Culture critic
Fifteen years after Twilight hit screens, whose team are you on? The answer should be neither
I t’sbeen 15 years since the cultural phenomenon that was the first Twilight film hit cinemas, and TikTok parodies and throwback clips have peppered my feed with nostalgia. ICYMI (how?) the franchise follows mortal teenager Bella Swan (Kristen Stewart) as she falls for vampiric love interest Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson). But love is never easy and things get complicated when her werewolf BFF Jacob Black (Taylor Lautner) also confesses his love for her. So while I, along with the rest of the bisexual community, also fancied Bella, the fandom was ablaze with the debate over which of the walking-red-flag males to side with in the ultimate battle for her love: Team Edward or Team Jacob.
But can we finally address why our pop culture romance obsessions are deeply problematic? And why is it that we’re so drawn to toxic characters? I loved the Twilight novels and adored watching the stories unfold in the films – the New Moon soundtrack remains as iconic as Dakota Fanning’s red eyes as vampire Jane Volturi – but the more I think about these books and blockbuster movies, the more uncomfortable I feel for Bella.
In the first Twilight story, she’s soon caught up in a love triangle with two men who would literally die for her. But the intensity of their love is, at times, unsettling, and at others, extremely worrying. Yes, it’s ‘just entertainment’, but how much have these teen movie narratives subconsciously shaped our ideals of what romantic love looks like? Often with unhealthy depictions of love bombing, toxic male rivalry and emotional manipulation.
In one scene, Edward enters Bella’s bedroom through the window while she’s sleeping and watches her. Romantic... or chilling? ‘Watching a partner sleep isn’t creepy in itself,’ says Ness Cooper, resident sex and relationship expert at Je Joue. ‘It’s the secrecy, entering the room without her awareness or consent [that’s problematic]. We call this psychosexual stalking.’ And don’t get me started on how he runs hot and cold, showering her with attention before ignoring her in the school halls, all excused by the ‘brooding and mysterious, complicated man’ trope. But people who withhold love and warmth aren’t a sexy puzzle to solve – we should all expect open affection from our partners.
Then, of course, we have Jacob – achildhood friend of Bella’s, who also happens to be a werewolf. He falls hard for her in New Moon and struggles to control his primal werewolf urges, aggressively kissing Bella before she rejects his advances. Which is to say: consent isn’t exactly a thing in these stories. ‘[The time when] Twilight was written pr
