Friday, September 17, 2010

BLOGGING ECLIPSE pt. 20: Shape-Shifting Toward Bethlehem

When we last left our villains, Jacob had confessed to Bella that he loved her and wanted to be with her. Tell us something we don't know, Jacob. Actually, don't bother, and just kill yourself instead. Okay? Previous entries can be found in the directory.

Chapter 15: Wager

Bella stands there dumbfounded. Jacob grins like an idiot. Fuck this guy. Seriously. Bella turns to leave, but Jacob grabs her shoulders and spins her around. Strike one. Jacob asks if she wants him “to go away and never see [her] again.” Obviously she says no, she doesn't want that.

Jacob grinned again. “See.”

No, I don't see. (“You don't want me to go away forever or die, therefore you must want to be with me romantically.”-Jacob Black) Bella tries to explain that she wants him around for different reasons than he wants her around. Seems like a pretty easy concept to explain, right? Jacob doesn't get it. (“There are two kinds of people in this world: people who have no interest in me, and people who want to fuck me.”-Jacob Black) Not that Bella really helps him out with her clarification.

“You're family. I love you, but I'm not in love with you.”

Nothing says unambiguous rejection like a bland and meaningless phrase from romantic comedies! Jacob runs his fingers across Bella's check. Strike two. Bella tells him to back off. He says no.

“You decide, Bella. You can have me the way I am – bad behavior included – or not at all.”

NOT AT ALL. NOT AT ALL! I'll be your friend, as long as I can molest you whenever I want! Sure, good deal! Jacob says he recently decided that he's “not giving up.” He recently decided that? What was he doing before? If that was giving up, what does trying look like? Do I want to know?

“There really is something irresistible about a lost cause.”

You know who feels the same way? Rapists! Serial killers! Fucking Klan members! Bella says Edward is her “whole life” and Jacob draws an analogy that makes him sound like an unplanned pregnancy.

“Not anymore. Maybe he was [your whole life] once, but he left. And now he's just going to have to deal with the consequence of that choice – me.”

In some ways I guess Jacob has a point – Bella should have metaphorically aborted him when she had the chance. But it's bothersome that Jacob says Edward is the one who has to deal with him, like Bella's feelings don't register. Jacob's behavior throughout this chapter exhibits that attitude – I've argued before that Bella Swan is not a passive cipher like some critics contest, but Jacob sees her that way. That said, you know, there's bigger shit going on; all of this like a getting a mosquito bite while someone is stabbing you.

Jacob takes Bella's chin in his hands (I was going to call strike three but this is like a foul tip, prolonging the inevitable) and swears a weird oath:

“Until your heart stops beating, Bella,” he said. “I'll be here – fighting.”

Bella says her “heartbeats are numbered” - like the irony was lost on Jacob before. Was the irony lost on Jacob before? I guess it probably was. Anyway, suddenly “resolution” forms in Jacob's eyes. Fuck.

“N –” I started to object, but it was too late.
His lips crushed into mine, stopping my protest. He kissed me angrily, roughly, his other hand gripping tight around the back of my neck, making escape impossible.


AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!! STRIKE FUCKING THREE MOTHERFUCKER! This is an unquestionably horrifying moment, but S. Meyer inexplicably seems to be trying to make it sexy:

His mouth was soft, despite the anger, his lips molding to mine in a warm, unfamiliar way.

Talk about your silver-linings on mushroom-clouds. Speaking of which, will someone drop a nuclear bomb on La Push?

I grabbed at his face, trying to push it away, failing again...His lips forced mine open, and I could feel his hot breath in my mouth.

You are a fucking dead man, Jacob. Remember that scene in Pulp Fiction when Bruce Willis and Ving Rhames escape from Zed's basement and Ving Rhames says he's going to have one of his guys go to work on Zed with a pair of pliers and a blowtorch? I'm not a generally violent person, but Quentin Tarantino really knows how to access the revenge fantasy section of my lizard brain. And I really want him to do something about Jacob right now.

Bella's on it, though; she breaks away and punches Jacob in the face. YES. Unfortunately, she ends up breaking her hand against his jaw. Why can't you give us even a moment of catharsis, S. Meyer? Bella refuses his offer of help and starts walking away, moaning in pain. “As soon as I got away from him, Alice would see me. She'd send somebody to pick me up,” she says. And then Alice will double back and tear Jacob's head from his neck like she does James in the Twilight movie! Bella herself tells Jacob she hopes Edward “snaps his neck” as he follows her.

