Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight series is a vampire-teen romance that has become phenomenally popular among young adult readers. The movies based on these novels furthered the fan frenzy. Yet, its improbable success is matched by its share of criticism. Critics denounce Meyer’s literary skills and accuse her of disseminating racism, sexism, and Mormon-flavored moralism. As opposed to her contemporaries, she seems to have got a slightly different agenda for her readers. This paper delves into the embedded texts in Twilight and tries to re-contextualize them. It finds these texts disseminating appropriated facts and ideals through popular fiction to a vulnerable audience. These masked inceptions of gender, racial, backward, and moralist politics cast a doubt on the authorial intentions of Stephenie Meyer. Her sin-free saga of convoluted representationsdoes not find her guilt-free, as her fans would wish.

Vampires have come a long way since the blood-sucking days of Count Dracula. They have moved out of Transylvania. The soulless creatures can be fixed with a soul and be made good like Angel in Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997). And the sixteen-year-old vampire slayer, Buffy Summers falls for this mysterious stranger who later turns evil. Louis’ conscience in Interview with the Vampire—the book by Rice (1976) which was made into a movie starring Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise—makes him survive on rat blood. He does not fear the cross and cannot be killed by running a blade through his heart. In Trueblood (2008), vampires are the hunters as well as the hunted. With Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight, they became resistant to sunlight and started falling for the young girls they were supposed to dine on. From Bram Stoker to Meyer, what has not changed is the people’s fascination for these undead creatures of the night.

Vampire tales on print and TV have a huge fan following; they seem to exert their charm not just on their ill-fated preys. These tales have undergone much tweaking and revival since Buffy. Yet, the tales of these blood-hungry creatures, roaming sleepless on moony nights, gorging on young women were too frightening to fit a family audience. The books catered to a grownup demographic and the TV shows ran late night. Then suddenly vampires ceased to be the scary blood-sucking creatures, but pale gorgeous young women and men that every teen dreamed of.

Meyer, with her Twilight (2005), found a new demographic of vampire fans: the teens and readers of candyfloss romances. Her books became phenomenal successes and receptacles of much criticism. How and why that happened are not questions with easy answers. A close reading of Twilight, a vampire teen-romance at the superficial level, reveals embedded texts of racism, religion, and sexist politics. Their masked presence and how they work within and outside the text form the crux of this paper.

American Literature Journal, Stephenie Meyers Twilight, Contemporary Young Adult Fiction, Bella-Edward Romance, Native American Tribes, Moral Messages, Medical Ethics, Vampire Stories, Narnia, Harry Potter Phenomenon, Native American Actors.