First, the book of New Moon is terrible: nearly 600 pages of pedestrian prose, glacially paced, padded to excruciating lengths not with fluff, but with damp, insipid, indigestible literary sawdust. (Don’t any of the big publishers employ decent editors? I am not asking for Victor Hugo every time I pick up a work of popular fiction, but could we at least have Stephen King?) Worst of all, the most compelling character, Edward Cullen was absent throughout much of the book. The only thing that got me to pick the book back up after flinging it down several times in dismay was the hope that finally the romance of Bella Swan and her vampire lover Edward Cullen would resume.

Second, Catherine Hardwicke, the superb director of the first Twilight movie, was replaced by Chris Weitz, and the previews of the movie were not promising. Frankly they are as flat and dull as the novel.

But I have to hand it to Weitz and scriptwriter Melissa Rosenberg: they managed to extract a compelling two hour movie from the sprawling mess of the novel. New Moon is not as good as Twilight, but it is a worthy successor and a bridge to the final two novels/films, which promise much more. The momentum has not been lost.

Part of what makes New Moon work is simply the lingering magic of the first film. We were all glad to see the familiar characters and settings again.

Beyond that, Weitz manages to condense vast boring tracts of the novel into tightly paced, compelling scenes, many of them wordless. The literary sawdust has been replaced with visual poetry—and light comedy.

Taylor Lautner

But the best thing about New Moon is the performance of Taylor Lautner as Jacob Black. Although in the book, Jacob seems merely a distraction and digression from the main plot, Taylor Lautner’s performance made this movie his own. Amazingly, when he was on the screen, we did not miss Edward Cullen. Lautner is a fine, sensitive actor, with a magnificent physique, imposing stage presence, and genuine animal magnetism (which comes in handy for playing a werewolf).

(Guys: I saw this movie with an audience that was 90 percent white, 80 percent under 30, and 80 percent female, and I can tell you if you don’t already know: women go for muscles. They might say something different, but their gasps, sighs, and flutters told a whole different story.)

My two main criticisms of this movie are that the computer animated werewolves look fake, and the Cullens mostly look terrible. In the first film, they are lighted and made up to seem pale but beautiful and strong, like marble statues. In New Moon, they look like corpses who have just awakened from a decades-long nap, with the bad hair one would expect.

Now, as a white racialist, what is my take on this movie? In my review of Twilight, I emphasized that I liked three aspects of that movie.

First, even though the movie added in a number of non-white bit characters, it largely follows the book in underscoring the beauty of white people. New Moon undermines this, by making the Cullens look unappealing and by placing the spotlight on Jacob Black and his fellow young American Indians, who are portrayed by exceptionally handsome, muscular, and fit actors. By the way, judging from the biographies of the actors as well as their looks, all of them seem to have some white ancestry, despite their coppery complexions, which gives them longer, handsomer faces rather than typically round, ugly Amerindian faces.

Although there is a deep friendship—and the seeds of romance—between Jacob and Bella, in the end she returns to Edward. However, the movie can only promote miscegenation through its portrayal of an unusually handsome and gallant non-white male. White girls considering such dalliances in the real world need to realize that race-mixing destroys all races that take part in it. They also need to look at statistics on non-white tendencies towards infecting white women with STDs; raping them; and abandoning, abusing, and murdering them and their children.

Second, I liked how Twilight portrayed Bella Swan and Edward Cullen as exceptionally mature, cultured, and well-mannered young people—without implying that these qualities in any way detract from them being fun-loving and sexy. New Moon does nothing to undermine this, but it does nothing to add to it either.

Third, Twilight emphasizes traditional sex roles. Edward Cullen and Jacob Black are not today’s silly, weak, effeminate, non-threatening males. They are strong, masculine, gallant, heroic, and a little dangerous. Bella Swan is no ass-kicking, Buffy the Vampire Slayer. She is physically weaker than Edward and Jacob and attracted to their strength—including the dangers that come with it—and grateful for their protection. (Bella requires a lot of rescuing.) New Moon reinforces this aspect of the story, with Jacob and his wolf pack taking on the role of rescuers.

Yet Bella is in full possession of her real strength as a woman, which makes both men willing to sacrifice themselves to protect her. They do not want to live without her, but they both break off their relationships with her, because they fear that their supernatural strength threatens her well-being. Both come to learn, however, that Bella is safer with them than without them.

