YouTube Selection: Lindsay Ellis’ “Dear Stephenie Meyer”

I didn’t care for the Twilight movies.  I didn’t think they were very good and they weren’t for me.

But did the story, or the author, deserve the hatred that it got?  That’s the question YouTube essayist Lindsay Ellis asks and examines in her open letter essay to author Stephenie Meyer.

Here’s how Ellis approaches it:  she’s taking a second look and rethinking her response, not because she thinks Twilight is particularly good, but because the level of vitriol is way out of proportion for what the series is:  entertainment aimed at a mass audience that isn’t supposed to be high art.  But while Ellis points out that, say, The Fast and the Furious films are not necessarily great art, or that Meyer isn’t necessarily any worse of a writer than Dan Brown or Ernie Cline (Ellis reading a few random selections of Ready Player One really do hammer home that Cline didn’t write great art either), her suggestion here is the hatred for Twilight comes not due to its quality alone, but more due to who it is aimed at, namely teenage girls.  Take a look.  It made me rethink my own thoughts on the Twilight Saga.

Though, as I think about it, I don’t think I ever really went after Stephenie Meyer except for this one time for not being particularly creative with her follow-up novel, but I think I’ll refrain from hating on it too much in the future.