A Geek History of Time - Episode 314 - White Wolf Part III The Epoch Elipse

Episode Date: May 2, 2025

See, people when they click on this, they'll see the title, so they'll be like, poor Ed. What does that even fucking mean? However, because it's England, that's largely ignored and unstudied. I really wished for the sake of my sense of moral righteousness that I could get away with saying no. He had a goddamn ancestral home and a noble title until Germany became a republic. You know, none of this highfalutin, you know, critical role stuff. So they chewed through my favorite shit.

No, I'm not helping them. I'm going to say that you're getting into another kind of, you know, Mediterranean, or psyche archetype kind of thing. Makes sense. Also trade winds are a thing. Ha ha, just serious. Like, no, he really has a mad on him. Yeah, we'll go upon a tangent. As we keep doing.

Like, yeah, this is how we fill time. This is a Geek History of Time. Where we connect nerdery to the real world. My name is Ed Blaylock. I'm a world history teacher here in Northern, California and Earlier this evening My wife and son and I finished watching the princess bride which My son had seen before But the last time he saw it was before the age three threshold where like, you know, memories are erased

As as the brain develops and so he had like no memory of it at all and I mean, it's it's a beloved classic movie for for a reason. It's Possibly my wife's favorite movie ever Uh, it's it's right up there for me it contains ever. It's right up there for me. It contains what I think is certainly the most entertaining sword fight in cinema history. And so yeah, we're watching the movie and we keep, you know, Robert keeps asking, is it gonna be okay kiddo? We've told you it has a happy ending. Don't don't worry about it. Watch the movie, you know

and the problem with us telling him that is We couldn't stop quoting the movie before the movie said what the movie was gonna say Like the number of times I had to look at my wife like really babe. Come on marriage um I'm not a witch I'm your wife she like there was no controlling her when Madeline Khan showed up on screen she just talked along with the whole movie

it's like our family's rocky whore picture show like you know and I have to confess hello my name is Enigo Montoya you killed my father prepared to die Yeah, I couldn't not say that along with Mandy Patinkin. So Yeah, and he he loved it I know there are there are levels of it. He doesn't get yet at age 7 But yeah, so it was it was wonderful. So that was that was what I had happen today. How about you, sir?

Well, I'm Damian Harmony. I am a US history teacher up here in Northern, California at the high school level and today another cinematic first in this in this household. I Invited my daughter to watch The Hobbit with me Bass Rankin Hobbit with me. Bass Rankin, Hobbit. Ah, yes. So. The one that warped my imagination

into a particular mold at a very young age, yes. Yeah, and I had to explain to her, and I felt like the grandfather in Princess Bride. You know, you see, she doesn't get eaten by the eagles. Eagles, at this time. Yeah, you look very, she doesn't get eaten by the eagles. Eagles at this time. Yeah. You look very nervous, right? You look very worried.

So, you know, I was like, you have to understand, Julia, that there was no conception of what a hobbit actually looked like yet. This said it. Or an orc. Or an elf. Yeah. Or a wood elf. Yeah. And she's just like laughing her ass off at how dumb everything looked. And rightly so. And I told her, I said, keep in mind,

D and D had just been invented maybe three years earlier before this film got released. I'm trying to remember if it was 78, 77 or 70. The film was released in 77. 77 Yeah, three. Yeah, here's yeah I was like these are things to keep in mind when you're laughing at how ridiculous it is There was no codifier yet. Yeah, have you have you? Had the chance to show her the illustrations from the a D&D first edition I bought her art in Arcana years ago. And she's gone through that and she's like, what did the beholder used to look like?

Oh my God, you know, she's like looking at it. And so I was like. So take a look at the races, like point out to her, look at the races. Oh I did, I didn't have to. Like she got it, she's like, oh okay. I was like, yeah, this set the tone for a lot of that. And she's like, but why do the goblins have two throats?

I'm like, that is a good question My bigger question is why are they singing to a disco tune? Because there is a seven were weird down down down to Goblin Town. It Absolutely was disco. Oh So so she enjoyed it totally lit. Yeah, um at one point she was like Were the Eagles an army? I was like, no, I don't remember that either and then Yeah, they they cut, you know, they cut the the Billy Connelly character out of it entirely

Well, yeah, so it was it was it was a lot of fun. Um, yeah, we really enjoyed that very cool. Yeah, so it was it was it was a lot of fun. Yeah, we really enjoyed that very cool. Yeah, so cool All right, so so what do you got for us tonight? Well? Last time mm-hmm. I was talking about I started talking about the world of darkness the the universe created by white wolf games right for a whole series of RPGs. And the debut game for that was Vampire the Masquerade. That was 1991. And kind of talked about what that game was and kind of where it fit in the zeitgeist at the time. And so now we're going to carry on and on and I'm gonna talk about werewolf. Okay, and

Just like I did last time. I want to talk a little bit about werewolves and So werewolves as we recognize them today are a lot older than vampires They are they know the the you mentioned last time there's a werewolf story in the satiricon Yes in about 60 ad yes, but even before the Romans wolf men Had been loping through the European imagination for millennia nice verb. Thank you and so There's this there's this very very Primal thing going on with with werewolves and the idea of the werewolf. And one theory is that there is a link between myths of the werewolf and proto-indo-European mythology and the belief that there was

a very very early stage of the development of like the Ur culture and I don't mean the city of Ur, I mean metaphorical sense. I was like Enkidu. Yeah, hi how you doing? Yeah, wild man. Yeah, but there is this understanding of there having been a wolf or dog cult associated with young unmarried warriors. That particular caste of society. Sure, I mean there were dog soldiers amongst certain tribes in the northeast of the American continent. Yes. So, and. It's a widespread kind of thing.

Yeah, there's berserkers. Wherever there are wolves, I'm gonna get to that. Sure. And so, there's the theory, belief, that there, because we know from later cultures, that there were lycanthropic-themed kind of initiation rituals where the spirit of the wolf would come upon a warrior and there would be a transformation involved.

And this idea coming from that, the shadow of that, then carries forward in in the subconscious in the collective psyche. Now I'm going to float this idea as well and not mine. Obviously I don't do my own stuff. I'm not original. I'm an historian. No, but so we were talking about PIE, Proto Indo-European Yeah, PIE cultures and and stuff like that. Is there a possibility that The werewolf being usually larger hairier more ferocious less reasonable, etc especially in battle is not some sort of also like an explanation mythologically and culturally and whatnot

of cohabitating in the same space as Neanderthals. Oh, it's entirely possible. I would, I, yeah, like I didn't, I didn't find anything mentioned of that, but that's, you know, that was the first place I went was like, cause it's same thing with like the uncanny valley for us. Yeah. Yeah. Right.

