Huh.

(Spoilers for Uglies here, and probably Vampire Diaries as well.)

So, first off, I think I should really work on post titles, because the auto-permalinker is all “huh-3.”

Secondly, I accidentally-for-reals came across some criticism of my recaps, the first I’ve ever seen.  I wasn’t Googling myself or even looking up Vampire Diaries stuff, go figure.  It’s just that “bookslide” is a name I use for a lot of accounts, and so it came up in the course of looking for something else entirely this blog-unrelated.  The criticism is that–I hope I get this right, because I don’t even know if I could find the page again if I wanted to–I’m too focused on Elena as a negative role model.

The thing is, I don’t see Elena as being her own self in a lot of ways.  One of these ways, probably the most major way, is that she’s an ’80s/’90s stereotype of the Blonde Good Girl.  The second most major way is my memories of my emotional connection and interaction with her as a young reader.  When you merge these two lenses (like when you’re at the eye doctor!), and you’ve got the adult perspective going on, a lot becomes clear.

The message in these decades was that these were characters to look up to. These incredibly flawed characters were held as pinnacles of Teenage.  Now, there are a lot of incredibly flawed characters in the past ten-plus years who are protagonists and (sometimes arguably) heroines, Katniss from The Hunger Games and Vivian from Blood & Chocolate springing immediately to mind.  Heck, if you want to get into it, Tally from Uglies is the perfect example, really.  Whereas Katniss and Vivian’s flaws are more subtle and might take a more sophisticated reader to distance herself from them, Tally is filled with flaws that she can’t stop thinking about, not just physical flaws but emotional ones.  The difference between Tally’s flaws and Elena’s is that Tally and the other characters in the series notice and interact with these flaws, whereas in TVD, Elena rarely admits to flaws and generally sees them as unchangeable aspects of herself, while managing to see small or negative amounts of change as real growth.

When you think about Shay vs. Caroline, it becomes a little more clear.  Shay is never REALLY the bad guy–that’s always Dr. Cable.  And yet Shay always seems to be on the opposite side of the fence from Tally, no matter what Tally’s choices seem to be.  And in Specials, she tells Tally that she’s narcissistic.  She doesn’t even say this in anger.  She accepts that this is who Tally is–Tally is incapable of seeing situations from perspectives other than her own.  That’s why the end of the series, abrupt as it is, makes perfect sense.  Tally can’t see the system from inside; she sees it from her own worldview and is determined that she and David will enforce that worldview.  Whether it’s right or not doesn’t matter–Tally has shown over the course of the book that she doesn’t comprehend expansion for the sake of humanity, because it was drilled into her head as a child that expansion=bad. If David creates a counterbalance, great, but even without David, Tally would be doing what she’s doing, based off of her own Tally-centered motivations.

Caroline, on the other hand, is set up as the Mean Girl/Bad Guy from the beginning.  She’s so jealous of Elena.  She wants Stefan.  There’s nothing about their relationship that isn’t antagonistic, and nothing we see in Caroline for a long time that’s worthwhile, so we’re meant to use her as a metric: Caroline, Bad; Elena, Good.  This is aided by Meredith and Bonnie–even when Bonnie complains about Elena getting all the guys, Meredith’s response is that life isn’t fair, suggesting that life favors the Elenas.

We’ve seen this come up on The Dairi Burger and 1BRUCE1.  Elizabeth and Jessica (blondes, by the way) are set up to the heroines, despite their personalities being apparently polar opposites.  Even though Jessica is, by all accounts, a sociopath, and Elizabeth is incredibly condescending, the entire series is built around basically worshiping them.  Todd is held up as the standard of the perfect boyfriend, but the drama of an ongoing series demands conflict, so he’s thrust into the role of crappy person for about 50 pages to make some kind of point that seems to disappear at the end of every book, thus negating his worth entirely for everyone but a young reader who can’t yet make that distinction.  Other “good” characters, like Enid, are props to hold up Elizabeth’s perfection, and give the impression of being doormats, whereas “good/bad” characters like Lila are scheming and conniving shoplifters with daddy issues.  But don’t worry, those daddy issues with be dealt with, until the plot needs them again, when they start from the beginning.

The thing is, it was what it was.  We can’t go back into the past and change our role models.  We can’t hop in a time machine and say “Francine Pascal, stop what you’re doing right now and THINK.”  And why would we?  Jessica and Elizabeth are fantastic examples of ’80s heroines.  To deny that would be to deny the times that created them.  As a lit major, that is nowhere near my intention.  But as someone who’s looking at these works at least somewhat critically, I can’t help but find this to be a huge aspect of rereading and mention it appropriately.

Elena is, after all, in retrospect utterly ridiculous.  She has bizarre expectations about social norms and the opposite sex; no interests other than boys, clothes, party planning, and her friends; and never once considered a life outside of high school.  She’s an upper middle class white girl from a town in Virginia not far from some major cities–the exclusion of college from the narrative makes the Bella/Edward college argument seem downright realistic.

But when I write, I’m not here to say “But what about the children who are reading the reprints now??”, although as a parent I of course care what my kid reads (and she didn’t read this series until she was old enough to discuss it, as is pretty much the rule in the house).  What I’m writing is more like “But what about my childhood?” along with “What do my adult eyes see?”  If I find in Elena so many flaws, it’s because I’m a different reader than I was twenty years ago.

Did depictions of thin, beautiful blonde girls who treat people horribly influence my young worldview?  Absolutely.  Are these characters, with their reissues, doing the same thing now?  Absolutely.  Do I care?  Sort of.  I mean, I’m not willing to start a revolution in part because I don’t approve of censorship on a major level and in part because…it’s not something worth giving much attention to, other than from afar and with much snark.  Do I wish I’d seen Elena for what she was when I was twelve?  Yes.  Do I wish she were more like Poppy from Secret Vampire, who has interests and friends and pays attention to her family members, even the ones she doesn’t always get along with?  Sure.  But ultimately, her worth as a role model is an aspect of the distanced perspective, not an alarmist criticism of the work.

I mean, there’s a lot going on here in my head, and to say that I’m writing from the perspective of “What about the chiiiiildren?” (which is what I think I was directly accused of?) is pretty laughable to me.  It’s more about the shock of coming back to a series where I looked up the heroine and now find that she’s someone I dislike intensely.  In fact, if there’s one major perspective here, for reals, it’s something like “I, I, I” and “What about meeeeee?”

Like I said, Elena was an influence.

…Well, here’s hoping that was more explanatory and interesting and thought- and discussion-provoking than defensive.