The Curse of the Wer.. - Site de Thomas - Free

I USED TO BE A WEREWOLF
the Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man script synthesized the concept of
the inevitable monthly transformation with the lunar cycle. Since then,
the full moon transformation theme has become such an entrenched
feature of the werewolf subgenre that the soundtrack for the 1981 film
An American Werewolf in London made humorous use of songs about
the moon, including ‘Blue Moon’ for the opening sequence and ‘Bad
Moon Rising’ prior to the transformation scene.
The Wolf Man cycle of films also consolidated the werewolf of the
cinema as psychologized and masculine. The explicitly gendered title
of the werewolf in this series is only the most obvious signifier of a
pervasive concern with masculine subjectivity in crisis, and Chaney’s
anguished dramatization of the Wolf Man’s character was a definitive
performance of masculine struggle with the ‘beast within’. The film
also explored the consequences of a failure to ‘discipline’ the ‘beast
within’ for male power and identity. The reconciliation of Larry Talbot
and his father after a long period of separation at the beginning of the
film has occurred due to the death of Larry’s older brother, an event
that has bestowed upon the younger son the heirdom of white male
authority. At the outset of the film, Larry’s right to this inheritance is
unquestioned, as he takes command of his surroundings and pursues
the town beauty. Yet, after Larry is bitten by a werewolf and the curse
takes hold, the very agencies of patriarchal power that had propped
up his claim to the inheritance are now pitted against Larry: through
his father’s unwillingness to accept his son’s assertion that he has
become a werewolf, his doctor’s insistence that the problem is all in
his mind, the church’s rejection of him, the ineffectual investigations
of the police, and finally, in the conclusion of the film, when Larry’s
father kills the wolf, only to discover that he has killed his son. Larry’s
alienation from the world of his father is articulated in a phrase he
repeats so often it acts as a kind of refrain in The Wolf Man and its
sequels: ‘You don’t understand.’
In modernity, the assumption of power is often narratively represented
as a problematic transition that is nevertheless central to
masculinity, and dramatized as a ‘crisis of succession’. 41 The origins of
this pattern can be found in the Enlightenment, with its questioning
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