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| In our dog-eat-dog world, it’s time for werewolves | |
| (about 1 hour later) | |
| Next week Britain’s first academic conference on werewolves will be hosted by the University of Hertfordshire. A stellar list of 50 international speakers, including Sir Christopher Frayling, is lined up to debate such pressing lupine matters as “Rabid Bitches and Fanged Whores”, “I’m Hairy on the Inside” and “Encountering the Beast Within”. | Next week Britain’s first academic conference on werewolves will be hosted by the University of Hertfordshire. A stellar list of 50 international speakers, including Sir Christopher Frayling, is lined up to debate such pressing lupine matters as “Rabid Bitches and Fanged Whores”, “I’m Hairy on the Inside” and “Encountering the Beast Within”. |
| Related: The howl truth: scholars get packing for UK werewolf conference | Related: The howl truth: scholars get packing for UK werewolf conference |
| Culturally, werewolves have always come to the fore at those historic moments when our most basic resource – food – starts to feel in short supply. And in these jittery days of collapsing capitalism, lycanthropes, or man-wolves (they are nearly always male) are emerging as the archetype around which our contemporary terrors adhere. | Culturally, werewolves have always come to the fore at those historic moments when our most basic resource – food – starts to feel in short supply. And in these jittery days of collapsing capitalism, lycanthropes, or man-wolves (they are nearly always male) are emerging as the archetype around which our contemporary terrors adhere. |
| Werewolves emerged in folklore in medieval Germany at times when a poor harvest meant that both humans and animals were contending with rumbling stomachs. When your weakest sheep or calf was grabbed in the dead of night, it was easy in your paranoia to believe that it wasn’t a wolf but your neighbour who had mounted a midnight raid. Or perhaps – in heads swimming with semi-starvation – your neighbour had somehow turned temporarily into a wolf, cunningly morphing back into human form just in time to greet you with cheerful mildness at dawn. | Werewolves emerged in folklore in medieval Germany at times when a poor harvest meant that both humans and animals were contending with rumbling stomachs. When your weakest sheep or calf was grabbed in the dead of night, it was easy in your paranoia to believe that it wasn’t a wolf but your neighbour who had mounted a midnight raid. Or perhaps – in heads swimming with semi-starvation – your neighbour had somehow turned temporarily into a wolf, cunningly morphing back into human form just in time to greet you with cheerful mildness at dawn. |
| Crash advice No.2: do you have enough bottled water, tinned goods & other essentials at home to live a month indoors? If not, get shopping. | Crash advice No.2: do you have enough bottled water, tinned goods & other essentials at home to live a month indoors? If not, get shopping. |
| While the wild fluctuations of the Chinese stock market haven’t yet meant bare supermarket shelves in Britain, there are plenty of doom-mongers out there who suggest that we should now be preparing for the worst. Indeed, Gordon Brown’s former adviser Damian McBride suggests the only sensible thing to do is stockpile food and cash and wait for capitalism to come tumbling down. | While the wild fluctuations of the Chinese stock market haven’t yet meant bare supermarket shelves in Britain, there are plenty of doom-mongers out there who suggest that we should now be preparing for the worst. Indeed, Gordon Brown’s former adviser Damian McBride suggests the only sensible thing to do is stockpile food and cash and wait for capitalism to come tumbling down. |
| This recognition that it really is a dog-eat-dog world has always created a ripe breeding ground for werewolf fantasies. Little Red Riding Hood may, according to the Freudians, be all about a young woman’s initiation into the dangers of predatory male sexuality. However, the trigger for the grisly sequence of events is the fact that Red Riding Hood is taking food to her ailing grandmother, deep in the forest where baked goods are presumably scarce. And the wolf, far from being some smooth-talking bed hopper, turns out to be simply starving. First he eats Grannie, before polishing off the little girl for afters. Here is a comfort story that has been dreamt up around a peasant pot containing nothing but thin soup flavoured with a single turnip. | This recognition that it really is a dog-eat-dog world has always created a ripe breeding ground for werewolf fantasies. Little Red Riding Hood may, according to the Freudians, be all about a young woman’s initiation into the dangers of predatory male sexuality. However, the trigger for the grisly sequence of events is the fact that Red Riding Hood is taking food to her ailing grandmother, deep in the forest where baked goods are presumably scarce. And the wolf, far from being some smooth-talking bed hopper, turns out to be simply starving. First he eats Grannie, before polishing off the little girl for afters. Here is a comfort story that has been dreamt up around a peasant pot containing nothing but thin soup flavoured with a single turnip. |
