TWILIGHT, L'amour Miséraaaaable: A Vegan Fantasy

1834, "hobby, pet project;" 1881 as "fashion, craze," perhaps shortened from fiddle-faddle. Or perhaps from Fr. fadaise "trifle, nonsense," ult. from L. fatuus "stupid."

Original definition of "fad"

With the cinematic unleashing of Stephanie Meyer’s “Twilight” Saga, the once folkloric and mythological Vampire brand of seductive, gothic romance, nightly mischief and mass hysteria has shifted into a frosty terrain of mopey, emo-tinged, sexless, blood-sucking abstinence. And let us not forget: health-conscious - - instead of stakes, the film features a steak sandwich or lack (of meat) thereof (Meyer herself makes a cameo as “Woman Who Orders a Vegetarian Salad in the Diner”) - - vampire culture has gone from blood-red to green excitement. Oh, what a sad time for a vampire to be immortal. (See how a centuries-old vampire is coping with the contemporary film and literature fictional-shift.)

By definition, Meyer’s “beloved” (doesn’t it take at least a decade to reach beloved status) vampire-based novels and (Production Designer par excellence) Director Catherine Hardwicke’s first entry in the film series, TWILIGHT, have achieved cult status amongst a rabid fan-base of young adults, primarily tween and teenaged girls. If the film and the universally accepted lifestyles it has promoted are any indication of where (young) modern America is headed, I’d welcome anyone to drive a stake through my heart and be vanquished of this culture shock.

After the ‘cold open’, wherein the film’s production and distribution company’s snow-enshrouded Summit Entertertainment logo in cool aquamarine (which constitutes the film’s main color palette) fills the screen, an equally chilling line is uttered by Isabella Marie "Bella" Swan (Kristen Stewart): “I’ve never given much thought to how I would die” - - this is both a character name and a line of dialogue given heavy weight of wisdom and maturity not befitting of a modern-day American teenager who speaks it (unless, of course, she was featured in an Anne Rice novel). I’d have been thoroughly interested if this was being spoken in voiceover by the pre-slaughtered fawn in the film’s opening minutes, a scene reminiscent of both the stately deer’s demise in Michael Mann’s THE LAST OF THE MOHICANS and the sacrificial lambs surrounding the lushly, ethereal pond setting in James Whale’s BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN.

As the film progresses, we discover that Bella and her peers are no ordinary teenagers, but those characterized by the stereotypical Emo sub-culture: wherein guys are more sensitive than girls, yet both sexes lead an angst-ridden, tortured and depressed existence while donning apparel that is correspondingly suicidal and where short or tall, choppy, low-banged hair makes up 75% of their ‘look’ best represented by the human mortal counterparts, the vampiric coven of the Cullen Family (Emo Royalty, who flamboyantly shimmer like diamonds in the sun’s rays) and Bella’s prey, Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson) who no one at Forks High School seems to understand.

Despite the ill effects the current economy has had on millions, modern-day teenagers (most particularly, Bella) in Hardwicke’s film really have nothing to feel tortured about: they have a (multiple) cell phone(s), home computer (and/or laptop), the unlimited pleasures the Internet has to offer (e.g. access to FaceBook and Twitter accounts), luxury automobiles and parents who show concern for them and fend for their well-being. Quel dommage! Incidentally, the one and only time Bella shows any sincere enthusiasm in the entire film is when her father, Charlie Swan (Billy Burke) gifts her with a truck he has purchased from his friend, Billy Black (Gil Mirmingham) and son Jacob (Taylor Lautner). Perhaps it’s in the drinking water - - in fact, the only instance anyone drinks from the tap is Bella during a conversation she has with her father in their kitchen - - as he’s typically placed near a bargain pack of Dannon bottled-water and cans of beer.