Well, you beat me to it. I was going to say, like, why is it? Why is it that we as a species, like everywhere have these things, you know, like watch out for the red head. It's, you're aging out of being worried about that. As my daughter continues to remind me. But yeah, you know, be wary of, you know, count the teeth, count the... Right. You know, if they smile too wide, if they, you know, if they look like us but not, you

know, if they're wrong. They're like us but they're not like us. Yeah. And there has been, I mean, literally redheads are evidence of it, but like there has been evidence of like cross pollination as it were. Well, you and I, as we're bread, the mouth descended Americans. Yeah. Uh, we, we carry, um, I'm trying to remember, you know, one or 2%, it's a small percentage, but like, no, no, we, we, we carry Neanderthal DNA.

Yeah. Um, the joke that friend of the show, Sean always made made was like in the case of his family. It's like 15% But you know, but in my family it's actually possible because like we have medical record of me being macrocephalic We have like there's talk of the redhead gene despite it actually originating in Central Asia What we now call Afghanistan, that that is still so old that it could have been from that. So it's not, you know, these, these Germanic brutes, hulking up where it's, you know, cold. That's why the redheads, it's like, no, no, no, it's much further toward, toward Central Asia, toward the step, which has its own reasoning, you know, whole, whole bunch of stuff associated with that whole yeah thing. Yeah, so okay. So werewolves are so essentially redheads got it

Not not exactly Carried me but I mean I can't argue against it. Yeah. Yeah, so I mean you have seen my teeth like they're yeah Yeah, yeah, so I mean you have seen my teeth like they're yeah exceptionally sharp canine. Yeah Yeah, it's weird, you know, yeah speaking of uncanny, you know, you're starting to make me question some things here, man I don't know about you. I do like that. I'm the guy who teaches Latin or taught Latin I mean, I still teach it to my kids Yeah I the one who is descendant of the ones that they built a wall to keep out to keep out and teaching their language I don't know who that means one

like a really that's a really meaningful question like meaningful, but not not important. Yes, which is our stock and trade pretty much. Yeah, we do here. Yeah So we have in In the Iliad We have Dolan Warrior allied with the Trojans. He wasn't a Trojan. He was a member of an allied tribe But he was said to have worn a wolf pelt Mm-hmm in order to sneak through the bushes and try to spy on the Greeks

And that ended badly for him and try to spy on the Greeks and that ended badly for him. You know but we have that example which again call back to the wolf cult kind of idea. Herodotus who I just love so much reported a story that the Neury, I don't know if that's the way to say it or if it's No'uri or something, but any URI, Ne'uri, a tribe that lived north of the Scythians all turned into wolves for a week every year. Like it has been reported in the way he does things, and it has been reported that according to this person in the, you know, so and so, you know, a Scythian said that their neighbors, the Nauri, you know, did this thing. There is a champion Olympian boxer named Damarcus, who was said to have turned into a wolf for 10 years before his Olympic victory. So he and his story is tied to the story of Lycaon, interesting name in the context, who was a mythical king. Yes.

Who Zeus transformed into a wolf for committing human sacrifice. Yeah, um, the story was that demarcus had somehow Like been a party to that feast or you know had somehow, you know tasted the the the flesh of the human sacrifice or whatever And the curse had carried on to him He had transformed into a wolf for 10 years and he had not Uh, he had not eaten man flesh in that time. And so he was able to turn back into a human, which, which is a theme that recurs. There are these legends of,

men transforming and going off into the wilderness. And if they were able to not eat or kill and devour men, then they would turn back into men. They would reclaim their humanity at the end of this period of time. Demarcus is a named example of this, but this is a story that comes up in a couple of other places. Oh wow.

You are absolutely just like forcing my hand at like, okay, I do have to do an analysis of being human. Because which might be my like my magnum opus swan song all rolled into one because it's going to be depressing as fuck but like You're talking about a culture of abstinence of Monsterhood that then allows them to regain their humanity, which is like Yeah, right right there. Yeah, unless they went to like an aquarium to steal an algae covered sea cow There's no better regaining of a humanity.

Yeah, pretty much. So yeah, don't eat human flesh, abstain. Yeah. Yeah. And you can. Yeah. If you essentially there's there's this there's this idea of if you succeed in not surrendering wholly to the beast, right? You're able to return to humanity and There are there so many more stories, but the idea of men transforming into wolves

Mm-hmm, either via a curse or some other mechanism Mm-hmm was a firmly entrenched part of the European subconscious long before the Middle Ages And now and this is across the continent this is okay that's it was my next question We're talking all the way as far as Lisbon all the way as far as Dalmatia Yes, the surrounding the whole lake that was the Mediterranean all the way up to Yeah, Scagger acts, cool. Yeah. Yeah and by the middle ages belief in lycanthropy was like I just said it was widespread.

Werewolf hunts occurred on the fringes of witch hunts throughout the medieval period. When you have a witch hunt, when there is witch hysteria out on the fringes of it, there also winds up cropping up, not every time, but you know, it's a noticeable thing that you also have periods of werewolf hysteria. And the legal code of King Knute of England from the very early 11th century, so pre this is really really pretty pretty vision Specifically calls out werewolves attacking the faithful Like as a as a this is something we are going to work to prevent like in the city city or is this? This is anywhere. Um, you know, I mean by, by this time and at this time, you know, really, uh, there were towns in England,

but the only real urban center that we would, that we would look at and go, yeah, okay, I can see that's a city was, you know, London, but there were there were towns You realize that there's a law about werewolves of London Yeah Okay, so be on the lookout for a man whose hair is perfect. Yes. Um yes and Yeah In your colada. Yeah. yeah, yeah, yeah now this

One of my favorite songs yes, oh yeah like all time absolutely yeah This canute is this the the the Viking king who's like a king of multiple spots Including this is this is a Saxon. This is Knut Cneed and you take note okay is Knut. Knut. C-N-U-T Knut. Okay. Not Knut. Okay. Old English is weird. Yes.

So, yeah, at the same time as Knut has this code that he's saying we need to protect the faithful from werewolves, ecclesiastical writers are strenuously denouncing the idea of belief in werewolves. If I was them, okay, I would have been like, of course, I'm always looking to do the grift, but instead of like being a useful idiot to a grifter. But if I was them, I would be like, exactly, that's who David slew. That's what a Goliath is. This is just a different version of that. OK, yeah.

