Twilight

Yes, I went to see the teen paranormal romance blockbuster hit Twilight. Let's set the scene: The Peckham Plex cinema for the 6.30 showing. There was me, my friend (like me, a strapping adult male), and the rest of the audience either groups of teenage girls, or younger girls and their mothers. I was feeling a trifle uncomfortable in these pedo-sensitive times. I felt that the mothers' were looking askance at us like we were Latvian sex traffickers about to ask: 'Hey, how much you want for the little girls?'

I did largely enjoy the movie, it has to be said, even though if it plays like a long, third-rate Buffy episode where Joss Whedon decided not to write any jokes. But even third-rate Buffy is good as vampires are always sexy, and longtime Expat File readers will know my heart melts at any star crossed lovers story.

Still things a few things irritated. 1) It takes Bella about 45 minutes into the movie to figure out that pasty-face, Elvis pompadoured, can't go out in the sun, skin cold as death, superhumanly strong Edward is a vampire, when even the dullest person would know off the bat. More importantly, all of us in the theatre know it going in. C'mon Catherine Hardwicke, cut to the chase! 2) Bella is the new kid in this piss-ant town in Washington State, and the high school is so multi-cultural it makes a Benetton ad look like a Klan meeting. I've been to many piss-ant towns in the US and they are invariably full of toothless, inbred rednecks. And all of the kids must have been sired by supermodels and champion athletes because even the geeks are beautiful and buff. Most unbelievable of all: not a zit to be seen. 3) Edward the vampire, though looking 17 (well he actually looks about 25), is 100 years old. The deal is, he and his vampire siblings (they are good veggie vamps, only subsisting on animal blood) keep moving about going to new schools every four years. The question is, why? What kind of fresh hell would it be to have to repeat high school over and over - worse than being the undead, that's for sure. He was turned into a vampire in 1918, so I reckon this is his 22nd go-round of doing pre-calculus and elementary biology. Why not go to university and study interesting things? By my maths I reckon he could be on his 12th PhD. Maybe put that big vampire brain to use researching Alzheimer's or finding something new to say about Emily Dickinson.

There has been a lot of chat around the books and the film that author and yummy Mormon mummy Stephenie Meyer has basically made stories that are right wing propaganda and adverts for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. That is a view about as spot-on as when born-again idiots say Harry Potter promotes Satanism. I've not read the books but the film is just a PG version of a vampire story with sex verboten and the violence off-camera. I am troubled by the central theme that sex equals death, but anyone who has, say, been brought up Catholic or has lived in a post-AIDS world has probably had similar stuff shoved down their throat. So to speak. Anyway, kids will work it out for themselves. Look how well I turned out.

Leaving the theatre, my friend's bus came by immediately and he hopped right on. I decided to walk, as it is only about 15-20 minutes back. Peckham is the only place in London that I have felt threatened in daytime. Now I was left to negotiate the gauntlet of its streets in the dark, my senses all a-jangle after seeing a vampire movie. After a moment, though, I was cheered by imagining that if a vampire swooped down to get me, he would probably be set upon by one of the roving gangs of knife and gun-wielding hoodies who would shout as they hacked him to pieces: 'Peckham Boyz, innit! South side!'