It seems as though these days every Anne Rice fan or eyeliner-wearing semi-punk can talk your ear off about how Stephenie Meyer effectively de-fanged vampires through her works, reducing them from the once monstrous forms that they used to inhabit as soul-destroying murderous creatures of the night to harmless tortured souls that only want a place in the world where they can sparkle in peace. Although I definitely agree with the people that think vampires should be evil and although I mourn the loss of the vampire-as-a-villain in much of modern literature, I also think that the Cullens are just the last step in an extremely long process that has been gradually de-fanging the vampire since the days of John Polidori and has included everyone from Anne Rice to Joss Whedon.
However, I don’t particularly care about vampires, to tell the truth. They don’t interest me nearly as much as that other archetypal denizen of modern horror movies that has survived in the collective human consciousness since prehistoric times: the werewolf. Werewolves are, in their own way, infinitely more terrifying than even vampires. They are perfectly ordinary human beings that attend town meetings, go to mass once a week, say hello to their neighbors, and every so often stalk through the night raping and murdering their neighbors. They are the monsters that don’t just look like ordinary people, but actually are ordinary people—most of the time. Then, whether because of the uncontrollable pull of the moon or because of their conscious spell-work, they take on other forms—and they lose themselves completely as they satisfy their most base and ugly of desires. Not only could that nice man next door secretly be a bloodthirsty killer, but that mysterious animal that tears out the guts of your livestock and children could be the nice man next door. And you’ll never find out unless you shoot him or expose him to silver.
It’s a little-known fact, but vampires are actually based on werewolves. The legends that provided the inspiration for Bram Stoker’s Dracula were of creatures that operated only at night, that resisted holy objects and consciously chose to do evil, that had unusually shaped hands and nails, that changed forms under the light of the moon but were weakened by the presence of sunlight, and that had special relationships with animals commonly associated with Satanism, including bats and canines. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, Dracula is a werewolf. Well, he’s technically a hybrid of vampire legends and werewolf ones, with a healthy dose of good old nasty humanity thrown in there. (Guess that makes him Renesmee Cullen and Jacob Black’s love child, then.) But the point remains: the werewolf is a very specific, very terrifying archetype in human culture, and it is never ever going away. Today, we just call the werewolves of old serial killers (or just Freddy Krueger) and the things we call werewolves have, shall we say, devolved somewhat from their original incarnations.
That said, I have many and various problems with Stephenie Meyer’s portrayal of the loup-garou. I really, truly wish she had not de-fanged these monsters even more so than vampires, and that she had not done it so very effectively. Of course she has the artistic license to write whatever the heck she feels like, and the popularity to have whatever the heck she feels like read by millions of people (including yours truly), but I am deeply bothered by the extent to which she is unfaithful to my all-time favorite monster legend. As James Marsters, the (talented, sexy) Bela Lugosi of our generation, said, “If you’re going to write about that metaphorical monster, keep it true to its original purpose as a metaphor.” As previously stated, werewolves were created as a way for people to explain serial killers. And now Stephenie Meyer has them as perfectly ordinary teenage boys that occasionally are a little harrier than most people. Rather than portraying them as monsters in human form, or, more accurately, humans who take on monstrous forms as an external symbol of the depravity within, Meyer chooses to make her werewolves protectors of the small, valiant ancient warriors that have been gifted with an additional set of abilities so that they can protect the innocent unknowing humans from the inhuman threat in animal forms as well as human ones. By her definition, the Quilute aren’t werewolves; they’re Animorphs.
Wolves have long held conflicting sets of symbolism in human mythology. On one hand they’re feared and hated as the scourge of livestock and even occasionally the killers of children, but on the other they’re respected for their strong family structures and incomprehensible endurance. They are mothering, nurturing murderers, that will literally allow themselves to be killed to save their young but are also capable of acts of brutality and even cannibalism that the human mind shies away from contemplating. In short, wolves are an excellent metaphor for human beings. And when a human being gives into the animal side so completely that all conscious thought or moral reasoning is lost under the passionate need to satisfy one’s carnal needs… Then a werewolf is born. It’s just a person that, quite simply, has all the nasty intelligence of a human being and all the power and self-motivation of an animal. That description doesn’t even come close to applying to the Quilute.
At least Meyer’s vampires are still distinctly animalistic: even the good ones must struggle against the instinctive desire to kill people, and even the good ones occasionally give in. They may sparkle, they may brood, they may even have cute baby vampires that they then start wars over, but they are still, on some level, less than human. Their natural way of life is to depend on murder for existence, and just because the plucky band of main characters decides to follow an alternative lifestyle, that doesn’t mean that the vampire community as a whole has anything to contribute to society. They are still monsters, they are still scary, they are still the very last thing that you want to hear going bump in the night.