The social network in Forks, Washington (population “3,120 people”, Bella grumbles) where TWILIGHT’s events unfold can only be deemed as ironic dysfunction when compared with other educational institutions (real or cinematically fictitious, you may decide). Characters engage in lingo indicative of current social trends (e.g. “google it”; “Chillax”; “I’m down the with kids” and “You’re the bomb”), the majority of the student body seem to intuit and welcome Bella as if she’s of a celebrity-status (in this case, Sherry Potter) and yet Bella gives everyone the brush advising that she’s the “silent, suffering type”. Bella’s dad, the Chief of Police, has no idea that his daughter, the metaphorical Pandora’s Box (gift wrapped by Chastity), has conveniently liberated an age-old blood feud between a race of vampires spawned by the Volturi (an ancient race of Italian vampires) and Quileute (a.k.a. Quillayute) Indians who are able to transform into werewolves.

So, Emily Bronte’s classic WUTHERING HEIGHTS has been transferred from the Yorkshire moors to the gloomy Pacific Northwest and grafted with fangs and fur! Unlike the conversations featured in this revered classic of English literature, Meyer’s discourse in wuthering Washington State tends to be commonplace and awkward. Questions are dodged; secrets are kept and then revealed later; nervousness ensues. Mankiewicz or Chayefsky wouldn’t dare partake in such screenwriting trifles and/or released work one would connote to a fad. Bella literally shakes off potential friends in a school gymnasium who try to enter in a dialogue with her. And her movements are equally oblivious when she opens a car door into Jacob or slips and falls on a patch of ice. I understand the latter being a plot device, both that Bella is on shaky ground and that it hints at an accident involving the employment of Edward’s superhuman vampire strength and a van that nearly crushes Bella in a parking lot. But her actions are consistently clumsy and mopey and why she attracts everyone in her orbit, I may never know - - unless I read the books to discover that she holds the key to the ultimate human question - - but, that’s another medium for another post (that may never be); I digress.

Bella and Edward get past their initial awkward teenage adolescent hang-ups (that still exist come the climax) and become an item. Just as Romeo and Juliet participated in a doomed romance so are Kristen Stewart and RPatz’s protagonists as Edward fears he may altogether consume (i.e. drink, bite, devour) Bella if he is overcome by his animal urges. What ensues are scenes that are as uncomfortable to watch as they are laughable e.g. when Edward erratically squirms in Bella’s presence and looks as if he’s going to V in his M. TWILIGHT’s closest cinematic counterpart (save for the nomadic vampires’ long ‘hesher’ hair that came and went with THE LOST BOYS who are intent on killing Bella) may be CAT PEOPLE that contained a similar theme of controlling one’s animal desire for the sake (and safety) of a lover in that Irena Dubrovna (Simone Simon) refused to become intimate with her fiancé Oliver Reed (Kent Smith) innately knowing that she’d transform into a dangerous panther thereby tearing him to shreds. Jacques Tourneur’s and Val Lewton’s horror classic however, favored style over substance (and passing fancies). And if the first entry in the book series come to screen is any sign of things to come for the TWILIGHT Saga, this will be a quadrilogy that is anything but bella.

Films That Have Inspired Social Networking

Twitter, YouTube and flickr are just a few of the current social networking tools that have contributed to the massive proliferation of users online as well as making the world (and universe) a much smaller place through the use of their technological devices and the data that has passed through them. Likewise, the cinema has been a source of entertainment and inspiration for its viewers since the first image and accompaniment of light flickered on a movie screen. By combining communications tools via the power of the cinema, the results have been highly reactive in the present social and technological marketplace.

Pre-dating contemporary computer and electronic technology, the movie-going public as well as the characters embedded in the celluloid, would (and still do) engage in an archaic form of message-delivery: stone drawings, paper/letter correspondence, radio or Morse code/telegraphic communications. Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s A LETTER TO THREE WIVES (1949) would now easily reach three million within seconds via a mainframe and companion server. In Hitchcock’s THE LADY VANISHES, Dame May Whitty’s Miss Froy, could’ve texted of her capture in the train’s compartment or uploaded the “MacGuffin” folk song carrying top secret information to a YouTube account using her mobile phone.

