Let's agree we're going to think before we use the term "Twilight-y" or "Twi-Lighty"

Let's start with the notion that we all hate the 4-novel/ 5-movie cycle of "vampire" tales of Stephanie Meyer. And, people, having now seen the first three of those movies (with the support of wine and RiffTrax), I can confirm that there is no small amount to hate.

gah.  these two.

We've previously covered the deep seeded issues we had with Twilight, but as a quick re-cap:

• Bella is our focus.  Over three movies her character utterly fails to develop or even deliver dialog.  There is nothing remotely unique or interesting about her except that supernatural creatures seem to give a great big 'ol damn about her, but cannot explain why.
• Edward is written as a psychotic stalker, but in the context of the movies, this is played up as desirable and sexy.  He does mope in expensive clothes and drive an expensive car and have a surrogate huge (vampire) family that all love Bella.
• There's some werewolf kid who the female audience loves because of his abs and dopey, blank stares who also pines for Bella.  His entire storyline seems like a C-plot thread that somehow stole focus completely from anything actually happening.
• Having had seen 3 Twilight movies, I cannot tell you what they are about other than that "bad" vampires want to kill Bella for inexplicable reasons, and that everyone is willing to die to protect her.
• The movies are comprised about 60% of filler material of characters standing around having "emotional" scenes wherein the plot is not moved forward, the characters do not advance, and everyone feels badly.

However, in the past year, an interesting phenomena has occurred.  Superhero media featuring youngish men dressing like youngish men and going through fairly standard melodrama are getting the label of "Twilight-y" affixed to them in media commentary.  And it is not meant as a compliment.

Twilight-y.


I am not exactly certain when I first read this criticism of "Twilight-y" or "Twi-Lighty" (that the reviewer never feels the need to expand upon) but its never clear that the reviewer is actually familiar with Twilight.  If I had to put a stamp on what Twilight means to me, it would be "a movie about vampires who care unnecessarily about a bland, dull-eyed girl".

Let us take the example of Superman: Earth One.  Somehow pundits (including Katie Couric* for God's sake) decided that Superman dressing pretty much exactly how kids dress these days - and I work on a college campus - was a threat of some sort.  Those crazy jeans!  That...  hoodie! (again, Twilight vampires wear designer sport coats, not hoodies)!  The skinny tie!

What I basically gather from this is that a generation is getting older, and their only frame of reference for what the 20-ish crowd and teen-agers look like when not wearing soccer shorts is their exposure to the Twilight franchise. 

The recent release of the trailer for The Amazing Spider-Man also drew cries of "Twilight-y!". I found this a bit baffling.  Was it that actor Andrew Garfield has foofy hair?  That the movie was suggesting it had emotional beats for its protagonist?  That it starred a young man who we know will be skinny but powerful?

I may not love the trailer (it makes me wonder why we're getting a new Spider-Man relaunch), but...  nothing about it had me rolling my eyes as characters pledged their love, smiled slyly and sexily into the camera, hunched into a ball weeping over the feelings about their feelings...

And, seriously, Peter Parker invented the super-hero pity party.  There's nothing here that isn't from the comics, hasn't been seen in a cartoon or in the last 3 incredibly successful Spidey installments.  If you're throwing accusations of "Twilight-y" at this trailer, you can't not throw them at Spider-Man in general.  And I know you haven't got the cajones for that.

I mentioned before that Heidi MacDonald had seen the one word of "brooding" in the description of the Superman relaunch in September and affixed "Twi-Lighty" to the character's relaunch. 

Look, if "brooding" = Twilight-y, then Batman is the Twilight-iest character on the entire planet, and people love that @#$%.  The point of the use of the word is pretty clear - youngish audiences so want their characters to wallow in internal conflict of some sort.  I'll make an argument that Batman absolutely does not muck about with conflicted feelings, and that's one of his trademarks, but somehow the fact gargoyles are all over Gotham City and make for good rooftop seating has meant Batman "broods", but that's how its read by young people (I know I read it as "he must be thinking deep shit up there" when I was a teen-ager).

Now, Edward...  that dude broods.  He broods in science class.  He broods watching Bella sleep all night.  He broods doing the laundry, going to Rome, throwing birthday parties, and playing baseball.  Dude lives in his own head a bit, and worries about stuff instead of doing something about it. 

And then there's relaunch Superman:

its called "Action Comics" for a reason.

That is not a guy sitting around having a pity party.  And, truthfully, that image is all we know about the September relaunch at this time.

I don't love the press copy, and we've talked about this already.  But...  what, at this point, is DC supposed to be doing?  I've seen the phrase "this isn't my Superman!" or "this isn't the Superman I want to see!" online regarding the relaunch, but you know what, you weren't buying the old Superman, either (and I would argue New Krypton and the first half of Grounded were waaaaaaay more about "brooding" than what this appears to be, and I saw not a word about "Twilight-y"). 

In fairness, Superman is dressed differently here, but if jeans and t-shirts = Twilight-y, then we all have a little Edward Cullen deep down inside, no? 

I don't want to take unnecessary digs at Heidi in particular, but I have to come back to who is making these comments, and it seems to be older fans who may be transitioning out of the hip, 20-something or younger crowd.  The same way our folks may not have understood our obsession with our own pop-culture touchstones (many of which we realized decades later were terrible), or not understood how we dressed or what we listened to on our crazy new-fangled cassettes, so, too, are we going to see ourselves baffled with what the kids are up to these days.

And, if I might, we may also have less patience for melodrama as we get older (I certainly have a pretty short attention span for either real or fictional melodrama before I expect people/ characters to get their act together).  What seemed like a "relatable" Peter Parker with his relationship issues and turmoil in 2002 may seem like a dude who needs to realize "you have awesome powers.  Go have fun!" in 2011.

When we're getting pernsickety about hearing that the demographic for comics is males ages 18-34, we may have to adjust our expectations that we're older than that now, and we have to quit expecting comics to age with us as we've been lucky to have happen since the 1980's.  At some point, comics need to be for a younger audience, too.  Sure, I relate to a Superman with a stable marriage and a nice home life, but I'm 36 and hitched up.  New Superman dates around and has lady-issues, and feeling blue about the ladies sounds a lot more like something I could understand at age 18.  Let alone trying to figure out what to do with my newfound freedom and open destiny (let's be honest, Superman was a dude with two fulltime jobs the past 25 years).

Is that Twilight-y?  I don't think so.

So let's be careful out there when we're throwing around terms that we're still defining.  Hoodies?  Jeans?  Not Twilight-y.  Young men as heroes?  Not Twilight-y.  Spending four movies crying over "feelings"?  That is Twilight-y.

And, yes, sure, I volunteer to be the internet's cop on when we get to use the term.

*Couric, by the way, accuses Superman of looking like he's doing cocaine.  Nice.