Roger Ebert ruminates on vampire heternormativeness, er, heteronormalness, er, heteronormality. Whatever
Saith the Chi-town God of the aisle seat:
You have to give me credit. I may not have used the term, but I was right on top of the heteronormativeness of the first of the movies, "Twilight" (2008).
On Prom Night, on the stage of the not especially private gazebo in the public gardens, he teeters right on the brink of a fang job, and then brings all of her trembling to a dead stand-still."
...Imagine, if you will, Bella and Edward having passionate sex. The mind recoils. They are more ideals than real people: Beautiful, perfect, young, idealistic. We have no desire to have the image besmirched by rumpy-pumpy.
...The argument is made in some studies of the Stephanie Meyer's work that she embeds her own Mormon or Christian beliefs about heteronormative behavior. Chief among them is chastity before marriage. But doesn't "Breaking Dawn" make an equally compelling argument against sex after marriage? Edward was right and they should never have gotten married in the first place. The film, in fact, makes a good case for gay, lesbian, transsexual and other vampires, in that they cannot be expected to reproduce. I don't know if Stephanie Meyer thought this through, but there you have it.
Postscript 10 a.m. Nov. 21: I continue to muse about the word "heteronormative." If you take it apart it seems to reduce to "normal heterosexual." Somehow the scientific nomenclature transforms that into a negative. I understand the reasons why non-hetero minorities feel discriminated against, and sympathize with them. But doesn't "heteronormative" apply the same process of blanket discrimination?
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