Breaking Dawn, Part 2: Culturally Inclusive, or Culturally Insensitive?

For the first four movies of the Twilight saga, the answer to the title question is obvious: yes, this series is one of the most culturally insensitive movies about Native Americans since Disney's Pocahontas:

My face is this sad because now millions of children will think that Native Americans run
around the forest in sexy, short dresses,  paint with all the colors of the wind, and have a special ability to understand native wildlife.

While it's tempting to be hard on the high muckity-mucks who apparently engineered such cinematic missteps, especially since it's cases of racism we're dealing with, it's helpful to recall that the ignorance that causes racism is not a crime but a shame. Yes, one might indeed argue that Stephanie Meyer's portrayal of Native Americans is one-dimensional, narrow, and diminishing, but, then again, so is the entire Twilight series, to just about everyone in it (unless you happen to be a white male). Thus, it would be silly to suggest that Stephanie Meyer "has it out" for the Native Americans -- though, yes, she clearly failed to do her research and represented the Quileute tribe as both caricatures and, perhaps most offensively, actual animals (supernatural, yes, but still animals). No, instead it is a shame that Meyer did not do her research before molding an entire culture to her storytelling whims, for she could have had the opportunity to present tribal life in a much more beneficial and realistic way. The Quileute tribe actually exists, by the way, which adds a whole new level of colonial oppression and horror to the scenario. Do you see what I'm getting at? While bigoted or reductive interpretations of other cultures is upsetting, it's more of a shame (caused by ignorance, remedied by education) than a direct and pinpointed affront deserving of our critical anger. Good, now that that's clear....
Look at these pictures. They're of South American vampires Senna and Zafrina, who will be introduced in Breaking Dawn, Part 2, this November.

According to the Meyer's novel version, Senna and Zafrina arrive in Forks as representatives of "the Amazonian coven." To Meyer, it seems that the Amazon is some great, unexplored, unnamed wilderness and so one can just say people are "from the Amazon" like they're "from Africa" or "from Europe." No. Geography lesson:

See that place marked "the Amazon Basin"? It covers most of South America, 1.7 billion acres, and belongs to nine nations. But Zafrina and Senna? Who knows where, exactly, they're from. It's not important, right? It's just important that they look ethnic.

Hopefully, the movie will reveal the characters' exact origins, but so far, Zafrina and Senna roles appear to be relatively minor; they are described in various Breaking Dawn wikis and write-ups to be "from South America," which obviously is an even broader area than "The Amazon." Though we could spend quite some time on how angering that whole debacle is, let's get off of that tangent for a minute and focus on one of the most superficial issues here. To be honest, I can't believe that no one in the media has protested this yet, and by "this" I mean the attire of the so-called "South American vampire coven." Here's one of the actual stills released from Breaking Dawn, Part 2, and it's worth at least a thousand words:

Here, Zafrina (played by Judi Shekoni) and Senna (played by Tracey Heggins) are having a conversation with Bella and Edwards' offspring, Renesmee.  To put the actors' attitudes in context, here's an excerpt from an interview appearing on breakingdawnmovie.com; Judi Shekoni stated "I went to the London Zoo pretty early on and met up with Tracey [Heggins].  We came up with the idea of them [Senna and Zafrina] having these animalistic qualities.  We actually went to the LA Zoo together before we started shooting.  We looked through all the animals and decided which animal we can pick our movement from. We came up with the black jaguar, because there are a lot of them in the Amazon and they have these beautiful bright eyes that very similar to vampire eyes.  We’d go to the zoo, using video and watching the animals in real life and taking pictures, deciding which aspect.  Basically, they have a lot of power and a lot of energy in their shoulders."

There you have it: the actors came up with the idea of acting animalistic in order to portray a specific (yet unnamed) race of people, and the directors did nothing to discourage what was a potentially offensive choice -- to be honest, they probably encouraged it: "Actually, it’s quite funny on set, Stephenie Meyer came up to us at one point and said she noticed our vampires are really different from the other ones.  She really noticed us and thought it was really pure.  It was all a success for it to be noticed by Stephenie," Shekoni's concluded in the aformentioned interview. 

And finally, I get to say it: WHAT ARE THEY WEARING?