Yeah, yeah. You know, I would have absolutely folded it. Oh, totally figured out a way to, yeah. Right. No, what they did, and this gives you an idea into kind of the not quite high medieval, early medieval ecclesiastical mind within Christianity. Their argument wasn't, of course, any kind of scientific or rational reason. It wasn't like, this is ridiculous.

You're a human. You can't turn into a wolf. That doesn't happen. That's not a thing, right? It's not. It's not that. So 1950s school counselor talking to a girl who wants to like play the tuba yeah right yeah you don't do

that you should take shorthand yeah yeah okay you're you're you're your boys play the tuba girls play the flute now yeah I can get you into you know a home ec class yeah but yeah because we need to make sure right that certain internal organs aren't forced out of your body by the pressure involved of having to blown a tuba you don't get bass clef. Okay, okay That's just doesn't boys. Yeah, my vibrations are gonna be bad for all kinds of stuff It's gonna jiggle your womb and you will be infertile and what value will you have? Yeah, and by the way, you can't you can't do cross-country because we're afraid of your uterus literally falling out of your body. Oh Okay, that is deeply specific and I want to know where you got that from

Is this something your mom reported she had to deal with? No, no the when when women started Trying to participate in marathons Doctors insisted that you know running for that long could you know cause the uterus to fall out? Yeah, yeah, we're talking that's the 70s wasn't it like the 60s 60s because I was like, okay If your mom heard this in her PE class, I'd be like, okay a little late in the game for them to be that regressive But okay, but no

Wow, okay. So it was a thing. Yeah, this is why they're attacking women trying to run got it Yeah, and and and we're getting off the subject, but it's funny Yes, we are deeply depressing like oh my god We've always been this bad kind of way We've been stupid for a long time long way longer than we thought Yeah And so but but the reason ecclesiastical writers were so up in arms about oh my god. No, this is not a thing Is because only God?

Can affect the transformation of one species into another? This this is this is something that can only be achieved Through miraculous action by God not by any other power. Did they have any examples that were biblical of God? Transforming people I know there's transmutation But that's yeah the same thing. There's there's bringing back to life. That's not the same thing. So was there anything in there where? I didn't research any of the details of this particular ecclesiastical weirdness. Okay. But it was, it was, they, they saw it as an affront to the power of God.

Okay. That like, no, no, you, you need to remember this is, this is something only God can do. You're, you're ascribing, um, deific power to forces that are not him. Okay. And that was, and that was, that was the problem. Okay. Cool. Okay.

So, uh, we have werewolves appearing in the Welsh Mabinogian and there's a whole whole subgenre of Breton French folktales That that involves werewolves and I find it notable that one author Marie de France relates that gar wolves Mm-hmm are common in Normandy, which by this time is a territory that had been settled by Norsemen. Right. Who had then gone mostly native. There's an interesting-

Drop the S. Yeah. Another name just became Norman. Yeah. Yeah. And I find that statement, that kind of- Yeah. Yeah. And, and I find that, um, that statement, that kind of, yeah, it's like, cause, cause there's a couple of things that are going on there.

Like, uh, number one, there are all kinds of Nordic, you know, uh, berserker wolf stories and ideas that, that could be a thing in the folklore of that region because of where the Normans had come from and The norm the the Norsemen Right had of course had this bestial violent terrifying reputation And the idea that you know, these are them only kind of semi tamed Sure as as a well, you know Obviously, there's gonna be a lot of werewolves there as an assumption from somebody who's an outsider You know a Breton or whatever else right, you know, there's there's kind of kind of multiple ways that this that this idea

Could have come about And I just find that that kind of like, well, you know, in that region, they got a lot of them, right? Is just an intro. Like as I was researching this, it was like, you know, that's, that's interesting. I'm wondering also if there's some sort of like, Jesus Christ, that's a huge dog kind of thing going on, like, there's wolfhounds, right? There's like, again, you get closer to the Mediterranean, you have like Malosian hounds and stuff like that,

but like they're constantly talking about how like the North based dogs are fucking huge and they start breeding them to hunt wolves, wolfhounds, right? To protect them from the wild wolves. So I wonder if there's also just something going on like oh, we thought our hounds were big What the hell is that like you know fuck man? Yeah, we have to duck the turds like Yeah So I'm sorry I'm remembering yeah, George Carlin talking about you know you got to get a big dog yeah turd ducking dog turd ducking dog. Yeah, I

Guarantee you that's where I got it from. Okay now that you say his name. I'm like, I yeah Yeah And in the same routine he talks about, you know feeding his dogs rubber bands So right, you know all he has to do is pick him up and fling him over his neighbors fence. Yeah You know all he has to do is pick him up and fling him over his neighbor's fence. Yep So in in Norse sources it is claimed that Harold the first of Norway mm-hmm Had a bodyguard of old Fednar There's something about just the feeling yeah worse words like yeah, we'll have Fednar Warrior warriors similar to berserkers who took

on wolf spirits in battle rather than bears because okay berserker bears arc right you know bear bear shirt yeah but these these took on wolf spirits and fought in a savage frenzy and there's there's a split around the 11th century around this time that I'm talking about with Knute. Mm-hmm There's an interesting split in the lore between Germanic werewolf traditions which extend from You know modern-day Germany into you know, the Nordic countries and and into England

Mm-hmm and the Slavic werewolf tradition. Okay, so like with the Rhine being a dividing line or are we talking like the Don River maybe cutting it across? Yeah, as much as we can look at a geographic point, but yeah, essentially look at the linguistic map and kind of that's where that's looking at. Right.

And Slavic werewolves come to be associated over time with vampires and carry similar overtones in their stories. Okay. Yeah. While Germanic werewolves, especially in German, what is today Germany, trend toward witchcraft narratives and become entangled. As I mentioned earlier in witch hunt hyster Germany, trend toward witchcraft narratives and become entangled, as I mentioned earlier, in witch hunt hysteria. Right. And so we see, you know, different things happening in the legends of like how this happens

and what, how to deal with them and all these kinds of things. So in the Slavic tradition, you know, werewolves carry more of the, there's a bit more of a, I don't want to say more bestial, but a bit more of the monstrous. Their changing is something more closely tied to the phases of the moon. OK. And, you know, there's a lot more kind of focus on that side of things. In the Germanic tradition, we keep hearing stories about people, you know, wearing wolf skins and engaging in rituals in order to turn into werewolves.

