Racism in Twilight?
So I have taken us to about the middle of the second book in the fangirl acclaimed Twilight Saga, New Moon.
We have discussed many things, such as intimate partner abuse, personal autonomy, agency, and myriad other topics on this journey.
Now, all snark aside (I totally can’t back that up) I want to discuss something serious. I want to discuss themes, obvious and otherwise, of implied racism in the series.
All throughout the series we are bombarded w/ an image of beauty as white. As pale, flawless, sparkling alabaster skin as the image of perfection. Smeyer’s vampires are all various shades of white, and this is part of their perfect beauty, pallid, nigh transparently pale skin. It glitters in the sun like diamonds. It is the epitome of perfect beauty.
It comes as no surprise to me at all, considering how most media, in movies and such, consider white to be default, the norm. Pale skin, light eyes and fair hair are the ideals of conventional beauty in our world, and anything other is exactly that; an Other.
While I was not surprised, I was slightly taken aback that the only brown person portrayed in the Twilight movie, Laurent, was the leader of the “bad” coven of vampires (even though in the book he is not described as black, but rather having a slightly olive pallor to his stone skin). This was unsettling b/c we see it far far too often in major media. All that is good and pure is White and beautiful, and evil is always associated w/ Dark. In the movie Laurent is black, which natural hair, and while in this first movie (and first book) he steps out to not interfere b/t the two covens, later, in New Moon, we find that he does indeed come back to hunt and kill Bella. Writers do nothing unintentionally. Words are too precious a commodity in a finished product to do things by accident, so I don’t find the fact that a major player for the “Bad Guys” being the only brown skinned person a coincidence. In the mind of the writer, when it came time to introduce a force for evil, a darker skinned person came to mind. Even in the book, the darker skin, the olive tone, is associated w/ being bad.
Then, there is the issue of dealing w/ the Native American tribe. We start w/ the stereotypical poor Reservation, w/ it’s tiny, shabby houses filled w/ dark skinned kids running around shirtless and barefoot all the time. Those crazy savages, unable to bother w/ things like clothes. It is no surprise to me, either, that this is the foundation for the Werewolves in these stories.
The Werewolves, barely able to control the wild desires in them, unable to control their tempers and initially unable to control the rage in them that transforms them. Unable to control that urge to hunt and kill. Even, in the case of the character Sam Uley and his finace, Emily. In a fit of uncontrollable rage young Sam loses his control and slashes Emily from scalp to the length of her arm leaving permanent disfiguring scars. Modern day held over stereotypes of “Injuns” and their foul tempers circle over the heads of Native Americans everyday, and here, in a popular young adult fiction series we have the Werewolves, the ones unable to control their nature, as Native Americans. Granted, over time they are able to control their urges and master their transformations, but it is something they must overcome and learn, just as Natives must learn to not be so poor and lazy and savage. Oh, and later on Jacob sexually assaults Bella, something that good, white Edward would never too, b/c he is perfect and chaste.
One direction that I hesitate to step, but I feel must at least briefly be discussed, since Smeyer herself has admitted that her Mormon background heavily influenced her writing, is the way that upper echelon Mormons view brown skinned people. Years ago, and certainly not the only ones to hold this belief, leaders of the Mormon Church believed that Natives must be saved, made to “be more delightsome” by having their women married off to the white men, so that their children may have a chance to be born w/ whiter, more delightful skin. B/c they were once delightful and white, but were cursed w/ dark skin b/c of their savagery and evil ways. There were sects of the LDS movement who allowed racial exclusion in membership. There is a lot of scripture in the Book of Mormon indicating that Native Americans are descendants of the Lamanites, and some such (and names that keep popping up, coincidentally, are Sam and Jacob. Neat, huh?). As far as I can tell, a lot of this is fairly old dogma mostly only believed by older prophets and higher up leaders of LDS, and the friends that I have who are Mormon don’t subscribe to these racist beliefs. Being no expert on Mormonism whatsoever, and having only brief readings of the BoM, I can not lay claim to the validity of these things. I would, however, be interested in discussing this w/ someone more in the know than I. True or not, I still find it unsettling that the more poorly tempered and savage fantastic characters in the books are Natives, unable to make an active choice, like the good, white vampires.
More importantly, and in summary, I find the division of color and morality disturbing. I think it says a lot about Smeyer the way that she created her vampires and their lack of depth, beyond their beauty and surface qualities. These books are so wildly popular, despite their lack of conflict, plot, and utterly lazy writing that I think it is dangerous to not discuss the issues of race w/in the frames of the story. The division of morality along color lines is something that needs to be talked about, b/c it isn’t OK to erase PoC from media, and it isn’t OK to make the only amoral or evil character in a white world brown skinned (see: clusterfucktasthrophe that is the Avatar movie). All too often popular culture erases color from the world. The message this sends to People of Color is simple but clear: You don’t matter. No one sees you and you practically don’t exist. No offense, but you are the Other.