When Edward thinks that Bella is dead and seeks to end his life, Bella takes on the role of the rescuer, appearing in the nick of time to save his life, not through strength, but simply because she is the one who makes his life complete.

Echoing my review of Twilight: in spite of their supernatural powers, Edward Cullen and Jacob Black are what in decades past were known simply as red-blooded males. Because of the sickness of our society, such men today can appear on the screen only in the guise of monsters. But because of the strength of nature, women find the monsters irresistible nonetheless.

White people should see New Moon, but the parents of young girls need to warn them about the consequences of miscegenation in the real world.

I am glad I did, because Twilight is an excellent movie: beautifully filmed, artfully-directed, well-acted, with a gorgeous cast and scenery, and very good music. But most importantly, although it is decked out in the usual Semiticially correct Hollywood cliches, the overall message and impression of Twilight is quite subversive of Hollywood’s agenda. This is particularly interesting since it is directed at young adults, who are the main targets of Hollywood’s pro-feminist and anti-white propaganda.

Twilight begins with Bella Swan (played by Kristen Stewart) leaving her mother in sunny Phoenix to finish out her Junior year in High School with her father in Forks, Washington. Located on the Olympic Peninsula, Forks is blanketed almost year-round by clouds, fog, and rain.

Bella is a lovely brown-eyed brunette with an exceptionally fair complexion, which gives her a somewhat “Goth” look, although for all I know this analogy is hopelessly dated. Even her name connotes white beauty, for bella is Italian for beautiful, and swans are archetypically white and graceful.

Despite her “Goth” look, Bella is not merely a moody and maladjusted teen with morbid tastes. She is a remarkably mature, intelligent, bookish, and sensitive girl who studied ballet and knows something about classical music.

For a small town in Washington State, Forks has an implausible number of non-whites. The only non-whites who really fit in this setting are the local Indians, who are on quite friendly terms with Bella and her father, the local police chief. (Out West in the real world, Indians are overrepresented among criminals and tend not to have warm relations with policemen.)

The students Bella meets are a friendly enough bunch, but they seem immature and one-dimensional compared to her. Bella’s attention, however, is immediately drawn to Edward Cullen (played by Robert Pattinson). Tall and handsome, Edward like Bella is a brown-eyed brunette with a fair complexion. It looks like makeup, and I am sure the effect is achieved by makeup and lighting, but in close-ups one can see blue veins beneath his skin. Edward’s parents Carlisle and Esme (played by Peter Facinelli and Elizabeth Reaser) share Edward’s pallor. Strangely, it is also shared by Edward’s four foster siblings: Emmet and Rosalie (played by Kellan Lutz and Nikki Reed) and Alice and Jasper (played by Ashley Greene and Jackson Rathbone), who to add to the weirdness, also seem to be romantic couples.

Edward is obviously as attracted to Bella as she is to him. But he also resists this attraction and flees Bella, which only increases her fascination. She begins to notice strange things about Edward. His eyes change color; his skin is ice cold; he is astonishingly fast and strong; and he and his entire family disappear on the rare days when the sun shines in Forks. . . . You see where this is leading.

The Cullens are vampires. But there is a twist. They do not want to be monsters. Although they have a strong craving for human blood, they resist it and feed on animals instead. As they put it, they are the vampire equivalent of vegetarians. But resisting the hunger is hard, so they are forced to remain aloof from normal people. Edward, however, is in love with Bella. Hence an exquisite conflict: how can he get close enough to love her without succumbing to the temptation to eat her?

I will say no more about the plot of Twilight. Suffice it to say that the romance of Edward and Bella is fascinating: emotionally and morally complex, beautifully acted and directed, and just plain hot. But, remarkably, all of this is portrayed without resorting to depictions of nudity and sex.

Aside from the absurdly multi-racial cast of bit-players, the heart of Twilight is deeply politically incorrect in three ways.

First, the heroes of Twilight are two very unusual teenagers. Edward and Bella are intelligent, thoughtful, well-mannered, serious-minded, and cultured. This is not surprising in the case of Edward, who has lived for more than a century. But Bella really is a teenager. Twilight does not mock manners and refined tastes as stuffy, snobbish, and old-fashioned. It displays them in their full beauty and shows that they are consistent with being young, fun-loving, and sexy. This is remarkable message for a movie aimed at a young audience.