I mean, again, to go back to the stuff that I do know about, Roman ensigns, which that wasn't the word, they were a quill affair. They're basically the Bannermen, very often would wear a wolf pelt or some sort of creatures pelt as they're walking through, which had multiple functions, obviously, but part of it was to embody that fighting spirit. Yeah, well and Roman legend of the twins having been raised by a she wolf. Yeah, also you have the Lupercal. Oh right. Yeah, which is Valentine's Day.

Lupercalia yeah But it all comes down to fertility shit. It's all about fucking like wow yeah most of that That's again. I don't know if I've talked about that on this podcast And if I have it was probably very recent World War one holds a fascination in my head The end of World War one holds a fascination in my head the end of World War one, especially does There is audio of when the guns fall silent Yeah, and it's amazing. But my favorite part of it is about 10 seconds after the guns fall silent birds are chirping Now birds chirp for one of like three reasons get the fuck away from me. Yeah

I Found food. Yeah, or what a fuck yeah And I really like the idea of like Ten seconds after the yeah four years of just these humans are destroying everything and then ten seconds later What you doing? How you doing you up you? It feels I mean they're literally tweeting um but But like they're instant messaging each other like yeah you up like

So babe yeah, how's it going long time no see I just I love I love that we have an audio record of life The violence after the madness immediately get horny. Yes instantly. Yes. Well, you know those those drives need to you know It literally is I I also think it's actually one of the most affirming things that there is like we spent ten four years Trying to destroy ourselves and each other quite successful and then nature was like We're done. Yeah, we're gonna get back to fucking like it's it's nice. There's something about that. So anyway wolves So The first time we see a silver bullet. Uh-huh mentioned as a way to defeat a werewolf comes from a

1767 account. Okay, they hunter killing the beast of Gavaudan in France and And this is this is this is an awesome story. So between 1764 and 1767 an Unidentified predator some some big, killed literally dozens of people. And this is heavily documented, this is heavily attested. There's multiple eyewitness accounts that were written down by authorities. You know, it's responsible for killing, and like I said, dozens of people, but also, you know, making attempts and attempts and you know running away when it failed

so like multiple accounts Witnesses and survivors of attacks said that the beast was quote like a wolf, but not a wolf Hmm That they saw it stand on two legs That it leaped or flew at victims and reports indicated it always went for the head or the neck of its victims Okay, I mean that's very wolf like yes. Well, I don't know my wolves that well, but I assume that if you're gonna go for the soft bits Well, yeah

Jean Jean Chastel Is the name of the hunter and he supposedly melted down several metals of Mary Saints metals that he kept in his hat band He melted them down cast them into bullets and it was one of those according to the stories that killed the beast and so silver had previously Associations with the moon which by this time has become tied to some legends of, of werewolves, you know, right in the, in the Slavic tradition, we're seeing more of that,

but that's, you know, that's filtering through, right. Um, and you know, wolves howl at the moon. So, you know, that connection is there. Sure. Sure. And silver had also been connected to purity Kind of in general, right long before this but this is where we first see it codified as a weapon Now I also find it interesting that silver is linked to purity. So is gold and Yeah, I mean this is gonna sound like I'm setting up for a pun, but I promise I'm not. Gold is held to a higher standard, the gold standard, if you will. But they were trying like hell to do alchemy,

to convert base metals into gold, not into silver. And what I find fascinating there is the desire to turn base metals, lead, into gold was actually tied to a sense of cosmology. You are trying to take the rude humanity and turn it divine, because if you could do that metallurgically then we could do that with our sin, and we could find our way to the kingdom of heaven. Not silver.

And silver is more plentiful. It's used to cut gold into alloy. There's so little bonding that happens with them, but they would stamp them into alloy coins. Silver is more plentiful. Silver is honestly a more ready currency for most of us. It's more of a rude currency than than gold is. And so I just find it fascinating that silver is used to kill a beast. Yeah. A man beast. Whereas gold is proof that we

can be made divine. Oh, yeah. So there's like this Demi action going on there. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that is yeah I think there's also the issue that The the silver tarnishes That's true silver out. That is true little silver it tarnishes gold Gold doesn't gold doesn't react to anything gold is right. Turnal gold carries Gold doesn't react to anything. Gold is eternal. Gold carries obviously a solar connotation to the lunar connotation that silver has. Right. The greater light, the lesser light in Christian mythos. Yeah. And gold has connections to immortality because of that. And think that's that's a part of the Spiritual logic sure you want to call it that in that but silver still has a curing one. Yes, which is interesting But just not to that level and therefore it can be used to kill beasts. Whereas gold is almost like pedestal. Oh

Yeah, well, yeah, you know, yeah if you if you have Oh, yeah. Well, yeah, you know, yeah if you if you have Gold there are other things you're gonna do with that gold doesn't have Gold isn't isn't potentially utilitarian Right that silver yes used because because of its non-reactive qualities. That's true You know, we talked about fine silver when we're talking about tableware Because that was rich people's knives and forks right for eating with right, you know And so the guy who tastes tests dryers ice cream doesn't use a silver spoon He uses a gold spoon. Oh

like literally and his tongue is insured for like over a million dollars, but like Like there's a whole documentary on this guy for like over a million dollars, but like, like there's a whole documentary on this guy as well, but he uses a gold spoon because things don't bond to it, right? Because it's got that purity, not a silver spoon, which we see used in a descriptor of all kinds of things. Oh yeah. You know, from, from rich people to Ricky Schroeder vehicles. Yeah. So, yeah. So, you know, the, the utility, the fact that silver silver is pure and it has that, that rotation, but it is something that also carries connotations

of use. Sure. If that makes sense. Yeah. Yeah. And so yeah, I think, I think you're, you're definitely on to something there. And, you know, modern, modern theories about the Beast of Gavodan very, some think that it was just a particularly freakishly large wolf. Yeah, there are dire wolf., you could be there are theories that it may have been a wolf dog Hybrid sure There are there's one theory. I'm particularly fond of that it may have been Somehow a juvenile lion Okay, you know although rich people had like weird fucking like bring your animals shit going on So but there's there's there's a bunch of different theories But this this you know this this ravening beast that you know seemed to be very intelligent very cagey very intelligent evaded capture or or death for three years.

