Wolf-People of the World Unite! Socioeconomic Conflict and Classic Horror Creatures

[I want to thank Professor David Graeber, whose anthropological dissection of Buffy the Vampire Slayer (and accompanying lectures) very much forms the basis of this post.]

Let’s begin with two observations. First: the Vampires that inhabit our most recent pop cultural works differ so dramatically from the classic archetype of Golden-Age Hollywood that they are are almost unrecognizable. Second: Werewolves are lame.

Or at least, compared with their undead, blood-sucking, vaguely-Carpathian cohort, werewolves of late have occupied a far less enviable position in the collective pop cultural landscape. These are not the subtle, nuanced, infinitely malleable characters vampires are–the sort capable of carrying their own novels, TV-shows, Movies and crappy Movie-Tie-In Video Games. Rather, lycanthropes end up as the stock types passively added to spice up a Vampire vehicle. Sure, some immortal genius might figure out a way to breathe new life into the old dogs, but for now, Buffy’s Oz remains a werewolf’s best case scenario. In the worst cases it’s… well… I’d rather not say.

However, there is something to be said about the sheer frequency with which werewolves pop up in Vampire works. Is your horror-story turned teen-abstinence-parable getting a bit too stale to survive a sequel? Throw in some werewolves! Is having a psychic heroine dating a vampire proving an insufficient allegory for southern race relations? Make her boss a werewolf! At least…sorta’. The point is, as the length of a Vampire epic approaches infinity, the probability that the spinning “let’s throw in a different kind of monster” wheel will stop on “Werewolf” approaches 1. And it does so far earlier than all of the other forms. As the old aphorism goes: no ghosts, witches, reanimated corpses, mer-people, vengeful pagan gods or giant, radioactive slugs before werewolves. And for heaven’s sake, NO MUMMIES.

Yet–and this is important–despite the number of appearances Werewolves (or the equivalent) make in predominantly Vampire (or equivalent) works, the converse is never true, because Werewolves remain lame.

But why? What is it about our culture that causes us to perpetually dwell on one classic occult figure, while paupering the other of such attention?

The answer, of course, lies in the failure of Marxism.

Werewolves appear so frequently in Vampire works because the two form a binary pair, a dual metaphor which–though valid when applied to either party individually–becomes all the more powerful when the two are placed side-by-side. This dual metaphor is for the western socioeconomic class structure.

Note, my assertion here is based on the archetype that first brought the idea of Vampirism into the modern popular culture. I’d apply the same assertion to Werewolves, but there’s no need: they’ve essentially remained unchanged since the 30’s. Still, to jog your memories:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Nfmh178L98
I was *this* close to using the trailer for “Scream Blacula, Scream!”

~and~

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zTNQEd8D4pg
Again, probably an inappropriate place for “Scream Blacula, Scream!”

Even from these trailers, we get a sense of the underlying themes each monster represents. A Vampire movie is the story of common people banning together against a powerful–yet somehow alluring–external foe. Strip the labels off, and in abstraction the plot points and character relationships could just as easily follow an Upton Sinclair novel as they do a horror flick. Meanwhile, a Werewolf feature is about a man dealing with his own personal affliction, a common theme in, say, depression-era dustbowl dramas.

Yet, if we really want to see how these two forms complement one another, we’ll need to go through them in detail, side-by-side.

So please…vaaaalk zeeees vaaay…

Let’s line these two culprits up and compare their salient features:

Supernatural Powers

Vampires: Varies depending on the storyteller, but frequent features are immortality; flight; heightened senses; psychic influence (unto the point of enslavement); super speed and strength; physical transmutation into bats, shadows or mists; and control over animals. In short: stuff people typically think is pretty cool.

Werewolves: Chomp, chomp, smash. Not so smooth at parties, but pretty useful when hunting in the woods.

Preferred Dwelling

Vampires: Typically ancient, well-guarded castles, even if not particularly well-maintained. A mansion of comparable luxury will do. But really, what’s keeping you from having both?

Werewolves: A pile of leaves somewhere, maybe a cave – pretty much wherever he passed out the previous night. The forest is his true home.

Manner of Dress

Vampires: If he leaves the crypt wearing anything but a tuxedo and at least one gold amulet, that’s a Dealbreaker, ladies.

