Atole Blog's

The Last Newro­man­tic Myth

by Ilaria Amato

Never under­sti­mate a girl that loves the Twi­light Saga. Why? Because she is more con­scious­ness than she look like, because authen­tic emo­tions live through her and her heart beats like the ones of 50, 100, 300 years ago. And she has into her heart feel­ings that embarasess her, and she knows it. It is wrong to think that “women  from another times”  are not still with us, in times in which vir­gin­ity and mod­esty are not pro­moted by soci­ety, these same value are results of a free and cor­a­geous choice .

In times in which you can have all at once, and you can step the stages of your sen­ti­men­tal edu­ca­tion, in a soci­ety where every­thing is acces­si­ble by the inter­net, and a strong moral free­dom, girls who fol­low the cult of Stephe­nie Meyer are the authors of the new roman­ti­cism  demonstrative.

Closed in their rooms, they cul­ti­vate the taste of pre­serv­ing their­selves, and they pre­pare them­seves on cour­ter­ing rit­u­als, they are young, they are some­times very young, but they all had a founda­men­tal insight: a woman is more inter­est­ing when she is “dressed” than when she is  naked, because a dress is like poetry, is the wait­ing time before the secret is revealed, is the heart that beats, and the mind that dreams, is our most human part that sep­are us from ani­mals. Because ani­mals mat­ing but only humans love. And choose whom to love. Bella could have Edward and Jacob at the same time but she knows she has to make a choice: between fire and ice, wolf”s pas­sion or vampire’s cool blood.

Is not casual, that Eclipse begins with verses from the famous amer­i­can poet Robert Frost, because is this con­stant tense between the two oppo­sites that nail you to see the pic­ture. Peo­ple desire that this deci­sion comes later as pos­si­ble, and the taste for the wait­ing will be extended in the extreem, with­out any sex­ual act to be con­sumed. Look­ing at the saga from this point of wiew, Twi­light rep­re­sents, with­out any doubt, the last new roman­tic myth, sur­pris­ingly born in the Zero Age , after Gen­er­a­tion X Nihilism and after, never for­get this the deser­ti­fi­ca­tion of the illu­sions after Sep­tem­ber, 11. Il the third mil­len­nium, love becomes eter­nal love, girls are courted with words and mod­esty, and a boy find him­self refus­ing a girl’ request, like Edward on Bella’s. The last new roman­tic myth grows with schemes from the past, with a clas­si­cal love tri­an­gle “two boys and a girl” (who really cares if they are a wolf and  a vam­pire) and on its cateti were writ­ten many roman­tic lit­er­a­ture mas­ter­pieces. Edward and Jacob are to Bella like Ash­ley and Rhett to Scar­lett in Gone with the wind. Stephe­nie Meyer her­self said she had been insipred by fem­i­nine writ­ers like Mar­garet Mitchell to Lucy Maud Mont­gomery (Anne of Green Gables), from Bronte sis­ters to Pride and Prej­u­dice from Jane Austen, the writer’s mag­nif­i­cent obses­sion. But this is not a sim­ple costant refer­ring to the past themes, what is impor­tant is the grace in the descrip­tion of the pro­tag­o­nist’ feel­ings, always in the mid­dle of love suf­fer­ing, vul­ner­a­ble and capa­ble to act in the wrong way but brave and aware. This is the way the twi­lighters want to be, they want to live their love dream from the first rows, extend­ing their grow­ing time until the adult age, like they were liv­ing in a ete­nal place still full of hope. Their sex­ual absti­nence is their chastity vote, like they would like to be joined only to a supe­rior being, beyond the uman­ity. Maybe a vam­pire. If only Edward could be.

He tried to work as model, then he decided to do the musi­cian until a 109 year old vam­pire came into his life. Since then Robert Pat­tin­son became Edward Cullen and his life has changed. And it has gone so far as he can’t even go out of his home.

THE LAST NEW-ROMANTIC HERO
Get­ting closer to the 3rd mil­len­nium, among blind dates on Face­book, scan­dals on Youtube, mil­lions of peo­ple stand in line to watch a movie where girls are courted like in the 1800, rela­tion­ships are chaste and pla­tonic and love is for­ever. Almost like in a Jane Austen’s romance. What if this is real rea­son of the Twi­light suc­cess?

