Bella Swan, Real Girl?
"The Twilight series challenges what I would call the 'Buffy Summers Maxim': that teen heroines be physically empowered, oftentimes at the expense of emotional clarity. Bella Swan diverges from many of our more recent teenaged female heroines. The ones who appear in films -- the feisty Olive from Easy A, the quirky ironist Juno MacGuff -- often seem to be written by thirtysomethings seemingly desperate to revisit high school to work some alchemical magic: turning the abjection of it all into a badge of indie cred. But even the more complicated female heroines of recent young adult fiction -- Katniss Everdeen of The Hunger Games or Katsa of Graceling -- embody a suspiciously pleasing, 'empowered' form of female adolescence." [The Hairpin]
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Comments
Doesn't Bella have a "superpower" though?
Spoiler alert:
Yes.
It's still one that's connected to her maternal instinct (to protect loved ones), but it is a superpower, and in Breaking Dawn Bella finally begins to actualize herself. She's passive and unsure of what she wants in adolescence, but becomes active and more assertive of her needs and desires in adulthood.
The Twilight books are about the coda of Mormonism and Mormon family values. Bella is poised to 'convert' and in doing so posits herself as a wife and mother, the highest and most important achievement that any Mormon woman should strive for. Comparatively, Buffy had premarital sex (for which she was grossly and heinously punished) and her successes always came at a high cost to her romantic relationships. Katniss was sent to her death as a virgin sacrifice, which is why she could be martyred. Twilight is just reinforcing old stereotypes.
Joss Whedon has said more than once that Buffy was about the pretty blond girl NOT being the victim and being the one who was the hero.
To compare Buffy to Bella is apples to oranges, as Bella is so incredibly passive. I was banned from going to see the Twilight movies with my friends because after the second movie, I asked if the movie shouldn't be called "New Moon: Bella lets Supernatural Boys Drive Her Car for Her.'