UPFRONT: I HAVE A CONFESSIONto make. Up until last week I had never seen the movie Twilight. You know, the multimillion-dollar film based on the book where the new girl in town falls in love with a vampire? My friends sigh at the mere whisper of the name "Edward Cullen", despite my insisting that he looks like a well-preserved cast-off from The Addams Family, writes ORLA TINSLEY
The prospect of a Twilightmovie night makes them squeal – and me cringe – at the thought of a generation being swept up by such obvious exploitation. Woman-gets-rescued-by-superhuman-man syndrome – how original. But now that I've actually seen the movie, and with Hallowe'en in the air, something else is happening to me, something you might call supernatural. Twilightmelted me into slush ( think Wicked Witch and that bucket of water). Now I gaze at the porcelain skin of Edward Cullen, that moody, pouty vampire, and at Bella Swan, his shy, book-obsessed love interest, and I wonder, what is it about vampires that's gnawing away at us?
When Bella first meets Edward, he doesn't seem to like her much. In fact, he sticks his sleeve over his mouth as if she stinks and tries to change his class timetable so he doesn't have to sit beside her. He's a typical moody teenage boy – albeit one who looks like he walked out of a Calvin Klein advertisement, all pouty and intense staring. He glares at Bella every time he sees her, and then when a car happens to skid out of control, while he's in prime glaring mode, he rescues her by stopping the car with his bare, manly hands. Then he goes back to being moody with her for a while longer, until it turns out the old sleeve-over-the-hand trick is his way of protecting himself from her scent. It triggers his animal instinct, you see; his guttural, undead loins are screaming for her. The Count from Sesame Streethe ain't.
Now that I’m converted, I personally have no problem if he shows up at Hallowe’en. What girl wouldn’t want to hear a line such as: “The more time I spend with you, the more human emotions seem comprehensible to me. I’m discovering that I can sympathise with Heathcliff in ways I didn’t think possible before”? Oh, the angst.
Ed sounds a lot like my first playground love. His name was Jimmy and it was back in those wild days of senior infants that I first gazed at the back of his silky, blond head. He didn’t talk to anyone else in the class, which made him a delicious mystery. He liked to crack jokes and the class would convulse with laughter, until An Múinteoir threatened to put all 24 of us in the bold corner.
That Valentine’s Day, there was an envelope on my desk. “Guess Who?? xxx” said the card inside. I would have guessed, only he walked right up to me, red-faced, said nothing, and plonked it on my desk. On the outside was a heart drawn perfectly in black marker and coloured in red crayon – all inside the lines, too, which sent my six-year-old insides a-flutter. The scent of the newly coloured crayon made me a little high. Ah yes, the sort of boy who sends you a Valentine’s card one minute and refuses to talk to you the next. (The next day, he stole my woolly hat, ran outside the boundaries, and threw it on to the football pitch. Bella, girlfriend, I know how you feel.)
Bella is that insecure part of us twentysomethings walking around, trying to carve her way out of her past and into adulthood. I love her because she's anti- Legally Blonde, she's not straightening her hair before she goes to school, or trying to be some form of reality-TV star. On my first day of secondary school I bumped into my soon-to-be yearbook editor, and spilled soup down his shirt. I can see Bella Swan doing that. She's just like any girl falling in love for the first time, breaking away from her parents, and all too soon realising that her perfect guy really isn't that perfect.
The supernatural in Twilightis what makes it human; Edward can do great things and still find it hard to resist temptation, like when he tries to drain venom from Bella after she has been attacked – once he starts, he almost can't stop drinking. He's the boy who tries to solve all your problems but almost bleeds you dry in the process. Or that friend who calls you up and dumps their problems on you, until you have to put a stake through it.
In the new HBO series True Blood, which TG4 will be broadcasting from Monday, the main character, Sookie, a mind-reading waitress, falls for a 174-year-old vampire called Bill. Vampires are meant to live on a new synthetic blood in this hill-billy world, but still these guys manage to exchange blood, leaving Sookie with newly heightened senses similar to Bill's. That's what happens when you play with vampires – you lose a little of yourself. Ah vampires, they're just like you and me.
It’s that idea of the seduction, the forbidden, the “I know you’re a blood-sucking vampire and this might kill me but I find the risk seductive. . .” that gets us. Even Hollywood has been obsessed this year: see Lindsay Lohan’s fangs on her Twitter page, or check out vampire Heidi Klum looking a bit like a well-fanged Cher. Now there’s undead for you.
In senior infants, us girls got chased around the yard by the boys. If you didn’t get to base in time, you were nailed with a wet one and left scrubbing your face for the remainder of the break. Some girls just burst out crying and rubbed snot off with their sleeve, and went on playing.
Vampires are the bad boys of the playground, the ones who kiss and run. Or, in Edward Cullen’s case, refuse to change you into one of them and leave you hanging after you were ready to give up everything. Or at least leave us newly-converted, thirsty for more. Good job we can sink our teeth into the new movie next month.