Originally published in print, September 2021.

 

Last August, Stephenie Meyer published Midnight Sun. This companion novel to the Twilight series retold the events of the first book from the perspective of Edward Cullen. Meyer published it in order to commemorate the 15th anniversary of the original novel’s publication — which coincided with a revival of interest in the paranormal romance series. Over the last year, a fresh wave of memes, TikTok edits, discourse and discussion centered around the series has taken over the internet, and the series seems to be regaining some of the pop culture significance that it had lost towards the end of the noughties. 

 

Twilight was a cultural phenomenon. The books attracted a cult of loyal readers and the mania only intensified with the release of the first film in 2008, which Seventeen magazine called “The Year of the Vampire”. On paper it was a simple love story about a teenage girl who was torn between a moody vampire and a shirtless werewolf, but it came to represent so much more. The “Team Edward” and “Team Jacob” debate dominated the cultural consciousness, generating copious amounts of online quizzes, fanart, and slogan t-shirts. It was serious stuff. Some people even lost friendships over it. But, like all good things, the hype had to come to an end. Trends in YA fiction changed during the 2010s. Dystopian fiction took over as The Hunger Games inspired a series of knock-offs. While Twilight didn’t invent love triangles, many franchises tried to recapture the success of the “Edward VS Jacob” debate, which led to audiences losing interest in the trope. More and more copies of the books appeared on charity shop shelves. The movies were only rooted out for the occasional throwback during a sleepover. 

 

Part of this new wave of nostalgia is natural. Nostalgia cycles are a well-documented societal phenomenon: in the 2010s it was 80s nostalgia that influenced fashion and popular media such as Stranger Things and Taylor Swift’s 1989 album. 90s influences also fed into the cultural zeitgeist, a trend that continued into the start of the new decade. Throughout 2020, “Y2K” was the new buzzword, as girls in baby tees and velour tracksuits dominated TikTok. Even the “main character” trend had its roots in tropes from coming-of-age movies of the 2000s, such as Legally Blonde and Camp Rock. Given how massive Twilight was in the 2000s, it was only a matter of time before it had its own revival.

 

But there are other forces at play too. It’s no secret that the pandemic has completely changed our relationship with the media that we consume. In 2019 for example, the most-streamed shows on Netflix were Stranger Things, Lucifer, and other recent releases. In 2020 however, it was shows like Friends and The Office that saw the biggest streaming numbers. Indeed, many articles have been written justifying this culture of rewatching. In times of uncertainty, people are seeking out the familiar, the comfortable. There’s an element of regression, especially for young adults, many of whom have moved back into their family homes and lost some of the newfound independence that comes with going to college. Stuck in your childhood bedroom, surrounded by the remnants of your teenage years, it comes as no surprise that a lot of people have wanted to dive back into teenage escapism. Additionally, with the gift of hindsight, people have been able to look back on Twilight’s place in the cultural canon, the mania that surrounded it — and the criticism it drew.

 

It’s no secret that Twilight garnered a lot of backlash. It even inspired a parody film with 2010’s Vampires Suck. Not all of the criticism thrown at Twilight was entirely undeserved. Both Edward and Jacob display abusive tendencies: Edward stalks Bella, while Jacob refuses to respect her boundaries or take no for an answer after she continually rejects him. Meyer’s Mormon beliefs permeate the messaging in the text when it comes to abstinence and abortion. Additionally, Meyer’s depiction of the real-life Quileute tribe and her use of their culture has come under recent scrutiny, as she took many liberties with their traditions. The implications of the Native characters being able to turn into wolves are made all the more sinister when the mainly-white vampire characters wrinkle their noses at their smell, or refer to them as “dogs”. It also doesn’t help that one of the Native characters hits his wife, and that two of the pack members form soulmate connections with infants.  What’s even more egregious, however, is the fact that in spite of the millions the series made, the group never received any of it. This is in spite of the fact that their folklore contributed to the lore of the series, and that their traditional symbols were used for official merchandise. 

 

However, as someone who was part of the anti-Twilight brigade back in the early 2010s, I can safely say that these criticisms only represented a tiny portion of the backlash to the series. Arguably, the main reason why Twilight was reviled was because it was popular with teenage girls. I consumed a lot of Twilight-critical content back in the early 2010s, and in hindsight, it’s really weird to me that so many grown men were up-in-arms over a mediocre film and book series aimed at fourteen-year-old girls.  These were men who made hating Twilight a huge part of their personality. Everyone is obviously entitled to their opinion, and is allowed to have an opinion on whatever piece of media they like, but the sheer volume of parody videos and memes calling Edward Cullen “Tinkerbell” were not warranted when one actually looks at the content of the series. Again, there are things about Twilight that should rightfully be criticised. The fact that the vampires sparkle, or that it’s a love story without much of a plot, is extremely low down on the list. Part of me wonders if a lot of these men were just annoyed that Meyer had made their favourite horror movie characters more appealing to teenage girls. It’s worth noting that media made for male audiences is not held to the same standards. They’re allowed to have their explosion-filled action movies with flimsy characters and nobody bats an eyelid. 

 

I’m more interested in the women who criticised Twilight though, having been one of them myself. Much has already been written about the “Not Like Other Girls” phenomenon, and it’s now a trope that is past the point of parody. But that culture was very real, and I only really started to see it challenged around the mid-2010s. When you see adult men — online and in the real world — calling teenage girls shallow or silly for liking things that they are the literal target audience for (see One Direction, chick-flicks, John Green novels, and even the Beatles back in the 60s), when “girl” starts to become synonymous with “bad”, your natural reaction is to get defensive — I’m a girl, but I’m not like those girls. This is ironic when Bella Swan herself has been held up as one of the definitive examples of this trope: the broody brunette bookworm, who has no interest in fashion or jewellery, and would rather fix up motorcycles than go to parties. Maybe that’s why I suddenly made hating Twilight part of my personality, after being a fan for so long. I saw myself in Bella, felt like I didn’t really fit in with the other girls in my year, and then once the series became mainstream and those girls became interested in the films, I wanted to set myself apart from them again. Internalised misogyny can be a hell of a drug, one that many of us are only now breaking free of. I can honestly say that it felt pretty liberating to jump on the nostalgia-train and flick through my old copy of Eclipse. 

Last Valentine’s day, in the midst of the pandemic, my boyfriend and I watched all five films together over Zoom. It was honestly the most fun that I had in lockdown, especially since my boyfriend had never seen the films before and knew nothing about the series. He got surprisingly invested by the end of it; he even asked me for all of the character backstories and the details that were lost in adaptation. While it’s clear that part of the Twilight renaissance has been fuelled by ironic appreciation, it seems that there could still be a new fandom of “Twi-hards” waiting in the wings. Maybe I’ll even get him a copy of Midnight Sun for Christmas.