AnDread, Joshua T. Anderson, and Matthew Connolly discuss werewolves as metaphors for disability, mental illness, addiction, female puberty, and the tragic outsider! Discussion of The Wolf Man (1941), Ginger Snaps (2000), and An American Werewolf in London (1981)!
Intro
Werewolf Discussion 32:00
- The wolf as an endangered/persecuted animal – connects to werewolves as misunderstood characters
- Barry Lopez’s Of Wolves and Men – great book about wolves in culture, science, relation to humans
- Werewolf/disability connections
- The werewolf/shapeshifter archetype from Stephen King’s Danse Macabre – a metaphor for mental illness and addiction – linked to Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
- Werewolf as collision of binaries – good/evil, tame/wild, human/animal
- Freud’s “The Wolf Man” – a “taming” of the mind
- Werewolf story as a story of queer desire that must be controlled/restrained – queer subtext of Jekyll and Hyde; restraints as trope of werewolf movies/chains as dominant image
- Excess and the “return of the repressed” – werewolf transformation is the eruption of repressed identity or desire
- Learning to see yourself as abject – connects to all forms of marginalized identities, passing narratives (race, sexuality)
- James Baldwin – Americans have terror of inner/private self becoming public – werewolf is secret self externalized
- Werewolf as liberatory – cannot help but transform, boundaries crossed, social conventions defied, temporary power
- Tied to setting – site of original “infection” usually rural, primal place, place of the Other
- Clinical lycanthropy – delusional disorder in which someone believes that they have a wolf’s body or their body is turning into a wolf’s body
- Doctor, priest, or officer of the law – can’t explain/control werewolf
- Werewolf lore
- Bite/infection element – invented by The Wolf Man, not part of actual werewolf lore (through sorcery, magic, or curse)
- Full moon/lunacy
- Killed by silver
- Connection to indigenous cultures
- Transformation scene as set-piece – painful experience – connection to acquired disability
- Increased aggression, signs of the wolf while human
- Werewolf is protagonist
Individual film discussions 1:30:20
- AnDread: The Wolf Man (1941)
- Josh: Ginger Snaps (2000)
- Matt: An American Werewolf in London (1981)
Guest plugs
You can find Matt and Josh on Facebook and Josh on Twitter @catahoulajosh
Check out the work of Stephen Graham Jones, a horror writer who has covered slashers, werewolves, and much more in his fiction. Josh is a big fan of his stuff and is the secretary of the Stephen Graham Jones Society.
Josh’s recent publications:
Anderson, Joshua T. “Playing Dead.” Bourbon Penn, no. 14, Sep. 2017.
—. “Hard Water.” North American Review, vol. 305, no. 2-3, summer/fall 2020.
—. “Mongrel Transmotion: The Werewolf and the Were/Wear/Where-West in Stephen Graham Jones’s Mongrels.” Weird Westerns: Race, Gender, Genre, edited by Kerry Fine, et al., University of Nebraska Press, 2020.
Plugs and Wrap-Up 2:18:04
- WEBSITE: freaksandpsychospodcast.com. Please subscribe, rate, and review
- VOICEMAIL: 614-721-1011
- TWITTER: @FreaksPsychos and @AnDreadtheBlind
- LETTERBOXD: Andread. Disability in Horror list
- DARK MARK, creator of the show’s intro and outro music
- Twitter: @mark underscore longfield
- Letterboxd: Darkmark
- NEXT EPISODE: TBD
- If you find yourself wishing that you were normal, just remember: The Freaks Shall Inherit the Earth.
There will be a transcript for this show in the future. Please contact freaksandpsychospodcast@gmail.com for any accessibility concerns.
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