The Better Edwards

Have I men­tioned how much I hate Twi­light? I prob­a­bly haven’t, come to think of it, because when­ever I try, I sput­ter into an inar­tic­u­late rage. Go read this instead, pre­tend that I wrote it, then come back.

See? See what unspeak­able dam­age the Twi­light phe­nom­e­non is doing to kids (and more than a few adults, but let’s be hon­est: if an adult is sus­cep­ti­ble to the kind of mes­sage embed­ded in Twi­light, he or she is already an almost lost cause).

Emblem­atic of the cult sur­round­ing Twi­light, and there­fore con­ve­nient tar­get for my hate, are t-shirts that fea­ture Edward Cullen’s enor­mous fore­head (and, more recently, Jacob what­shis­name as well). I am thank­ful that, since I do not fre­quent malls or Hot Topic, I have never encoun­tered one of these shirts in real life.  They cross my periph­ery thanks to the all-seeing eye of my Google Reader feeds.

When New Moon was unleashed upon the swoon­ing masses around Thanks­giv­ing, a comic strip from HijiNKS Ensue turned the hys­te­ria around and cre­ated an out­let for vent­ing geeks. Replac­ing Edward Cullen with another Edward, no less wor­thy of idol­a­try in the eyes of many, was genius. Click that link and go buy your own. Team Edward James Olmos is worth every penny.

Once the notion of alter­na­tive Edwards is intro­duced, it’s easy to imag­ine an army of bet­ter Edwards, locked in a meta bat­tle with the pale and sparkly Edward Cul­lens of pop cul­ture. It’s also easy to make t-shirts. It is hard, how­ever, to top a man who starred in both Blade Run­ner and Bat­tlestar Galactica.

Evan­ge­lism is inef­fec­tive unless the audi­ence can rec­og­nize the idols of the faith. Those who swoon over Edward Cullen are unlikely to know Edward James Olmos, but they prob­a­bly know Johnny Depp, and thus Edward Scissorhands.

The inter­net is also full of Edward Nor­ton pho­tos, though unfor­tu­nately none were iconic enough for my t-shirt evan­ge­lism purposes.

I should at this point warn you of the dan­gers of blind web searches. I had in mind two other bet­ter Edwards, but I decided to use Google’s auto­com­plete search tech­nol­ogy to dis­cover other poten­tial idols. Early on, I learned about the Edward Forty­hands drink­ing game. Dis­turb­ing, but innocu­ous. An inde­ter­mi­nate num­ber of clicks later, how­ever, I found the unspeak­able hor­ror that is Edward Pen­is­hands. Some­times, the inter­net makes me proud.

Fans of the Edward Scis­sorhands aes­thetic will prob­a­bly appre­ci­ate the next bet­ter Edward: Edward Gorey. Gorey isn’t as widely rec­og­nized as Mr. Scis­sorhands, but his work is beloved by those who know it. In his self-portrait he wears a fur coat and ten­nis shoes.

It’s no great sur­prise to me that I have to explain these shirts to peo­ple. Most of the peo­ple I know have never heard of the Team Edward shirts, because they have the good sense to avoid things like that. It’s a lit­tle more dis­heart­en­ing, though not unex­pected, that nobody rec­og­nizes Edward Gorey.

There is no excuse, how­ever, for not know­ing who Edward R. Mur­row is. Even if your knowl­edge of World War II his­tory is spot­tier than mine, even if you weren’t alive dur­ing McCarthy­ism, you could have watched George Clooney spoon feed you Murrow’s legacy in the film Good Night, and Good Luck. The final bet­ter Edward t-shirt is of David Strathairn, as Mur­row, scowl­ing through art­fully pho­tographed cig­a­rette smoke. It brings to mind Murrow’s address to the Radio-Television News Direc­tors Asso­ci­a­tion:

This instru­ment can teach, it can illu­mi­nate; yes, and it can even inspire. But it can do so only to the extent that humans are deter­mined to use it to those ends. Oth­er­wise it is merely wires and lights in a box. There is a great and per­haps deci­sive bat­tle to be fought against igno­rance, intol­er­ance and indif­fer­ence. This weapon of tele­vi­sion could be useful.

I’ve met pre­cisely one per­son who knew who Edward R. Mur­row was and was also famil­iar with the Twi­light t-shirts. (Thanks, inci­den­tally, for pre­serv­ing my faith in human­ity.) The rest of you, use the box of wires and lights to which you are attached and edify yourselves.