The Abstinent Vampire Attraction
Vampires aside, last year’s block-buster movie, Twilight, has provoked some interesting research. New research from the University of Missouri shows that the reason teenage girls have fallen hard for the Twilight book and film series has to do with its portrayal of a traditional, abstinent romantic relationship. In the series, vampire Edward Cullen doesn’t want to bite his teen love interest Bella Swan, which means they can’t have sex. Cullen is portrayed as romantic, protective, and most important, as relating at a far deeper level than mere physical attraction. He resists sleeping with Bella because he doesn’t want to harm her. His desire to love and protect her causes him to take leadership, put on the brakes on their physical relationship, and control his sexual impulses.
Melissa Click, an assistant professor of communication who surveyed 4,000 Twilight fans, aged 11 to 70, at a fan convention in Dallas last summer, noted, “With teens, we actually found that they appreciated the messages of abstinence.” Click and her co-author’s research primarily address the reasons behind the teenage vampire craze. They discovered that many teen girls are attracted to the idea of love that goes beyond the physical. Click’s colleague, Jennifer Stevens Aubrey believes the series is a “backlash to the ‘hooking-up’ culture.”
Click and Aubrey plan to publish their findings next spring in a collaborative book, “Bitten by Twilight: Youth culture, media and the vampire franchise.” The media environment is saturated with teens in sexual relationships,” says Click, “[Twilight] does provide something different for girls. I’ve had girls say to me: I’m going to wait for my Edward.’ And they think that’s really cool.”
Take 18-year-old Twilight fan France-Renee Miron, for example. “Most boys now around our age, all they want is to get you in bed. They don’t care about the romance part,” said Miron, “In the book and in the film, (Edward) doesn’t want to have sex. [His love] is really different.”Miron’s friend, Valierie Lefebvre, chipped in that the book shows that relationships can develop and grow without unmarried couples being sexually active.
Click observed that many girls interviewed felt relieved that Bella and Edward had to control their sexual impulses. “They liked that it was the man putting brakes on sexual activity. For them it probably highlighted the development of the relationship – the romantic relationship – between the two, instead of the sexual relationship.”
Click and Aubrey’s findings match the conclusion of Mike Farrell, a partner at Toronto youth research firm Youthography. In a 2008 Canada-wide study, Youthography surveyed around 500 teen girls ages 14 to 18 about 50 different “values” from current events to sex. They’ve been tracking these values for the past 9 years. According to Youthography, only a quarter of young teenage girls are interested in sex, while more than half indicated that they were more interested in marriage and having children.
“There are some fundamental things that haven’t changed that much. And one of those, especially with girls, is the focus on a search for meaningful love that is hopeful, passionate, real,” says Farrell, “Despite an increasingly sexualized youth culture, the desire for romance among teenage girls has remained.”
I don’t recommend the Twilight movie. I’m not a fan of the messages it contains. But I find it interesting that pop culture is starting to take note that relationships built on illicit free sex are unfulfilling, and that sex ought to be the consummation rather than the forerunner of commitment.
(Reference:”Lack of sex attracts teens to Twilight” study by Laura Stone, Canwest News Service, Ottawa. Published in the Edmonton Journal, November 19, 2009)
© Mary A. Kassian
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Well said Mary. I also do not condone this movie, more because of the way I understand that Bella is obsessed with her vampire boyfriend than because of the vampire theme. I am concerned that so many girls and young women are caught up in a romance novel/movie that portrays the love between a man and a woman as obssessive and possessive. However, I do find the research you mention interesting. As the parent of two teens and a mentor to several I find the research rings true. Most kids are scared to death of the pressures to have sex. They just don’t know what to do with those pressures.
Thanks for a great blog post. I think I’ll use this info when I talk to my teen girls small group sometime soon.
Kay
Concurred with Kay: while I can appreciate the themes reminiscent of abstinence in the “Twilight” franchise, the series overcorrects far too much. The idol of Sex Obsession is merely substituted for the idol of Emotion Obsession. Either way, an idol is worshiped. The ideals of loving someone are without even common-grace balance.
Other novels and movies have this balance, such as “Lord of the Rings,” in which Arwen the Elf-maiden, devoted to Aragorn the rightful king, supports his battle from afar, sending him a banner (or in the film version, his sword) that denotes his right to rule.
Without such balance, the images of any story become as close to a lie as any advertisement or pornography with false “perfect” people.
Someone as perfect as “Edward” will not come, if a girl has fallen for the emotional-pornographic nature of the character’s portrayal.
Is love and marriage then without perfection? Not at all! Yet balance is needed. Romance is rough. Marriage is tough, even with its joys. And everyone is flawed — not in a powerful-bad-boy way, but with everyday, human, residual-sin flaws. We must learn grace.
“Twilight”’s overcorrection — apart from Biblical balance — is what keeps me from the stuff. It’s not just the series’ female bent, or even the vampires-and-violence themes. (Whether Christians can partake of such subject matter would seem to be one of those disputable issues, a la Romans 14 and 1 Corinthians 8.)
Thanks for the post. And it should attract more readers, now that Challies has linked to it this morning.
I think that it’s smart to note what it is that has spawned the popularity of this series, but also to note what the youth, other fans, and reviewers seem mostly to have failed to say.
Full disclosure: I have not read the books or seen any of the movies. Read a few short excerpts.
What I see in these is not, unfortunately, an emphasis on the emotional/deeper relationship development. Nor do I see an over-correction. Rather, I see simple titillation mixed with pathological manipulation.
That which is inaccessible is that much more appealing. My personal opinion is that that is what is at play here, not a true desire for healthier, less sex-crazed relationships between men and women.
Further, I believe that it’s possible that the “vampire” in Edward is really a symbol for the feminist idea that a man is only a blundering, groping, selfish dunderhead from which we women ought to be protected. Thinking about it, Edward is protecting Bella from himself. A healthy relationship is not based upon that.
These are just some thoughts I’ve had.
“Its themes of vampires and blood are too occultist…”
Yeah, good thing evangelicalism has given up its emphasis on blood.
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This is a very discerning observation. Much has been written in the Christian arena about Twilight, but it’s interesting to note the cultural standpoint towards abstinence and the reaction when it’s portrayed in a blockbuster movie. I certainly don’t think it’s a major reason why the movie is so popular, but it probably does form some of the draw – simply from the fact that it portrays the hero in a loving, responsible light.
I still think that media about vampires, marketed toward children, opens the door to Satan and his evil. My son noted that while these girls were “waiting for their Edward”, they were also creating a “vampire club” at school. They were biting each other’s necks, and even allowing boys at the school to do the same. Most terrifying, these 10 and 11 year old girls were suddenly acutely aware that they needed to be “romanced” and feel loved. All of which is based on *feelings* that come and go. Therefore any book or movie encouraging young girls and women to look for love in a feeling is a disaster waiting to happen.
I agree that having a man who takes leadership and respects a woman is a more appealing character, but in this case a man who is *mostly good* but also dabbles in evil is a horrific role model.
Oh please, Edward Cullen is a controlling, manipulative freak. He made Bella think she couldn’t live without him by forbidding her to see her friends and controlling her every action all in the guise of “protecting” her. If this book is in any way an indication of Christian morals then count me out.
Having never watched or read the Twilight series but having just seen entertainment shows talk about it, I never would have guessed that there was no sex going on between the main characters. It’s all they talk about, how sexy they are, the photos of them are all provocative…funny, eh? It may not be happening in the story line but they use it to promote it.