Twilight, The Virgin Project, and the dusk of youth

Twilight

I thought it would be fun to write a column about two very different narratives that I happen to be thinking about this week. One is Twilight, the teen vampire movie, and the other is The Virgin Project, a comic book about different peoples’ first sexual experiences.
 

You’re probably wondering what they could have in common, but it’s obvious: they are both about first sex. Twilight is about putting it off, while The Virgin Project is about looking back on the memory.

Twilight is, of course, the usual orgy of product placement that, as in most other big-budget films, constantly distract you from the story. But the story itself is beautifully done. Briefly, the film is about a young girl in Forks, WA who desperately desires to become a vampire. I loved two things about the film. First, I loved the baseball scene. Vampires playing baseball at night is terrific. You would never put a scene like this in a vampire story unless you just simply love baseball and would have put it in ANY film, and I love that. The baseball scene makes up for the 4-door Jeep, and the Volvo, and the MacBook computer, and all the other annoying advertisements—it was just pure random exuberance. (Plus, it’s a helpful metaphor in case you didn’t realize that vampirism is all about sexual desire—the vampire girl, like Bella, comes like this close to hitting a home run!) Second, I loved the fact that Twilight builds up to the prom, that sickest and most bizarre of all high school drama-fests, like the Titanic approaching an iceberg. They have to go to the prom.

The prom is necessary in a teen vampire flick because the prom, like the vampire myth, is all about losing one’s virginity. That’s the whole point of a prom—there’s no other reason to even have a prom. Now, if you do lose your virginity on prom night, you’ll be disappointed, because really, it’s all just such a mess, but still, that’s the whole reason for going, so if you want to have priceless memories that last a lifetime, what you need to do is go to the prom but fight to control your raging desires and those of your date. You need to go to the prom but remain pure. Which is what Bella does in Twilight. Barely.

From a financial perspective, if you’re Stephenie Meyer, what you want to do is keep Bella pure, but keep her flirting with raging desire for the flesh, for as long as humanly (get it?) possible. Meyer clearly realizes that power, wealth, and fame, both her own and those of her characters, come from thwarting passion, from battling desire, from denying lust, from defending purity. It’s a simple formula that has worked for centuries. (How do you think all those senators got their money and influence? By ignoring the throbbing in their loins and channeling all that energy into their work, of course—or at least by not getting caught.) The Twilight sequels will probably continue for decades, but eventually, the mythic tale will have to end. And that’s what The Virgin Project is about—the end of youthful drama and confusion, the end of innocence, and the onset of the terminal condition known as adult reality.

What Seattle artist Kevin Boze and his partner Stasia Kato have done is interview hundreds of people about their first sexual experience and make each story into a short graphic novel. As you can imagine, the book is somewhat repetitive—how could it not be? And yet, the variety of different experiences in the book is pretty amazing. You’ll also be impressed with the treatment.

Each story in The Virgin Project takes place somewhere along the timeline charted by Twilight. Some finally experience sex after a long period of hope, frustration, and impatience, and for some of these people, the experience is everything they hoped it would be. Others are initiated into the cult of adulthood far too early and against their will.

Miranda’s story is sweet, simple, and nice—the way you probably wish your first experience was. Clifton discovered he was gay while looking at Mexican girly mags in a treehouse with a friend. Patty was playing around naked with her girlfriend, on the hood of Dad’s mustang in the garage, when Mom walked in and offered to take her to a psychiatrist. Jim hired a prostitute so he wouldn’t be inexperienced on his wedding night. Marc was raped by his high school wrestling coach. Jayne endured sex with her husband, “painful at best, at worst humiliating,” the first time and then daily for over half a century because it was God’s will.

Boze and Kato tell these stories, and a great many more, simply and truthfully, with sensitivity and grace. The Virgin Project, an episodic graphic novel, is not exploitative—it is certainly not porn. The cartoons are not even that explicit, for reasons Boze explains on his blog site. Their variety is staggering, as is their sameness, because regardless of the circumstances, when it’s over, it’s over. Sex represents the end of youth, the end of drama and delusion, the end of all the anticipating and yearning and torment. Youth and desire sell cars and stimulate (ahem) the economy, but sex is the beginning of how things are going to be. The cars aren’t so new and fancy in real life—you may have to drive a minivan for a while, and you may have to make do with a PC instead of a Mac. But there’s a real beauty to that transition—it’s your minivan. Even if your transition to adult reality is rough and hurtful, even if decades later you still haven’t recovered from it, it doesn’t happen on a screen—it is yours, and that makes it beautiful.

Desire is ideal—it’s a maelstrom swollen with rage and hope and potential. Youth is capital, and desire the compulsion to spend it. Sex is just your life—probably a comparatively low-budget affair, but beautiful, still. Your kids are watching Twilight, which is great—it’s a terrific film. But look ahead a little and accidentally leave a copy of The Virgin Project on the coffee table. A little basic information goes a long way.