Note: Due to a long school day on Monday, this will be the last Monday post. From now on updates will occur on Tuesdays.
The Jetsons aren’t a very notable cartoon/sitcom for a number of reasons: the first being that despite the futuristic (although by now it’s probably in the past) setting their technology was less than that of the Flinstones, they were just a Flinstones knock-off to boot, and the whole thing is just 1950s sexism taken to an absurd extreme.* What is especially notable is the opening sequence:
It’s not especially catchy, the animation isn’t anything that Warner Bros. or Disney wasn’t doing a billion times better and it is possibly the laziest way of introducing characters and their roles, one by one. This sort of introduction was in vogue in the 1960s, the actual date of the Jetsons show, but quickly it loses flavor except in ensemble shows like SNL or MadTV. It simply doesn’t work for television, and it certainly doesn’t work for books but for some reason we have it here in Twilight.
Bella has just fainted from kissing Edward which is lame enough on its own but at this point I am getting quite sick of Meyer trying to cram it down here throats that he’s the most desirable male to ever have existed. By the one millionth time, I think this is just wish fulfillment and that the author herself is missing something or in love with her own character. No matter that she recovers and is whisked off to the Vampire stronghold of Forks, Dr. Cullen’s house.
All of Vampire literature and film makes this trip a big deal. The video game series Castlevania is basically built around the premise of the sudden appearance of Castle Dracula which makes me think that Meyer is purposely juxtaposing the typically ominous journey of this with complete flippancy as Bella points out the nice driveway and how well lit the house is itself. I’m glad that I read each section twice because I simply didn’t get it the first time. “And then after a few miles, there was some thinning of the woods, and we were suddenly in a small meadow, or was it actually a lawn?”
It’s a lawn and it’s entirely normal. And that may be the point, it shouldn’t be normal because it’s a vampire’s house. Which I felt was a clever move since it could have gone either the dark, gloomy, and stereotypical route which I would have criticized for being cliche or not mentioned at all.
After some brief reassuring from Edward that her family will like her (but not that they won’t eat her) they go inside so that Bella can formally meet the family as Edward’s boyfriend. It plays like the Jetson’s opening only with more self-pity and whining. Hum it along if you want to. First, at the top of the stairs, we meet Carlisle Cullen, “I’d seen Dr. Cullen before, of course, yet I couldn’t help but be struck again by his youth, his outrageous perfection.”
Nothing like outrageous perfection, it’s funny because this is the first time anyone has mentioned it before. How young is he? Or better yet, how young does he look? We know from Charlie that the nurses** seem smitten with him, but that doesn’t imply perfection just attractiveness. Bella didn’t even mention it before, although we could give her some wiggle room since she was just almost hit by a car. She says hello and Dr. Cullen replies, “You’re very welcome Bella.”
Finally. For three hundred pages we’ve been told how old fashioned the Cullen family act and on page 323 we finally get evidence of this.
Next down the stairs is Esme, who is “Snow White in the flesh” whatever that means. She is also extremely polite given both her breeding and age. Then comes daughter Alice, whom we’ve already met. The odd thing is that Alice isn’t looked at any differently now, even though Bella knows that she can see the future. It’s like finding out your best friend has wings but never bringing it up. Something should change especially given the foreshadowing from earlier in the chapter. Then there is Carlisle’s boy Jasper, all leonine in appearance. It’s pretty mundane and they sit around asking Bella some questions before telling Edward to play something on the piano.
The scene is boring and is nothing more than exposition of new characters. It gets interrupted by Esme’s admiration for Edward which is too much again in a chapter already full of too much. WE GET IT, HE’S AWESOME, tone it down some.
After finishing his masterpiece on the piano (an original composition), Bella notices that everyone is gone. She points his out and Edward explains, “Very subtly giving us some privacy, I suppose.”
In the magnificent series The Wire, there is a scene where one of the drug lords needs someone framed and he tells an underling to do it but “be subtle with that shit.” He then makes sure that the underling understands the meaning of the word “subtle.” Which is not leaving people alone by physically leaving them alone in a room. No, subtle would be letting them sit and talk while everyone else busied themselves. See, this way they are alone, but they aren’t actually alone that’s subtle.
Bella does notice, in Alice’s absence, that she was acting a bit weird. You know more strange than she normally does compared to the one other time that Bella has met her. Edward has an answer, “Alice has her own way of looking at things, he said through tight lips.“
I’m guessing that she would, given that she has the 2nd power.*** Now would be a good time to for us to learn what it actually is that Alice has seen in her glass. It would be in context and be extremely pertinent to learn it right now, “He realized that I knew he was keeping something from me. I realized that he wasn’t going to give anything away. Now now.”
Yep, it was the perfect time but the only thing we learned is that Bella knows her place, and that place is not asking questions.
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*All women like to shop and date boys is the lesson that the show imparts, and I’m not even one of those guys.
**Which is another sexist comment that slipped by me the first time. It’s so completely stereotypical as well, all of the nurses in the hospital are women hoping to land a doctor for a husband. Of course a good number of nurses, in real life, are men but needn’t concern ourselves with facts about the real world.
***Let’s see if anyone gets that movie reference.
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