Claws and Controllers: Werewolves and Lycanthropy in Digital Games

Bridging a host of narrative and procedural genres, werewolves feature prominently in videogames as characters to control, enemies to kill, and allies to assist. Yet, despite the broad range of werewolf depictions found in games, there is a relative paucity of research examining how games depict werewolves and how these depictions relate to the mythos writ large. To address gamic werewolves specifically, this essay performs close readings of several games, notably The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess (2006) and The Sims 2: Pets (2006). The readings are guided by the works of media scholars, including Alexander Galloway, Ian Bogost, Souvik Mukherjee, Tom Tyler and others. In analysing werewolf avatar gameplay, this essay proposes that some gamic werewolves encourage players to acknowledge and value animal alterity, human animality, and human-animal relations. Additionally, these werewolves foster ‘becomings’ for players, allowing them to understand hybridity and liminality experientially.

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Dirty, Wild Beasts! Representations of the Homeless as Werewolves in Horror Films from Werewolf of London (1935) to Underworld: Rise of the Lycans (2009)

This study will look at the ways in which the homeless in America have been correlated with the figure of the werewolf in horror films since the 1940s. Coming out of the Great Depression of the 1930s and the increasing migration of people from small towns into the cities after WWII, the homeless signified both a return to the past and an uncontrolled and controllable element of the population. Films such as Werewolf of London (Walker: 1935) and The Wolf Man (Waggener: 1941) will be examined to demonstrate how the werewolf is constructed to represent poverty and homelessness and the contagious nature of both. The present study will further show, in light of films like the Underworld (2003-present) series, that these signifiers remain part of contemporary configurations of lycanthropy, particularly since the global economic crisis of 2008.

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Clemence Housman’s The Were-Wolf: A Cautionary Tale for the Progressive New Woman

Clemence Housman’s little-studied novel The Were-Wolf (1896) gives voice to fin de siècle anxieties surrounding changing roles for women. Just as other ‘monstrous’ texts of the period tackle these fears so too does Housman’s novel, but in the unique form of a werewolf story. A great deal of scholarship has been devoted to nineteenth-century representations of vampires, but comparatively little work has been done on less-frequently occurring werewolves.  The figure of the werewolf embodies contradictions and allows Housman to tackle false dichotomies that plagued women at the end of the century – dutiful wife and mother or single, professional woman – and highlights both the potential and the danger of the New Woman. Her werewolf identity mirrors the rupture that results from trying to embody ‘conflicting’ roles, and it emphasizes White Fell’s inability to conform to societal expectations for women. While on the surface the novel can be read as a simple Christian allegory, it also functions as a cautionary tale for the progressive New Woman. The story warns that the New Woman’s strength and deviance from accepted norms will be perceived as dangerous signs of societal decline, and that more conservative individuals will attempt to destroy her progress.

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