Shirin Dubbin's Blog - Posts Tagged "essay"
The Darker Side of Our Love For Werewolves: Prey, Not
In the opening of Running With the Pack, an anthology of werewolf fiction, editor Ekaterina Sedia suggests mankind’s fascination with werewolves comes from our desire to transform ourselves from prey to predator. A very cool thought! I’d never considered humans, as a species, prey.
(I like people who inspire me to examine my way of thinking and thus, hopefully, to grow.)
For me, the savage abandon and bloodlust of werewolves—absent in large extent in actual wolves, a wolf strikes with purpose—is due to the freedom from human mores the animal enjoys. Lycanthropy abruptly strips away the social fastenings neatly tying back a lifetime of angers and one is finally free to take revenge on that jerk who cut you off on the highway, causing you to spill an extra-short-venti-skim-java-concoction into your lap; or on the boss who delights in demeaning you daily…and to exact one’s payback with teeth and claws. At our worst we’d take satisfaction in blood when sanctioned by the beast within. It ain’t hunting or protecting the pack, it’s a killing spree and seldom do wolves do that.
Heck, seldom do timber wolves decide to commit genocide against or enslave red wolves because of what they consider the improper way of howling at the moon. On the flipside, for some groups of people that’s a Tuesday night.
Of course, as I said, this imagines our darkest natures and I like Ekaterina’s thoughts a lot more than mine.
Yet, I’m not sure we can call ourselves prey when we’ve taken dominion over a planet so thoroughly creatures seemingly more ferocious, though sadly (for them) less ambitious, have no recourse but to either become extinct or seek new lives in the dumpster at 7Eleven (or whatever your country’s equivalent). In a few more ticks of time, tigers will avoid the midday sun by taking naps in the beverage case at Starbucks, and bears will point you to the detergent aisle at Wal-Mart so their cubs can enjoy a bit of farm raised salmon because BP sautéed nature’s fish in petrol. That m’dear is the world a dawning.
Ekaterina’s idea caused me to rethink things…still I can’t help but ponder, if we semi-hairless beasties are prey then we must be rabbits with Uzis; hares horrific enough to make the trials of Watership Down read like Pat the Bunny; prey that does not run but instead pulls the trigger.
Isn’t this the reason we read the Vampires Lestat and the werewolves, or go to see the Alien(s) and the alien Predators at the movies? Isn’t it the guilt of war and pollution, racism and genocide, cruelty and apathy, bombings and slaughter that compels us to create a more vicious creature than we could ever be and thus to appear less monstrous?
If there is something worst than our worse we get to rise to level of hero in epic and outstanding ways... And if I’m being honest, we are just as often intrepid and self-sacrificing, charitable and kind, poetic and beautiful, intelligent and inventive as the other things I've named. We are sometimes monstrous and as often heroic. This is why we love the beasts.
>
The introduction of Running With the Pack alone has inspired a new short story to spark within the womb of my darker thoughts on humanity. And I shall dub it: Bunnies With Uzis.
The thought makes me smile.
Good stuff.
I can’t wait to finish reading this book.
(I like people who inspire me to examine my way of thinking and thus, hopefully, to grow.)
For me, the savage abandon and bloodlust of werewolves—absent in large extent in actual wolves, a wolf strikes with purpose—is due to the freedom from human mores the animal enjoys. Lycanthropy abruptly strips away the social fastenings neatly tying back a lifetime of angers and one is finally free to take revenge on that jerk who cut you off on the highway, causing you to spill an extra-short-venti-skim-java-concoction into your lap; or on the boss who delights in demeaning you daily…and to exact one’s payback with teeth and claws. At our worst we’d take satisfaction in blood when sanctioned by the beast within. It ain’t hunting or protecting the pack, it’s a killing spree and seldom do wolves do that.
Heck, seldom do timber wolves decide to commit genocide against or enslave red wolves because of what they consider the improper way of howling at the moon. On the flipside, for some groups of people that’s a Tuesday night.
Of course, as I said, this imagines our darkest natures and I like Ekaterina’s thoughts a lot more than mine.
Yet, I’m not sure we can call ourselves prey when we’ve taken dominion over a planet so thoroughly creatures seemingly more ferocious, though sadly (for them) less ambitious, have no recourse but to either become extinct or seek new lives in the dumpster at 7Eleven (or whatever your country’s equivalent). In a few more ticks of time, tigers will avoid the midday sun by taking naps in the beverage case at Starbucks, and bears will point you to the detergent aisle at Wal-Mart so their cubs can enjoy a bit of farm raised salmon because BP sautéed nature’s fish in petrol. That m’dear is the world a dawning.
Ekaterina’s idea caused me to rethink things…still I can’t help but ponder, if we semi-hairless beasties are prey then we must be rabbits with Uzis; hares horrific enough to make the trials of Watership Down read like Pat the Bunny; prey that does not run but instead pulls the trigger.
Isn’t this the reason we read the Vampires Lestat and the werewolves, or go to see the Alien(s) and the alien Predators at the movies? Isn’t it the guilt of war and pollution, racism and genocide, cruelty and apathy, bombings and slaughter that compels us to create a more vicious creature than we could ever be and thus to appear less monstrous?
If there is something worst than our worse we get to rise to level of hero in epic and outstanding ways... And if I’m being honest, we are just as often intrepid and self-sacrificing, charitable and kind, poetic and beautiful, intelligent and inventive as the other things I've named. We are sometimes monstrous and as often heroic. This is why we love the beasts.
>
The introduction of Running With the Pack alone has inspired a new short story to spark within the womb of my darker thoughts on humanity. And I shall dub it: Bunnies With Uzis.
The thought makes me smile.
Good stuff.
I can’t wait to finish reading this book.
