhere. Like fucking Johns Hopkins working on gunshot victims, maybe? Or working in Chicago doing simultaneous heart-and-lung transplants? Basically anything other than removing splinters at the Forks Hospital? Kira, your career suggestions made me laugh, and are great. Suicide prevention hotline, especially. There is a suggestion in Book 4 that they fuck a lot? I can't wait for this Breaking Dawn shit!

Bridget: I talked to my friends about this at lunch today (the original question, that is), and some of them were convinced that Edward and Carlisle (and company?) would have too much trouble getting into Germany from the US. I ain't buyin it.

The more I think about it, and this might be obvious to the rest of you, but I think that most of the appeal of the series hinges on Edward (and to a lesser extent, his family) being almost totally fixated on Bella and indifferent to every other human in the world.

Elinore: Maybe Meyers doesn't believe in the Holocaust. She doesn't seem to be the brightest bulb in the chandelier. Inte den skarpaste kniven i lådan...

Renee: I don't think we've yet considered that this omission might be more of a reflection on Meyer's Mormonism. From what I've read, Mormons posthumously baptize people of many faiths(including a number of Holocaust victims) without consent. That displays an amazing amount of disrespect toward other religions. It's entirely possible that Meyer herself does not feel the Jews were worthy of saving (except by Jesus) and therefore it never occurred to her to have the Cullens do anything about it.

Zac: OH SNAP RENEE. Bringing out the big guns. I should say, by the way, w/r/t your earlier comment about the US and showing up late to the WWII party that it helps in these cases to avoid the standard IR perspective that states are unitary actors. FDR wanted to get involved in WWII much earlier than an isolationist Congress would allow. The Cullens in this case may be more equivalent to the Catholic Church, an actual unitary actor who chose to stay out of the Holocaust, despite it being in their backyard. I agree that the Mormon retrospective baptism thing is weird, and kind of a mind-boggling act of hubris, but I suppose when you look at it from the perspective of a True Believer it's sort of a nice thing to do.

And I think that, at this stage in the game, it is unfair to ascribe much of anything to S. Meyer's Mormonism. I don't see those specific religious influences-- sexual repression is sort of a common Judeo-Christian thread. It's entirely possible that Stephenie Meyer "does not feel the Jews were worthy of saving" but it is also entirely possible, and probably more likely, that she feels the normal way, that the Holocaust was an unfathomable tragedy. It's probably too hyperbolic of us to ascribe genocidal sympathies to the author.

Elinore, I'm glad you're making this discussion multilingual. That translates to "Not the sharpest knife in the drawer," in case anyone was wondering. I'm glad we seem to share idioms with the Swedes, if not sexual mores. Just kidding around with Elinore, I know you need to get back to your orgy.

Bridget, I don't think it's outside the realm of possibility that the Cullens could have been dropped into France, dressed as civilians, a la Inglourious Basterds. They could have even come ashore at Normandy-- they can hold their breath underwater, right? I think we're all with you that the general thrust of the novel is at such a scope that these questions don't really need to be considered, but they do in a "bigger picture" sort of way. This blog is at least concerned with the bigger picture, even if S. Meyer is not.

Oh, and Rosanne-- fuck their priorities.

Sabinlerose: Others have said it, but I think its because they the majority of the Cullens just didn't give a damn. Edward was probably to busy being a "hero" that he didn't care about a war.

It leaves questions about other vampires though. You would think that the people eating vampires would have flocked to the war. Perhaps they did, and we just don't know about it because of a lack of "Vampire History" that doesn't include the Cullens take.

Another side thought. WWII is something that always seems to be sidestepped in "Modern" setting fantasy. Provided it won't have any direct impact on the plot.
I don't believe the Dresden Files ever touched on the subject. Despite the fact its something that would have been impacting on the White Council.

Zac: I have no idea what the hell most of that means, but you know, I'm new to all of this.

Have something to add? Comment and I'll add you to our dialogue. If you want your name to link somewhere, let me know on Twitter or here or wherever. We should do more of these.

No comments: