BLOGGING BREAKING DAWN, pt. 12: Stare Decisis

Last time, Jacob took over as narrator. Here, it gets interesting. Unfortunately, just as S. Meyer makes a real innovation, we hit several uncomfortable moments in a row. If you missed it, we had kind of a great discussion about the possible impact of S. Meyer's Mormonism and even her attitudes regarding feminism on these sort of moments, which are becoming more and more numerous. These are issues I want to keep exploring. Keep up the good work, everybody.

Chapter 8: Waiting For The Damn Fight To Start Already

Jacob leaves Quil when they hear Sam howl from the woods. Jacob wolf-ifies (the term they use is "phasing," which I have been resisting because it is stupid) and then remarks at how easy it is for him now. That prompts him to recall Bella's wedding, when apparently the stress of realizing that Edward was planning on fucking Bella temporarily disabled the ease of that ability. It confuses and frustrates him even now. I totally get that. You accidentally think about someone you find unattractive having sex, and suddenly you can't, uh, phase. It's a drag! Jacob doubts himself further-- even if he'd been able to get himself straight, would he have gone through with it and put it in? His claw into Edward's face or whatever, I mean.

And then the beginning of some pretty cool stuff happens. Jacob is in wolf form as he does the aforementioned brooding, and Leah's thoughts cut in. "So self-absorbed all the time," she thinks. Because wolves can read each other's thoughts, the dialogue starts to intrude on the exposition. Here's what happens as Jacob and Leah head toward Sam who is waiting in a clearing. (Until further notice, I'll be putting quotes from the text in bold so as to preserve the way S. Meyer renders wolf thought, as it involves lots of italics. Quotes from the text that are actually fabricated by me will remain set off in italics.)

I sped up, wanting to be there. I heard Leah move faster, too. She hated being outrun. Being the fastest was the only edge she claimed.

Claim this, moron, she hissed, and then she really kicked it into gear.

Nifty! In this way, S. Meyer can do post-modernism without being post-modern, you know? It works as a kind of ironic commentary on novels as a storytelling medium, like Ferris Bueller turning and talking to the camera, but it also just works as the way the story is being told now; Jacob is narrating in real time. Okay. I dig this.

Anyway, Sam called the meeting because word has reached the reservation that Bella and Edward are back in town. Charlie got a call from Dr. Carlisle, because Bella is allegedly sick with some kind of rare South American virus. I know this is just a cover story, but what a racist cover story, am I right? Was that the point? Are the Cullens trying to play on Charlie's perceived small-town prejudices, Jack Donaghy-style? Of course the irony here (and for once S. Meyer does dramatic irony correctly) is that the wolfpack assumes Bella is undergoing her transformation; they don't know about the baby. Sam says (well, technically Sam thinks it) that Charlie told Billy (news travels in ridiculous ways on the reservation) that Dr. Cullen said he's "doing everything he can." The wolves take this as part of the cover story, but we know different. Though, we don't know precisely what Carlisle is trying to do. Is he trying to save Bella or trying to save the baby?

Jacob wonders (still assuming she's becoming a vampire) if they'll go so far as to have a funeral, to bury Bella and let her dig out of her grave. That would be pretty badass! I hope so! Jacob and Leah are still making their way to Sam at this point, and when Jacob gets there he assumes they are departing now to start the war, to fire the howl heard 'round the world or whatever. Nope! Sam totally deflates Jacob's murder boner.

Sam thoughts came slow, hesitant. Are you sure this is what you want? Is it really the right thing? We all know what she wanted.

Jacob stubbornly clings to the specific language of the treaty, and Sam maintains that keeping the peace would be closer to the spirit of what the Founding Fathers intended. It was ever thus, y'all. Does the tribal council have any past cases you can look to for guidance? Seth Clearwater asks Jacob what he would do if Bella fought with the Cullens. Would he kill her, or would he make someone else do it? Jacob doesn't really have an answer.

So there's this weird b-plot to this whole scene where Leah keeps objecting to Sam's use of gender-specific language. When Sam tells them to "can it, guys," Leah winces at the word guys. Later, Sam asks Jacob if, in the battle, he'd be willing to "lose a brother" and then adds after a pause, "or a sister?" Now "guys" is probably not the best example for when we talk about gender-neutral language, but this is an important debate (even though many people suspect it's much ado about nothing) and since we have recently broached the subject of S. Meyer's self-proclaimed feminism, we should get into it. I say that despite the fact that I am one of those pussy equivocators who alternates between "he" and "she" in my writing, occasionally even going for a clunky "one ought to..." or whatever. I don't have a good answer for what one ought to do, I haven't coined my own new word or anything like that. But this is one of those things that deserves to be talked about, even if at the end we all just go fuck it, let's use "he." Like a lot of these sort of debates (Huck Finn and the N-Word) having the conversation is (I think) more important than whatever the conclusion is, because usually just thinking hard about gender and race issues for a while makes you into a better and more measured person. This is why I would never use "cocksucker" as an insult. Why would anyone want to suggest that sucking cock is a bad thing? But the obvious question to raise about this particular moment is: Is Leah actually supposed to be a feminist character, or is S. Meyer mocking feminism?