Mm hmm. You know, this this set, uh, set a hysteria going in the countryside. And I don't want to get too much into the incidents of werewolf hysteria because a lot of them are tied very closely to witch hunts Sure, which is gonna be when I talk about mage Wizards put a pin in that yeah put a pin in that yeah, but what I think is worth looking at here Again is the endurance and the ubiquity of werewolf legends and beliefs sure this isn't tied like what we do is like Okay, so what's going on in the real world? You know while Wallace is happening, right? You know, I have these stories the Townsend act Okay, I think the stamp act was two years earlier like you know, we're three years from the Boston massacre I think they are

Which which you know when you put it in that context is like Which which you know when you put it in that context is like shit Yeah, hold on. Yeah, we really we really have been this credible for a very long time That's I love that part. I love how like like again the credulous not credible. Sorry. Yeah We have also been this credible But like I do love how many things like I think they discovered longitude lines, like a way to measure them for, for navigators, like within 10 years of this. Oh yeah. There's all kinds of really funny shit happening in 1767,

like plus or minus 10 years of it because I mean, sorry, 10 years later we're well into the American Revolution. Yes. And 20 years later, we're about to have a constitution. The French Revolution is going to kick off two decades after this. But also, Adon shot a werewolf. Yeah. Be careful on the countryside. There's men changing into wolves to prey on travelers. But also I've done shot a werewolf. Yeah

Yeah, there's men changing into wolves, you know, right prey on travelers. Oh my god, it's just it's so wild the Again, I always bring this up to my students In 1927 they discovered that air was not a substance like I cannot like cannot stress to you enough How stupid we are that we've been flying for 24 years by this point Yeah through air. Yeah Yeah, when I tell you that people have always been this dumb, right? I'm right that people have always been oh my god Yeah, I'm just trying to think of other things that are happening in 1767. I'm sure Ben Franklin is like fucking people in England Well, yeah, yeah Franklin doing his best to like in newer everyone to syphilis I Just

It's astounding like how many how many like we're talking we've already had like two bouts of smallpox in America where we've already had like two bouts of smallpox in America where vaccination was a strategy was a thing and Anti-vaxxers got going had had also been a right and also they're shooting a werewolf Yeah in France life. It's just goddamn. Yeah yeah so so Because of the Ubiquity of this particular myth, um, this isn't, this isn't something that we can be like, okay, well, you know, because politically at this time, this is, you know, this is a thing.

This is, this is more primal than that. This is fear of the wild. This is fear of violence. This is fear of violence. This is fear of anger. Okay. If we go back and remember the initiation ritual idea, and we go back and we think about, you know, the barbarian ancestors of all of these Europeans and berserkers, you know, taking on, taking on a totem spirit and, and right.

Frenzy. When we think about, um, the, the spirit is psychological, not spiritual at this point. Uh, the, the psychological weight that the animal, the wolf carried for people, because these are, these are peasants and farmers Wolves are stock. Yeah, you're there. They're your biggest threat also because they're pack animals Yeah, and you live close to the woods like back then there were forests and you live close to the woods You get livestock that can run away you if you're a shepherd of any kind wolves are an issue

And if you find a single wolf, it's are an issue and if you find a single wolf It's actually in some ways going to be a more dangerous Thing yeah, because it's starving. It's desperate Yeah, so I mean it's it is it is a big thing in the consciousness of anybody hurt Who is rural which is almost everybody at the time? Yeah. Yeah and People are living in small communities, right. That depend on very close ties. Like, if you don't like your neighbor, that's you're going to have

you're going to have to work with them anyway. Yes. Because everybody everybody has rent to pay to the landlord. Everybody has crops that have got to get harvested. Everybody's got, you know, all of this stuff needs to happen. And you have to depend on the people around you. And so if there is anger in the community, that's a threat. If if somebody is violent, if somebody is, um, out of control, out of control. Yeah. That's going to be a

threat to the fabric of the entire community. Right. So this kind of subconscious fear of loss of control, this subconscious fear of a frenzy is this subconscious fear of, uh, frenzy is, is a thing and this ties into what the werewolf is all about. There's also a lot of fear of outsiders. Strange people show up in the village. Like who are you? Or they don't show up in the village. They show up adjacent to the village.

Again, you've got that one weird guy out on the edge. Yeah. On top of that, you remember, we're talking communities that have been invaded and reinvaded and protected and what have you. I love how you put scare quotes around protected. Throughout, like, I mean, we're talking 1767 when this thing happened. But you've got a culture of over 100 years. I mean, when was the 30 years war? When was, you mean, we're talking 1767 when this thing happened, but you've got a culture of over 100 years. I mean, when was the 30 years war?

When was, you know, like you've got- 1640s, I would say. Yeah, so you've got within, you know, not living memory, but like- But a generation beyond that. Generations, yeah. And I don't want to overemphasize this, but I know the dancing plague was in the 1500s.

Yeah. But the effects of ergot. Are a thing. Yeah. And so there's all kinds of people fucking will wild out. Like you go chasing the sheep into this field and you run into some sort of hallucinogenic mushroom that you step on and inhale the

spores and you go fucking bat shit for like 12 hours. And people will be like, I don't know what's going on with John. I don't know what's going on with John, man. What the fuck? So, I mean, you've got a lot of possibilities to drive somebody crazy. It's not like they had an FDA for alcohol either.

Like, you got home brew, which mmm, you know, yeah, so Yeah, yeah and and then there's the subconscious fear of starvation Right that the werewolf represents right and towns that have been besieged I mean very often what do we hear about towns that are besieged for a long amount of time? You know, there's cannibalism. So, and it's really easy to scare people about someone eating... you or your dogs and your cats, as we've seen.

Yeah. And, you know, for all of these folks folks and going back as far as the Romans, for that matter, going back all the way to, you know, the first settled, uh, uh, farmers, nature is the force that you are contending kind of against. Yeah. Like you're, you're depending on it, but you're also fighting against it. You are imposing order on something that naturally wants to go to a state of chaotic entropy. And so nature, nature, and everything that is embodied in the wild, in the wilderness, is an antagonist that you have to contend with and maybe bargain with. And it's a lot more powerful than you are.

