You know the end is near when...

... the trailer for the next installment of the Twilight saga has come out.

Oh dear. I feel a rant coming on.

Let’s start with the books. The fact that the series is called the Twilight ‘saga’ makes me vomit a little. It causes these teenybopper books to sound like a masterful account of biblical proportions. Which they are not.  And it also makes them sound a little bit refined and maybe even sophisticated. Which they most certainly are not. 

The books are a phenomenon. Why, I’m not quite sure. I’ve read them (OK, only the first one... but that was enough), and I sure don’t get why everyone’s in such an uproar. But then again, I’m not a female. However,  I have a theory as to why they’re so popular:

I think a couple hundred girls across the U.S. got paid by their parents to check out a book from the library and read it. Reluctantly, these girls went to the library (to the ‘Teen’ section, duh!), closed their eyes, reached out their nail-polished fingers, and picked the first book their hand touched. Which just happened to be Twilight. (Why, oh why, could it not have been To Kill a Mockingbird or Catch-22?) Now these girls had hardly read anything before, much less anything thought-provoking and substantive. So when they started to read about Bella and Edward and more about Edward and all about Edward, they swooned.

Then these few hundred girls told their friends that there were these things out there called books (Can you believe it? You read them!) and that this one called Twilight was sooooooooooo amazing. And like, it’s just like the best book I’ve ever read! And Edward! Oh, Edward! If only boys these days were like him!

And so on.

Thus sparked the fad that is Twilight. Now as you’ll recall, fads are bad. That’s so easy to remember, because it rhymes. FADS are BAD. Plaid shorts, cliches, Twilight, etc. All fads. All bad. 

What is most alarming to me is that fact that several of my friends who, for the most part, I would deem ‘intelligent,’ have bought into the same ridiculous delusion: They fell for Edward Cullen, and they fell hard. 

When I read the first book (one of my close intelligent friends told me it was really good and that I should read it, and I actually trusted her opinion at the time), I was with it for a while. I liked the whole ‘angsty’ feel that played out in the first few chapters. It wasn’t groundbreaking by any means, but it captured the teenage years fairly well, I thought. 

But then the cliches set in... the parents who were divorced... the dad who didn’t relate to his daughter... the boy who wouldn’t talk to the girl (in Chemistry, of course)... the girl who wasn’t good at sports or anything in particular, yet the hottest vampire in the world was attracted to her... the stereotyping of the American Indian as a loon...

You get the idea. Unless, of course, you’re a thirteen year old girl.

And then I about lost it. Halfway through the first book, there is an entire chapter devoted to Mr. Cullen’s physical perfections. Oh yes, men. Believe it. His toned muscles, his rippling chest, the way his abs practically pop out of his shirt, the way he smells, his radiant white teeth, and oh, that hair. That hair! 

Once again, vomit.

Yeah, I’m a guy. And I shouldn’t like it. But why do I feel like the only one who understands that these books aren’t particularly well conceived or well written, that the characters have one dimensional personalities (Edward may be hot, girls--but he has zero points in the personality department), and that most importantly, just because every other person in the world loves them doesn’t mean I should have to?

I admit that I didn’t see the movie. Why would I? I knew it would be a waste of money that could be going to make brilliant independent French films about the meaning of life. And then they threw together the sequel in a matter of hours just because they knew it would make another trillion dollars at the box office, no matter how horrible it turns out to be. 

Sigh...

You can disagree with what I’ve said. You’re wrong, but you can disagree. You may even be one of those intelligent girls who reads the books just for entertainment and pleasure. But those aren’t good enough reasons for me.

If you really are intelligent, you’ll be entertained by Eliot and Brecht, not by Edward and Bella.