What follows are a few examples of films that have exhibited similar techniques and design processes of these networking tools prior to their creation. What is key here is that data was shared through an interaction with another person(s) (or user(s)) as opposed to being kept to oneself which is the crux of social networking.

Photographs were taken by paparazzi in LA DOLCE VITA (Dir: Federico Fellini, 1960) and NOTHING SACRED (Dir: William A. Wellman, 1937) and by a photographer trying to solve a murder (BLOW-UP, Dir: Michelangelo Antonioni, 1966) and (REAR WINDOW, Dir: Alfred Hitchcock, 1954), but that the images weren’t shared by them through their cinematic communities, save for their respective newspapers or magazine editors, they must sadly be disqualified from any inclusion herein.

Although there is an exuberance of energy and powerful imagery present in films such as MAGNOLIA (Dir: Paul Thomas Anderson, 1999), JFK (Dir: Oliver Stone, 1991), SINGIN’ IN THE RAIN (Dirs: Stanley Donen, Gene Kelly, 1952) or ANNIE HALL (Dir: Woody Allen, 1977) - - all of which and more like them are featured in clips (or in their entirety) online - - their entertainment may leave a lasting effect on one’s memory and feature a film (or game show)-within-a-film or film-viewing aspect, but any tool for the sake of social networking is for the most part, intangible.

Just think, if these filmmakers had played their cards right and had access to the technology that is currently available at our fingertips, these contemporary devices could’ve been welded in the furnace of their creative minds and like many of (YouTube’s) Chad Hurley’s contemporaries, in their basement.

Twitter/texting (Jack Dorsey, 2007; www.twitter.com)

Twitter asks one question, "What are you doing?"/"What's happening?" Answers must be under 140 characters in length and can be sent via mobile texting, instant message or the web. Twitter's core technology is a device agnostic message routing system with rudimentary social networking features. By accepting messages from sms, web, mobile web, instant message, or from third party API projects, Twitter makes it easy for folks to stay connected.

DR. STRANGELOVE OR: HOW I LEARNED TO STOP WORRYING AND LOVE THE BOMB (Dir: Stanley Kubrick, 1964) In this “culturally significant” dark comedy masterpiece, Sterling Hayden’s General Jack D. Ripper, orders a B-52 carrying nuclear warheads into Soviet airspace through an onboard CRM 114 device utilizing brief three-letter code prefixed messages between themselves. The results are disastrous and equally hilarious.

E.T.: THE EXTRA-TERRESTRIAL (Dir: Steven Spielberg, 1982) The beloved science fiction blockbuster featuring the relationship between a stranded alien botanist and his earthling friend, Elliott, as they employ a “Communicator” device to “phone home”. By utilizing the Speak & Spell console (one of the earliest electronic handheld devices complete with a visual display) in addition to various household appliances, a tree branch and a little imagination, Spielberg has concocted one of the most elaborate communications tools (exhibiting less than 140 characters, albeit, in an alien language) in cinema history with enough reception to reach E.T.’s home in deep space.

REAL GENIUS (Dir: Martha Coolidge, 1985) Val Kilmer’s Chris Knight attempts to loosen up his fellow “Pacific Tech” classmate Mitch by throwing him a party during their many failed attempts at creating a chemical laser for their professor. Unbeknownst to Mitch, Chris lures him (and scores of students in the process) across the university quad by way of a laser light show to a “Tanning Invitational” hosted by dozens of scantily clad beauticians. An alternative precursor to Evite / Socializr, Chris types a brief phrase “Tanning Invitational” by way of computer which is eventually “spelled out” by an elaborate series of laser beams and reflective mirrors set up across campus.

THE ABYSS (Dir: James Cameron, 1989) The science fiction underwater actioner features a team of oil workers and Navy SEALs in a mission to salvage nuclear warheads from a sunken Soviet submarine before they detonate and an approaching hurricane topside impedes their objective. When one of the warheads falls over the edge of an undersea trench, Ed Harris’ Bud is fitted with a special diving suit as well as a wrist pad touch-type device to apprise the team (in brief messages) of his advances into the abyss.