And so we have that going on subconsciously. And it has to be said, wolf attacks were a real thing, right? Like France at the same time as the beast of Gavaudan was was doing its thing There was there was a rash of just like wolves. Yeah going going attacking travelers in the mid 1700s And and this was it was especially prevalent for whatever reason. We see a lot of, we see a lot of reports of it, probably because this is a time period where we see, you know, expansion, population growth, you know, and when people push into the wilderness, you displace things and upset the apple cart ecologically right, you know and you know depending

I didn't look into what the climatology of it all was but you know, there could have been Things going on with prey animals there could have been you know There was a little ice age in the the 16th 17th centuries, right? Yeah, not the mini ice age the the one that lasts way longer like so there was a warming period so people expand during warming period and then shit cools. And animals, again, are starving. They're getting ranged out. So they're going to start showing up.

And I mean, we saw this during Covid. Yeah, we know he's coming down the street. Yeah, because people aren't there to scare them off anymore. Right. Because everybody's inside their house looking out the window going, is that a fucking coyote? Right. I mean, and where I I live I can hear coyotes Baying some nights, which is pretty cool And I will see one probably every other month or something over by the levee or something like that

I'm sure yeah out there, but like yeah in the the the previous century to the beast yeah, things had started cooling. And yeah, it started dropping the temperature. And of course, that's going to lead to animals, ranging differently. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, when things warm, you tend to find like the bigger cold animals coming further south, but when things cool

You're gonna see all kinds of like crazy boots drying up, you know because they're gonna go where the yeah So this this all makes plenty of sense. Yeah And i've kind of already mentioned that like the totemic weight of wolves right but wolves, you know Because they are a pack predator uh-huh you know there is there is a look like we look at bears and in our lizard brain for lack of a better phrase sure you look at a bear and the fear that you have of a bear is it's a gigantic unstoppable wall of muscle fur and teeth.

Yes. But like, if it decides your lunch, your lunch, like there's just, there's nothing you can do. It is the Hulk. Yeah. Now, wolves are cunning. Wolves are fierce and clever and they work together. are fierce and clever and they work together.

And you know, so, so there's this, there's this set of totemic ideas associated with them. And you know, you see frecky and Gary as pets and servants of Odin, who are their names literally mean greedy and ravenous. Oh boy And so, you know Bears are scary because they are huge and like angry, right? Wolves are scary because they're smart and they're hungry. Yeah And that's that there's a different edge to that

Also bears might growl as they're getting to you. Wolves will howl throughout the forest. You are not going to be able to tell where they are or how many of them there are. Right. Yeah. And so within the werewolf legend, there's also these transformation and possession overtones. You know, we keep seeing the idea that this is a man who has, uh, who, who has, who has lost reason, a man who has been inhabited by a spirit of wildness, a spirit of hunger and ferocity. Sure. And, and the obliteration of their human identity. And so there is a psychological fear of the ID that we see throughout these myths. And when we see interpretations of the story, these are the themes that keep coming up no matter what the contemporary context of that story is, if that makes sense. Yeah, yeah.

And so as we come forward into modern media, werewolves, just like vampires, they never really go away. Like, you know, you've talked before about you know possession movies like we see them in these weird clusters and right here's why yeah because we don't trust our government. You know or you know why was like I talked about you know there was this this burst of you know sword and sorcery fantasy movies at the beginning of the 1980s. right going on with that why right right vampires never go away there's always there's always a vampire movie somewhere being made maybe not a

lot of them mm-hmm but it's it's you know consistent werewolves are the same way now what I found interesting as I was looking through this though is the way that they've evolved mm-hmm and what the most famous examples from different eras kind of tell us about the myth. So 1941 one of one of the most famous of all time is the wolf man. Right. Lon Chaney plays an American in Wales who gets bitten by a werewolf while he's trying to protect the sister of a woman he has the hots for. Okay. So he and this woman who he's trying to pursue and she's trying to brush him off because she's engaged and he's kind of not listening to that. Okay. Which is a subtext that's interesting um

her sister Gets attacked by a werewolf and he has a silver-headed cane That he uses to you know bludgeon bludgeon the werewolf with and he gets bitten in the attack Mm-hmm and as he passes out he looks over and it's not a wolf lying there. It's a dead man Silver silver cane right exactly um he transforms into a werewolf on following nights and kills several villagers Okay, and now he suffers a kind of moral horror in this story because you know, he wakes up and he's disoriented He doesn't know where he is and then like the first time, you know

He wakes up and he doesn't know what's going on and he hears that, you know One of the villagers has been savagely murdered, you know killed by some wild animal the night before And it and it's a couple of nights before it's like incontrovertible that no no that was me I did that oh my god. You know what have I become right right? and so This is the same kind of moral horror that vampire was supposed to be Right. Mm-hmm, but this time it's centered on his terrifying lack of control of himself So the moral horror in vampire was

You're you're a monster and you need to try not to turn into a ravening Like right human monster. You need to hold on to your humanity. This is This is about loss of control, right? is this is about loss of control right which which sounds similar on the surface but there's there's a no it's it's different weight to it yeah there's a spiking that happens yeah with werewolves whereas it's a steady degradation or corruption which if you're a vampire yeah yeah and at the end of the film he's killed by his own father Okay, but this didn't stop universal from fighting way to bring Cheney back in 1943 sure Frankenstein meets the wolf man

And his series of other sequels right with him and Bella Lugos Bella Lugos is actually a supporting player in the wolf man Not as nice Frankie or yeah Dracula. But there are some prominent Romani stereotypes that play a major role in the story. I was wondering if we're gonna get to that connection. Yeah put a pin in that because I had to come back to it. In this film codified a lot of tropes for werewolves in cinema like the way the transformation sequence works. You know what the man wolf kind of shape looks like right? Right the human I the humanoid version not yeah, you're a full wolf. Yeah so in 1957

We have I was a teenage werewolf hmm, and I cannot highly enough recommend the analysis that Stephen King does of this movie in dance macabre. Oh, okay. It's great. Like he's looking at it very much from his thesis about Dionysian versus Apollonian.

Sure. But it's still, you know, it's a great, great analysis. And this one hits themes of puberty sexual urges Right fear of teens running wild from adults and an expression of teen fears of their own sexuality and urges for teens themselves Is this a cutout for homosexuality? Or is this just because teenagers have cars and we need to stop it's it's yeah, it's I'm I'm I don't see things that are

Explicitly in any way clear coded the issue the story the storyline and I mean you can you can tell me if you think I'm Overlooking something sure, but the storyline is that the main character has anger management issues and he gets in a lot of fights and he's just angry and angsty. And he realizes when he snaps at his girlfriend and almost hits her, he realizes, okay, no, I've really got a problem. I gotta go see somebody.

