New Moon: New Swoon

The path of true love never does run straight but does it have to run this crooked? Poor Bella. Her first love, Edward, turns out to be a vampire who has all sorts of "vampire" issues like turning all sparkly in the sunlight and never being able to sleep with her for fear he'll lose control and suck her blood to the last drop. Bella also frets over the fact that he never ages, so much so that her turning 18 actually freaks her out. That he's also a perfect, and dare I say gorgeous, gentleman simply makes their romantic difficulties all the more poignant and heart-wrenching for Bella.

But Bella doesn't know true heartache until Edward suddenly leaves her after an unfortunate incident involving a bloody paper cut and the subsequent frenzied attack on Bella by Edward's vampire brother. Deciding it's not safe for her to be hanging around him or his family, Edward selflessly tells Bella he doesn't want her anymore and leaves for good.

As with any first heartbreak, Bella is inconsolable for the longest time. Fortunately, she has a hunky and very buff best friend named Jacob who secretly, and then not so secretly, pines for her. He's another perfect gentleman who does all he can to help her get over Edward. He promises to never hurt her the way Edward has and to be her protector always. But just like Edward, he too has a secret that he can't tell anyone. A secret that just happens to leak out: He's a werewolf!

Poor Bella. I mean, what are the odds? Her first love is a vampire and her potential suitor is a werewolf? That girl is snakebit in matters of the heart.

Right after Jacob's literal transformation into a wolf right before her eyes, Bella utters my favorite line in the movie: "So, you're a werewolf." The seeming absurdity of the line is engulfed by Bella's world-weary earnestness. It's as if she'd discovered he was nothing more than a vegetarian. And when the extraordinary is treated as mundane, you know it's time to start thinking metaphorically.

Unlike my teenage daughter, I have not read the four Twilight books. But what the series seems to be about, at least at this juncture, is the emotional development of a teenage girl's heart. Edward represents the impossibly dreamy and romantic ideal of first love, whereby the man devotes all his time and energy to denying his own sexual nature in order to honor and respect the girl/woman. He's like the courtly gentlemen of the Middle Ages who took pride in the absolute nature of their love for "milady," a love unsullied by the physical. (Edward even speaks in a kind of courtly manner.) Edward becomes all the more alluring because of his self-control, his self-denial. His reticence doesn't kill desire, it enflames it. And all those "vampire" complications conveniently keep that desire at a safe distance.

Jacob represents something altogether different. After the first movie, I thought he was going to be Bella's more realistic and better grounded "human" option. If Edward was a little too much like a god, an unattainable ideal, Jacob was the healthy alternative - a more down-to-earth guy who knew how to be a good friend as well as a lover. He represented the kind of love that grows out of friendship, rather than in the hothouse of one's imagination. Or so I thought.

Then the writer/filmmaker drops the "werewolf" bomb. And I'm not sure what to make of that. Does he now signify a more animalistic kind of love? Like The Incredible Hulk, Jacob warns: "Don't make me angry." Otherwise, he turns into a raging werewolf. (The Incredible Hunk?) Perhaps he's meant to represent the more testosterone-fueled side of male sexuality, in contrast to the more effete and dandified poet/lover. The carnal versus the ethereal. Team Jacob and Team Edward indeed.

The problem is Bella's love never really wavers. If this narrative is meant as a metaphor for the kind of emotional choices women must face head on, shouldn't she at least be tempted by Jacob? As much as he wants her, she really only has eyes for her vampire. So, in the end, I'm left thinking Jacob does not represent an alluring alternative version of the ideal man. Instead, and more mundanely, he's just the poor chump who helps the girl mend her broken heart while all the time she unwittingly is breaking his. Poor Jacob. It just might be enough to bring out the werewolf in him.