July 02, 2010

Vampires = imperialists in Eclipse

Why Team Jacob always has to lose in TwilightTeam You Are Not Allowed To Have An Interracial Relationship

Jacob represents humanity, warmth, frank eroticism . . . and an interracial relationship. Though Jacob's tribal identity has played a part in previous films, it's in Eclipse that we learn what that means. At one point, Jacob brings Bella to a tribal meeting where one of the pack leaders tells us a story that unfolds in flashback like a cross between Dances With Wolves and Dark Shadows. "When the cold ones came," he explains, they fought the native wolves. We see a white vampire in European garb slaughtering native wolves. Then when the wolves kill him, his wife comes to their village, destroying everyone in a blaze of fire and imperialist nastiness.

In case you had any doubts before, it's now abundantly clear that "the cold ones," the vampires, are the Europeans who destroyed the lives of innocent natives. Most of the vampires are blond to the point of absurdity (seriously--they couldn't afford decent wigs?). One of the Cullens fought for the South in the Civil War, and it doesn't get whiter than that.
Is it a coincidence that the vampires' headquarters is in Italy, seat of the Renaissance? The only other locations that represent the West as strongly are Britain and Greece.

Why not locate the headquarters in China or the Middle East? Because that wouldn't suggest vampires are at the center of Western civilization.

This the first Eclipse posting I've seen that says anything substantial about the werewolves' origin. As longtime readers know, this is where Stephenie Meyer went astray in her (mis)appropriation of Quileute legends.

Unfortunately, the scene, or this description of it, covers the werewolves' history only after their origin. I'd still like to know whether and how the movie explains this origin.

For more on the subject, see Eclipse to Show Werewolf Origin? and The Origin of Twilight's Werewolves.

2 comments:

Forget Bella! said...

For the life of me, I cannot see why this white girl has the hots for a walking corpse homo-erotic guy that it takes almost two and a half films to even "attempt" to disrobe this horney little hussey while lying or misleading her on more than one occasion while a young native stud literally paws at her and is honest to the core about everything he tells her from the first film?

I really believe this little girl has deep seated racial issues. If you watch closely, you notice how patronizing and condecending she is towards the Indian guy, but believes everything the Vampire farts out! I don't think Bella is any nicer to Jacob than a stranger on the street and she is fake to him in many ways.

This little girl is not all everyone makes her out to be!

I wish the guy would hurry up and bite her and damn her to eternal face paste and reptile blood.

Jacob can do better!

dmarks said...

I recall the books as making no claim that the original cold ones were European. But it is quite clear in the movie