Werewolves: In the luckiest of circumstances, a de facto loincloth consisting of the tattered remains of the previous evening’s clothes. Less fashion than function, tattered pants (and, depending on the gender, a tattered, fortunately-placed makeshift sports-bra) are the appropriate ensemble for any lycanthrope–whether you’re hulking out, or hulking in.

Average Lifespan

Vampires: Left to their own devices, eternity. In fact, it is notoriously hard for a community to completely rid themselves of a Vampire infestation.

Werewolves: Unclear. In the Underworld “Saga,” Werewolves are also immortal, but this seems to play against consensus. (And, as in all my OTI posts, by “consensus,” I mean “in Teen Wolf.”) Let’s infer that, since this is a disease which conveys its powers upon the afflicted only in short, periodic bursts, presumably an unchecked werewolf would die in accordance with the natural lifespan of its human form. An American werewolf, then, would presumably die due to complications from Type-II Diabetes at around age 65.

Cognitive Capabilities

Vampires: Formidable. A Vampire is presumably at least as smart as he/she was during life, further augmented by the impartial tactical perspective that can only be attained by removing one’s soul. They’re not lacking for time, either, which means (A) They can educate and acclimate themselves as society grows and alters, and (B) They can make plans over extraordinarily large time-frames. This also allows them to develop something completely alien to their Werewolf counterparts: an internal culture. The Vampire learns, adapts, and seizes power in part through communication with other vampires, allowing them to experience and react to the world with a breadth of complexity rivaled only in the minds of living humans. Still, relative to their non-undead human counterparts, Vampires are at a substantial advantage, having the prior experience of living among them, and the wisdom that immeasurable time has brought them. Also, they can control our thoughts and actions. So, that’s a bonus.

Werewolves: Bmmwuurrwl?

Preferred Food

Vampires: Vamps are finicky eaters, and their preferred food–the blood of nubiles and/or innocents–admittedly takes a while to prepare. Sure, they’re occasionally known to grab the proverbial ‘quick bite.’ But when given his druthers, your average Vampire prefers to ensnare his food through guile, persuasion, and the occasional assistance of a mad henchmen. Indeed, it’s the rare case where Nosferatu is forced into subsistence living; he can typically win whichever victim his long-silent heart desires.

Werewolves: The Wolves eat whatever is immediately available, and which they can kill. In film, this set is highly biased toward nubile young women in white evening gowns, but this is less diagetic and more the filmmakers’ recognition that–even when talking about dismemberment–sex sells. The point here, though, is that these unfortunate debutantes-turned-PuppyChow were not lured into the grasp of their defiler. They caught the attention of their beastly tormentors by being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Access to Minions

Vampires: Whether or not a given Wampir will employ a cadre of servants is up to his own discretion, but his ability to acquire them is unquestionable. He can drive someone mad unto the very breaking point, literally turning them into Tom Waits. Control’s not an issue, either: even sane minds can be twisted (at considerable distance, mind you) toward the Vampire’s will. Of course, an older vamp can make a few younger vamps to do his bidding, but given their own single-mindedness (and the additional competition for resources they represent), the best bet lies in employing some crazy old Gypsies. They’ll work for next to nothing, and don’t need to be driven mad or mind-controlled. My understanding is that Carpathia is such a wanton crud-shack that even working for the blood-thirsty undead beats day-labor. Same goes for Hollywood.

Werewolves: With rare exception, employing others to do your bidding requires some form of conscious thought. So… nope. If a Werewolf wants to get something done, he has to do it himself.

How You Become One

Vampires: Again, the details vary depending on the specific story, but in most cases a person’s entrance into Vampire society is a process requiring the willful participation of a Vampire. This is a selective group, into which only the rarest of humans are considered potential applicants. The rest are food.

Werewolves: You get bitten by a Werewolf, plain and simple. There’s no seduction, no deep-emotional entanglement, no exchange of souls and blood. As a consequence, becoming a Werewolf is–compared to becoming a Vampire–fantastically easy. It could happen to anyone at anytime. Well, assuming “anytime” means “at night, during a full moon.” You catch my drift, though.

How You Kill One

Vampires: We’ll get to the killing in a moment, but let’s cast a broader net and look at the most famous Vampire weaknesses.  Anything vaguely religious seems effective–crosses, holy water and the like (Ankhs might do if you’re one of those people)–and of course Vamps hold a famous grudge against garlic.  Note that none of these items are particularly difficult to come by, especially for lowly villagers.  To wit, religious artifacts, after food, clothing and some sort of adorable thatch-roofed hut, were among the only possessions you’d expect a poor person to have during the last ~2000 years or so.  Likewise with the garlic; one doesn’t even have to roast it to be effective, though I thoroughly advise it.  It’s delicious.

