All That Glitters is not Gold

Here's another one of those essays that I wrote for class. It was a definition essay this time, hence the essay required for me to either define a word in the best way possible, or pick a word that has changed in its implications over time. I picked the word 'Twilight'. *sigh* Yes, I did. And here's why.

“All That Glitters Is Not Gold”

There is a light spring breeze blowing the white spring blossoms into the air. Some birds slowly, calmly glide into their nests; others recklessly hunt for food in the slowly fading light. The sky is a canvas painted blazing red and soft hues of yellow and orange, even pink, slowly forming a spectrum with the dark blue sky. “Wow, what a beautiful picture, twilight,” says my friend. “Yes, it is,” I reply dreamily, staring out the window. “Edward Cullen is like, SO hot,” she responds, even dreamier. “Wait, Edward Cullen? What?” “The vampire? In Twilight?” she replies, confused. And then I realise what she is talking of – Twilight, the new horizon of the young adults and moms of this generation.

Long gone and forgotten is the sparkling sun, or even those shiny, craved diamonds. The new sparkle in lives of eager teenage girls is now only of Edward Cullen, the glittery vampire. There existed a time, long ago, when the word twilight referred to “the soft glowing light from the sky when the sun is below the horizon” (Oxford, Twilight). However, that definition has now been buried under the four books and four films of Stephanie Meyer’s vampire saga, Twilight. These days, the mere utterance of the word provokes strong, mixed reactions. There are those whose ears perk up, which is in most cases, due to the intensity of the meaning of the word today. Some people’s eyes go soft and they lose themselves in a dreamy land of shirtless werewolves and sparkly vampires and shriek out their love for that fantasy world. Then there are some whose eyes harden and they yell every profanity known to them in disdain at the concept.

Twilight has now gone from being a word to describe the time of day, to an entire culture. It started in 2005, when a Mormon wife, Stephanie Meyer, dreamt she saw a sparkling vampire and a woman standing in a beautiful meadow, and the vampire, in her dream, loved the woman and wanted to kill her at the same time. This inspired her idea for the novel which is now almost a cult novel and has received an almost ridiculous amount of attention and following all over the world. Teenage girls all over the world immediately fell for Edward’s old school, nineteenth century etiquette and his, literally, painful love for Isabella Swan, the saga’s protagonist. Though readers over the globe unanimously agree that the books are not well written or contain ingenious plots, unlike the Harry Potter series, yet the clichéd, young adult novels’ fight between good and evil, a love triangle between a werewolf and a vampire, and stunning actors playing the roles of these characters have been the source of all the attention and hype, including even groups of TwlightMoms, or the Volturi Vultures.

 However, while there exist those whose hearts beat only for Team Edward or Team Jacob, there is an extremely large portion of the population who like to believe the Twilight series is, as Urban Dictionary puts it, “a book that is a cringe-worthy testament to teenage hormonal fabrication,” or even, “a series about vampires that is guaranteed to make you 25 percent dumber each time you read it.” (Urban) The saga has received as much insult as it has praise, and has led to extreme accusations of being “a piece of shit” (Urban) and the hero, Edward Cullen, has often been deemed a fairy, a slang term usually used for homosexual men with flamboyant or homosexual traits, or a half-dead sparkly pedophilic vampire. Therefore the saga has not only changed the meaning of the word twilight, but also of the names Edward, Bella and Jacob.

It is of note how the title of the saga, Twilight, came to be. In one of the later chapters of the novel, anyone who read Twilight, would have noticed Edward Cullen, as he talks of the twilight. He says, “It’s twilight. It’s the safest time of day for us. The easiest time. But also the saddest, in a way… the end of another day, the return of the night. Darkness is so predictable, don’t you think?” (Meyer, 2005, p. 232) Here, we see the original definition of the word twilight coming into play and hence, used as the title for the novel. This is a very important factor that is brought to light, as people are slowly beginning to forget the meaning of the word twilight, itself, and now focus only on the saga, which is, ironically, named after the original meaning of the word itself.

It is fascinating how youngsters today tend to relate the word twilight directly with the novels and movie. Before the saga became such a sensation, poets and authors would write of twilight, and its beauty. The word and time of day, twilight, inspired many, such as Shakespeare, William Butler Yeats, and Pablo Neruda, who wrote poetry on twilight. William Butler Yeats, in his poem Into the Twilight writes about it, “And time and the world are ever in flight; And love is less kind than the grey twilight,” (Yeats). Twilight now, however, has become the source of internet memes, which mock the novels and films, fan fiction, and journals dedicated to poetry inspired by the Twilight novels. Here is an example from one such blog, by a young fan from London, whose poem starts as, “Ed, your lazy languid gaze Cuts like a knife into the haze Of life, it holds me and it stays Within my head, like you, for days.” (H.)

The recent craze for internet memes, which are “an image, video, etc. that is passed electronically from one Internet user to another” (Oxford) have also incorporated the Twilight saga, usually in memes which pick images or situations for other films and then compare them to Twilight saga, saying “Still a better love story than Twilight.” A popular meme shows Tom Hanks, from the film Cast Away, with a football he befriends in the film, which has the title mentioned above. Many cover the theme of Bella, usually lying or sitting helpless, pining for her “sparkling boyfriend” to do the work. The memes have supported the mockery that the novels and films generated in a number of people. All of this has again given the Twilight saga, and hence the word twilight, an almost cult base.

Therefore, it is interesting to note how changing cultures and fads across the world can so quickly and rapidly change the meaning and implication of a mere word. The word twilight, previously simply the description of a time of day, has now turned into an entire culture, an entire concept on its own. Not only has it changed the meaning of the word for the present youth, it has created its own world, and changed the meaning of several words, such as Edward and Bella, along with it. As Grossman said in an article, playing a pun on both meanings of the word twilight, “It's Twilight not just in America. The shadow has fallen over the entire globe.” (Grossman, 2009)