Werewolves And Other Shapeshifters In Popular Culture

In recent years, shapeshifting characters in literature, film and television have been on the rise. This has followed the increased use of such characters as metaphors, with novelists and critics identifying specific meanings and topics behind them. This book aims to unravel the shapeshifting trope. Rather than pursue a case-based study, the works are grouped around specific themes—adolescence, gender, sexuality, race, disability, addiction, and spirituality—that are explored through the metaphor of shapeshifting. Because of the transformative possibilities of this metaphor and its flexibility, the shapeshifter has the potential to change how we see our world. With coverage of iconic fantasy texts and a focus on current works, the book engages with the shapeshifting figure in popular culture from the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and Australia. Instructors considering this book for use in a course may request an examination copy here.

Examines the history of werewolf lore, famous incidents, and possible explanations.

Evil isn't simply an abstract theological or philosophical talking point. In our society, the idea of evil feeds entertainment, manifests in all sorts of media, and is a root concept in our collective psyche. This accessible and appealing book examines what evil means to us. Evil has been with us since the Garden of Eden, when Eve unleashed evil by biting the apple. Outside of theology, evil remains a highly relevant concept in contemporary times: evil villains in films and literature make these stories entertaining; our criminal justice system decides the fate of convicted criminals based on the determination of their status as "evil" or "insane." This book examines the many manifestations of "evil" in modern media, making it clear how this idea pervades nearly all aspects of life and helping us to reconsider some of the notions about evil that pop culture perpetuates and promotes. Covering screen media such as film, television, and video games; print media that include novels and poetry; visual media like art and comics; music; and political polemics, the essays in this book address an eclectic range of topics. The diverse authors include Americans who left the United States during the Vietnam War era, conservative Christian political pundits, rock musicians, classical linguists, Disney fans, scholars of American slavery, and experts on Holocaust literature and films. From portrayals of evil in the television shows The Wire and 24 to the violent lyrics of the rap duo Insane Clown Posse to the storylines of the Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter books, readers will find themselves rethinking what evil is—and how they came to hold their beliefs.

A collection of thirty-five short stores featuring werewolves and shapeshifters.

When Darkness Reigns and the Full Moon Glows, Terror Emerges to Stalk the Unsuspecting… From lycanthropic creatures found on television and film such as Teen Wolf, Twilight, and True Blood to the earliest folklore of shape-shifting creatures, The Werewolf Book: The Encyclopedia of Shapeshifting Beings is an eye-opening, blood-pounding tour through the ages of monsters with the most amazing camouflage capabilities—they hide among us! Along the way, you’ll land at the doorstep of creatures like hirsute mass-murderer Albert Fish, and Fritz Haarman, who slaughtered and ate his victims—selling the leftovers as steaks and roasts in his butcher shop—as well as visits to mythical shamans, sirens, and skin walkers. Covering 140,000 years of legend, mythology, and fact, The Werewolf Book provides hair-raising evidence of strange and obsessional behavior through the centuries. Learn the basics of becoming a werewolf and the intricacies of slaying the beast. A true homage to werewolves and other full moon beasts, it includes topics such as … • Bear, tiger, coyote, and other shape-shifting people • Classic and modern werewolf movies • Gargoyles, totem poles, and Internet depictions • Serial killers and sadistic rulers • Sorcery, spells, and talismans • Television shows, songs, and computer games

Most of us are familiar with the idea of a werewolf—that someone can change, either deliberately or unwillingly, into a ravenous creature—but is there some justification for such a belief? And if so, how is it achieved—through magical potions or ointments or simply by the light of the full moon? Or is the whole thing simply a form of delusion, the product of a disturbed mind? In Werewolves, author Dr. Bob Curran examines the deep psychological perceptions about the linkage of man with the natural, bestial world. Do the roots of such a belief lie in the supernatural world, or are there other explanations? How has the discovery of feral children, living in the wild, shaped our ideas of human-beasts? And what is the future of such beliefs? The book considers genetically-based speculations regarding the possible fusion of human and animal genes in order to alleviate some human diseases and suffering. Is the idea of man into beast really so far fetched? Werewolves is an essential reference book which looks, in depth, at a fascinating subject. One word of warning though: it must never be read under the baleful rays of a full moon. You have been warned!

Wolves lope across Gothic imagination. Signs of a pure animality opposed to humanity, in the figure of the werewolf they become liminal creatures that move between the human and the animal. Werewolves function as a site for exploring complex anxieties of difference – of gender, class, race, space, nation or sexuality – but the imaginative and ideological uses of wolves also reflect back on the lives of material animals, long persecuted in their declining habitats across the world. Werewolves therefore raise unsettling questions about the intersection of the real and the imaginary, the instability of human identities and the worldliness and political weight of the Gothic. This is the first volume concerned with the appearance of werewolves and wolves in literary and cultural texts from the mid-nineteenth century to the present. Drawing on representations of werewolves and wolves in literature, film, television and visual culture, the essays investigate the key texts of the lycanthropic canon alongside lesser-known works from the 1890s to the present. The result is an innovative study that is both theoretically aware and historically nuanced, featuring an international list of established and emerging scholars based in Britain, Europe, North America and Australia.

Examines the cultural significance of the werewolf filmProvides the first academic monograph dedicated to developing a cultural understanding of the werewolf filmReconsiders the psychoanalytic paradigms that have dominated scholarly discussion of werewolves in pop cultureIncludes over 40 individual case studies to illustrate how werewolf films can be understood as products of their cultural momentIdentifies the cinematic werewolf's most common metaphorical dimensionsHorror monsters such as the vampire, the zombie and Frankenstein's creature have long been the subjects of in-depth cultural studies, but the cinematic werewolf has often been considered little more than the 'beast within': a psychoanalytic analogue for the bestial side of man. This book, the first scholarly study of the werewolf in cinema, redresses the balance by exploring over 100 years of werewolf films, from The Werewolf (1913) to Wildling (2018) via The Wolf Man (1941), The Curse of the Werewolf (1961), The Howling (1981) and WolfCop (2014). Revealing the significance of she-wolves and wolf-men as evolving metaphors for the cultural fears and anxieties of their times, Phases of the Moon serves as a companion and a counterpoint to existing scholarship on the werewolf in popular culture, and illustrates how we can begin to understand one of our oldest mythical monsters as a rich and diverse cultural metaphor.