What’s wrong with Twilight?

By Beth Felker Jones,

The popular series' troubling take on love

The release of Breaking Dawn Part 2, the final movie in the Twilight series, has brought…the last flurry of Christian reaction to the popularity of the books and films…Mars Hill pastor Mark Driscoll, [wrote] a recent blog post titled “A Father’s Fright about Twilight.”… 

Girl-finds-a-boy-to-be-her-everything

I share Mark Driscoll’s concern about Twilight. But I diagnose the problem…differently.…Twilight is aimed at girls, and because it appeals so deeply to so many girls and women, the problem with Twilight is a problem about gender.…My biggest worry about Twilight is that Bella, the main character, lives a life completely centered on the guy she loves. The love she has for Edward is all-consuming. Absorbing. Total. Her mother worries that Bella orbits around Edward. The girl-in-love is a satellite, circling round the boy, and she wants to give up everything—family, friends, education, the possibility of motherhood, her humanity, even her soul—for his sake. The super-natural aspects of the story feed the passion of course, for Bella and for Twilight fans, but it is this mundane fantasy—girl-who-finds-a-boy-to-be-her-everything—that’s the heartbeat of Twilight. What is most terrifying here is not the super-natural but the stuff of fallen nature, the fiction that women are made not for God, but for men….

Girl finds a Saviour in a Boy--Fantasy

Twilight offers a false version of love, sex, and romance that can pull us away from God’s good intentions for us in these areas of life.…Twilight is more [about] idolatry. It feeds the colossal, fallen fantasy that a girl can find a savior in a boy—if only she gives up everything. The boy only has to be a culturally prescribed masculine fantasy—strong, jealous, with iron self-control…

Don’t wait for “Edward”

I wrote about Twilight…in my book Touched by a Vampire . I wrote with the hope of helping the church to think biblically and faithfully about the story’s themes. My advice, for Christians thinking about this vampire romance, is modest, but hopeful. We should try to feed the godly dreams of our daughters—and our sons—not dreams about finding fulfillment in the “the One,” but dreams about serving Christ as Lord and using all our talents…for the kingdom. Rather than encouraging our daughters to wait for their “Edward,” we should encourage them to find satisfaction in their Saviour.

Beth Felker Jones, author of Touched by a Vampire, is assoc.prof. of theology at Wheaton College, Wheaton, Illinois, USA.

Edited extracts from Her.meneutics, Christianity Today’s Blog for Women, Dec. 5, 2012