I have only seen one Twilight movie, and I have only seen one episode of the 2008 CW series The Vampire Diaries. But I already feel it is clear that the latter is a much better show than the former. Why? How could that be, when the two properties are so fundamentally similar?
After all, both are supernatural romantic dramas in which actors in their mid-twenties pretend to be high school students. Both feature broody male vampires as their primary love interests. Both male leads are trying to go vegan, but struggle to tamp down their vampiric urges. Both find their taste for blood is especially aroused by the female protagonist, for whom they nurse a devouring passion that may be either a passion that devours or a passion to devoir—or both.
Why then is one better than the other? I submit it is due to our old friend, the “objective correlative”!
Each series introduces its female protagonist by indicating that she is sad. She feels burdened by the world and the habits of daily life. She is alienated from the people around her, convinced they cannot possibly understand what she is going through. But in the case of Twilight, this central character seems annoying for this reason; whereas in the Vampire Diaries, she seems relatable. Why?
It's quite simple really: the screenwriters gave the Vampire Diaries protagonist an objective correlative for her angst. In the opening monologue, they reveal that her parents just died in a car crash. That’s why she feels put-upon and ineffably tragic. That’s why she can’t face the prospect of suffering through inauthentic small talk with a bunch of only half-interested strangers. They actually won’t understand her pain, or know what to say.
Whereas it’s not clear what the protagonist of Twilight is upset about, other than being so much better than everyone at everything; or why she feels alienated from her non-vampire schoolmates—apart, again, from being superior to them.
It shouldn’t have been so hard. The writers of the Vampire Diaries found the perfect way around this problem. They managed to create a moody, angst protagonist without making her annoying. Their solution was an old one—known to the every writer of a Victorian melodrama. When in doubt: make her an orphan. When scrambling for a sympathetic backstory, just give her dead parents.
It's like the first episode of the 1960s soap opera Dark Shadows. When the plucky heroine Victoria Winters stands up in an early scene and says, “of course, I am grateful for how good everyone has been to me here at the foundling home…”—whose heart is not instantly melted? Whose sympathies are not enlisted on her side? The foundling home!
There is no excuse not to make use of such a readily-available and effective trope. And yet, Twilight lets the opportunity slip by. They so easily could have given the protagonist an actual reason for why she feels glum and alienated. But they simply declined to do so.
Perhaps they realized they didn’t need to, because they were writing for a teenage audience. Teens often have no objective correlative for their own angst, after all, so they don’t expect their fictional representatives to have any. Life is burdensome and emotionally overwhelming on its own—why the need to layer on extra tragedy?
But by the same token, you might as well give your fictional teenage protagonist a serious tragedy in their past—because teen angst feels like it just as weighty as a real tragedy. Teens who have had a shouting match with their parents fifteen minutes ago feel as if they were just in a tragic car wreck and everyone they loved was killed—so why not give the fictional character one; they will relate implicitly.
Even Shakespeare knew this.
In the original critical essay in which he first described his concept of the “objective correlative,” after all, T.S. Eliot was essentially complaining about Hamlet as an implausible teen drama. It was the CW series of its time.
Eliot was confused about why Hamlet was so melancholic. He thought that the playwright ought to have given his protagonist some real precipitating event, which would explain the volcanic emotions within him that determine the play’s action. He couldn't accept that this character felt so burdened and alienated, Bella-like, despite having no real problems.
But even Hamlet at least had a dead father. So, there’s truly no excuse for Twilight. Bella could at the very least have been missing a parent. Oh wait, maybe her parents are divorced or something. Well, that’s better than nothing.
Maybe Vampire Diaries is just better written…
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