YouTube (Chad Hurley, Steve Chen, 2005; www.youtube.com)

YouTube is the leader in online video and the premier destination to watch and share original videos worldwide through a Web experience. YouTube allows people to easily upload and share video clips across the Internet through websites, mobile devices, blogs and email.

JOHNNY MNEMONIC (Dir: Robert Longo, 1995) Keanu Reeve’s Johnny Mnemonic takes the idea of a ‘thumb drive’ a step further playing a data courier who delivers sensitive information to clients through a storage implant in his brain by connecting to and uploading data and imagery via a television or visual display. A similar idea is featured in TOTAL RECALL (Dir: Paul Verhoeven, 1990) based on sci-fi maestro Philip K. Dick’s “We Can Remember It for You Wholesale” when Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Quaid is ‘uploaded’ with memories - - or in this case - - images for a vacation on Mars.

HACKERS (Dir: Iain Softley, 1995) Johnny Lee Miller’s Crash Override first connects with Angelina Jolie’s Acid Burn when Override tries to hack into a television station’s computer network in order to watch an episode of The Outer Limits. Burn then (like current copyright infringement) hacks into the server and kicks him off.

THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT (Dirs: Daniel Myrick, Eduardo Sánchez, 1999) The film takes YouTube’s tagline “broadcast yourself” a bit too far and although it is indirectly ‘broadcast’ by filmmakers other than those featured in the footage, it is nonetheless a forerunner in the idea of shooting oneself to become the subject of shared video and ‘viral’ programming for the masses to digest it.

JACKASS: THE MOVIE (Dir: Jeff Tremaine, 2002) The “feel-sick movie of the year” features MTV’s Jackass television performers (stars?) doing what they do best in front of the camera which has spread like ‘viral’ wildfire throughout the Web and become a pop-cultural phenomenon spawning imitations online, on television (MADtv and FAMILY GUY) and re-enacted most particularly by young boys aged 18-32.

Amélie (Dir: Jean-Pierre Jeunet, 2001) Amélie Poulain’s Audrey Tautou mysteriously surprises “the Glass Man” with videotapes she has edited (and uploaded) with whimsical, random and ‘viral’ imagery (e.g. a naked baby swimming in a pool, a horse intruding on a bicycling tournament, etc.).

Flickr (Stewart Butterfield, Caterina Fake, 2004; www.flickr.com)

By securely and privately uploading images and/or video from the Internet, mobile devices, users' home computers and from whatever software they are using to manage their content, Flickr shares this data on the Flickr website, in RSS feeds, on one’s blog, by email, by posting to outside blogs, etc. Flickr also organizes photos and video as metadata in order to search and disseminate to others with ease.

PECKER (Dir: John Waters, 1998) Edward Furlong’s Pecker, an avid photographer and sandwich shop employee, becomes an art sensation when the photos he takes of his family and Baltimore neighbors catch the interest of a New York art dealer and professional art collectors.

Amélie (Dir: Jean-Pierre Jeunet, 2001) Through the help of Amélie’s friend, a stewardess, Amélie devises a plot to have her travel the world with her father’s garden gnome and take pictures of it amidst the backdrop of worldly landmarks (e.g. New York City and Russia). Additionally, Amélie’s love interest, Nino Quincampoix, travels throughout Montmarte lifting discarded photos from photo booths which he collects and keeps in an album.

PRECIOUS: Restricted Cinema For All, Pleasure for None

Claireece Precious Jones (Gabourey Sidibe) is a woman oppressed on multiple fronts: in the home; in the outside world and most unfortunately by herself. She struggles to live a hopeful existence in an otherwise hopeless environment afflicted by unending emotional anguish brought on by intense physical and verbal abuse. In short, Precious is living in her own personal Hell. This state of torment and perpetual misery is presided over by her mother, Mary (Mo’Nique*), an ironic moniker that conjures religious connotations of a woman living a sinless life and/or capable of mothering (a) God. Mo’Nique’s matriarch in the Jones household, however, is a gross portrait of motherhood of horrifying proportions whose welfare depends on the check of the same name (welfare) while flying under the radar of concerned Government and Educational caseworkers.

