One of the most highly anticipated movies of the year comes out at midnight tonight: The Twilight Saga: New Moon. Teenagers everywhere are lining up at movie theaters tonight and tomorrow to immerse themselves in the world of forbidden love with vampires and werewolves. While this might be one of the most popular movies of the year, the question arises, is it a movie that promotes Christian values?Here is what the USCCB has to say:
[T]his latest chapter in the love story of well-mannered vampire Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson) and mortal high school student Bella Swan (Kristen Stewart) is -- like its 2008 predecessor "Twilight" -- remarkable for the innocence of their interaction. (Edward fears that temptations of the flesh, if indulged beyond the occasional kiss, might give way to temptations of the blood.)As mentioned, the interesting part about the Twilight series is the restraint of the main characters' sexual passions. Even though they greatly desire each other, they remain chaste. Yet, although this is a good thing not often seen in movies, the series does have a downside. Steven D. Greydanus has more:What makes it sad is the thought of how rare the portrayal of such a restrained relationship has become, even in entertainment aimed at the young. And then, of course, there's the fact that it takes an occult contrivance to compel and enforce the couple's chastity.
The film contains considerable action violence, a vague sexual reference and at least one mildly crass term. The USCCB Office for Film & Broadcasting classification is A-II -- adults and adolescents.
Twilight and New Moon are essentially uncritical celebrations of that overwrought, obsessive passion that is the hallmark of immaturity—passion that wholly subordinates all sense of one's own identity and elevates the beloved to summum bonum, or even the sole good; passion that leaps as readily to suicidal impulses and fantasies as to longing for union.
The theme of suicide pervades New Moon. Both the book and the film open with an epigraph from Romeo and Juliet ("These violent delights have violent ends / And in their triumph die, like fire and powder, / Which, as they kiss, consume"), and references to Shakespeare's play (the current subject in Bella and Edward's English class) occasion an early remark from Edward envying Romeo the ease of his suicide. It then comes out that Edward has given practical consideration to the difficulties of vampire suicide, when Bella's life was threatened at the climax of Twilight—since, of course, for Edward life without Bella would be not so much unthinkable as a mere oxymoron.
As you can see, Twilight takes love to an unnatural level and sets the beloved on a platform that neither of them can ever live up to. Edward and Bella desire each other so much that they are willing to forsake everything for a complete union. While this is not always a bad form of love, it can turn bad once the beloved is put above even God and the beloved is made into a "god."
Edward too often makes Bella into a "god;" something that put into practice in the real world will cause grave consequences. The moment that your boyfriend realizes that you are not perfect and are actually human, is the moment when he can very easily leave the relationship, because the fantasy has been lost and has revealed the truth. Putting these unhealthy and unrealistic demands on a relationship is not good and can very often lead to disappointment and regret. We are human and only through a relationship with Christ can we ever be able to love beyond ourselves.
Love without God very often turns into the worship of each other and that worship will soon be disappointed, because both will find out the other is not God.
[Photo: Yahoo! Movies]