That said, if it’s time stop warding-off and lay the ole’ hammer down, there are many perfectly reasonable ways to kill a vampire.  Sadly, the most easily attainable of these–sunlight–is pretty difficult to implement.  In films, it’s most often used against waking Vamps who are lured against their will into it.  This requires tricking the Vampire, not a trivial task (see above under “Cognitive Capabilities.”).  In theory, one could always cart a sleeping vampire out into the open with some sort of dolly system, but then, if you had access to a sleeping Vampire, you’d be able to end it right then and there.  The preferred implement, of course, is a wooden stake, applied through the heart.  Like garlic or crosses, not that hard to come by; if you’re a farming peasant, you probably have some on hand already, but in a pinch you could whittle one yourself for free.  If you’re feeling luxuriant, here’s a 25-pack for ~$8.53 US (not including shipping and handling).

Werewolves: Unlike their Vampiric brethren, the Wolves don’t give a dime about your God or his/her desires.  Wood’s cool with them; they’ve often seen smashing through or inhabiting in it.  No, other than heart worms, the only thing a Werewolf’s known to dislike is silver, not the sort of thing that a peasant can easily acquire. In fact, the preferred method of killing a WolfMan is gunshot with silver ammo, requiring not only access to silver, but a silver smithy, ownership of a gun, and the 5-7 day waiting period that entails.  Even if we assume that the “gun show” loophole in most state laws allows you to purchase a 0.40 Smith & Wesson from a meth addict in an alley somewhere, there’s still the issue of ammo.

I personally know nothing about guns, but this guy recommends using 140 grain (~0.32 ounces) bullets with the above gun, though he’s calibrating on copper shot, not silver.  As of the time of this writing, silver stands at ~$16.35 US/Oz, meaning that each bullet will set you back a whopping$5.23 (!) After taxes, that’s roughly an hour’s work at minimum wage, hence the sort of weapon more commonly wielded by the gentry class.

Incidentally, the price of silver seems to be dropping, so monitor your investments accordingly.

Are Gypsies a Knowledgable Resource?

Vampires: Yep, Gypsies work for them.

Werewolves: Yep, Gypsies hunt them.

Life is hard when even Gypsies see you as a pest.

So, if we take all these aspects together, what does the Vampire/Werewolf dichotomy represent?  Follow me…

From the 40’s onward, the single largest group of pop-culture consumers have been the Middle Class.  From their vantage point, what do the Vampire and Werewolf forms mean?

***

What does it mean to be a Vampire?

Vampirisim is an allegory for the wealthy elite.  Vampires form a class of beings whose access to power–both in the conventional and the occult sense–is nearly limitless.  They are not brute beasts who ravage the lands they inhabit in bursts of unchecked rage.  Rather, they manipulate, they seduce their victims through their personal magnetism, and the illusion that the victim might, through association, have access to their nearly limitless power.

Vampires  inhabit an unimaginably insular society,the ultimate ruling class.  While entrance into this coven grants the Vampire access to unparalleled power, it requires an enormous personal sacrifice: the literal loss of the entrant’s soul, his/her humanity.  In the process of death and un-death, the Vampire rids himself of the personal connections he bore before, as the exclusivity of Vampire society, and the nature of the predator-prey relationship, precludes close ties with humans.  Likewise, the Vampire becomes disconnected from the natural world, from the earth.  Food no longer sustains him; sunlight literally kills him, and hence day-to-day activities must be exacted through servants, slaves and other intermediaries.  Indeed, while little is unavailable to the Vampire, and while he must do little to acquire it, the process of acquisition takes the form of an employer-employee relationship.

Hence, no longer able to function amongst the general populace, the cloistered Vampire pulls the strings of his underlings, drawing victims in through the oblique promise of power, and draining them of their life-force so as to further his immortal life.  He is a leech on society.