A step back in time. Sep­tem­ber 2008, 60 days before the release of Twi­light: blogs of the fans are full of com­ments on the actors cho­sen to play Edward and Bella on the big screen. The kind­est adjec­tive on Robert Pat­tin­son are “inad­e­quate”, “dull” and “ridicu­lous”. <> Robert jokes today. He went from the Oym­pus of Hol­ly­wood celebri­ties to the unstop­pable Pat­tin­son­ma­nia move­ment and secur­ing the 50th place on the Forbes 2010 list of most pow­er­ful peo­ple. <> , Pat­tin­son explains, and he looks, if pos­si­ble, even bet­ter in real­ity than on the screen: low voice, ele­gant bear­ing and deep gaze, the actor is charm­ing, nice and hum­ble. Noth­ing of the star. When he talks he looks into your eyes, he is very con­cen­trated when he lis­tens to the ques­tions and always waits a moment before answer­ing. His life has com­pletely changed in less than 6 months: after the Twi­light release he had to armour-plate him­self, fil­ter news and change hotel 3 times a month because of con­tin­ual leaks, like it hap­pened in NY dur­ing film­ing “Remem­ber Me”, where he was also run over by a taxi because of the pres­sure of the twi­lighters.

Lon­doner, the youngest of 3 chil­dren (his sis­ter Lizzie is a singer), his father imports vin­tage cars, his mother works for a mod­el­ing agency, Pat­tin­son moves a lot of money today, just think about he played in 5 block­busters (ther’s also HP and the gob­let of fire and HP and order of fenix) and that Eclipse, filmed with just 68 mil­lion dol­lars, grossed 400 mil­lion dol­lars in just 2 weeks (the equiv­a­lent of the tak­ings of Twiligth). <>, he taunts him­self. <>.Mmmh, yeah, but 2 years ago twi­lighters of all over the world weren’t happy of the choice of him as Edward, and today the same fans stop him and ask him, kindly, to bite them on their neck, lift­ing posters up like “Rob bite me”. <. With­out doubts, one of the (many) secrets of the suc­cess of this saga is actu­ally him, the cor­re­spond­ing vam­pire of the 21th cen­tury, an ema­ci­ated, roman­tic and hand­some crea­ture with a gothic look and some­thing of the rebel james dean which brings him to a marked unsociability.

–What is like to be con­sid­ered a sex sym­bol?
It’s a strange feel­ing. I real­ized that in Italy, when I was in mon­tepul­ciano shoot­ing New Moon. I keep find­ing incred­i­ble the fact that before twi­light no one ever turned around to look at me, while now I can’t even walk down the street. But I don’t want to be con­sid­ered a sex sym­bol, just an actor.

- Are you stressed by the fans?
Amazed, a bit embar­rassed, but not stressed. The fans are a huge sup­port. On set in Tus­cany they applauded at every take, even if I didn’t do any­thing. It was nice. I thought I was in a theatre!

–Why do you think Edward is so fas­ci­nat­ing, not only for the female audi­ence?
Because he’s a mys­te­ri­ous char­ac­ter. When you read Stephanie’s books it’s easy to project what you want onto him.

–Does being a vam­pire help him?
It makes him more intrigu­ing than a human being, like being immortal.

–Would you like being immor­tal?
Hon­estly, It doesn’t appeal to me. I would end up get­ting bored.

–How much are you sim­i­lar to Edward Cullen?
He often has feel­ings he can’t han­dle. That’s a com­mon behav­ior. It hap­pened to me, too: I’ve always had weird rela­tion­ships and also in the movies I like messy love sto­ries, not the clas­sic roman­tic love.

–So noth­ing like Romeo and Juliet?
I’m more like “last tango in Paris” by Bertolucci (laughs)

–In Eclipse you divide the scene with another male actor, Tay­lor Laut­ner. Does it bother you?
Not at all. I feel more free.

–Did you know Kris­ten Stew­art before Twi­light?
I had seen her in “Into the wild” by Sean Penn. She’s a respon­si­ble actress. But I had already real­ized it by read­ing her cur­ricu­lum: she always made moti­vated choices. I know her very well by now and I knew she would suf­fer from all this mania after Twi­light, with all the paps and photographers.

–What about your singer career?
It has stopped now. But I keep play­ing. I wanna do a record in 2 years.

–Your hotel in Mon­tepul­ciano was mobbed by fans, you were almost run over by a car in NY because of them. How has your life changed?
When I go out I more wor­ried about where to go, because I always meet some­one who stops me and ask me an auto­graph. Every­body rec­og­nize me by now and I got para­noid about it.

- Your career has changed, too. It seems like every­body wants Pat­tin­son.
This scares me, too. I can’t under­stand who really wants me for who I am or who wants me in order to have the Twi­light fans.