“It is fairly common to have your story as a woman, even if you’re the protagonist, facilitated by all of the male characters. It’s so rare to have a female lead character being so proactive. She pushes her own story forward, rather then being affected by all of the outside elements. Hopefully we do that, I’m really proud to be a part of something like that. It’s always food for women to feel empowered.”
– Kristen Stewart talking about her role in Snow White and the Huntsman and definitely not anything at all about her role in Twilight.
This quote is neat because everyone is going crazy, saying that Kristen is slamming Twilight and being just generally bratty. Obviously she didn’t mention the Twilight franchise specifically, but it’s hard to imagine that she wasn’t referring to it at all, isn’t it? It’s way too fitting, because in Twilight Kristen’s character, the protagonist, is definitely facilitated by male characters and definitely does not push the story forward. Everything that happens in the books happens because of what some vampires or some werewolves do. Well, except the whole baby thing. Bella did push that story forward by begging for sex over and over. Yay, female empowerment!
So we’re going to go ahead and discuss this with the assumption that Kristen Stewart was referring to Twilight, because I think she’s too smart to miss all those parallels, all right?
What do we think?
On one hand, I have to applaud Kristen for this. You know I love Twilight, but there are people who take it so, so seriously, and that’s worrisome. Here’s an example why: the entire second book is about Edward leaving Bella and how she cannot function at all without him. There’s a section where entire pages just have the name of a month on them, indicating that she did or thought absolutely nothing for several months because he left. She ends up jumping off a cliff just so she can imagine him worrying about her. Really, that’s what happens. Some people read that and think that it’s a reasonable reaction, and that’s insane. We definitely need more stories where female protagonists have their own things going on, who are concerned with things other than boys (hey, Hunger Games!).
On the other hand, Kristen did choose to star in the Twilight movies, and she knew what they were all about. So where was this kind of attitude when she was making tons and tons of money playing one of the worst damsels in distress we’ve ever seen?
What do you guys think?
I think that this is all taken way too seriously. I read the Twilight books, I watched the movies. I read the Hunger Games, I watched the movie. I thought both were “ok” but I preferred Hunger Games because all the “Oh Edward! I’m so sad…” crap in New Moon made ME want to jump off a cliff and the sex and birth scenes in Breaking Dawn were the first scenes in a book that tried to be 100% serious that actually caused me to laugh. It was kind of a relief to be in the head of Katniss instead of Bella. I mean, Katniss has her own little love triangle thing going on and it plays a part in the story but more often not, the love triangle has less influence on Katniss’ decisions than the situation itself does and after reading Twilight, it’s a bit of a relief. As far as Kristen’s comments, that’s just Kristen. I have no preference between roles where a characters choices are limited or if the characters choices drive the story. I mean, really, there’s room for both and for anyone to say “We shall have only stories that show women/men as powerful” is kind of stupid…
No but Bus, the problem is when in modern mainstream media, female characters (even main characters!) are passive. Have you seen New Girl? The main character is Jess and yet she’s far less developed as a character than her male counterparts. I don’t have a problem with weak characters themselves, the problem is that more often than not that is the only way you will see a woman portrayed. She’s not saying that she only wants stories with powerful women.
I see her, definitely, and completely agree with her. We need more films with main female characters who do stuff because they want to, not because of a man. The Hunger Games, Bridesmaids, are proof female-led films don’t need men to push them to make decision. As for starring in Twilight, well, would you pass up the chance to make more money than you could ever imagine? I do think they didn’t think it’d be as big as it is, but you can’t blame a young actress for taking a role that will give her heaps of money and recognition. Whether that will be positive for her roles or she will forever be a cliché, we’ll see.
What is actually says Kristen, Bella is taken all the way …… Snow White fights for her things, and knowing Kristen guess she meant it for a long time …… she is totally correct ! She is very visceral and literal, love!