Of course, from the aesthetic sense, the metaphor fits quite nicely: Vamps take the guise of aristocrats, hanging out in luxuriant castles and donning opulent clothing.  But the correlation doesn’t end there.  Vampires hate garlic, a simple food pulled from dirt and eaten raw, a symbol of the plebeian life.  They fear the church–the eternal crutch of the working classes–which makes sense both diagetically and metaphorically.  After all, post 19th century, Big Business had surpassed the Church in wealth and power, and sees it more as a threat than an ally.  Vampires (like Wall Street analysts) victimize through an intellectual game, their victims both fear and envy their power, and would just as soon join the beasts’ society as they would kill it off.  Hence, the act of killing a Vampire becomes a game of wits as much as it is a hunt.  And the simple, peasant’s implements with which one kills the vampire clearly denote who his natural enemy is.

But of course, the Vampire–and his society–is immortal.  Time, time and again you think you’ve killed them off, only later to find they’ve come back even stronger.

What does it mean to be a Werewolf?

As revealed by the structural assessment, Werewolves diametrically oppose Vampires almost perfectly.  Accordingly, they represent the peasant class, the irretrievably destitute.  Recall, Vampire movies tend to use a normal human (i.e.-Middle Class) protagonist, thus the film follows seemingly powerless people as they band together to stop a seemingly insurmountable foe.

Werewolf movies are different.  Sure, there’s plenty of people-banding going on, but the monster here is a normal person who’s become afflicted with an illness–he himself is often the primary protagonist, if not a secondary one.  In this way they’re similar to the “Accident of Science” horror movies of the 50’s and 60’s, but WerePeople rarely bring their affliction upon themselves; they’re not being punished for playing god. In the most assuring cases (for the audience, at least), they’re being punished for trying to feel someone up at Makeout Point.  In the most unsettling cases, they’re being punished at random.

And what is the nature of their punishment?  Essentially, a mindless return to agrarianism.  Unlike Vampires, the Werewolf maintains a living organism in the scientific sense.  He’s not undead, in fact the amplification of his animal nature makes him more alive.  Becoming a Vampire is a willful process which keeps the will, but not the soul, intact, whereas becoming a Werewolf is an mindless act which strips you of your mind, but frees your body into a grotesquely feral state.  You’ve lost your humanity, but you’ve regained a deep connection to nature.

In the context of economic metaphor, becoming a Vampire imbues a Middle Class citizen with the god-like powers of the ruling Gentry, all in exchange for shirking off human ties with the lower-class brethren.   This is what we now commonly call “climbing the corporate ladder.” Inversely, while becoming a Werewolf imbues a Middle Class citizen with a fierce self-determination, physical robustness and a feral connection to the earth, it concomitantly severs his ties with society.  In our modern culture, we call this “farming.”

Of course, just as the Vampires’ natural foe are the stake-wielding Peasantry, Werewolves’ most obvious enemies are the upper classes, the kind who can afford to blow $5.23 per gunshot.  It’s quite intentional, too, that Werewolvism takes its victims by happenstance: a sudden drop from the Middle Class into poverty would have deeply resonated with those who experienced the Great Depression first hand.  And as we all have been recently reminded, poverty can strike nearly anyone, at any time.

***

SO, taking this all into consideration, one must wonder: why are the Vampires of late such pussies?

WHY MODERN VAMPIRES ARE SUCH PUSSIES.

Again, it’s best to tackle this issue from the vantage point of the Middle Class’ collective unconscious.

America is indeed a deeply religious country, and the most popular of its many faiths is called Consumerism.  Most of us derive a sizable portion of our happiness, and connect with the world around us, from the consumption of goods, the anticipated consumption of goods, or by watching those bizarre “haul” videos that are so popular on the YouTubes.  Even the Evangelicals, the most outwardly pious of us, have simply adorned  their old Gods with Christian labels, and continue to worship consumerism Voodoo-style.  That’s why MegaChurches have gift shops, or, like, exist at all.  And, as far as I can tell, is the only possible explanation for this insanity.

Now, every religion has an angelic class, the beings that epitomize the faith’s central themes, and shine as glorious examples over lowly mankind.  In the faith of consumerism, angles are those people who can consume infinitely – hence, the rich.

So, it makes sense that, during the majority of the 20th century, the classic Vampire form remained essentially unchanged, and the Werewolf remained scary.  As the Middle Class grew, following the omnipresent (but infuriatingly unattainable) American Dream, their combined idolatry and resentment toward the angelic Upper Class remained a common characteristic.  This is encapsulated in the Vampire form–the indefatigable, aristocratic social leech.  Likewise, most of these people, their parents or grandparents understood the harsh consequences of the economy’s cyclic nature.  They’d survived a Depression, after all, and knew that anyone can be quickly dragged down from the comfort of the Middle Class to a “less civilized” status.  The Werewolf remained a Lupine reminder of economic stature’s fragile nature.