Discussion? Thoughts?
Other New Moon blogging here, here, here and here.
(Hate to say it but I’d like your post better if you’d spell out “with” and “because”).
I definitely agree that writers do nothing unintentionally… even if it’s subconscious, it’s still racist. And just bad and unoriginal. Can’t we move on from this world where the bad guys are easily recognizable, wear black hats, look different?
If you hate to say something, don’t say it.
I don’t really care what people think of my use of “w/” or “b/c”. I have been doing it for a long time, and I don’t know why people still feel the need to point it out. I think if people can’t get past it then they are missing the point.
That said, thanks for stopping by. And yes, I think it has a lot to do w/ the need to make a bad force recognizable. But they should be recognizable by their actions, not by their appearance. White people are equally capable of being “bad” and PoC are capable of being the forces of “good”.
I really agree with what you’ve said here. I don’t know much about Mormonism myself, but I do think the way you’ve described the Quileute characters is spot on. Thanks for this. Despite their flaws (I’ve only read up to book two since), they were my favorite characters because to me they actually felt alive… like real people, unlike the Cullens whom I couldn’t love or respect because they weren’t as perfect and moral as Smeyer wanted us to believe; they encouraged Bella’s unhealthy obsession with Edward. Generally, I view them as enablers. Rosalie as a character, I thought, instead of reducing what she felt as jealousy (that’s all it ever is with us females) could have been used more intelligently. She could have had legitimate reasons for not liking Bella or her relationship with Edward.
For me, the Quileute were the best part of the book and the only reason I wanted to read this series. Eclipse is sitting unread because I don’t really have the heart to read about how Jacob sexually assaulted Bella. I think it’s OOC and racist because he’s being positioned as the animalistic, uncontrolled non-white in contrast to the “civilized,” restrained and white Edward. I wish that the Werewolves had been treated with more respect, but I felt as though they were positioned as an “inferior coven” so to speak and the race of the characters makes this effect even more pronounced.
Out of the three books, I hate Eclipse the most.
Jacob goes from being the nice best friend to being totally demonized in a half assed effort to force conflict into a story where there is none. Instead of writing some depth into the swarm of vampire newborns plaguing Seattle or even spending one page on the “big fight” at the end we are stuck w/ pages upon pages of pathetic “I love him, but I also love him” squished into a giant pissing match. What little bit of actually interesting story there is is pretty much abandoned for this stupid game of chase and non-conflict. No, suddenly Jacob has a huge swing of character change which is out of the ordinary for who seems to be the most developed character in any of the books.
Not a coincidence that he is the only principle player who happens to also be a PoC. The assault and the consequent praise and “atta boy” mentality from Bella’s father, the COP is pretty ridiculous, and makes me wonder what the fuck Smeyer is thinking. Especially since she is trying to tote this whole series as an “ultimate love story”. Now we have a player who is, once again, a force of bad who is also a brown person.
Do you see this as a kind of…discipline? It’s almost like SMeyer realized Jake and the Quileute were a threat to the superiority of her vampires (they were, characterization-wise). Instead of exploring that, its like she put them back “in their place” immediately because they were in danger of outshining her darlings (ie; Jake/Bella started out with much better development and made more sense, to me anyway, than Ed/Bella).
I can see where you are coming from on that. And, yes, at first (in New Moon, they did seem to make more sense. He didn’t stalk her, or force her to do things she didn’t want to (until that assault), and he didn’t play cat and mouse w/ her. He is nice to her (and doesn’t want to eat her). I liked Jacob a lot until book three, and then by book four I was starting to see Edward as a better and more compatible person. Eclipse changes the way we see Jacob, taking him from the strength that *groan* held Bella together when her world fell apart to this menacing brown being trying to force his way b/t her and the beautiful and perfect white boy.
There is a lot more there, too, thinking back on how race and class intersect (and the way Natives are shoved to the fringes of society). Think of the way the two homes are described. The Black’s home (coincidental for name, no?) is tiny, barely big enough to contain them. Shabby, w/ tiny windows letting in very little light. Fading w/ things falling apart. Compare that to the Cullens, w/ their spacious multi-roomed home, w/ lots of glass to let in the sun. Large beautiful yard, the top notch of furniture and such. The Cullens have more money than a small country (as Bella notes in Breaking Dawn), while Billy can not afford to repace the shoes that Jacob destroys w/ his transformations. And then we find Bella, and the Swan residence. Average home, decent size, comfy, but nothing special. Bella wedged not only romantically, but socially as well in the middle.
