On the Horror In Film & Literature mailing list, someone asked today "But why do werewolves HAVE to be evil? Real wolves aren't bad so why are werewolves?"
My instinctive answer was that it's not the wolf-part that makes them evil, it's the were-part. Animals are not evil, at least in the ways that people can be.
"Today at the pond, ducklings with firecrackers strapped to them were sent by their leaders to blow up the geese who erected the anti-duck wall."
"Squirrel kills sixteen other squirrels, hides bodies in nut hordes, claims it was lonely."
"'Go back to Peking, flat-faces,' say rottweiller seperatists."
The closest I can think of to a animals being evil is cats playing with mice or birds. And given that they play the same way with paper, string and my fingers, I call that misguided rather than evil.
Posted by pearce at April 22, 2005 1:40 PMMy thought on the Werewolf thing would be that they are trapped between two sides. The wolf side which is predatory and territorial and the human side which is social. A werewolf probably wants to continue to be social, but is lacking some of the intelligence of a human, therefore making them more bestial. This means that they look for contact with humans but can't communicate in anyway that isn't violent - claws and biting, basically the way a wolf pup would play. Assuming a werewolf is infantile, even though the human is fully grown, then it would take a few years before the werewolf had a greater understanding. They would still be dangerous, but no more dangerous than a wolf.
Wolf Lake (which used a White Wolf werewolf concept), Teen Wolf and Oz (not to mention other werewolves) in Buffy are all interesting concepts where werewolves aren't evil. Most of these aren't touching on the horror genre too heavily, even BUffy which has its roots in horror.
Posted by: jarratt at April 28, 2005 12:11 PM