“I hate you, Jacob Black.”
“That's good. Hate is a passionate emotion.”
“I'll give you passionate,” I muttered under my breath. “Murder, the ultimate crime of passion.”


I love that rapier wit! (Insert joke about Jacob being a rape-ier twit.) Jacob says it must have been better than “kissing a rock.” “Not even remotely close,” she says.

“You're just mad. I don't have any experience with this kind of thing, but I thought it was pretty incredible myself.”

A rapist is born. Could this get any more gross? Yes, it can get more gross. Jacob makes another plea to be her man. “I never left,” he says.

“Just think about it, Bella.”
“No,” I said stubbornly.
“You will. Tonight. And I'll be thinking about you while you're thinking about me.”


There is not a violent death violent enough for Jacob to die. There's a great episode of Sports Night where Natalie, a female TV producer, gets flashed in a locker room by a football star. Jeremy Goodwin (played by the great Joshua Malina) confronts the guy after, and the prick says something about the look on her face “when she got a load of me.” This happens:

Patrick: I'm six-four, 230 pounds. Bench press three bills, run a four-forty. What, you want to dance with me, junior?
Jeremy: You touch her again, I'm gonna have you killed. You understand what I'm saying? I'm going to pay someone fifty dollars to have you killed.


Jeremy Goodwin is my hero. Sports Night is great show by the way, has everyone seen it? You really need to see it.

ANYWAY, there is really no limit to Jacob's self-delusion. What's amazing is not how easily he deludes himself but the lightning speed with which he erects new justifications every time Bella tells him to fuck off and die. He now says he thinks Bella is being “overly defensive.” He would say something about the lady protesting too much if he wasn't a functionally illiterate brute.

At some point Bella gets in Jacob's car and accepts a ride home – I don't understand why she would do such a thing unless she was planning to grab the steering wheel and jerk them both into traffic like Cameron Diaz in Vanilla Sky. It's maddening to realize this won't actually be the final nail in the coffin of Bella and Jacob's twisted relationship. S. Meyer still has a book and a half of nails to hammer into our eyes.

Jacob follows Bella into her house – Charlie is there as Bella storms past. He asks what happened, and Jacob says she broke her hand hitting him.

“Why did she hit you?”
“Because I kissed her,” Jacob said, unashamed.
“Good for you, kid,” Charlie congratulated him.


Well. I suppose my goodwill for Charlie had to run out some time. Nothing gold can stay. Kill your idols.

I've never been happier to read about Edward, by the way. Bella calls him – he's already in the car by the time he picks up the phone. He's in a cheery mood, Edward 2.0 and all. But he doesn't know what happened.

“I punched Jacob,” I admitted.
“Good,” Edward said bleakly.


I've never been happier to see Edward say something bleakly! This is like when the cavalry comes in Birth Of A Nation and you try to ignore the Klan robes they're wearing. Edward makes an oblique threat of violence toward Jacob and Bella is like yeah, kill that motherfucker (I'm paraphrasing) and that finally clues Edward into the fact that shit has gotten real. She tells him Jacob kissed her and hears him audibly accelerate. Charlie suggests Jacob bail.

“I think I'll hang out here, if you don't mind.”
“Your funeral,” Charlie mumbled.


I wish! Also: nice try Charlie, but you still suck. It's going to take a lot of endearing shit to make up for that enthusiastic reaction to the news that your daughter got molested. I guess we should be glad he didn't react like Titus Andronicus, but still!

Edward says he's around the corner “darkly,” just paragraphs after saying something “bleakly” but whatever, there is no time to nitpick that stuff. There's killing that needs to be done! Edward racks up thousands of points in this chapter: as soon as he gets to the door he examines Bella's hand. Very smooth, no?

“I think you're right about the break,” he said. “I'm proud of you. You must have put some force behind this.”

Edward kisses her hand and then turns and reduces Jacob to a pile of liquified organs and bone fragments in seconds. Kidding, he's going to be classy about this too. Dammit. Jacob and Edward have a brief standoff in the hallway – Charlie tries to discourage violence while Bella openly calls for it. I like this, Bella! She and Edward leave, but Jacob follows them out of the house. “I'm not going to kill you now, because it would upset Bella,” Edward says. Bella protests that assumption. YES. He threatens Jacob some more and it is awesome; if Jacob kisses Bella again Edward will break his jaw. Jacob suggests that Bella might want him to kiss her because of course he would think that. Edward says in that case he wouldn't mind.

“You might want to wait for her to say it, rather than trust you interpretation of body language – but it's your face.”