All of this gets completely rewritten in the early 1990s.  First, the major communist powers fell under the force of Capitalist competition.  Russia famously deflated, and ‘Communist’ China developed into a country with one of the world’s most formidable banking industries, a strong currency and heavy trading with the West.  Communism was supposed to be the ultimate workers’ revolt, the rise of the oppressed, unwashed (let’s say, Werewolf) masses to permanently usurp the entrenched power of the ruling aristocracy (… of Vampires). Russian propaganda was even festooned in populist, agrarian imagery, playing right into the metaphor.

And yet, it turns out that Vampires are hard to kill.

At the same time, a second trend was developing in the West.  Prior to 2007, Americans were enjoying a famously over-inflated access to wealth, both real and virtual.  With the unprecedented availability of cheap credit, almost anyone could buy the American Dream on margin: if we hadn’t worked ourselves into the angelic class through the sweat of our own brows per se, we could still attain their trappings.   We were tourists in the upper class.

As Americans used cheap credit to approximate membership in the Aristocracy, two things had to change about the consumer religion and its accompanying Vampire metaphor.  First, we no longer needed to worship the rich, seeing as–as far as we knew–we ourselves were rich.  Of course, we weren’t happy to just call it “mission accomplished” and settle down, but more on that in a moment.  Second, as the average American began less and less to resent the Aristocracy, and more and more to identify with him, those classic, cartoonishly urbane characteristics of the Vampire needed to go.  Even after attaining wealth, we’d realized we were still feeling, emotional beings, and so our Vampires made a parallel development.  Look at Buffy’s “Angel” and “Spike” characters in early seasons: other than being told that one has a soul while the other lacks it, what distinguishes these two characters from two normal humans, one nice and one an immoral prick?

In order to remain a cultural touchstone, Vampires needed to jettison outdated elements and adopt a more modern sensibility; they needed to remain a symbol of what was deeply desired, though deeply resented.  No more old white guys.  No more old people at all, actually.  Likewise, gone are the hooded tuxes, gold amulets and stone castles.  Say goodbye to the glowering, manipulative mastermind Vampire, the unfettered ruler of his dark domain.  In his stead, we got a character who embodies the West’s new unrequited longing: the true power wielded by the truly wealthy.  Yes, if our credit-frenzy had been a genuine class ascension, with our new-found wealth would have come new-found control.  And yet, infuriatingly, it was the same group of people calling the shots for society as it had always been.  The truly wealthy didn’t need to show it (as the faux-wealthy so often did), hence the Vamps’ caped tux is supplanted with those shiny stripey shirts I can’t afford.  The truly wealthy can afford a level of personal care few would dream of; they are, quite literally, better-looking that we are.  And of course, with the instinctive sense of entitlement that comes with owning the world comes a cool detachment in dealing with it.  Vampires are cool.  They’re young, sexy, every bit as controlling and powerful as before, but show it less.

What about Werewolves?  The very concept that we could lose our wealth was, prior to the housing market’s collapse, complete absurdity.   Moreover, as Middle Class society was already becoming progressively detached and anonymous, the fear of being expelled from it held little weight.  The werewolf became an archetype without a socially valid metaphor: his Great Workers’ Revolutions were failures, and the symbol of ever-present economic collapse was laughable.  This was not the beast of your undoing, he was the poor shlub who missed the Everybody-Gets-Rich boat.  He’s a pitiable, sympathetic character, not an object of fear.  If you watch Underworld: Rise of the Lycans–and I thoroughly advise that you don’t–you’ll see what I mean.

I suspect the next few years will be a fascinating case study in how these archetypes further develop.  Since the economy’s down the pipes, and the gulf between real and imagined wealth has been thrown into stark contrast, it’s tempting to say that life will simply return to its pre-90s state.  Perhaps it’s no accident that this is happening in the current economic climate.  But I wonder if we can really go back, having tasted the life we longed for.  Maybe we’re no longer a society ruled by our yearnings for the unattainable and fears of the inevitable.  Perhaps we’ve become a society that feels entitled to regain what it’s lost, one which held indescribable wealth in its hands and watched it turn to dust.  Now, all we wish is to rise from the dead, take back what is ours, and with it the true power it’s embodies.

Essentially, I’m predicting another spate of Mummy movies.  Brendan Fraser, it’s GO TIME.