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Image Credit: Empire Movies

There has been some controversy—though less than might be expected—about the racial politics of the new Twilight movie, New Moon.  I went to see the film the other night and while I was prepared for smoldering gazes, repressed embraces, and some retrograde gender relations, I was not prepared for its representations of race.  While several critics have protested the casting of predominately non-Native American actors in Native American roles, far less comment has been made about the portrayal of Native American characters as bare-chested pack animals that morph into wolves when they become angry. The main character in this storyline is Jacob Black who falls in love with Bella Swan and then comes down with puberty-induced werewolfism.  He and the other wolves are all members of the Quileute tribe, which long ago signed a territorial treaty with the vampires.  Sound familiar?

Image Credit: www.newmoonmovie.org

The storyline reminds me of a 19^th century Irish genre called the “national tale” in which national identity is allegorized as the choice between an English and an Irish mate.  The heroine or hero’s choice becomes an allegory for national identity: should the nation embrace its indigenous roots or reach outwards towards Englishness?  In New Moon, Bella is seemingly rejected by her urbane vampire beau Edward Cullen and becomes increasingly attracted to Jacob.  While the story is simple, or simply formulaic, enough, I wondered how allegorically we are meant to read Bella’s choice between the vampiric cosmopolitans and the animalized locals?  To further complicate and more firmly allegorize this love plot, the final scenes of the novel take Bella to Europe, which appears to be the origin point of vampire culture and home to the Volturi vampires.  Compared to the blood-sucking European monsters, the American Cullen vampires seem models of restraint and compassion.  Wedged between the Volturi and the Quileute, Edward and Bella seem to articulate a particularly American version of the national tale. 

Image Credit: Screen Shot IMDB

In Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez’s blog post, “The Politics of Wizards and Vampires,” she argues that Stephanie Myers’ Twilight books represent a particularly right-wing fantasy world.  While Valdes-Rodriguez clearly articulates the religious components of conservativism in the novel, I would add that the story also demonstrates conservative values in its representation of national identity.  As an American national tale that rejects both European and Native-American identities, the Edward-Bella romance is also a romance of American exceptionalism.