Stories of the open road

Tales of a Vagabond...

By Pathum Punchihewa

When the night comes, you will find out that you are no more human, but something supernatural. You are not a vampire or a zombie, or a skin-walker. But you are a shape shifter. No, you are more than just a shape shifter. You are a werewolf.  It’s your gift and your curse. Night is about to fall and you better understand who you really are, a legendary phenomenon, a werewolf…!”

If you are also a “Twilight fan” or an “Underworld fan”, you know what that really means. Those movie franchises brought the Werewolf fever to the peak among many teenagers and youngsters world wide by portraying werewolves as supernatural heroes!

the-wolf-man

First of all, this fast growing subculture is not about real creatures that can shape shift into fearsome and super strong wolves but it’s all about believers of the werewolf legend. Some of them even perform dark magic rituals in moonlight! We are now witnessing a new subculture that is based on werewolf movies and literature.

Werewolf movies and werewolf literature hold one essential fear in common. We should realise that a werewolf is actually a symbol for the rage that all people hold inside that most are never able to let out. The werewolf is the personified rage which is unleashed by the main character of a story against his conscious will. Once that rage is unleashed, there is no controlling it, and there is no stopping it.pain

Most of the members of the werewolf subculture find that one of their greatest fears is allowing themselves uncontrollable rage. They fight with the emotions that we all do, and are afraid that there might be a chance that rage could take over, and make them do things that they would not usually do.

Just because a person is a member of the werewolf subculture does not mean that he or she believes that werewolves are real. Very few are given to the fantasy that there are actual werewolves. Chances are good that the few that do believe in such things have some kind of predisposition in their mind for believing fanciful thoughts.

Now, in Sri Lanka there isn’t exactly a Werewolf subculture but still there are many teens who love strong and masculine werewolf ‘Jacob Black’ than sleek and charming vamp-boy, ‘Edward Cullen’!

Published on  Daily Mirror (30th December 2010)

2 comments:

පිටස්තරයා said...

I love the Underworld series. Especially how it depicts the Werewolf personality in the proper manner. Wolfman and Van Helsing are the other two that do justice to the proper Werewolf. Metallica's "Of Wolf & Man" is also something that should not be forgotten.

About the psychological explanation of the Werewolf persona, I think you are trying to say that Werewolf is basically the Id of a person. According to Freud Id is the animal part of the person's psych. I never thought this character as having this much of significance. Come to think of it, Hulk can be the modernist successor of the Werewolf.

Pathum Punchihewa said...

Yes, in that perspective. Werewolf subculture is basically about a community that shares a mutual interest about werewolves but what I see from the werewolf legend is not shape shifter, but a persona shifter.

And original werewolves have limitations. Such as they cannot transform until it is full moon and after they transform, they have no control on their motives. So yes, I think Twilight Jacob is more than just an Aztec legendary supernatural werewolf, he is more like a super human Hero!

Thanks for the comment bro. You always expand perspectives of my writing.

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