The latest installment in the vampire movie series Twilight is a “deviant moral vacuum”, according to the Vatican.
In New Moon, British actor Robert Pattinson returns as the blood-sucking vampire Edward Cullence in love with the beautiful Bella Swan.
The movie has already broken box office records as the highest single-day earner after pulling in $62.2 million on its opening day.
Monsignor Franco Perazzelo, of the pontifical council of culture, said on Friday that the theme of vampires in Twilight “combines a mixture of excesses that, as ever, is aimed at young people and gives a heavy esoteric element”.
“This film is nothing more than a moral vacuum with a deviant message and as such, is something, that should be of concern,” he said.
Last month, the Vatican warned parents that Halloween was had an “undercurrent of occultism” and was “absolutely anti-Christian”.
The Vatican advised parents instead to “direct the meaning of the feast towards wholesomeness and beauty rather than terror, fear and death”.
via Twilight Saga: New Moon is ‘moral vacuum’, says Catholic leader.
November 25th, 2009 9:46 am
hmmm a moral deviant with a vacuum, maybe the Vatican is right after all.
Or is the “deviant moral vacuum” a new Dyson?
Sorry my moment of feeble humour for the day.
November 25th, 2009 10:05 am
ha!
November 25th, 2009 10:13 am
Moral vacuum! Great phrase.
It’s usually the moral vacuums that grab the public.
November 25th, 2009 3:44 pm
Well, I enjoyed the series; can’t say the movies (or the books!) are works of art, but just another set of pop cultural artifacts. I think the point and the opportunity is being missed here: just as with the Harry Potter books, the danger is not in the stories themselves — they’re really an exercise of the imagination founded on cultural history, after all — the danger is in the inability to distinguish between reality and fiction, a consciousness and clarity that I really think has to be taught rather than assumed. Why not use Twilight and its like as a chance to engage in conversations on reading, adaptation, attitudes towards life, death, love, and obsession? I found the books to have been great conversation starters into rarely ventured avenues.
November 25th, 2009 6:32 pm
B Tan, I would agree wholeheartedly:
Also, I believe that we can take this time to engage our culture.
My only deep concern would then be the rise of ‘don’t watch this’ mentality which drives people to the theaters.
November 25th, 2009 9:52 pm
Indeed! Wonder where we got this rebellious streak from … But anyway, I think with globalisation, the Internet, the fact that advertising is everywhere we look, and so on and so forth, it’s not just mandatory to learn and teach how to be discerning with print matter, we also have to do the same with moving images — how we’re being manipulated into harboring so many fruitless wants and thoughts by them.