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Is Twilight better than Dracula?
By Lester | February 25, 2009
Before you break out the stakes and torches, let me briefly lay out my reasons for that opinion.
First, I’d ask that you read my various posts (1, 2, 3, & 4) about the experience of rereading Dracula recently. They lay out what I see as both the strengths and weaknesses of that novel.
Balanced against that rereading has been my recent experience with the Twilight series…
My daughter K8 dragged me to the movie on its opening weekend. I didn’t want to go, having read that they were expecting huge box-office receipts based on an audience of “teen girls and their mothers.” For one thing, I have a love/hate relationship with theaters—with having to put up with other people’s chatter while I’m trying to lose myself in a story. For another, having raised four daughters, sometimes I just get tired of romantic tales. (Okay, to be honest, it’s frequently the disjoint of my Army Basic chromosome wanting to kick the ass of the chromosome that’s making my eyes tear up. A man can stand only so many years of that internal conflict.)
The film surprised me. Quite a satisfying tale. Enough so that I wanted to read the book to find out why K8 was disappointed in the movie characters. The desire to read a book after watching a film doesn’t strike me that often. Let me offer this desire as Defense Exhibit A, then.
While the first book annoyed me in places (after all, I’m a 53-year-old guy and the protagonist is a high school gal with teen angst), the love it depicts resonates with my own experience of meeting my wife (a sort of head-on freight train inevitability that carried me to wonderful places once I quit resisting), the characters are so real, the plot builds so nicely, the descriptions leave images in my mind, the action scenes are spot on, the climax is pretty much perfect, and the dénoument unwinds in a more satisfying manner than much I can remember reading elsewhere. To give you more specifics would be to give away spoilers, but I hope you get the idea.
But here’s the clincher—Defense Exhibit B, if you will. I couldn’t put the book down. And once I’d finished Twilight,
Granted, Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles (barring, perhaps, book 1) engaged me in a deeper way than the Twilight series, but Twilight and its sequels are virtually as satisfying.
And that’s something I just cannot say about Dracula.
Okay, bring on the stakes and torches. I’m ready.
Topics: Announcements | 3 Comments »
December 13th, 2009 at 11:48 pm
[...] been paying attention, you already know how much I like the Twilight series. (I’ve said it’s better than Dracula.) But I also like a good spoof, and what follows is particularly good! Enjoy. Posted in [...]
August 16th, 2010 at 5:50 pm
Dracula pwns Twilight in millions of ways, sure, the book was a little drier, but at least it isn’t full of holes. Twilight has a MILLION flaws, and its like reading a book about a woman’s dream land. Every character is a Mary-sue (perfect), completely draining out the interest. With perfect characters, you know whats going to happen- not one good guy dies and leaves no suspense. She isn’t independent, relying on Edward 24/7- and Edward is VERY controlling- notice how he forces her away from Jacob and never losing an argument?
Also, do you see any character development? Bella is a dry, whiney girl who has the emotions of a dead chipmunk, complaining half of the series about her ‘unfair’ life and the other talking about Edward. The series also encourages stalking, unsafe sex,and dropping out of school, and being completely sexist all the while. What about Jasper’s self-control problem? Is he not walking in a highschool full of girls with their period?
Lastly, Meyer wrote the entire series….for herself. Bella IS Meyer, she just wants to live in a perfect world were everything works out.
Besides, the majority of fans only watch the whole thing because they think Robert Patterson and Taylot Lautner is hot and they want a super cool boyfriend. That is not fair to authors who try and teach the world a lesson with their books and write artful stories.
Now, Dracula is aimed towards and older audience, people with their heads cleared and usually not influenced by fictional seres. Count Dracula has a humane side and vicious side to himself, more of a seducer and blood-luster then anything else. But, he has flaws.
Dracula is super-powerful, but like everything, has multiple weaknesses. In the end, its his lust that brings him to his grave, while taking good guys with him too. The entire plot is detailed and without holes, with more interesting, realistic characters. And, the entire story as a deep meaning behind it while also being very original.
My wooden stake has been driven! x3
August 17th, 2010 at 1:03 pm
Thanks for the comment! I’m happy this post is generating some discussion.
In many ways, I agree with you. Twilight is definitely young adult romantic fiction. It avoids the whole estrus subject in the same way Marvel Comics forbids its artists to include crotches on its characters. The relationship between Edward and Bella is very much in keeping with Wuthering Heights-era novels. Etc.
To say that Dracula has no plot holes, however, is wishful thinking. I mean, is the Count an evil genius or does he have a “child mind”? Van Helsing says both. And do you honestly see any character development in Dracula? They’re all stage characters, full of grandiloquent gesture but little true human emotion.
I mention Wuthering Heights because I believe Bella and Edward face the same sort of mutually headstrong relationship as Catherine and Heathcliff, and they’re dropped into a similarly impossible problem of separate, seemingly irreconcilable societies. That they survive and overcome in the end is due to Bella’s strength of character more than anyone else’s. That Meyer unveils such a rich, inventive supernatural background behind this classic love story raises Twilight above mere junior fiction and—I continue to believe—makes it richer and more impressive than Dracula.
That Stoker never managed to write anything worth reading after Dracula, while Meyer’s The Host is excellent sci-fi, is the final nail in Stoker’s coffin.