My first impulse upon hearing about anything to do with the Twilight franchise has always been to give a rather dismissive “Meh!” and look the other way.

Which is why I was surprised at my own reaction over the contents of the third installment (of the movie version) as I was randomly flicking channels on TV last Saturday. Star Movies had decided to screen Eclipse as its weekend special and since I had nothing of importance to do, I thought, well, why not participate in a little study of my own.

The overarching statement that this film makes is – men are essentially animals. It is no coincidence that the male protagonists in the film are both predators – aggressive, dangerous and endowed with many animal like qualities. And if you can overlook certain features of the film that are dripping with melodrama as well as a hyperbolic sense of romance, you will notice that it can serve as one of the most entertaining films in recent years.

Much has been discussed about how the Twilight books (and consequently the film adaptations) cater to and thus capitalize on repressed pubescent sexuality. What better way to keep an audience lingering than to promise what they do not have, to keep them waiting until the very end, as anti-climactic as that may be.

So going back to the men in the film. What is especially entertaining is their lack of etiquette, their disregard for any social cues, their complete abandonment of twenty first century norms regarding romance and their anachronistic obsession with love, like it actually matters, like it might even be the most important thing in life. I think the Twilight saga reestablishes the idea that sexual attraction is love and only love must translate into sex. Now how primitive an idea is that?

But what is almost cathartic is the way these boy-men are constantly growling at each other. It is almost a relief that they aren’t playing complicated mind games with each other. They aren’t hiding what they feel, an obvious distaste for each other. They don’t feign apathy – their attraction towards the potential mate is just as palpable as their six-pack masculinity. For them, love is sharper and straighter than cupid’s arrow and points straight at the virgin female. In the role of beasts – with fangs and fur – both wooers are shown to discard their human restraint while adopting a more animalistic urge to claw, scratch and bite their way into the maiden’s bed. Look at how simple they make love seem. Anyone who’s been in love in this day and age knows it’s far more complicated than that.

The ultimate decision has been left to the damsel in distress, of course. The movie reminds me more and more of the wildlife documentaries I’ve watched on Animal Planet where they show wild bulls wrestling with one another to show to the wild buffalo who the better mate is.  What I love is that, in this movie, the damsel is just as confused as a wild buffalo may be – both men are kind of attractive. And in an egalitarian society, it would be every bit justified that they both be given a shot. It is almost too delicious for me to witness that the storyline is toying around with the idea of a potentially polyandrous relationship.

What I find very puzzling is why Stephanie Meyer has placed so much emphasis on the need to preserve one’s chastity and why she’s advocated post-marital sex in the story. Everything else seems to point in the other direction. Through the entire film I feel like in the garb of bestiality, repressed humanity is trying to find some sort of release. But the end is, disappointingly, even more repressive. Other than winning the approval of the parents of her hormone crazed teenage audience, maybe this is the only way of trying to maintain the distinction (and illusion) that human beings are civilized, cultured and not, after all, beasts.

All the reviews I’ve read lately (as part of my research for this blog) give the impression that the movies have done great injustice to the books by Stephenie Meyer. In other words, there’s a fair chance that all that I found interesting in the movie is actually a misrepresentation of what’s in the book. Apparently, the movies are supposed to be intolerable. The books (sans semi-nude men up against each other in unrealistically panoramic locations), on the other hand, are quite a charm.

What is my response to that?

“Meh!”

Ms. Sumi teaches English to high school students. When she isn’t in the classroom, she likes to read novels, write poems, and spend time in the kitchen. She is also a great appreciator of wildlife and considers spiders, cockroaches and leeches as some of her favorite insects.