If you’d asked someone before this century to list words associated with ‘werewolves’ you may have heard words like ‘brutal’, ‘vicious’, and ‘evil’. These days you might however find a list of totally different words. Ask a impressionable young teenage girl who has read the Twilight series or other such knives in the back of prose, and the list might in fact read as ‘sensitive’, ‘emo’, and ‘romantic’. Now you wonder why this is concerning, surely the dimming down of traditionally violent fictional concepts is a good thing for society? No. No it is not. Allow me to explain why.
I am writing with the view to evaluating werewolves as entirely fictional concepts. Yes, people have in the past held sincere beliefs of lycanthropic men terrorizing the good people of their societies, France’s Gilles Garnier for instance was accused of being a werewolf. But aside from historical anomalies, werewolves are usually confined to stories which are intended to be told to children. Werewolves carry with them an important tradition in children’s stories of being the violent antagonists, which is a purpose which seems to be more and more suppressed these days. In the world of political correctness and red tape, nobody seems ready to defend to ancient tradition we have of letting kids know the ugly truth. It is apparently better to tell them a comforting lie about the world. I’ll demonstrate my point with the example of Cinderella.
Now many people base what they know about Cinderella on the Disney film. I hate Disney. I cannot stand it whatsoever because they have destroyed children’s stories, like this one. The people who base their knowledge around the film must have got the impression about the world that mice run around making dresses for people, that everyone sings what they are doing as they do it, and more concerning is that they don’t know the part of the story where the ugly sisters cut away parts of their feet in order to try and wear the slipper that doesn’t fit them. Yes that’s disgusting, but there is a purpose to the inclusion of this in the original myth as it outlines the folly of trying to fit any kind of ideal that you are not. There is not even a way that anyone can validly argue that this is not the case. Think about it; we live in a world where plastic surgery exists. People literally cut pieces of themselves away, reshape themselves, and have plastic fixed to their body. Anybody who wants to tell me therefore that a story that tells children that it is better to be happy with their appearance than to cut bits of their body away to fit an ideal is anything but a positive thing may as well not bother because they are wasting their time.
So violence and gore does have a place in children’s tales. What is the alternative, after all? Tell children that the world is a bouncy castle where unicorns fart out gold and the lemonade is free? No. By the same token I would say that violent werewolves are important part of our folklore.
I would like to further this argument with the claim that modern interpretations of werewolves as soft are dangerous. This will seem absurd until I outline exactly why I think this, however by the time I have concluded my point I cannot see any feasible way that people can debate this reasonably with me. I am right.
In this world where the term werewolf, tragically, can refer to the like of ‘Jacob Black’ and other such characters, you wonder how their example can be anything but positive. However by having something like a werewolf as a character that is soft you are creating a monster that the juvenile readership can relate to. The entirety of Twilight and all its characters are essentially an emo’s wet dream. They are dark, weak and reclusive individuals with teenage-esque hormonal super sensitivity to emotion. A far cry indeed from the Lon Chaney Jr ‘The Wolf Man’ type of werewolf. The kind of monstrous werewolves of these old films and literature were not relatable to. So the danger of the soft werewolf is that the readers will relate to this and put into practice some of the more dangerous aspects of Lycanthropy. In the typical Twilight/teenage manner, these children see the acts of the werewolf when the moon is full and how their lack of control and lust for evil is justified, and use their own perceived lycanthropy as the reason for their own faults. This sidestepping of responsibility is directly caused by their capacity to relate to the emo wolf characters of such works of modern werewolf fiction.
This sounds like a contrived theory, and from simply reading it on paper I wouldn’t be convinced by it either. However there is proof of the danger of these teens seeing themselves as wolves for all the world to see. You may or may not have heard of ‘teen wolves’. If not, then look them up. Yes, they are just as ridiculous as you imagined. For those who can’t be bothered – they are a subculture prominent in the states in which emo/scene tendencies are taken to the next level and these teens believe that they are part wolf. Therefore presumably also part whiney, emo, ignorant freakfuck too. For whatever reason (poor parenting, poor parenting or poor parenting, take your pick) these children are allowed to walk the streets wearing dog chains, spiked wolf teeth and animalistic contact lenses.
Ok, so you say its simply a harmless teenage phase that these teens go through? A modern adaptation of the ‘goth kid’ every yeargroup in the school has known for years now. A phase it may be, harmless however it most certainly is not. Anyone familiar with ‘Wolfie Blackheart’ will know this. Oh yes, and the clue is in his/her name, (I am still unsure about its gender, so lets call it an ‘it’) it has been influenced by the modern, pussywhipped, weak werewolf ideas. Well Wolfie is a dog murderer, no the police never proved it but it did it. It is responsible and I don’t care who wants to defend it. It is a teenager who clearly feels that because it is ‘part wolf’, and I mean the wolf of fanny-dom not the wolf of brutality, that it is justified in having done so. I will not outline exactly what Wolfie Blackheart did here as there is plenty of information on the web about the incident. So I apologise for the vagueness that this article offers about its crime. I recommend ‘Youtube’ as being a good starting point for you getting yourself acquainted with these teenage trend. This dangerous teenage trend.
Now, I believe in the freedom of art. So I do not suggest prohibiting the creation of these works of pseudo, attempted literature and emo wankbank films. If I did then I’d be as much of an idiot as those involved in the John McCollum/Ozzy Osbourne case. An interesting point would be to consider the nature of the monster in Mr. Osbourne’s song ‘Bark at the Moon’, and consider how many teenage sub cultures this has influenced. None. Oh and guess what – the wolf is a soulless, vengeful, killing machine. But art has to be free. That does not mean however that if you are a good parent then you will allow your children to become obsessed with these emo-trend, fuelled works of fiction. If my son came home with an emo piercing or, worse still, a teen wolf dog chain, I would find the person who sold then the piercing and jam it in their eye, or if it was the lead I would strangle the fucker with it. I would then correct my child’s way of thinking. That is the parent’s duty, to raise functional, decent human beings for society.
Maybe I’m just an old eighteen year old stuck in my ways. But in my day werewolves were fannies and I hated it. When I found out that they had originally been a far less dangerous yet paradoxically far more apathetic and murderous breed of creature, I realised that for the better of society the proponents of the modern emo, teen wolf movement need to be stigmatised and championed as an example of exactly how a human being should not behave. Kids these days... why can’t they just love soulless killers like they used to?