The second politically incorrect feature of Twilight is the movie’s aesthetic of whiteness. One does not need slogans like “White is Beautiful,” because it is so obvious. But while the cultural establishment exploits the white racial aesthetic, it also undermines it, particularly by promoting the ideas that tanning is beautiful and healthy-looking while having a fair complexion is ugly and unhealthy looking. (Of course a corpse-like pallor does look unhealthy, but a fair complexion that is rosy and pink with health obviously does not. Tanning, as Socrates pointed out, does not make people healthy; it merely adds color to the sick and the healthy alike, allowing one to mask one’s sickliness.) Promoting tanning is the cosmetic equivalent of miscegenation: it replaces distinctly white characteristics with non-white ones. (One can, of course, lose one’s tan, but not the skin damage that comes with it. Miscegenation, however, is forever.)

Bella and the Cullens are, of course, a whiter shade of pale. Too white to really be healthy. But nonetheless, they force you to confront just how beautiful palefaces can be. They look like they have stepped out of old paintings from the days when people valued fair complexions and tried to preserve them. Of course all the actors have fine features, which is the bedrock of beauty no matter what the skin tone. But their fair skin, especially combined with dark hair and eyes and red lips, makes their faces astonishingly expressive in the most subtle ways. (Twilight promotes a white aesthetic, but not a blonde-haired, blue-eyed one, since these contrast less strikingly with fair skin.) Facial expressiveness is a matter of contrasts, and the fairer the complexion, the wider the range of contrasts that can be observed, from the most subtle blush to the most marked expressions of fear and anger. (This, by the way, is why Blacks rely so heavily on their eyes and teeth to express their emotions, since these contrast most sharply with their complexions.)

The third way in which Twilight is politically incorrect is that the whole thrust of the movie is deeply anti-feminist. In one scene, Bella tells one of her racially indeterminate schoolmates that she should ask a guy to the prom rather than wait for him to ask her, because she is “a strong, independent woman.” This strong, independent woman takes Bella’s advice and gets the date she wants: a flamboyantly effeminate Chinese wimp. Together, they are the feminist establishment’s ideal androgynous couple, and nobody in his or her right mind would want to emulate them.

Bella, however, is not interested in the nice, non-threatening boys in her high school. She only has eyes for Edward, because she senses that he has powerful emotions that he is struggling to keep in check. She is attracted to him because he is dangerous. But even when she unravels Edward’s secret, she is not dissuaded from pursuing him, but instead is even more fascinated.

There is a remarkable exchange between Bella and Edward once they openly acknowledge that he is a vampire. He says that she should flee from him. He is the most dangerous predator in nature. Everything about him is designed to attract her: his looks, his voice, his smell. But if she tried to run away from him, he could outrun her. If she tried to fight him off, he could overpower her. It is only the strength of his will and chivalrous instincts, and his desire for a deeper and longer-lasting form of union, that protects her.

Bella is no Buffy the Vampire Slayer, no Xena: Warrior Princess. Edward makes her feel anything but strong and independent. That is what makes him so irresistible. But he does make her feel deeply feminine, and deeply powerful in a different way. For Edward, despite all of his strength, is incomplete, and as a woman Bella possesses something that has made this fierce and formidable killer helplessly in love with her. Yet loving her does not emasculate him, and this is good, because the same strength and capacity for violence that could rape and kill her allows Edward to go on to save Bella from being raped and killed by others.

Edward’s potential for violence and the chivalry that holds it in check  may be heightened by his vampire nature, but there is nothing supernatural about them. Edward Cullen is what in decades past was known as a red-blooded American male. Bella too is a classic figure from fiction: a damsel whose awareness of her physical weakness and vulnerability only heightens her sense of a woman’s true strength.

Of course for decades now the popular culture has worked to emasculate men and masculinize women: to turn men into the non-threatening males Bella spurns and to convince women that strength lies in casting aside all distinctly female roles and competing with men in traditionally male pursuits (or drive their men crazy in trying).

It is a testimony to the power of this propaganda that true manliness can now appear only in the guise of a monster. It is a testament to the even greater power of nature that women find the monster irresistible nonetheless.