The Native American tribes of the Twilight saga aren't forced into traditional garb; why do the Amazonian coven? And is that clothing accurate? Who's to say, because we don't actually know where the characters are from, exactly. How fair is it for the producers, directors, and everyone involved in Twilight

to support an image of another race that (unfortunately, because of the minimal amount of ethnic diversity in the cinema) will unfairly be seen as representatives of their people? And why must that image be as sexualized as possible? Other vampires get to keep all their clothes on:

Interestingly, this is the only still that I could find of the whole group. I'm not sure what they're doing, maybe being stunned by their awesome whiteness.

These are issues that need to be taken more seriously in today's cinema, and I find it both disturbing and distressing that no critic has commented on such an obvious shortcoming; in a series as popular and influential to today's youth as the Twilight saga, there really is no good excuse for such a bizarre and parochial portrayal of non-white culture.  

Suzanne Collins' Hunger Games Trilogy is Anti-war and Anti-government?

From the beginning of the Hunger Games, I imagine it’s fairly easy for readers to get caught up in the pageantry, the romance, the intrigue of the Games and Katniss Everdeen’s war against the Capitol. This is so much the case that readers tend to laud the books for their strong heroine, their encapsulated and far-fetched view of teen romance (more than one man wants me at once! Whatever shall I do? It’s a tale as old as time), that the same readers don’t see through to what is probably the most important messages of the trilogy: War is Bad and so is Controlling Government. According to Collins’ narrative, those two things actually go hand in hand, as when in the last book the Capitol’s power begins to disintegrate, District Thirteen takes an even greater interest in war-mongering. And Katniss has demonstrated through her regret at the death of her friends and countrypeople, the destruction of her homeland and the murder of her sister, that the violence and so-called casualties of war are exactly what makes war so undesirable.

Thus, at the end of the Hunger Games, we find Katniss in a position strikingly similar to that of a veteran who didn’t want to serve a second term after the horrors of a first. To carry this rusty metaphor further, Katniss began the 74^th Hunger Games in the position of a drafted soldier, but a soldier grudgingly willing to follow orders (orders that she set herself, yes, but orders reinforced by the “kill-or-be-killed” rules of the Hunger Games) and she promises her sister that she will, in fact, “Really, really try” to win the Games. She consoles herself with Gale’s advice that if she forgets the other tributes are human, than she won’t have any trouble killing them at all. From there on, it’s perhaps too easy to excuse Katniss’s actions of murder: she’s defending herself, her sister, and the people she kills have been manufactured by Collins to be real villains, seen as fully-formed killers and baddies while Katniss retains her purity as a girl who’s been forced to grow up too soon in a situation one of her age should never be in. 

Old enough to kill people, old enough to become
reluctant figurehead of a rebel army, I always say.

As the novels develop, Collins allows Katniss to maintain this innocence and bewilderment towards horrors of violence, victimizing her character at every turn with the crushing control of first the Capitol, and then through a wary alliance with District Thirteen.

Thus, at the end of Mockingjay, the final book of the Hunger Games trilogy, veteran Katniss is quite literally battlescarred, a recluse, terrified of what the future may hold, refusing to play any part in the new system of government installed and well aware that more violence is likely just around the corner, for as Plutarch says, “We’re fickle, stupid beings with poor memories and a great gift for self-destruction.” In this way, Collins’ Katniss rounds off her argument about the horror of war and the unnecessary control of government.

What is the greatest challenge to Collins’ dilution of an anti-war, anti-government trilogy? There always is one. In this case, there’s going to be three huge ones: the movies. The small message Collins did create by her trilogy will not translate into the trilogy of Hunger Games movies, blockbusters though those movies may be, for the movies are at their basic level an insult to the readers of the books – by watching the movies, the readers become the very spectators of Hunger Games and violence, fans of the Hunger Games and supporters of the tribute Katniss, we've been educated by Collins’ trilogy to dislike. In an unfortunate turn of events, stardom, screenwriting, and popularity have tragically caused the Hunger Games books to be regarded with the same youth angst and enjoyment as Twilight and Harry Potter, examples that do not carry the same enduring message through their sequels. Collins spent three whole novels criticizing the controlling viewers of the Hunger Games; with the movies, we're all made into hypocrites.

What Fifty Shades of Grey Is Telling Readers

Fifty Shades of Grey. Unless you’ve spent your summer under a rock, I’m going to assume you’ve heard of it, though not as an astounding work of literature. If the average person was presented with the first page of the James’ novel, it would be easy (I hope, in an incredibly optimistic view of our national literacy rate) for said reader to immediately grasp a single fact about E.L. James’ work: its genesis has not done it any favors. Which is to say, of course, that a novel first published online and even now in published in print hasn’t been graced with the skills of a professional editor. Perhaps, under the criticism and therefore tutelage of any editorial giant, James would have ameliorated what are the easily spotted as the greatest (technical) errors of her work:

The woefully thinly veiled reference to Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight:

"I'm not afraid. Thankfully, my character isn't developed enough."