YESSSS. Then it degenerates into “I'm going to fight hard for her,” and “I'm going to fight HARDER” and “I'm going to be so hard” and “I'm going to be so much HARDER” one-upmanship. Whatever, Edward is still a badass. He and Bella drive back to the Cullen garage, where they have a truly funny exchange with Rosalie and Emmett (!?). Rosalie is under Emmett's Jeep, apparently fixing it, but lest you think that emasculates Emmett at all he's holding up the car for her with one hand. Bella gets a line for the ages when Emmett notices her hand and asks if she fell again.

I glared at him fiercely. “No Emmett. I punched a werewolf in the face.”
Emmett blinked, the burst into a roar of laughter.


It's frustrating that scenes like this come grouped with the maddening and misguided and morally malformed shit like Jacob's Rape Kiss. Does it make sense to say that the Rape Kiss itself is not the real problem? The Rape Kiss itself is not the real problem. Were it that Jacob was turning into the villain of this book, the whole thing would be fine. I mean, it wouldn't be fine, it would be horrible, but it would horrible solely within the fictional universe of this book, and not, you know, the world. I could focus my rage entirely on the fictional character of Jacob, as such would have been S. Meyer's intention. But that is not what is happening, and that is not S. Meyer's intention. We are still supposed to empathize with Jacob, for reasons passing understanding. He is a deluded molester, but Bella will continue to agonize over her feelings for him. He will probably do something heroic in the end, and we will be meant to forgive him for his trespasses, and maybe we really will. He is not the villain. Stephenie Meyer is.

5 comments:

Kim said...

That whole thing is one of my favorite parts of all 4 books. Angry Bella is so much better than sad Bella. Angry Edward is also better than whiny bitch Edward or overly moral, creepy, controlling Edward. Plus, the whole exchange with Emmet cracks me up every time I read it.

I also think any moments between Jacob and Edward that happen in front of Charlie are a nice reminder that there are people who aren't aware of the supernatural world. To Charlie, they're just two normal teenage boys fighting over his daughter. I almost wish we saw more of the fine line Bella would have to walk between those worlds, but Meyer always explains everything away much too easily.

Thetrace360 said...

I hated this chapter so much. Jacob is such a creep. The worst part about him is that he just gets worse and doesn't get the hint that Bella will never want to be with him. There will be no heroic deed great enough to forgive him, at least there wasn't for me.

Kira said...

Apparently I'm forever going to be a Jacob apologist, and possibly have to shred my Feminist card, because I don't feel like Jacob is out of line to kiss Bella and I also feel like she's a cock teasing asshole.

Now, being a cock tease doesn't mean she gets to be mouth raped, but she also consistently send Jacob mixed messages. She is willing to alienate the alleged love of her life, and put herself into terrible face-ripping danger, in order to spend time with a dude who she knows is in love with her. How does that NOT say that she is considering him? She wants to hold his hand, pet his hair, snuggle up to him, but doesn't understand how he could think she might be in love with him a little?

My mom taught me that when you're a stone cold fox, you need to assume that every dude you meet might want to fuck you, and act accordingly. If you want to encourage that, then hold his hand, be flirty, whatever. If you DON'T want to encourage that, then fucking stop touching him. And if you know he's in love with you and you're not in love with him, but you keep encouraging him, you're a big jerk who deserves to be mouth raped. Not really, but a little.

And I feel like Bella's responses only continue to give him the exact same impression. Sure she decked him, but the whole thing is very jokey. She didn't run away, find a brick, and beat him in the face with it. She didn't call the police, or ask her dad to arrest him or something. She didn't become so traumatized that Edward had to tell Jacob to stay away from her forever or he'd kill him. They all treated him like he's just exasperating, incorrigible Jacob, because he is, and she kind of loves it. She loves him being in love with her, because she knows if shit doesn't work out with Edward, she's always got Jacob. One in the chamber, one in the clip, as I call it.

Don't hate the player, hate the game.

Dear said...

Hi, Kira! I disagree about Bella's culpability in the "mouth rape." There is no need for Jacob to rely on the impressions she gives him. The ambiguity he senses is resolved when she uses the word "no."

I understand that she may continue to send mixed signals or whatever, but when she says NO, that is not mixed. That is very clear. I really strongly believe that it is not her responsibility to prevent him from molesting her. It is his responsibility to keep his fucking hands to himself.

ZL said...

I kind of think Kira is right, but I also don't want to ever say someone was "asking for it" like, ever.

I know it is just a kiss, but the imagery is brutal, and all the more brutal because it doesn't seem like S. Meyer knows it is brutal, you know?