And the psychologist who's treating him I gotta go see somebody and the psychologist who's treating him Gives him a drug that is like a scopolamine kind of thing that's supposed to help him It's it's like chemical hypnotherapy. It's it's he's gonna give him this drug that's been synthesized from wool hormones This is prior to MKUltra. This is. Okay, and this is... Yeah, this is going to be prior... Okay, so already just based on the dates, I'm just remembering there was a... like a mental hygiene.

Oh, yeah. You know, the reel-to-reel that they would show in class on a rainy day in PE. And one of them was titled, One Never Knows When the Homosexual is About. That was in the 60s thoughows When the Homosexual is About. That was in the 60s though. So it predates that. Yeah.

And so he's given, so this psychologist gives him an injection of this experimental drug and then puts him under hypnotherapy. And this triggers the awakening of some primitive something that leads to him shifting into a man wolf and going berserk instead of helping him deal with these things that just makes them worse. We still see Romani stereotypes

because there is a janitor at the school who apparently is from someplace in Eastern Europe and he recognizes immediately there's a werewolf involved, which I find funny because the werewolf has been caused by a scientist by science run amok, not like, but anyway, we still have this Romani thing going on. Yeah. We're going to blend them. Yeah. And, um, the protagonist again, dies tragically at the end With a police officer making a stentorian set of remarks about the dangers of scientists playing God

that's interesting because like Is 57 so this also predates the Manchurian candidate by five years. This is true Yeah, and this is if I recall correctly this is like Michael Landon's coming out. Yes. Okay. Yeah. All right. Anybody who's a little house on the prairie fan you see a very different side of him in this film. But this is also two years after Rebel Without a Cause. This is true. So we're seeing teenagers out of control type of movies. Oh, yeah I mean because again about it. Yeah, we talked about this in the very first two episodes of our of our show exactly

Teenagers delinquency. Oh my god, they're terrifying We're spoiling them rotten, but we're terrified of them at the same time. Like yes that that weird dichotomy But we're terrified of them at the same time like yes that that weird dichotomy So in 1981 and we have a couple of movies. Yep. Okay. I'm gonna I'm gonna put it in the chat here are my guess Yeah, all right here. We are here. We are And he want me to look at the chat first. Yeah, yeah, okay Okay, I put them both in there, so tell me what you're gonna tell me and then we'll come back to it. So the first one that I'm gonna talk about is the howling.

That's what I meant to type in. God damn it. Okay, I typed in wolfen. I meant the howling. The howling. My apologies. Okay. Well, because there was another one that was wolfen, something, something.

Yeah, but I wasn't actually thinking of wolfen. That's not the iconic one that I'm... But yeah. Yeah, but I wasn't actually thinking of wolfing But yeah, I was thinking of the howling I transposed the two. Okay. Yeah, so the howling Involved a secret society of werewolves, right? One of whom is a serial killer like why you would keep that person in your secret society like that's that I just like Right. That's a security risk like yeah That one stabbed that one was a silver knife get it over with you know call it good Yeah, call it good like no if you're gonna have a secret society

You can't have people running around doing random crap like that, but whatever they're evil. I guess so Anyway, there's the secret society of werewolves who gather at and kind of run a resort And there's heavy conspiracy theory vibes. And there's there's some very overt eroticism and sex scenes, which is interesting because there's a subtext of sexuality and sexual urges previously, like in the Wolfman, he wants this gal who's engaged to somebody else and he's not really paying attention to that, there's that kind of hungry animal, wolf whistle kind of aspect going on.

In I Was a Teenage Werewolf, there's a moment where his transformation is triggered by him seeing a young woman changing clothes he winds up peeking through a window and sees sees essentially a classmate so it's kind of like adrenaline based yeah yeah yeah and and so there's there's that in those earlier stories, but here there's like honest to God, werewolf sex scenes in this film. Right. Um, and there's, there's a

real emphasis on body horror. Um, these werewolves aren't tied to the moon. That's actually part of the twist. Spoiler alert is it doesn't matter what the phase of the moon is. They can shift when they want to When the protagonist who has been bitten and has become a werewolf when she tries to prove the reality to werewolf of werewolves to the world

Via a live broadcast. She's a news anchor the audience thinks it's a stunt with special effects and banker. The audience thinks it's a stunt with special effects. And so there's a whole lot of early 80s stuff going on there that I kind of come back to. This is one where their eyes are really, really like that. That kind of is where all the money went into, like special effects was like, yeah,

their eyes had a shine to them. And then like they blink. And then it's like a really fucking bestial eyes. Yeah, like, yeah, their eyes had a shine to them and then like they blink and then it's like a really fucking lies. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So also in 1981, uh, an American werewolf in London. Okay. Got it. Yeah. Yeah. Is it, I meant the howling, but yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Is it Gorefest? It's full of body horror. Heavy, heavy emphasis on the body. Yes. Had one of the best transformation shots, too.

Oh, yeah, you beat into it. I was going to say. Oh, I'm sorry. Yeah. Don't know, but you're right. Like, it was like the effects in this film were groundbreaking. Yeah.

As an exercise in practical effects, it's absolutely a masterpiece. Yes. So there are two American grad students who are visiting England and they're like on a hiking trip through England. Uh, they wind up pissing off a bunch of locals in a pub after dark and the locals kick them out of the pub, but tell them, stay on the road.

Watch out for the moon. You know, don't, don't go wandering across the Heath. Sure. Of course, the very first thing they do is they start wandering across the heath and a Massive animal comes out of nowhere Attacks the two of them kills one of them and then you know a local shows up and kills the beast with a shotgun. Mm-hmm and The survivor our main character

And the survivor, our main character, winds up realizing that he has become a werewolf. Right. And the film essentially follows his descent into werewolf-dom. Right. And his best friend shows up to him. There's a ghost story element, which is kind of new, because his best friend shows up and says yeah okay so bad news you're a werewolf and by the way some practical effects are involved in these scenes too because his friend is talking to him and the first time he shows up it is hey a truly dramatic jump-scare because his friend popped you know appears out of nowhere and and his

throat has been torn out. And it's all hanging out and blood everywhere. He looks like he did when he was dead on the trail. And he says, yeah, you're a werewolf. And by the way, because I was killed by a werewolf, as long as the werewolf's line exists, I'm trapped here. So as my friend, I need you to kill yourself because you're gonna wind up murdering more people right no getting away from it you

can't prevent it you know whatever and also by the way I'm trapped here so I need you to man up and fall on your sword. And you know, the main character dismisses this as a hallucination, you know, I've been through all this trauma, this is, you know, whatever. And then, you know, over the course of the film, he has these, I mean, absolutely terrific, terrifying nightmares. And you know, at the climax of the film He he transforms and it's again this masterpiece of special effects

and He winds up getting shot by police after rampaging through the eponymous London of the title and This film is drenched in doom. Like- Isn't it also a dark comedy though? Like it's directed by John Landis. John Landis, yeah. Yeah, it is like pitch black, darkly funny.

