I am terrible at keeping up with what I am supposed to be doing, so after many long weeks of lazy days and summer holidays I wanted to write again. (You can always message me or bollock me about not writing and I will perhaps make more of an effort. :))
Bubble has now banned me from helping with his homework!
September brings us a series of new challenges, my favourite number one boy has started High School, Squeak goes up another year and life goes on. She is happy and secure in what she does, and like most girls can be pretty fickle when she wants to be.
Bubble however is making that big step into the unknown. The village where we live is home to the High School - and six or seven other small villages feed into it - not only has he got to adjust from being a big fish in quite a big pond to being a little fish, he has to get to grips with loads more little fish. He is handling it all with usual innocuousness, and so far so good.
Homework however is proving problematical! Bubble has always viewed homework as a sort of optional extra, if he likes the subject he will do it - if he does not then it's ok - Mum will do it! This is a system that has been in operation for the last 6 years and Bubble had no intention of altering the status quo. We have eventually come to an agreement. He will sit down at the kitchen table three nights a week and do homework, I will not use the extra large cable ties I have bought to strap his leg to the kitchen table!
Any way - I digress.
Bubble came home the other night with a face like a wet lettuce, truly despondent about his English homework The conversation went like this:
"Hi Bubble, had a good day?" "It was great until I got to English, you will never guess what we have to do, it's all about emotions and stuff. I hate that kind of stuff - it's a teenage girls book and I am so not interested"
40something bitch: "It cant be that bad love, give it go you might be surprised"
Bubble: "Mum - It's Twilight!"
At this point I spat my my cup of tea out, all over the kitchen side, knocked over the sugar bowl!
I have no objection to kids reading everything and anything, indeed as the bookworm I am, I read more than most people, it's a very true saying of the Duchess "if you never learn to read - you never learn to think" and generally I encourage my kids to read whatever they want to.
So why do I draw the the line at Twilight?
Because it's a pile of teenage angst and emotions, a badly written piece of work that encourages bad behaviours, encircled by the glamour of a love story, with sparkly vampires who opt to drink animal blood. Like they opt to be vegetarians!
The author of Twilight openly admits that she was inspired to write it once she had read Jane Austens, Pride and Prejudice, A classic work of Victorian literature, still read today, it's brilliant both for its social commentary, plot and story. Stephanie Meyer is not alone in copying plots and moving them to a modern setting, so in this respect I can still kind of go with it - Madame Bovary was heavily influenced by Don Quixote , Finnegans Wake was inspired by C.S.Lewis - Alices adventures in Wonderland and Willd Sargasso Sea is a prequel to Charlotte Brontes - Jane Eyre.
E.L.James was inspired to write "50 Shades of Grey" after reading Twilight.
It is a book which is written with appalling syntax, and grammar. The plot deals with a couple who do nothing but have kinky sex, and is written in such a way that the "heroine" has to be a submissive to the dominating hero who, make no mistake about it - enjoys what he does, plays the "I'm damaged, and flawed" card so many times it's cringe worthy and she still runs after him!. There is absolutely no plot or story, and now they have made a film about it.
Why I am I spitting my tea out?
Vampires are a creation of classic Victorian Gothic literature. They are monsters, there is no redemption for them, Bram Stoker did not write Dracula as a love story. Anne Rice's "Interview with a Vampire" is superb reading, "Van Hellsing" is another must watch. Vampires are ultimately monsters. Gothic Horror at it's best. Jane Eyre is also gothic horror albeit with a happy ending once Mr Rochester had been punished for lying.
The Twilight series have been compared to the Harry Potter Series of books, and again I just don't see it. We have read as a family all of those books, love them, and frequently re-read them.
A quote from Robin Browne states "Harry Potter is about confronting fears, finding inner strength and doing what is right in the face of adversity.........Twilight is about how important it is to have a boyfriend"
Society today seems to accept that chasing the cheap thrill is normal, that teenage girls need to validate their existence by being in a relationship, and made to feel they are odd or not normal if they choose to follow a different path grates on my nerves. Encouraging our teenagers to believe that in order to validate themselves, our adults of the future, into accepting that in order to find love you need to compromise, to the point of being submissive is extreme.
So - after going off on one - and explaining to Bubble all about the evolution of Pride and Prejudice -he has yet again, with a smile banned me from helping him with his homework!
He says he does not want to be excluded from his school just yet!
Thanks for reading
xx
