A Gen Z-Era Look at “Twilight” Racial Bias in 2020
“Twilight” Cast | Photo courtesy of Cosmopolitan and Summit Entertainment
The opinions reflected in this OpEd are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of staff, faculty and students of The King's College.
In the age of TikTok and memes, the 2008 phenomenon, “Twilight,” has somehow made a cultural renaissance. This resurgence may have something to do with “Twilight” writer and conceptualizer, Stephanie Meyer’s recent release of a companion story to the saga—Midnight Sun. Though the series just celebrated its 12th anniversary, “Twilight” seems to be making a comeback in the Gen Z media cycle—perhaps similar even to the age of “Team Edward” and “Team Jacob” Hot Topic t-shirts circa 2008.
One aspect of Twilight that is often overlooked is its subtle emphasis on color, and consequently, race. In the first Twilight film, there are only two Black characters—one human and one vampire. These two characters are contrasted by the White Cullens as well as Bella Swan, her father and her classmates. Set in Forks, Washington, Bella lives in a majority White community. The two Black characters in the film are presumed as morally questionable, and at extreme diagnosis—criminals.
According to the most recent American Census Survey, 85.99 percent of the population in Forks is White, leaving only 4.97 percent of the community as Black. Twilight remains numerically accurate by having few Black characters in the first film, along with all of the films in the saga, but makes an implicit argument by portraying all of the Black characters as evil or criminals.
The one Black student, Tyler Crowley, who is unnamed throughout the entire film, is featured in very few scenes. To the audience, he seems to be simply the unnamed Black extra. He has very few lines and has a very minor role in the storyline, except, he almost kills Bella with his car.
Tyler first appears in the film while Bella sits with her new human friends at lunch. The boys around her are fighting over her when suddenly Tyler runs from out of the frame to kiss Bella on the cheek—without her consent—and then pulls the chair out from under one of the boys Bella had been talking to. He quickly runs away to avoid the repercussions.
To an average viewer looking for a quick laugh, this seems to be a pretty surface-level humorous scene. It could also quite possibly be missed because of its fleeting nature. But, when unpacked, we see that Tyler is implicitly committing the crime of sexual harassment. Though this can be seen as a small inconsequential joke, Tyler, the only Black student at Forks High School, is intentionally harassing Bella with an unwanted kiss.
Tyler’s other prominent scene is when he uncontrollably drives his van into the school parking lot, almost killing Bella by swinging his van toward her. Before he can do any damage, though, the angelic White Edward Cullen comes to Bella’s rescue, pushing the van away with his vampire strength. Tyler is deeply apologetic after Edward disappears and Bella’s white classmates come to her rescue. This scene leaves the audience questioning, why did the creative team on the Twilight film put the Black actor, Gregory Tyree Boyce, in this role?
As a culture, we have been attempting to crash generational racial stereotypes that classify Black people—Black men in particular—as being “threatening” and “intimidating” according to the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.
This sort of stereotyping leads to institutions being weary of Black people—something we have seen very prominently in 2020 related to policing. The Black Lives Matter movement exists solely to demolish the idea of implicit racial biases in the institutional police system—along with other prominent institutions that reinforce racism in the U.S.
Bella’s father, Charlie Swan, is the white Chief of Police for the Forks Police Department. After the incident where Bella is almost killed by Tyler in the accident, Charlie meets Tyler in the hospital as Bella is waiting for her concussion results. He promptly glances at Tyler, points at him, and angrily says, “You and I are gonna talk.”
Tyler looks over to Bella and says, “I’m sorry Bella, I tried to stop.” Bella accepts his apology.
Her father, though, strikes back at Tyler by saying, “It sure as hell is not okay.” He looks at Bella. “You could’ve been killed.”
Bella, the angsty teen that she is, responds with, “well I wasn’t so…”
Chief Swan looks back at Tyler and says, “You can kiss your license goodbye.”