Not so the werewolves. They aren’t animalistic, they don’t struggle against base instincts or even seem to have any base instincts at all, and they never lose control in any way more dramatic than the occasional wrestling match or involuntary kiss, and they are as disgusted by the idea of killing people as any human being would be. In short, they are just perfectly normal people that have an extra ability or two. Not animalistic people, not monsters, not even semi-horror figures. Just good citizens doing their best to keep the leech population down. Just your friendly neighborhood wolf-men. Sad to say, but these are not werewolves.
Actually, it came as a huge relief to me when Meyer herself acknowledged that her werewolves, in short, aren’t. There’s a brief moment near the end of Breaking Dawn when the contrast between these benevolent protectors and the night-creeping killers of old Europe is finally noted, and the end conclusion is that these are just your harmless everyday skin-walkers. Never mind that skin-walkers were evil Native American shamans that were pretty much no better than your average werewolf… But the damage had already long been done by that point. No one actually remembers that the werewolves of Twilight aren’t technically werewolves. After four books’ worth of referring to them as werewolves, a single throwaway line about their actual classification isn’t going to change anything. People think of werewolves as your typical struggling young men (and one young woman) going through life with one extra blessing. Lycanthropy sounds terribly romantic the way that Meyer portrays it: no sickness, no problems, an automatic group of people that will always have your back, super speed, super strength, exactly as much aging as you want to have. Frequent exposure to semi-naked teenage boys. That’s not quite how lycanthropy is supposed to be.
By all rights, the werewolves that exist in the Twilight-verse should be terrifying monsters. It is even possible for them to be terrifying monsters and human characters at the same time—countless examples of how this can be done stretch all the way back to The Wolf Man—but they are sadly lacking. In light of the legends that led to the creation of the modern werewolf, and the interpretation of werewolves that has retained dominance for as long as humans have been telling stories, Edward has every right to be terrified at the thought of Bella hanging around with a whole pack of these creatures. The werewolves in most stories are at best humans cursed with a terrible monstrous nature, and at worst the most depraved creatures that have ever existed, shamans that change themselves into animals with the explicit intention of destroying lives. However, ironically, Edward actually has nothing to fear from the Quilute, who are werewolves in name only; they have nothing of the werewolf nature in any of their actions. In short, Meyers has de-fanged werewolves as well.
To give credit where it is due, the destruction of the werewolf as we know it has been a long process that has involved everyone from Anne Rice to J.K. Rowling, but Meyer was unquestionably the straw that broke the hypothetical camel. Rowling’s werewolves may be just ordinary people struggling to make it in a world that hates them for who they are and are respectable citizens with “furry little problems” twenty-seven days of every twenty-eight, but they are unquestionably monsters that extra twenty-eighth day. Mild-mannered Professor Lupin attempts to eat his best friend and three of his students just because they’re there, under the influence of his inner animal. Laid-back Bill Weasley is described as tense and temperamental after being bitten. Fenrir Greyback seems to have given in to that animal side entirely; no one can deny that a man that goes around attacking young children for the hell of it is a monster of the highest order.
Annette Curtis Klause may have put one of the nails in the werewolf’s coffin by being one of the first people to write a successful book about werewolves that are human no matter what shape they hold—Blood and Chocolate is a novel about a girl who is really just a normal person except she occasionally runs around in animal form under the full moon—but her werewolves are nonetheless definitely animalistic. They literally fight each other to the death to determine who will lead their packs, and they are organized about the same way as real wolves in the wild, with a strict pecking order that is occasionally enforced with physical violence. Patricia Briggs also writes about werewolves that are conscious even when transformed, but hers are humans that fight constantly against animal instincts and occasionally even then lose control of themselves. Much like Meyer’s vampires, Briggs’s werewolves are continually fighting against the possibility of becoming rapists or murderers, and many of them give in.
However, the werewolves of Twilight don’t have this struggle. They do not have to work for their humanity, and they do not follow the strict structuring of a pack; Jacob goes into open rebellion against his alpha and the worst consequence is that he loses touch with a few friends along the way. Most legends have werewolf packs killing interlopers without hesitation. Meyer’s werewolves have something that her vampires don’t: humanity. While this is not necessarily a weakness in most characters and is in fact a strength, it deprives her characters that should by all rights be monstrous of the ability to be anything but normal people. Jacob even explicitly states at one point in Eclipse that he considers himself to be more human than Edward, and in fact he is. Jacob, like the rest of Meyer’s werewolves, doesn’t even retain the semblance of inhumanity. He may occasionally lose his temper, but he does not have the mind of a werewolf, only occasionally the body of one. Edward and Bella have infinitely more to fear from vampires and werewolves in Meyer’s universe, because for all that they may sparkle, the vampires are still in some ways monstrous. The werewolves can’t even claim that dubious honor.
The monsters that haunt the dark places of the human psyche come out in various ways, and this particular form has been one of the most lasting, and the most terrifying. Lycanthropy has been used as a metaphor for serial murder, for social ostracization, for local paranoia, for humanity’s conflicting nature, for the fear of the unknown, and even for AIDS. Stephenie Meyer has every right to use it as a metaphor for teenage angst. I just wish that she hadn’t.
No comments:
Post a Comment