And, even worse than that of the Twilight series itself, the E. L. James appears to have written the next bloody chapter in the war on grammar and syntax.

Seriously, how can anyone concentrate on the sex scenes with all that bad grammar?

However, it is those things that make E.L. James’ work a target. And you know what? That’s not the target I’m going for. Like it or not (and I most definitely do not) Fifty Shades of Grey is a novel that has already made an impact on our national psyche. Deny it all you want, but I know it’s certainly scarred my psyche; I have at long last lost all respect for the New York Times bestseller list. At this point in time, every sign indicates that Fifty Shades of Grey is here to stay, and it’s at this very stage that we should find it in ourselves to cease criticizing James’ torture of the English language. Instead, it’s we should analyze whether the effect of James’ work perpetuates negative or positive messages by proxy of its characters – if for nothing else, to prove that we can be mature readers even if there’s a significant lack of mature writers. To criticize those already obvious errors that riddle Fifty Shades of Grey is a distraction from the greater purpose and depth of James’ intent, and (come on, people) gives us an easy way out. Challenge yourself to ask: What does James’ Fifty Shades of Grey tell the reader?  And once we have determined that: What is gained (or lost) by reception of James’ perceived viewpoint?

Here are some (brief) summarizations of James’ intent as characterized by her main character, Anastasia Steele. You’ll notice, I hope, that I said “main character” instead of “heroine.” There’s a reason for that, which leads us to our first summarization of What Fifty Shades of Grey Tells Us:

1)      Emotional and Physical Dependency is a key aspect of any relationship, especially relationships between men and women

Any way you slice it, Anastasia’s supposed romance with Christian is bound (har har har) to her dependency on him. Anastasia doesn’t just want Christian Grey sexually. She needs him emotionally, and is constantly, brutally rebuffed. It is this very combination of neediness from Anastasia and emotional/sexual distance from Christian which means that Anastasia’s relationship with Christian is emotionally abusive.

Adrenaline has spiked through my body, from my near miss with the cyclist to the heady proximity to Christian, leaving me wired and weak. NO! my psyche screams as he pulls away, leaving me bereft. He has his hands on my shoulders, holding me at arm’s length, carefully watching my reactions. And the only thing I can thinks it that I wanted to be kissed, made it pretty damned obvious, and he didn’t do it. He doesn’t want me. He really doesn’t want me. I have royally screwed up the coffee morning (50).

A few pages later, we find Ana crying in a parking garage because of this incident, as she wished to be kissed by Christian and he did not take the masculine initiative to do so. Take a note, James’ BDSM material hasn’t even entered into this equation (whether it should or should not is another, more complex argument). With Anastasia as a main character, James attempts to “normalize”  behavior, indicating that Anastasia’s dependency on Christian, her emotional responses (crying, anxiety, outpourings of sorrow) and psychological responses (guilt, self-blame) make sense and are to be expected in a relationship, especially if one is lucky to have a relationship with Christian Grey.

Damaging themes run throughout Fifty Shades of Grey, and to call them out without justification feels like yet another cop-out. Fifty Shades of Grey is not a complex book, but it presents themes that call for an incredibly complex analysis of both James’ intent and the readers’ assumption. Thus, simply choosing a fact that to the seasoned reader should appear fairly obvious (James seeks to normalize the emotionally abusive relationship) is positively childs-play. But critically examining that fact (what is gained (or lost) by James’ viewpoint?) is much more nebulous. 

Is this a gain? Women looking for men who act like Christian Grey?

As a result, I was not challenged by reading Fifty Shades of Grey, yet I have been challenged here by what damaging theme to push to the forefront of analysis. The normalization of emotionally abusive relationships eventually was the dubious winner of the contest, perhaps because it is the most visible of the issues, but I’m not sure that prioritizing it is fair. After all, how to choose between that theme and the themes of homophobia, physical abuse, emphasis on purity/corruption, and antifeminism? There is, unfortunately, no right answer, as James' characters of Fifty Shades of Grey seek to systematically legitimize each.

Thoughts? Requests for the next theme for analysis? Post them in the comments section below.