The anti-Twilight [GDT spoilers - but you've read it, right?]

I sat next to a twentysomething on the subway with her nose buried in a familiar neon-yellow paperback and suddenly it hit me: The Girl With A Dragon Tattoo is the anti-Twilight.

Twilight is about a man hurting a woman, happening within & validated by the sanctity of their emotional state. GDT is about a girl hunting down the evil fuckers who hurt women and making sure they get theirs.

Bella, enslaved, entranced, goes back again and again for abuse in the name of love. Lisbeth is the product of another abusive union,* and she watches her father hurt her mother until she stabs him and sets him on fire.

Bella wavers between one possessive, attractive fiction and another. Lisbeth spits in the faces of the ugly men in power we see on the news and in our lives every goddamn day. Bella 'saves' herself for the hazy fantasy of monogamous bliss. Lisbeth fucks who she wants, when she wants, and moves on.

Rape doesn't happen in the Twilight world. Kidnap, yes, the removal of the womanly possession from one bubble to another. Ambiguously consensual sex, sure - but not in those terms. In a framework where the woman is not her own, rape does not exist.

Lisbeth gets raped and gets even.

They're opposing ideals in a polarized world. How did I not see this? Lisbeth's is a harsh and dangerous freedom carved out with constant fight and real pain. Bella's is a happily docile servitude. The popularity of both stems from the perfect fringe models of womanhood they represent.

And we on Lisbeth's side will win because Lisbeth's world is real.

*If it had been written then, Lisbeth's mother might have read Twilight. Alternatively, requesting fanfic wherein Edward is ex-KGB who gets set on fire. And possibly hit in the face with an ax.

Posted via LiveJournal.app.