I just got through watching a YouTube video in which a young guy called DarkDreymer protests to werewolves being used as objects of hetero lust in movies like New Moon, as he believes and states — literally and very loudly — that lycanthropy is gay. Of course, he didn’t mean gay in the childish, generic-insult kind of way. He meant gay in the fabulous, “Carson Kressley” kind of way. He mentions in his videos that he himself is gay, but you’d have to be headless not to know. Seriously, watch his videos. The gayness of this kid will slow your connection, that’s how frickin’ fierce he is. I had to give him five stars for sheer awesome.

But lets move on to the next point: Werewolves = Gay?

Like vampires, werewolves have been used as segregation metaphors for years. For teens, for homosexuals, even for the disabled (Remus Lupin). I even read a comedic rant commenting on lycanthropic symptoms/abilities of the protagonist of Teen Wolf all being racist stereotypes (he’s cooler, great at basketball and break-dancing, he high-fives people a lot, etc.). But the main ingredient that makes lycanthropy work best as a metaphor for homosexuality is fear. It’s not just “My body is changing and I feel unsure”. It’s, “Everyone thinks my kind are dangerous abominations, and if they knew the truth about me, I’d be lynched.”

Unlike MJF in Teen Wolf, who uses his “freak” status to gain an unfair advantage over his classmates, become famous and sell t-shirts, (Come on, it was the 80s!) other fictional werewolves have spent there numbered days persecuted and emotionally tormented. Many people read Remus Lupin as a gay character, even the actor who played him in the movies. He tries to keep his otherness a secret, especially while teaching at Hogwarts, but word gets around after someone totally narcs him out to the public (let’s just say a bitter little Potions-teaching snitch told them), and Lupin gives notice, knowing the parents of the students won’t want someone like him teaching their kids.

It’s lamp-shaded outright in the second season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, a show that seems to compare everything supernatural with being gay, and does it so well that you start to wonder if they aren’t really the same thing. In “Phases”, the scoobies are on the lookout for a werewolf who might be a student. Larry, a jock who’s been bullying Xander and making aggressive advances at female classmates all year, had recently been bragging on a nasty dog bite. Xander — who was possessed by a hyena spirit in season one and, based on that experience, assumes Larry is the wolf — decides to go “force a confession out of him” and gets it, but not the one he was looking for. Apparently, if you confront someone with their lycanthropy but never actually say the word “werewolf”, it sounds suggestive:

I know your secret – what you’ve been doing at night. People are going to find out. I know what you’re going through because I’ve been there, and that’s why I know you should talk about it.

You can’t help but feel for Larry. It’s actually understandable to think that someone, no matter how well-meaning, would be chased out of town or worse for being outed as a werewolf, but the idea of someone being treated the same way for coming out of the closet is just criminal. But that’s exactly what happens. Larry had as much reason to hide as Oz.

One of the series touched on by the YouTube video was one of my favorite shows in the late 90s. A Canadian comedy series that was basically an affectionate parody of everything vaguely supernatural you’ve ever seen called Big Wolf On Campus. DarkDreymer describes the gay subtext of the show as though it isn’t subtext, as much as text played down in a kids show to keep it from getting too racy! *lol* Love that stuff. Of course, it wasn’t really the big intentional metaphor of the show, as DarkDreymer seemed to be suggesting, but it did look that way and the writers were hip to it from the beginning:

Tommy, a high school senior, goes on a camping trip with the guys, has a strange experience and comes back different. He tells no one, but tries to go back to his normal life. This doesn’t work. He starts blowing off his football buddies and ditching the hottest girl in school, so that he can have hushed conversations and secret meetings with his brand new best friend, Merton, an eccentric loner far removed from his social circle (with whom Tommy seems to share no common interests or past experience) who wears silk and velvet, and regularly gets antagonized by half-wit bullies.

It doesn’t take a genius to connect the dots. Even in the early first season, before they could’ve gotten any fan feedback, there were Tommy/Merton jokes all over that show. A few of these jokes equated Tommy turning into a werewolf to him getting aroused. One of them started with Lori, anxious to “see it,” as in, see Tommy wolf-out, asks “what gets it done,” and Tommy tells her he has to get worked up first; exited. “Merton knows how to do it.”

Maybe someday there’ll be a show or a film that literally comes out with the lycanthropic homosexuality, making it the metaphor from the beginning and owning up to it ’til the end, but until that day comes, we’ll have to settle for New Moon as the Gayest Werewolf Movie Ever.

You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.