The setting is Harlem, New York, 1987 and the images captured therein are photographed in a handheld vérité style that often shakes until the point of emphasis on a particular action is revealed. After a while, trained viewers will no doubt become aware of this predictability and build an immunity to the filmmaker’s desired result and just watch for the sheer joy of watching. But therein lies the problem. There is nothing particularly pleasurable of the film’s visual and verbal dichotomy. PRECIOUS is a contemptible entertainment in which its heavy-handed approach to finding beauty amongst so much tragedy is almost too much to bare. To add insult to injury (no pun intended), Precious Jones’s fictionalized story upon which PRECIOUS is based (“PUSH: A Novel” by Sapphire), is not very much unlike many of the stories that girls, women or men who experience personal trauma like this on a daily basis (in Harlem, NY or Anywhere, U.S.A.) find themselves in whether it be in an abusive situation at home, school or office space.

It is a filmmaker’s responsibility to put their protagonist through the wringer (when a protagonist is actually featured as opposed to a general documented subject) and can be witnessed in every form of entertainment that has graced celluloid, video or other medium from DUCK AMUCK to THE DEVIL WEARS PRADA. But come the climax when the journey has ended, there is typically the satisfying pay-off with an amount of gratifying retribution that has been earned as is found in most mainstream entertainment separating the cinematic pleasures from the displeasures. For the amount of misery inflicted upon Precious Jones in her cinematic journey, there’s not much 35mm data contained therein that doesn’t equate PRECIOUS to the popularly disreputable horror film (as opposed to the artistically dignified horror of Hitchcock’s PSYCHO or Clouzot’s DIABOLIQUE). That there is a more representative normality i.e. “conformity to the dominant social norms” present in PRECIOUS, as per Robin Wood’s analysis of the American Horror Film, PRECIOUS wouldn’t necessarily be categorized as a film of the socially accepted horror genre - - but it comes arguably close as it is a nearly two hour collective nightmare: collective, in the sense that it is the fusion of the nightmare of Precious’ life captured on celluloid by the filmmaker and the collective nightmares of the audience that are created from watching such intensely loathsome subject matter.

Wood argues that the basic horror film formula consists of three variables: normality (Precious’ daily grind in Harlem, Manhattan, New York); the Monster (Precious’ mother, Mary; her father who raped Precious thereby giving her two unwanted children and the H.I.V. virus; Precious’ inability to believe in herself who is almost always at odds with her alter ego, a white girl with blonde hair who she sees in the looking glass) and the relationship between normality and the Monster (Precious is invisible to the world around her and leads an existence that is comfortably numb).

Just as Christine Brown (Alison Lohman) is unable to escape the wrath of an elderly gypsy (Lorna Raver) who has cursed her in Sam Raimi’s DRAG ME TO HELL, Precious Jones is equally tortured by the demons in her orbit, albeit under less supernatural circumstances. Mary throws objects at Precious from across the living room in their besieged apartment and drops a television set down a stairwell in the hopes of crushing Precious and her child who are resting a few stories below; Precious is taunted by her peers and pushed to the ground when she least expects it. It is generally agreed that horror films are not meant to be taken seriously. So, to classify PRECIOUS as strictly horror with the added weight of it being based on so many true human documents attempting to share a voice for social criticism against such abuse, would be disrespectful - - but after just thirty minutes into its gratuitous landscape of sympathy smashing and domestic warfare, enough is enough. Wood intimates a psychological point that many people regularly attend horror films to ridicule or to laugh unless the film in question is overtly intellectual. Anyone screening PRECIOUS will get what they pay for: something very close to a nightmare (with unsteady photography). Wood explains that the horror film is “restricted to aficionados and complemented by total rejection’ and ‘they are dismissed with contempt by the majority of reviewer critics”.

