New Perspectives: Twilight, The

New Perspectives: Twilight, The Gothic Romance

The Gothic Romance: a genre of dark and foreboding castles, of supernatural terrors, and damsels in distress threatened by the powerful, impulsive male. Not exactly the tagline for Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight (2007), but then again The Twilight Saga has for many years been diminished as spoonfed to the underage darling. Director Catherine Hardwicke’s take on the novel is one that modernises the vampire narrative, and while acknowledging its teen audience, elevates it to the imagery of its Gothic predecessors.

Most notable is Hardwicke’s inclusion of a scene not derived from the novel but from Lugosi-era lore. After some internet research, the realisation that Edward (Robert Pattinson) is a vampire comes to Bella (Kristen Stewart) in a dream. Styled with film reel footage and period dress, Bella is draped languidly across a velvet sofa, with Edward sensuously approaching her neck only to emerge with blood at the corner of his mouth. Though brief, this scene proclaims Edward the new face of the classic vampire.

It also conjures the 19th century Vampire-Virgin dynamic. Gothic tales are laden with sexual undertones, and often vampires serve as allegory for fear of sexuality as young women are eroticised by powerful, mysterious men. With Edward the sublime and Bella the damsel, this image allows them to inhabit the traditional role of vampire and victim/virgin. Yet, Edward as virgin makes him unthreatening and palatable to a tween audience; the danger he poses to Bella can be romanticised instead of eroticised. It is in this way that Meyer conflates their love with the paramour love: the forbidden passion which must be denied at all costs (or else Bella becomes dinner). Edward both inhabits the Gothic role of the impulsive male and the safer, sexuallyrepressed male, thus giving Bella room to express her own sexual desire without threat.

With the same narrative freedom, she can be brave and self-sacrificing while delicate; thus, she expands the agency of the damsel archetype. It’s this agency that gave her female narrative blockbuster success-- and thereby feminist success-- at the hands of a female director, for a largely female audience.

There are many reasons skeptics argue Twilight is not Gothic-- namely that it bears no castle-- and they’re right. The Cullen house is modernised and true terror is removed.

However, Hardwicke’s blue tint, the metonymy of Pacific Northwest rain and fog representing foreboding and mystery, and the claustrophobia of forest visuals mimicking the effect of dark castle halls preserves the intended mood.

Hardwicke’s homage to the Dracula-archetype rekindles the Gothic. She explores beyond the constraints of a sexually-tame teen love and begs viewers to look beyond Meyer’s modern, somewhat watered-down vampires to their profound literary roots.

- Catherine Callahan