Are you in a Twilight trance?

By Malu Fernandez
Unless you have been living under a rock for the last six months you must be aware of the new “Twilight” saga by author Stephanie Meyer. The book is basically targeted towards tweens and young adults but have crossed over to adults. The novel is the first series of vampire novels written by neophyte author Stephanie Meyer. It has been on the ‘‘NY Times’’ best-seller list for over 50 weeks and has been translated into over 100 languages. With the last installment of the saga that hit the shelves this year the saga was complete—or so we thought as her manuscript for the fifth book got leaked online— the ‘‘Twilight’’ series has reached cult status giving Harry Potter a run for his money.
The first book, called Twilight is basically a story about a teenage girl named Bella who falls in love with a good-looking vampire named Edward Cullen. The series of books which follow, Eclipse, New Moon and Breaking Dawn basically chronicle the struggle and difficulties of first love and forbidden love between a human and a vampire. Pretty simple plot really, like Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet mixed with The Hunger, a literary Buffy and Angel with a touch of the Roswell Teen dynamic combined with the heroines of Anne Rice’s vampire novels.
The cult following is so strong, 6,000 young screaming fans congregated in Comic Con a few months back. It has become such a worldwide sensation, Summit Pictures is coming out with a Twilight movie starring Robert Pattinson, the guy who played Cedric Diggory in Harry Potter. The big thing about the movie is that Summit is a small studio compared to Sony and Universal Summit financed this film for a measly $37 million, a paltry sum compared to the other movies like Harry Potter, but because of successful viral marketing and its cult following they have a franchise on their hands which will make them one of the big boys to be reckoned with. In spite of the fact that it is targeted to a female audience the Twillight fans and so-called ‘‘Twilight moms’’ will be enough for a successful box-office opening. And how lucky can former Harry Potter star Robert Pattinson be? Harry Potter actually moved its opening date to next year which opened up the perfect spot for the Twilight movie. And good news to all you fans out there the movie is scheduled to open first here in the Philippines, which according to my sources in Hollywood is to deter piracy.
Yes I am a bit obsessed with the book I read all four books in three days and it brought me back to a time in my youth where everything was new—from falling in love, getting your heart broken and moving out of your home for the first time. A lot of women I know got into the book as well and my friend and I call it the Twilight trance—a trancelike state of being after you read the book basically you end up, as the Pinoy vernacular would say, making “muni-muni”. Everyone I know who’s read it has gotten into a trance. A friend of mine who regularly goes to bed at 10 p.m. now goes to bed at 2 a.m. because of surfing the Net on all Twilight topics and is madly in love with Robert Pattinson.
The character of Pattinson in the book is called Edward Cullen, a man so breathtaking and romantic it’s hard to compare to a real man. Another friend of mine went out with this handsome Italian guy who was perfect but she couldn’t enjoy her date because her mind was on the fictional character of Edward Cullen. She then realized after that it was unfair to compare a real man to a fictional character in a book, much less a vampire at that!
Women around the world who have read it mostly agree that it’s hard for a real man to compare to this fictional character of Edward Cullen because most of the women who read the book now expect more from their man. Other women I know just walk around in a daze questioning their current relationships. I myself have been fascinated by the myth of vampires ever since I could read so my obsession with the novel isn’t a new thing. When I got into the Anne Rice books, I was living abroad and I went to every Goth bar you could think of in the east coast. But back then they didn’t call themselves Goth. They just wore a lot of black and wore Doc Martens.
Reading novels takes you out of your reality and opens up a new world for you to imagine. I read a lot of books and each one takes you to a different world and opens up your intellect and imagination. JK Rowling encouraged young people to read as the Harry Potter phenomena grew. Stephanie Meyer does the same with Twilight but the big difference between the two is that the crossover of readers to older women has become huge and has created a whole new fan base for her. If the Twilight books made women swoon imagine what the movie will do. Pattinson better enjoy this quiet time before the movie because when the movie opens, his life will change forever just like all those women who read the books as no real man will ever measure up to Edward Cullen.