I disagree with you on the racism part. Because of how descriptive Stephanie is on her characters. She tried to make a point not to be racist by creating the diamond skin.
Also note the detail in the fourth book about here description of all the other vampires, coven or nomad. Each is described mainly as beautiful! With the exception of the Irish coven which she described their leader as plain. Considering this Irish leader is also white how can it be racist?
Read how she describes the Egyptian vampires and the South American vampires.
I get what your trying to point out but if you pay attention to more detail and read about Stephanie Meyers herself you’ll know that she did NOT intend any racism whatsoever in here series.
It all goes back to the fact when someone doesn’t like something they scream racism or discrimination of some kind and that looks to be the case here.
I myself am an experienced book critic and tend to pay attention to details on all novels I read even if it means reading it several times.
I also make it a habit to read blogs, other reviews, and the reader’s views on every novel that I critique.
Read Meyers books several times for each book and THEN you can critique it properly!
Hey check it out! I am getting advice on how to properly critique a book! All of that experience! I should be so grateful that you stormed into my house and told me my rugs look like shit!
How do you know how many times I have read the book? You don’t. How many other reviews have I read? You don’t know. How extensive were the notes I took while reading? You haven’t any clue.
I don’t have to go looking for the racism…it is there loud and clear. The fact that you don’t personally see it doesn’t erase it at all.
Having not done my review of Breaking Dawn yet, I haven’t gotten into how she describes the other covens (but the Amazons are so EXOTIC!!!). What I AM describing here is the way she portrays the Native Americans in her book, if you read this at all and didn’t just see the title and get all bent out of shape. She plays on some pretty huge and ugly stereotypes about Natives. This post is mostly about how she frames the Natives, and the one vampire so far described as anything but perfect, white and pure is depicted as an evil brown man.
She isn’t descriptive of her characters beyond their physical appearances. They have no depth. And just b/c she describes one character as plain doesn’t erase the other glaring racism inherent in Bella’s description. In the fourth book Bella also notes how odd and small and dark the servants on the island are compared to Edward. As if having to look at dark skin next to his white (like a beautifully perfect and bright diamond) his skin is hurting her eyes and making her suffer. The only emphasis she places on anyone is on their physical appearance (white = good and pure, brown = exotic or bad or some combination of both) or their morality (the Cullens are perfect, the other covens don’t measure up to them or their uniqueness, notice the other covens, the ones comprised of these “exotic” features are too uncivilized to refrain from human blood).
Just b/c you like something doesn’t mean that there isn’t room to critique or criticize.
Whether Meyer intended racism or not isn’t the point. The point is that it is there. Maybe she didn’t intend it, but that would mean that it is just so ingrained that it comes naturally, w/o her noticing. That is also apparent in other media.
Also, before I forget, in Breaking Dawn, Bella’s PoV changes. She is no longer looking at vampires as these mysterious and gorgeous others w/ her “dull human senses”. She is now looking at them as a vampire herself (the only part of the whole series I actually liked was after Bella’s transformation, when she was on equal ground w/ her new family), and through vampire senses. They are more like her now, since she is also beautiful and pale and perfect in her new life state. Human Bella no doubt would have found Siobhan beautiful and glorious, like all the others, but vampire Bella would see her through vampire eyes, which would make her “plain” by comparison.
Plain also does not equal ugly. Plain is indicating nothing remarkable, and one vampire would be no more remarkable than any other to a vampire.
Intentions and results are different.
We have a winner!
You covered the rest real well but, I’ve got your back.
I agree with Ouyang Dan: their is an obvious racist ‘tinge’ (sorry for the pun) to the ‘big themes’ of the twilight books, both because white often = beauty/goodness and because of the way in which first nation peoples are treated as ‘nature’ people, more primitive etc… In disagreement with Cheri, I actually find the racism of Meyer’s descriptive *details* to be more problematic and blatant (her brief description of the streets at night in South America, for example, or her assertion that, what with their dark hair and olive skin, the Egyptian vampires could ‘really’ be a family (because, unlike white people, everybody with dark hair and olive skin look alike?).
It’s true that white doesn’t consistently equal beauty for Meyer. However, it’s important to keep in mind that racism comes in many different forms, including an exoticizing praise. Just because something isn’t obviously negative (calling a subject ugly, for example) doesn’t mean it isn’t dis-empowering in some other, perhaps more insidious (because more complicated, harder to track) way.
