emerges, they do so in a manner non-genre fic- tion cannot, and that is the need, the importance and the power of the horror genre. “Speaking the unspeakable, showing the unshowable” has been simplified to mean, to too many horror aficiona- dos, the breaking of taboos in the most overt and obvious ways (ie., violations of the body, violence, gore, etc.), but that definition of horror’s modus op- erandi also relates to the deft metaphoric power of its devices—like vampirism—and TWILIGHT em- bodies that potential quite admirably. It does so as potently as the metaphoric device of “posses- sion” did in the early 1970s with THE EXORCIST, among other (rare) films in their respective eras. I don’t want to derail this analysis by dwelling too much on the contemporary socio-political-re- ligious ramifications, but again, I find Stephanie Meyer’s Mormon background fascinating in the context of what TWILIGHT—the novel and the movie, as well as the phenomenon—is and has become. Meyer’s Church of Latter Day Saints af- filiation and convictions inform so many aspects of TWILIGHT that I can’t help but ponder whether, in fact, that is what makes both the novel and the film unique, and so particularly attuned to now. The socio-political-religious ramifications of being a sexual being (particularly as a teenager) in
America today have become a major individual- ized front on the cultural wars. It is an individual- ized “front” that is no longer personal: society increasingly asserts laws, regulations and at- tempted controls and its own “need to know” as an imperative. The new permutations of how the once-precious (illusory) firewalls between the public and the private have been ruptured, rendered ob- solete or simply demolished. This shapes and in- forms TWILIGHT in interesting ways. One needn’t be Bristol Palin to suffer the indignities of one’s private life becoming terrifyingly public. This isn’t a new phenomenon, either—consider Nathaniel Hawthorne’s 1850 THE SCARLET LETTER, among countless other novels and pop cultural artifacts— but every generation endures its own spin. Given the current scene, public and private, Meyer’s insertion of the extended family as Bella’s sorely-needed rescuers into the traumatizing pri- mal scene is quite a mirror of the times, from the Palin family’s trials (it has somehow not been a scandal) to the various Church of Latter Day Saints sect investigations, intrusions (by various outside legal authorities) and revelations in 2008 alone. TWILIGHT ingeniously confronts many of those issues via Meyer’s at times inventive, at times lazy working-out of the vampire mythos (in conjunction
Though the staging of this scene has a resonance that dates all the way back to Shakespeare, Steve Bissette argues that TWILIGHT is particularly attuned to now.
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