This scene singlehandedly reinforces the relationship we see in the mainstream media about the police’s relationship with young Black men. One of the two Black characters in the Twilight film gets in trouble with the police for being seemingly rambunctious and problematic. Chief Swan seems frustrated with Tyler, which is justified. But, the punishment he gives him does not make sense because Tyler wasn’t drunk as far as the audience knows, he just slid out of control. The consequence Chief Swan wants to impose seems extreme, and Chief Swan is not willing to listen to Tyler.
With the resurgence of the Twilight saga, it is initially surprising that this is not regularly mentioned in today’s “cancel culture” among Twilight’s young audience. This character formation follows the cycle of stereotyping that young Black men are bad and deserve to be in jail. This kind of racial biases must reflect the viewpoint of the casting director, or Meyer herself.
These choices, though small, represent a larger implicit system of racism in the media. It assumes that all Black people are bad, and all White people are good. Though these choices are subtle and can be unrecognizable, they are implicit evidence that Meyer and the creative team have a bias favoring White people, and fearing Black people.
In fact, accusations have been made against Meyer for her choice in having a chronically “undiverse” cast. According to Zach Sharf for IndieWire who spoke with director Catharine Hardwicke, there were often conflicts on set with Meyer about having a more equally diverse cast. Meyer contended, saying that she “had not written it that way.”
It wasn’t easy for Hardwicke to get a pass about having Kenyan-American, Edi Gathegi, play the only other Black character in the film—a vampire described in the book as having “olive” skin.
Laurent, the Black vampire that chooses to prey on humans unlike the Cullens, who prey solely on animals, already has a bad reputation because of his choice to kill humans. He comes in a group with two other antagonists, red-head Victoria and sadistic James. Automatically, he is associated with evil. Although, his moral standing is more unclear in the first film.
Laurent first gusts in with his two companions on a stormy day during the undeniably comical baseball scene where the Cullens invite Bella to play baseball with them—because, of course, vampires are required to play baseball in a storm to blend in the sound of their powerful swings. Laurent is wearing two layers—both unbuttoned—showing off his muscular chest. This begs the question for the viewer, did Meyer only agree to this Black vampire on the conditions that his exoticism is overly sexualized? Most characters are fully clothed throughout the film except for the indigenous people—also sexualizing their racial exoticism compared to the white characters. This phenomenon can be traced back far into Western history but has a notable occurrence during the late 1800s in the case of French Orientalism. People in the West would picture people in the East as exotic and sexual, though they had never seen them before. This vision parallels that of Twilight towards both indigenous and Black people.
Jacob’s werewolf clan is often seen without shirts. In fact, a viewer could probably count on their fingers the number of times when Jacob and friends’ arms or chest is not being shown—furthering this idea of the sexualization of the “other” seen in many pieces of art. Because Jacob and his werewolf clan are supposed to be members of the Quileute tribe, they are sexualized because they are seen as “savages,” juxtaposing the hyper-civilized White Cullens.
Laurent is courteous towards the Cullens despite the fact that James and Victoria threatened to kill Bella. Before the Cullens and Laurent meet, Laurent’s clan had killed two humans that the audience knows of. Their team had been notorious for killing townspeople in the surrounding areas—what the humans wrote off as animal attacks.
After James threatens Bella saying “I think I found a snack,” the Cullens plan an elaborate plan to keep her safe. Though, Laurent comes to the Cullen’s house to talk with Carlisle, the father and head of the Cullen clan. His character is redeemed when Carlisle notifies Edward that Laurent came to warn them about James’s “unparalleled senses.” He said, “I’m tired of his games.” He promptly leaves after warning the family, presumably to go find a new place to hunt.
Though Laurent is partially good, he is still a flesh-eating vampire, contrasting from the white, angelic nature of the Cullens, who only prey on animals. He is definitely not explicitly a “good” or “bad” character, he solely acts as a messenger for both the “good” and the “bad.” Morally, Laurent is questionable.
