This past July, the Twilight saga was brought to Netflix. I vaguely remember watching the first one and a half movies when I was about ten. Now, as a college student, I have learned a few things since that age — one of which being the ability to form opinions about movie characters. And boy do I have quite a few of them about Bella Swan and her relationship with Edward Cullen. When it comes to their relationship, I’d have to classify it as the polar opposite of relationship goals. The lens through which the movies portrays Bella and Edward’s relationship makes it seem as if forbidden romance (code for stalking and manipulation) is a desirable form of a relationship. Bella and Edward, first and foremost, are not meant to be together. Edward is a vampire, meaning Bella is supposed to be his prey. So why do they continue to try to make their relationship happen?
Upon my most recent viewing of the movies, I am of the opinion that Bella is an abusive relationship. Edward does not value her personhood but rather his possessiveness of her, and Bella falls vulnerable to his predatory practices. But the movie saga does not frame their relationship as such. Woven throughout the film are romantic scenes, such as Bella and Edward lying in meadows, slow dancing at prom, exploring the woods together and a fairytale first kiss. But I couldn’t bear to watch the movie without noticing that their relationship is disturbing to say the least. The two even acknowledge it themselves.
“And so the lion fell in love with the lamb,” Edward says at one point in the first movie — Edward being the lion, and Bella the lamb. (Power imbalance much?)
“What a stupid lamb,” Bella says in response, diminishing herself. “What a sick, masochistic lion,” Edward says, admitting that the relationship is inherently wrong.
When Bella first moves to Forks, Washington at the beginning of the saga, she’s pretty popular for someone who just came to a new school. In the first movie, her friends are always making an effort to include Bella and hang out with her. But slowly, the film focuses more and more on her relationship with Edward to the point where it feels strange to watch scenes not involving any vampires. Anna Kendrick (who plays Jessica, Bella’s “best friend” in the series) even tweeted in 2018, “Holy sh**. I just remembered I was in Twilight.”
It becomes clear while watching that Bella is focused on one thing only: Edward. Edward acts alarmingly creepy towards her; after the first time they talk, he begins to watch her sleep in her room at night (he has nothing better to do, apparently — vampires don’t sleep). He also frequently smells her and isolates her from her friends, getting jealous when she talks to people who aren’t him. When Bella goes prom dress shopping, Edward reads her friends’ thoughts to make sure he knows where she is, which is an unsettling invasion of privacy.
In New Moon, when Edward (temporarily) breaks up with Bella, there is a montage scene showing the extent to which she is shattered by this. She sits on a chair, staring into space, as the seasons pass by and the weather changes. This shows just how emotionally dependent Bella is on Edward, to the point where life as she knows it is no longer the same now that they are apart.
Bella is also insecure: there are countless references in the movie about her ungracefulness and lack of confidence. When Edward takes interest in her, it makes her feel special. Without his attention and approval, she is insignificant, uncool and pitiful. Bella is portrayed as a damsel in distress in several scenes, like when another student’s van was about to crush her in the school parking lot, had Edward not swooped in and stopped it with his super strength.
Edward is also 108 years old, and in the first movie, Bella is only 17. The rest of the Cullens have perfectly suitable vampire significant others. Why not Edward? Why was he the only one who fell for a human, when it is so forbidden? These two are not in a healthy relationship; they are infatuated with one another in an toxic way, and those are two different things that the movies do not make clear. It is time for Hollywood to stop writing in relationships like Bella and Edward’s, because it encourages young and easily-influenceable viewers that this is what they should desire. The media industry can do better, and as consumers of media we have definitely matured from the 2008 Twilight days. Hopefully, we can start to phase out the Bella and Edwards of films from this point forward.