Twilight and Rome

John Granger, the Hogwarts Professor, has a little piece on the recent denunciation of the Twilight series from some guy in Rome. His take is, as far as I can tell, that the books are indeed crappy, but that the guy in Rome doesn’t really accurately assess *why* they are crappy. He also argues (and I agree) that it’s mostly counter-productive for Rome to be perceived as bothering its head about such pop culture twaddle. It makes the Church look trivial and censorious, as did the Lifesite misrepresentations about Benedict’s supposed “condemnation” of Harry Potter a few years back. This is current teapot tempest is less egregious than the “Pope condemns Potter” rumpus since, a) this is a real statement made by somebody who actually is being quoted accurately while the Lifesite silliness was a gross misrepresentation of something which, in any csse, Benedict, as Pope, never said and b) the Twilight books really do suck.

Granger, who knows what he’s doing when it comes to lit crit, had lunch at my house this past summer. He was here in Washington for a Twilight conference held in (where else?) Forks. He filled me in on the elaborate Mormon background of the books (replete with the bizarre and, well, antique 19th century anti-catholicism that suffuses the allegorical imagery of the book). It is indeed crapola. But not quite the crapola the Vatican guy thinks it is. If you want a more precise taxonomy of your pop lit vampire crap, Granger is your go to guy. 🙂