| In the same way, the great classic of werewolf literature – The Werewolf of Paris – was written in 1933, at the height of the Depression, by the American Guy Endore, whose penurious father had been an unsuccessful investor. The story was set partly at the time of the Paris Commune of 1870, a besieged community where supplies were so scarce there were rumours of citizens eating one another. This only adds to the sense that werewolf stories are all about negotiating our terror over where, come the apocalypse, we stand in the food chain. | In the same way, the great classic of werewolf literature – The Werewolf of Paris – was written in 1933, at the height of the Depression, by the American Guy Endore, whose penurious father had been an unsuccessful investor. The story was set partly at the time of the Paris Commune of 1870, a besieged community where supplies were so scarce there were rumours of citizens eating one another. This only adds to the sense that werewolf stories are all about negotiating our terror over where, come the apocalypse, we stand in the food chain. |
| All of which leaves the werewolf’s first cousin, the vampire, looking sadly behind the curve. For vampires belong to altogether more prosperous times and catalyse an entirely different set of anxieties, mostly to do with sex. They raised their fanged heads in Bram Stoker’s classic novel of 1897, which appeared at the height of fin de siècle jitters about sexual decadence. Two years earlier the Oscar Wilde trials had suggested the possibility that Britain harboured an underground community of homosexuals trying to “convert” young men by penetrating their bodies, taking them permanently away from everything that was decent and holy. | All of which leaves the werewolf’s first cousin, the vampire, looking sadly behind the curve. For vampires belong to altogether more prosperous times and catalyse an entirely different set of anxieties, mostly to do with sex. They raised their fanged heads in Bram Stoker’s classic novel of 1897, which appeared at the height of fin de siècle jitters about sexual decadence. Two years earlier the Oscar Wilde trials had suggested the possibility that Britain harboured an underground community of homosexuals trying to “convert” young men by penetrating their bodies, taking them permanently away from everything that was decent and holy. |
| Vampires had a resurgence in the mid-noughties with Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight series, a sequence of books for teenage girls dealing with the pressures of premature sexualisation in Western culture. Meyer’s hopeful message was that it was possible to find true love in a society that seemed increasingly to view young women’s bodies through the tropes of pornography. | Vampires had a resurgence in the mid-noughties with Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight series, a sequence of books for teenage girls dealing with the pressures of premature sexualisation in Western culture. Meyer’s hopeful message was that it was possible to find true love in a society that seemed increasingly to view young women’s bodies through the tropes of pornography. |
| Vampires are nicely dressed, seductive in their own way, and always remember to say “please” and “thank you”. (Count Dracula had lovely manners.) Werewolves, by contrast, display no such finesse. Existing beyond language, they represent our terrors at the most visceral level. For they remind us that, if times really do get bad, there is nothing we wouldn’t do to survive, including quite possibly ripping out our neighbour’s throat. | Vampires are nicely dressed, seductive in their own way, and always remember to say “please” and “thank you”. (Count Dracula had lovely manners.) Werewolves, by contrast, display no such finesse. Existing beyond language, they represent our terrors at the most visceral level. For they remind us that, if times really do get bad, there is nothing we wouldn’t do to survive, including quite possibly ripping out our neighbour’s throat. |