I agree, and I’ve studied early Mormonism, and have dear friends who are Mormon. I checked my facts with them, and they said that there was a hell of a lot of racism in the early LDS. (Obviously, the majority of Mormons are NOT racist, but it is something that ought to be examined)
Agreed, Caitlin.
And I don’t believe, at all, nor do I think that I said that SMEYER, is a big overt racist person. I don’t think she stands up and yells slurs or anything. I think it is ingrained thought. I mean, deep down we are all a little bit racist, but we each go through a bit of socialization in our lives that means that we need to examine things a little more.
There is some Mormon doctrine that I truly believe needs some close scrutiny. I also believe that Meyer wrote her books with some doctrine heavily ingrained in her mind, never having examined why, to her, beautiful always = white, and color = exotic/different/odd/sometimes bad.
Thanks for your thoughts.
Most people will not recognize the ‘labels’ put on certain groups. It becomes embedded in society. In our mannerisms, laws, conduct, and beliefs. Some labels are easy to spot, such as stereotypes. Some are not as easy, as in association. White is the label for purity, beauty, justice and good. While other colours have different associations we readily apply to them. If you are in the place where you are comfortable, it is difficult to see out of that comfort. If something challenges that comfort, you react. In many cases you react with denial.
Racism comes in many forms. It is a difficult thing to be aware of it.
Well said! Perhaps more disturbing is the fact that the series is so popular despite its racist undertones. It’s as if either the many readers and/or film viewers simply didn’t notice it or didn’t care.
Many will say, “Get over it!” “OMG! Why must everything be racist?! Why must ‘you people’ read so much into things?!” But here’s the point: We can’t forget that racial injustices have occurred and that stereotypes in pop culture have existed and continue to exist; and we should be on guard to avoid these things in the future.
“Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it.” It might be a trite saying but it is very true!
My man, I thought I was the only one who picked up on this…
Check out my take on it all, what Jacob REALLY wanted to say to Bella
Heh…You are kinda funny.
I have another post in drafts about Sam and Emily’s relationship that is on it’s way to post sometime this week.
Thanks for sharing your video! (But I ain’t a man, Man! ;) )
I totally agree with your point of view here, I think there’s a lot of latent racism in all four smeyer books, and it’s sad people don’t even realize it.
Which, as you also correctly pointed out, is just a symptom of our society. Personally, I find it very sad that many non-white people have already adopted this ‘white equals beauty’ dogma that they won’t even question those warped ‘beauty standards’, judging themselves by it (!) and trying to conform to them. Being white myself, I never understood this as I’ve always, for some reason, found much (more) beauty in non-white people, even as a kid (I always wanted to be the jet-black haired one :o)…) Kids don’t come to this world with any pre-set concept of what’s considered ‘superior’ or not. And I find it very sad that entire nations (who are not part of a ‘mixed ethnic group’ country, like the US, but rather homogenous, e.g. Korea or Japan) have totally adopted the ‘fake Hollywood beauty myth’ into their idea of what you have to look like to be considered beautiful (there too you can find an incredible amount of ‘white equals beautiful’ commercials, with a huge amount of ‘locals’ trying to fit in, even doing surgery etc. – which I find hard to understand, considering how much prettier their natural ‘non-white’ beauty is…)
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying white cannot be beautiful. It can be. But so can be any other non-white skin/hair/eye color (and depending on personal preference, many might find their very opposite more beautiful than themselves). I just wish more of this all-accepting, all-embracing spirit would be among us. Including Smeyer’s books. IMO, she had the chance to create something really outstanding, and I wish she would’ve written at least half the stuff completely differently. It would’ve been wuite ‘refreshing’ to see some old stereotypes shattered and done away with (just imagine the impact this could’ve had on these days’ youngsters…). Such a great opportunity wasted … what a shame…
Being white myself, I never understood this as I’ve always, for some reason, found much (more) beauty in non-white people, even as a kid (I always wanted to be the jet-black haired one :o)…)
I agree with a lot of the underlying sentiment of what you said here, and since you are a first time commenter, I read a lot of it w/ a grain of salt. This part, though, I think I want to mention specifically.
I feel that there is an (unintentional in a lot of cases) extreme where white people sometimes “exotify” non-white people (think the fetishization of Asian women). I think the thoughts that some white children get that certain non-white people are more beautiful comes from that fetishization. Don’t get me wrong, as a child I wished I could have had more of those typical Native traits, but for me it was more a matter of wanting to look more like some of the other kids in my tribe and less like the mutt that everyone called me. You brought an interesting point for me to ponder nonetheless.