Come Oscar time, although both actors worked their hearts out, Mo’Nique’s Mary has a better chance at AMPAS Gold than Raver’s Sylvia Ganush for the sheer fact that the latter’s performance is widely considered in the movie-going subconscious, an amusingly slapstick caricature of the evil gypsy. Blame it on years of B-Horror schlock generated by American filmmakers for the pre-determined snub. Oscar campaigns tend to be expensive and studios can be correspondingly faithless in pushing such an actor for the coveted trophy. In confining an argument for the approaching Golden Globes race, particularly Mo’Nique’s nomination for “Best Performance by an Actress In A Supporting Role” compared with Christoph Waltz’s nomination for the oppositely gendered “Best Performance by an Actor In A Supporting Role” as Col. Hans Landa in INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS, the portrayal of violence by the former is far more insulting than the latter’s elegant handling of menace who succeeds in doing so without uttering an obscenity. Even as Landa succumbs to his first and only on-screen act of physical violence near the film’s conclusion as he strangles the neck of a pivotal character, the scene exudes a Hitchcockian quality of love-making that typified many a killing representative throughout his filmography in such works as STRANGERS ON A TRAIN to FRENZY (whereas Hitch’s scenes of love-making resembled a murderous act).

Littered throughout PRECIOUS’s abrasive architecture is the consistent presence of the color orange. Just as Precious has difficulty fitting in with her peers (she is an overweight, illiterate teenager pregnant with a second child), orange is linguistically one of many words in the English language that doesn’t rhyme with any other word. In the universal color spectrum, orange (representing courage, caution and fire in Hindu and other traditions) falls between red (symbolizing heat, anger, passion) and yellow (signifying cowardice, enlightenment, ripeness, happiness) and due to its highly visible contrast in brightness to other colors is typically used to signify danger(s) ahead: a fitting choice for such volatile subject matter.

PRECIOUS is not so much exemplary of incendiary filmmaking as it is merely manipulative “poverty porn” that buries uplifting platitudes of clichéd enlightenment into bottomless depths of despair for sophisticated audience members to till through and unearth for deeper reflection. Amidst the exhaustive torment that Precious experiences, she herself has a mantra:

I want to be on the cover of a magazine.

I wish I had a light-skinned boyfriend with real nice hair.

But first, I want to be on one of them B.E.T. music videos.

that transforms her into a superstar where she appears amongst uplifting visual motifs by contemporary standards (when dreamed up by less than privileged youth) of a dancer in the gaze of dozens of spotlights as she is smothered by a handsome partner; an actress walking the red carpet after a Gala film premiere and an overwhelmingly colorful photo session where she strikes multiple fierce poses. When daydreams are not enough, Precious’ saving grace is the tangible support she receives from an understanding yet radical schoolteacher, Ms. Blu Rain (Paula Patton) at an alternative transfer school who reminds Precious that “everybody’s good at something” and who asks, “what can you do?” In time, Precious finds the will to read and write. She pushes herself to learn the spoken word to wield its power for the benefit of giving a voice to her story that has long since been silenced. Living in a comatose state for as long as she can remember, it takes the help of her new classmates and the tutelage of Ms. Rain and her admitting her love for Precious as a human being to wake her up to a new state of consciously hopeful possibility.

Besides Precious’ growing interest in reading, writing and in bettering herself by strengthening her abilities and intercommunication skill sets, her often times disagreeable behavior isn’t entirely sent into oblivion. She continues to harass a young neighbor in her building who likewise tries to show an interest in Precious and her child; she steals a bucket of chicken from a restaurant and eats the evidence while running from the establishment and mocks her fellow female students in her classroom which tends to mimic a tame version of a “Women In Prison” film sans the bars and the bondage. With a film displaying so much misery, it’s not very difficult for the viewer to become just as numb as the titular character. The tag line to PRECIOUS is as follows: “Life is HARD; Life is SHORT; Life is PAINFUL; Life is RICH; Life is PRECIOUS”. That may be true, but Life is also entertaining and for all of the aforementioned reasons shared above, PRECIOUS is not.

*Coincidentally, Mo’Nique’s character’s name in Director Lee Daniels previous film, SHADOWBOXER, was Precious.