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Romance and the Female Gaze Obscuring Gendered Violence in The Twilight Saga

2012; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 14; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/14680777.2012.740493

1471-5902

Jessica Taylor,

Sexuality, Behavior, and Technology

This article examines the violence inherent in the popular Young Adult Fiction series The Twilight Saga, considers how this violence can be re-coded as reassuring through the use of romance genre conventions, and further extends this analysis by applying the concept of the female gaze to the series. The article initially examines the gendered violence within The Twilight Saga, considering both the physical violence that occurs, as well as the mental and emotional violence, using Evan Stark's notion of coercive control. The series is then considered as conforming to the romance genre, using the work of Tania Modleski and Janice Radway, discovering how instances of violence can be re-coded as reassuring. This analysis is then further extended by introducing the concept of the female gaze, and considering how a female gaze might impact the way the potentially anxiety-inducing male body can be read as desirable, and how culturally determined understandings of what constitutes the desirable male body are evolving.