Sociologically and ethnographically film, like the mass media in general, is a secondary socialiser. It teaches us, in the broad sense of the term, along with other secondary socialisers like schools, the government, religious institutions, peer groups, and primary socialisers like our families, who we are, how we should behave, what we should believe, and how we should see and interpret the world we live in, for example. Without socialisation we would all be ferals.
It is well known that the author of the four Twilight books--Twilight (2005), New Moon (2006), Eclipse (2007), and Breaking Dawn (2008)--Stephanie Meyer, is a descent Saint, a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, a Mormon. Given this, and given that other Mormon writers like Orson Scott Card embed Mormon ideas and ideals in their novels and short stories, it has to be asked whether one can discern Mormon ideals and ideals in The Twilight Saga. My answer to this query is an unequivocal yes. The Twilight Saga is not only the product of Western romantic ideologies, vampire traditions, and the vamps meet the superpower comic book tradition, but also of Mormon ideologies which are themselves the product largely of Western Victorianism.
Mormonism is a patriarchal religion. Only those who are male can hold the priesthood in the church and only priesthood holders can be bishops, stake presidents, and general authorities, the highest authorities in the church. Like the Mormon Church, The Twilight Saga is grounded in patriarchal notions. The head of the Cullen clan, Carlisle, is a male. The head of the Volturi, Aro, is a male. Edward, particularly In the first two films of the Saga, often tells Bella what to do and she usually does as he asks.
Edward, as The Twilight Saga tells us again and again, is Bella's protector. When Edward absents himself in New Moon because he fears what will happen to Bella if he doesn't, Bella does little, after Edward leaves, but pine for her one true and forever love, Edward, and put herself in dangerous situations so she can see him. Bella rarely talks of anything other than love though she does seem to find a not quite replacement love in Jacob for Edward until Edward returns. She never even, unlike one of her friends, as a deleted scene from Eclipse shows, talks about going to college. Love and marriage (and eventually becoming a vampire) seem to be the only things on Bella's mind, something I am sure The Twilight Saga's massive tween female audience eats up.
Things, of course, do change after Bella becomes a vampire, sired by Edward in Breaking Dawn, Part Two. Choice, of course, is at the heart of Mormon notions of eternal progression from pre-existence to the return to existence beyond the veil and Bella chooses to "convert" to vampirism much as one might convert to Mormonism. As a result Bella becomes as strong, actually stronger, than other vamps, because she is a new born and new borns, as the series mythology tells us, are initially stronger than the old ones after she is resurrected thanks to Edward's siring. Bella also becomes, after "converting", someone who has special powers. In Bella's case she is a protector. Her protector abilities, however, arguably have a distinctly maternalistic flavour making Bella's protector role akin to the maternalistic roles women played in the American reform movements of the 19th and 20th centuries, maternalistic roles tied tightly to the roles mothers were supposed to play in the Victorian cult of domesticity, mothers as protectors of family and children.
Mormonism preaches the virtues of celibacy. Mormons are urged by the patriarchal leaders of the church to remain virgins until they are married. Those who attend the Mormon university Brigham Young University, must, if they are not married, covenant to remain virgins until they marry. Should they err they can even be expelled from BYU. The Twilight Saga also preaches the virtues of celibacy and chastity. Edward and Bella remain virgins until after they are married in Breaking Dawn, Part One.
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints preaches the joys of marriage. Saints are urged, by the male powers in the church, to marry. In The Twilight Saga Carlisle and Esme are married. Emmett and Rosalie are married. Jasper and Alice are married. Edward and Bella marry in the course of the Saga.
Once married the powers that be in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints urges its married members to follow the first commandment, "be fruitful and multiply". Significant numbers of those who come to BYU, for instance, get married while they are there and began to fruitfully multiply. In The Twilight Saga the question of whether vampires can have children is an open one. Edward and Bella have their "miracle child", as Renesme is called, before Bella is turned in Breaking Dawn, Part One.
Mormonism preaches that families are eternal. Mormons believe that families can, if their members follow the plan of salvation, eternal progression, remain together not only in this life but in life after death, life beyond the veil, where they can become "as gods". In The Twilight Saga the Cullen clan, the Cullen family that Bella becomes a part of, are a family of "immortals". The Volturi are a family. Edward and Bella tell us several times that their love for each other is eternal. The loyalty of the Cullen's to each other also seems to be eternal.
Nessie, the nickname Jacob, Bella's Native American werewolf friend and protector and protector of Nessie, gives Renesme, is at the heart, in many ways, in the (perhaps) final instalment of The Twilight Saga, Breaking Dawn: Part Two. Nessie, the "miracle child", is half-human and half-vampire--we learn in the final moments that there is, at least, one other, a Brasilian indigenous who is half-vamp and half-human--is a kind of messianic figure in the final instalment of The Twilight Saga. It is she others come to have faith in.
The set up for the end battle in Breaking Dawn, Part Two, to which Nessie is central since she is who the two sides are fighting over, reminded me very much of the cycles of heresy and faithfulness that dominate the narrative of the "Book of Mormon" and particularly the final battle between the faithless and the faithful in the "Book of Mormon", a battle which ends in a kind of apocalypse but with measure of hope intact, the hope that the story of the faithful in the New World will become known thanks to the restoration of the one true gospel brought about by he who who Mormons believe to be god's prophet, Joseph Smith. In The Twilight Saga the apocalypse is avoided. Both possible danger and hope permeate the ending, however. Hope, is there in the form of Nessie while danger exists in the form of Aro's and the Volturi's obsession with power.
I can't say that after watching all of The Twilight Saga I am a fan of it either aesthetically or intellectually. As someone who greatly appreciated Buffy the Vampire Slayer, a show that was at the centre of the aesthetic television revolution of the 1990s and 2000s, Buffy, to me, is a far more interesting adaptation and variation on the vampire myth and much more. Buffy showed us a world that was far more complex and far less simplistic than The Twilight Saga. I appreciated Buffy's tragic, sometimes farcical, and heroic existentialist realism at the time. I still do. It really is hard to live in this insane world.
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