BannedCast

First off, if you’re an adult and a fan of the Twilight books, now would be a good time to stop reading this and take an inventory of your life in the interest of divining just where you went wrong and at what point you chose to throw in your lot with intellectually challenged teenage girls who may or may not wear a lot of black makeup and harbor either an open or secret appreciation for Justin Bieber’s “musical genius.”

Because Twilight is nothing short of insipid drivel more suited to ad copy for a pedophile’s dream vacation, replete with all the advantages of Pacific Northwestern rural locations uniquely suited for a forested rape shed.

I say that the Twilight books and corresponding movies read and view like a pedophile’s dream vacation because when it comes to anyone past the age of puberty, only a committed pedophile could ever really embrace the story of a multiple centenarian vampire who repeatedly enrolls in High School in the interest of seducing and later imbibing the blood of so many underage girls from broken homes.

Because while Edward (yes, I know the names of the main characters) claims that High School is a means of mitigating his boredom and stimulating what one can only imagine is a scintillating intellect comparable only perhaps to a lobotomized Kardashian, it begs the question: Why not college? Or perhaps more aptly, judging from Edward’s limited vocabulary despite his several hundred years’ opportunity to learn words of perhaps greater than four syllables: Why not junior college?

I can personally attest to the fact that there is a shocking dearth of stimulation of any kind in our nation’s public schools, save for the various and copious amounts of drugs and alcohol that can at least be said to stimulate reckless unprotected sex. For a well-adjusted 28-year-old like myself, the thought of attending High School now for anything other than court-ordered community service related to my drunk driving arrest, much less attending high school as a sentient 400 year-old, smacks of bad judgment at the very least and an expression of deviant sexual predation at its worst.

Twilight is instead more a love story straight from the fantasies of R. Kelly or Roger Clemens and is more aptly suited to direction by Roman Polanski.

Furthermore, college (or junior college) would afford far fewer questions from school administrators who are keen to keep exactly the kind of predator that Edward represents out of their schools. Even the idea that Edward looks too young for college doesn’t sufficiently excuse Edward’s high school enrollment; there are plenty of 17-year-olds and even the occasional 16-year-old on college campuses—am I the only one who remembers Neil Patrick Harris as Doogie Howser?

So while Robert Pattinson’s onscreen presence makes Twilight palatable to parents who willingly escort their teen daughters to screenings to sit alongside desperate middle-aged Mormons, should Edward’s character have been played by someone slightly more age-appropriate and creepy, like say Ian McKellen or Steven Tyler or Pope Benedict XVI, perhaps the film’s allure would suffer.

The onscreen antics of a centuries-old Ian McKellen passing himself off as a high school teenager intent on seducing teenage girls from broken homes with stories of blood-drinking rituals and immortality might have the unwanted effect of deterring at least a few fans.

So while we all mourn the passing of the final chapter to the Twilight film “saga”, let’s at least admit that in the same way that we wouldn’t install Jerry Sandusky as the headmaster of Hogwarts, perhaps we likewise shouldn’t champion the exploits of a wizened vampire’s statutory exploitation of a minor.