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How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Appreciate Bad Art
Reflections on trash and taste
If I had a dollar for every Twilight book I saw on my college campus, I would be able to pay off my student loans. With the release of the movies, Robert Pattinson’s leer and Kristen Stewart’s vacant smile followed me everywhere, as female friends breathlessly asked me if I’d read it yet and what chapter I was on. I half expected “Team Edward or Team Jacob?” to be a job interview question — and definitely a make-it-or-break-it one. My roommate was transfixed by the books’ premise, which is that vampires, who are unchanging, can never fall out of love with their beloved.
It’s not surprising that a teen vampire love story took over pop culture. It wasn’t even the first time it had happened: As Buffy said in the Season 8 comics, “I did it first.” It may have been the first time that a book that used the word “murmured” every other page was a best-seller. In fact, the writing was as dry as a vampire’s victim, the characters two-dimensional, and the plot paper-thin until it got too thick to chew. And let’s not even get started on the glorification of stalking and the vaguely rapey love scene.
Naturally, everyone who was cultured and educated, or so they claimed, despised the books and movies and called them trash, an assessment I think is slightly unfair…