On the face of it, it stands to reason that Leah is meant to be a role model for girls. She's a female wolf! There are certainly girls who read Twilight and don't want to be Bella, but rather want to be Edward and Jacob. And why shouldn't they? Does S. Meyer feel like they should? Leah might be an indication of that. (You only hear her saying that she wanted her readers to be able to identify with Bella; in the words of Michael Bluth: her?) Of course there are female vampires, but moments when Alice and Rosalie get to step up and be badasses are as scarce as they are thrilling. It's sort of like how War Machine mostly just reminds you that there are almost no black superheros (a fact that made Donald Glover's Quixotic campaign to play Spiderman all the more vaguely upsetting when it failed. This paragraph is going all over the place). So Leah, the lady wolf, is another check in the right column, another weight trying to tip the scales back to even and give girls a monster who looks more like them. Leah Clearwater is a black Spiderman.

But then you remember that S. Meyer was the one who weighted the scale against herself in the first place. And that Leah has been unrelentingly shrill and described as such. And that Leah bristling at words like "guys" doesn't lead to Jacob thoughtfully considering her place in the wolfpack-- it doesn't lead to anything. She is ignored. It reads less like a feminist urge and more like an urge to pay lip service to feminists. Leah Clearwater is that black Superman they introduced (John Henry Irons, yikes) along with the cyborg and the other ones after Doomsday killed the original, white Superman. Leah Clearwater is a Shaq movie.

But then you remember Jacob's indication that Leah's thoughts were making him involuntarily sexually attracted to Sam, and you think maybe some good will come of this regardless of S. Meyer's intentions. That's what seems to happen most of the time.

(Like: there's a passing indication that Jared hasn't joined the pack in the clearing yet because he is with his girlfriend, and everyone groans at the knowledge that they will soon be sharing his thoughts. In other words, it sounds like people are having pre-marital sex out there, even if Bella and Edward aren't. There's also as always the notable fact that Jasper never Put A Ring On It.)

Anyway Jacob, having received Sam's official verdict that the Cullens will be left alone, flees the clearing. The wolves suspect that he'll run away again and beg him not to. He returns to human form to shield his thoughts, because he's planning, essentially, a suicide mission.

He hadn't mentioned an individual acting alone.

Nope, the pack wasn't attacking anyone today.

But I was.

That first sentence is troubling, in that it sounds weirdly coded in the way white supremacist language is coded. When we talk about domestic terrorism after all, a "lone wolf" is exactly that: an individual carrying out an act of violence absent a command structure. The term was popularized by Alex Curtis and Tom Metzger, who are white supremacists, in the nineties. A recent Homeland Security report stated that "lone wolves and small terrorist cells embracing violent right-wing extremist ideology are the most dangerous domestic terrorism threat in the United States." It's an uncomfortable parallel that I have difficulty rationalizing away as coincidental.

Chapter 9: Sure As Hell Didn't See That Coming

Jacob gets home to find Billy waiting for him in the yard. Every time this guy shows up, I like him a little more. Here, Jacob's father complains to him about having sore arms from rolling himself home from Sue Clearwater's house. Jacob calls bullshit and points out that it's downhill the whole way. "Caught me," Billy says. "Think I got up to about thirty miles per hour. It was great." There's a crazy and/or homeless dude who goes barreling down the various side streets in the Downtown Crossing section of Boston in his wheelchair most nights, shouting nonsense and asking people if they need a ride. I can usually hear him from where I work, on the fourth floor on an office building. Through closed windows. I love that guy.

They start complaining about Paul, but it becomes clear that Billy is happy to have him around because it's keeping his daughter on the reservation. And this goes deeper than just a lonely dad who wants his kids around. "It's hard," Billy says. "The girls were older than you when your mom passed. They have more trouble being in this house." Jacob goes on to tell us about the way his sisters have avoided coming home for the holidays for the last few years; it's an actual sad, genuine moment. I'm so used to S. Meyer's way of doing business that I braced myself for something horrific to happen after this, like an implication that Billy's been fucking one of his daughters or something. Luckily we are spared, and this scene is allowed to pass untarnished.

Billy brings up Charlie's call; he seems to already suspect that Jacob is planning to run away, but quickly senses what his son is actually planning. It's another nice beat. Without over-writing it, S. Meyer suggests a bond between Billy and Jacob we didn't really know about before. Jacob almost casually rips the phone from the wall so Billy can't call anyone and leaves his poor father in the house. He gets on his motorcycle and contemplates his plan of attack. He'll try to kill Edward first and then take out as many of the rest as he can before he is killed. The only thing keeping this scene from being unrelentingly bleak is the knowledge that Jacob is going to find out about the baby and probably be too stunned to attack anyone. I'm not complaining; that's the right amount of bleak! S. Meyer is so rarely risky that (Jacob's horrifying extremist lingo aside) the darkness of this scene is almost refreshing. I can abide Jacob's murder-in-the-first-degree impulses; it's the unintentionally dark stuff that's the problem!