According to Melissa Burkley for Psychology Today, the Twilight creative team put makeup on Gathegi to make his skin lighter for the role of Laurent. This sort of colorism, discriminating against someone based on the shade of their skin, seems unacceptable for Hollywood. Looking at a picture of Gathegi as himself next to him as Laurent, there are astronomical differences in the shade of his skin tone. This lightning, despite the fact that he was playing a vampire, seems inappropriate because of Twilight’s already bleak representation of Black people.
This issue is much bigger than Twilight. Today, many Black Americans are classified by themselves and others as either “light-skinned” or “dark-skinned.” Because of America’s implicit bias toward lighter skin tones, “light-skinned” Black Americans are more likely to be seen as attractive—allowing more visibility and representation for this one group. Hollywood is more likely to cast a “light-skinned” Black actor in a role as opposed to a “dark-skinned” Black actor because of this implicit skin tone bias. “Light-skinned” people are viewed as more “beautiful” in our world dominated by White privilege. Discrimination based on a person’s skin tone is a huge driver in the way that Meyer dealt with Gathegi’s role in Twilight.
Gathegi is originally from Nairobi, Kenya. For the Twilight films, they put makeup on him to lighten his skin tone to fit the mold set by the other white vampires. Making Gathegi wear makeup to lighten his skin tone stripped him of his ethnic background to meet a very inherently Western standard of beauty—light.
This phenomenon is not reserved or restricted to Hollywood. Women and men in other countries often attempt to use skin bleaching techniques to lighten their skin, allowing them to meet the Western standard. These products, which are incredibly dangerous for the skin, reinforce the idea that a whiter tone is more beautiful and more desirable.
Meyer obviously saw the world through a dominantly white lens—because that’s exactly the way she imagined the world in Twilight. Her clear racial biases associate white with good, black with bad. Having such an influence on young people, it is concerning that this movie is such a cultural artifact for both Gen X and Gen Z communities.
The audience doesn’t have to look too closely to see another questionable race-related plot choice on the part of Meyer. In a completely non-subtle way, Jasper Cullen was a Confederate Soldier when he was killed and then turned into a vampire. Jaspar’s character looks back on the Civil War fondly with respect and reminiscence, an explicitly racist plotline. This choice seems like something so easily avoided, but Meyer still persisted with her romanticism of white dominance. Jaspar, in fact, seems proud of his roots fighting for the South, explicitly making the argument that slavery is okay.
Twilight implicitly reinforces racial bias by creating a majority-white world, and by making the only two Black characters morally questionable and problematic. Tyler harasses Bella and almost kills her with his van. Laurent is a dark, human-eating vampire, juxtaposed by the whiteness and purity of the Cullen family.
This broader theme of color plays a prominent role in Twilight. When vampires are traditionally described as “the undead,” that usually means that their blood is white because they are dead—without blood running through their veins and a heartbeat. In Twilight, this whiteness is more eroticized and romanticized. Bella oftentimes refers to Edward’s skin as “beautiful” and “pure,” despite the fact that he has murdered countless people and is inherently flawed. All of the Cullens are viewed by Bella and the other humans in Forks as beautiful, angelic creatures—despite the fact that Edward oftentimes describes himself as a “monster.”
The whiteness of the characters in the film plays an integral role in the plotline. Because of the color symbolism, the audience is led to believe that pale white people, like the Cullens, are good. People who are Black and dark, who are underrepresented in the film, are assumed to be bad, in contrast to the Cullens.
This phenomenon of colorism can be seen in both Meyer’s writings and the way the film was executed. There is obvious implicit racial bias coming from Meyer, who dreamed up the story based on her own sex fantasy. That statement in itself shows that she didn’t feel like she needed characters of color because, as mentioned before, she “had not written it that way.” She has a preference, at least implicitly, toward white characters—specifically a white romance.
The Black characters in her film are used solely as negative plot drivers, allowing the white characters to experience their extravagant love story in its entirety.