New Moon Rises to the Occasion

The New Moon midnight screening experience was summed up best by the man in front of me, who, upon entering the theater full of girls, shouted "What are all these girls doing here? Don't they know this is a movie for the gays?!" Everyone around us laughed but I asked myself if the man in the tight "Team Edward" t-shirt had a point: who was in the wrong theater, the guys holding hands or the girls holding Edward action figures?

The anticipation for New Moon and everything surrounding it has been so great that the movie itself is almost an afterthought by now, but after a $140 million opening weekend (the third largest in box office history), it's clear that the Twilight phenomenon is far from over. The cast of Twilight has been on the cover of every magazine and a guest on every talk show imaginable. The books are not written well, and the actors aren't vying for any SAG Ensemble Awards, but like vampires themselves, there is a suspension of disbelief when it comes to The Twilight Saga. Women were largely responsible for the craze, but I'm sure there were a few gay Bandwagon Bettys once the muscled pics of Taylor Lautner came out (and whether you were a soccer mom or a Chelsea boy, everyone gasped whenever there was a shirtless Jacob scene).

Vampires and abs have always gone hand in hand, so much so that when my friends and I watch The CW hit, The Vampire Diaries (the best new show of the season) we yell, "gratuitous vampire abs!" every time they show one of the bloodsucking brothers with their shirts off (which is at least a couple times an episode -- yeah, set your DVR). Of course Twilight is all about abstinence, but just because the characters don't have sex doesn't mean every frame isn't rife with sexuality and hormones. Twilight has tapped into that "love something you can't have" feeling that girls in high school will experience with their gay friends, but instead made it about the living dead -- here the boys don't love Madonna, they love human blood, but in the end of this story, the girl gets the guy.

Like every great vampire tale, there is a love triangle, and though Bella (Kristen Stewart) may be torn on who to choose, the audience clearly wasn't. While Edward has the body of a slim British teen, and he is more than fine to look at, it is Jacob and the Were-Twinks that received the most cat calls during the screening I attended.

-- CHRISTOPHER RUDOLPH

Previously > You Can't Cure Bitch?