Bella's Back, But This Time She Doesn't Need to be Saved.
by Meredith O'Brien (Moms in Pop Culture & Politics)
Putting aside the handsome chivalrous vampire/ripped boyish werewolf/confused human teenaged gal love triangle for just a moment, first things first. The Twi-moms in the house likely want to know the answer to this question: Is Eclipse any good?
As a reader of all the Twilight books and a repeat viewer of the first two films, I found Eclipse to be the best installment of the saga thus far. The film version of the 629-page book was a very good adaptation, and -- this may seem heresy coming from a writer -- it seemed to move along at a smoother clip than did the book.
This film also seemed much lighter at times than the super-heavy, Romeo & Juliet "if you die then I die" New Moon where Edward disappeared for most of the movie, taking his hair and his chemistry with him. Not so with this movie. In Eclipse, the serious and dashing Edward Cullen - who, when he wasn't being stalkerishly overprotective of his human girlfriend Bella Swan and very traditional when it came to resisting sex before marriage, was sweep-you-off-your-feet romantic ("You'll always be my Bella") - was also apt to crack one-liners, like the comment he made when he saw the habitually shirtless boy-pup Jacob Black, "Doesn't he own a shirt?" (This remark was matched by Jacob's later comment, "Let's face it, I'm hotter than you," which had a duel meaning, but in that moment was literally a reference to body temperature.)
But it wouldn't be Twilight without romantic tension. And this is where things got interesting in Eclipse. While the forward momentum of the story stemmed from the imminent threats to Bella's life which ultimately prompted cooperation between the local vampires and werewolves to defeat an army of blood-thirsty newborn vampires hell bent on killing Bella, the Edward-Bella-Jacob love triangle easily overshadowed all of that action . . . as well as the question of whether 18-year-old Bella will actually marry Edward and whether he'll, in turn, agree to transform her into a vampire, thereby ending her human life.
On this marriage matter is where Eclipse becomes a story about maternal regret and a child not wanting to repeat her mother's mistakes. Bella's mother Renée got married "fresh out of high school" to Bella's dad Charlie and they had Bella soon after. The young marriage didn't last, and by age 7, Bella found herself being shuttled back and forth between divorced parents on the weekends. Neither Bella nor Renée ever wanted Bella to reenact this process and Bella certainly didn't envision herself getting married right out of high school.
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Do you pay attention to how the mom characters are portrayed on your favorite TV shows? Loathe the so-called "mommy wars" on which the news media love to focus? Each week, Meredith O'Brien's Moms in Pop Culture & Politics column provides a reality check on how TV shows, movies, and the media depict moms. A longtime journalist and mother of three, Meredith O'Brien formerly taught journalism at the University of Massachusetts, is the author of A Suburban Mom: Notes from the Asylum and writes the Picket Fence Post blog for GateHouse Media. Follow Meredith on Twitter: @MeredithOBrien.
