The Werewolf and its Inherently Queer Experience (CAPSTONE)
The idea of the werewolf is
inherently queer, it’s inherently related to many different LGBTQ+ identities. The
normal, socially acceptable human form of the werewolf? The closeted, everyday
persona of a queer individual. The monstrous desires, portrayed as nothing but
wrong and harmful? A view of view of queer love that has only recently begun to
stop being the norm and only in certain parts of the world at that. There are
still plenty of places where being outed as gay will get you killed as quickly
as a werewolf found standing above a dead body. And finally, the hiding of who, of what
someone truly is, often out of fear of hatred or harm coming to them if they
were revealed? So many queer people have periods of their lives where they have
to hide their true selves for the exact same reasons. Media and media analysis
regarding werewolves shows this and I want to focus and expand on the three
previously mentioned aspects of queerness and lycanthropy that the two states of
being share.
The human form of the werewolf is fascinating
to me because regardless of the form someone infected by lycanthropy takes,
whether that be full human, full wolf, or somewhere in between, the character is
still a werewolf. Characters in werewolf media won’t think someone is a
werewolf while in their humanoid form, but the character is still
unquestionably a werewolf, like Larry Talbot and his father’s argument about
him being a werewolf in The Wolfman. Larry’s father, Sir John, doesn’t believe
anything about werewolves until he finds his dead werewolf son lying on the
ground at his feet, killed by his own hand. While Larry Talbot himself is not
presented or hinted at as queer in the movie, the insistence from Larry’s
father that his son is completely fine and normal feels reminiscent of
homophobic parents insisting their children are straight, that they’re just
like everyone else. Additionally, the accidental death of Larry by his father’s
hand due to his father’s disbelief at his son’s identity seems disturbingly familiar
to the violence queer people can experience at the hands of people who hate them,
which, like in the case of Larry Talbot, can even end up being their family. So
much of the werewolf’s human form and the experiences werewolves have in their
human form mirrors the experiences of queer people attempting to come out and
either being shut down, with the other person insisting that they couldn’t possibly
be abnormal, or the queer person is eventually met with violence for trying to
be honest about who they are. This can also be seen in the 1935 film Werewolf
in London, a movie where the gay metaphors surrounding the main werewolf
are heavily touched upon in Robert Spadoni’s essay Strange Botany in
Werewolf of London. Spadoni talks about how the werewolf legend in this
movie is used to represent homosexuality and explore a gay man’s experience in
a society that wants him to repress who he is. That seems very similar to how
Larry Talbot’s father treated him The Wolfman, providing another example
of the gay metaphors surrounding lycanthropy and further building on the examples
from The Wolfman. Repression, hiding one’s self, and putting up a front
to survive in the world around you are very common werewolf experiences, just
like they are common queer experiences, proving the connection between the two
types of outcasts.
In chapter 7 of Queering the Non/Human, Phillip A. Bernhardt-House mentions that “ the wolf is almost universally a sexual creature…” when setting up his discussion about werewolves and the queer identity. This reflects the stereotypes of queer love very closely as, when it comes to discussions of sexualities beyond heterosexuality, the topic of queer sex itself seems to be one that people who are against the LGBTQ+ community focus on a lot. When it’s the love between a man and a woman, sex isn’t the first thing a homophobe thinks of. Yet when that love is between any other kind of pairing, the “unnaturalness” of the physical act of sex seems to be a huge concern, an example they can use of why only a man and woman should be together. Additionally, a very harmful stereotype of gay people, whether they be men, women, or something else, is that they themselves are inherently sexually aggressive. This trait can also be seen in many werewolf characters in modern media, such as David Kessler from An American Werewolf in London. After David is transformed into a werewolf, he can’t keep his hands off his girlfriend. While the connection between queerness and sexual aggressiveness is not a progressive one, it is still one that unfortunately exists due to decades of stereotyping and fear. So the sexual nature of werewolves is yet another trait that inherently connects them to the queer community.
In The Werewolf Pride Movement: A Step Back from Queer Medieval Tradition, Caitlin B. Giacopasi argues that modern depictions of werewolves are becoming less and less queer. When looking at werewolf depictions like Jacob from the Twilight series, it is easy to see where she’s coming from. Jacob is painfully heteronormative in the Twilight series, his showing of being a big, strong man while trying to win Bella’s affections. But I would argue werewolf depictions like Jacob from Twilight are so removed from the initial concepts of lycanthropy, from the focus on hybridism and feeling like a dangerous outsider that it’s no wonder his story contains so few, if any queer metaphors.
I believe werewolf stories, when they
focus on the werewolves themselves, have many inherent queer metaphors about
them, as shown in most of the examples before. While there are examples of werewolf
stories containing very little or no queer subtext, those stories do not
usually focus on the werewolf and the nature of being one(again, Jacob from
Twilight). The stories that do focus on the werewolf however, the ones that
focus on the hiding and fear and repression, inherently relate to the queer experience.
Mentioned essays/books:
Chapter 7 of Queering the Non/Human: The Werewolf as Queer, the Queer as Werewolves, and Queer Werewolves by Phillip A. Bernhardt-House. https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=HRE3DAAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PA159&dq=werewolves&ots=b1wQz02-sN&sig=3ShzVZLwZDbQEnHFT7kaQMMZ7nE
The Werewolf Pride Movement: A Step Back from Queer
Medieval Tradition by Caitlin B. Giacopasi.
Strange Botany in Werewolf of London by Robert Spadoni.
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