Right. Which helped make it something that I could watch, even though I'm a wimp about horror movies. It also helps that I was watching it with teenage friends when we were all cracked out of our minds on Mountain Dew and sugar at 2 o'clock in the morning. Yeah, yeah. So yeah, it is a dark comedy and a horror film at the same time.

It manages to walk that, that line really well. Like, like there are parts where you're like, Oh my God, this is terrible. And I can't stop laughing because what else am I going to do? Right. Um, but, but he's, he's doomed. Like from the moment he gets bitten.

There is no escape. He, he is a dead man walking or loping as the case may be. And, and, you know, there, there, there is no escape and his denial of it only makes it worse. And so again, put a pin in that because 1981. Now, just real quick. Yeah. These two movies came out in 81. Yeah. Between the two of them, I think they spawned like nine or 10 sequels.

Like the howling goes all the way up to like six and then it goes like the howling rebooted, the howling redone in the underground howling or some shit Yeah, and American werewolf in London then goes to Paris Yeah, and then like the protagonist right, but I mean it's same universe But yeah, yeah, so you know you get in then an American werewolf and like you know in in deep debt I don't remember exactly what it's called. Whatever. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah So yeah, both of these both of these films spawned franchises You know

So yes, that is worth noting now four years later 1985 Hang on I'll give you a second think about it Well, I just this by no means is by me time, but I would also point out that for the last 20 years, Wolfman Jack has been on the radio. That's true. That is a thing. So keeping the idea of werewolves just kind of kind of simmering in the background. Yeah, exactly. Okay, so 1985. 1985. 85, not, okay, so Howling and Wolf,

and I had them both mixed up. I don't know this one. I'm gonna kick myself. Teen Wolf. Oh, Teen Wolf, Jesus Christ, okay. Now, Teen Wolf abandons all the horror completely. It's a common form. Right, and embraces all of the racism. Yeah, sadly. Yes. Yeah And it and it treats like entropy as a stand-in for puberty

The more character or being black. Yeah. Well, yeah Yeah, you've seen those analyses were they like I haven't okay, like he suddenly gets really good at basketball He suddenly gets really good at dancing. He suddenly gets really good at dancing He's very good at sports all the women are fetishizing him Oh god damn it and like and his dad is like, you know, I also passed like there's like There's a lot of shit going on there. It's yeah I can't I can't make a bump noise when I bang my head against the microphone. Damn it. Yeah It's really painful

See in my my privilege privileged little bougie ass managed to overlook all of that. Yeah So so what what I noticed in in my you know, not not noticing that subtext noticed in in my you know not not noticing that subtext analysis is the main character starts to shift on the full moon and he has a freak out in the bathroom until the door opens both his parents are staring at him right out themselves right and it's like well yeah it's time we had the conversation actually I think it's just his dad though right he's got a single dad I thought he had younger siblings I didn't like rewatch the movie or right, but The movie is a straight-up comedy like I said yeah

It has a lot more to say about the tug between tradition and self-expression Mm-hmm and you know identity Then it does about the terror of the id Sure sure and Michael J. Fox is charming and relatable even when he's covered in Fern has three inch fangs Right. He takes part in a play that's set in the Civil War where he's burning a plantation down It's just it's inescapable. Yeah Yeah, yeah Yeah, so same year 1985

Silver bullet. I have no idea what this one is Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, so same year 1985 Silver bullet. I have no idea what this one is. Okay. Well, it's an adaptation of a Stephen King novella. Okay And it's it's notable mostly because it is a really really good adaptation of Stephen King's work Now there's an interesting variation in Silver Bullet. The protagonist never becomes a werewolf. In this film, the werewolf is a lurking monster. OK, and the

the conceit of the novella is that it's a it's it's told as a series of episodic vignettes over the course of a year Not starting with New Year's it starts. I don't remember what holiday it started like it starts with Christmas and then goes through But each time the werewolf strikes coincides with a holiday oh So like Valentine's Day, right? St. Patrick's Day and King says in the introduction to the to the novella He says the moon doesn't actually work this way. I know this is this is a story conceit like, you know, right

But it but in the story the transformation is keyed to the moon the protagonist is wheelchair bound mm-hmm and The protagonist is wheelchair bound. Mm-hmm. And it turns out, like we figure out fairly quickly in the book, but it's something in the film that we follow as the protagonist figures it out, the werewolf is the town preacher. And in the source material, we actually get inside his head. Okay, so the werewolf is an actual predator by day Yeah Yes

And and he he rationalizes his murders by reminding himself that all of the people he's killed were sinners You know like like that, that, you know, the one, the one guy that I, that I murdered along with that woman were in that motel because he was cheating on his wife, you know, and he was going to, you know, carry diseases back to her by the way, because he wound up killing them. The blood exposure actually, he, he, the, the werewolf actually develops an STI He gets syphilis because of his attack on like it's on the city It's a thing like like I have to recommend this story like the movie is great

But if you can find it look for Stephen the novella By Stephen King because it's a great read, okay for Stephen the novella by Stephen King because it's a great read. Okay. Um, so the protagonist is figured out that the preacher is the werewolf. The preacher figures out the kid knows he's a werewolf and like, well, all right, you know, I have to kill him, you know? Right. And so there's this, there's this subtext of,text of oh hey werewolf as you know predator right right and So all of these stories Present lycanthropy as a curse one way or another yes. Yes the rise of go ahead

I was just gonna say fun little weird thing. Yeah guy who directed Teen Wolf. Yeah I'm gonna say fun little weird thing. The guy who directed Teen Wolf. Yeah. Oh, also directed. I'm not gonna wanna hear this. No, no, it's actually, it's odd. Also directed Jim Belushi in K-9. Oh, okay.

And he also directed the sequel to the Beethoven movie with Charles Grodin. Huh. So that's. That's an interesting kind of thing. Three movies with dogs Grodin. Huh? So that's, that's, that's an interesting, pretty movie with dogs, with dogs. It's weird. Yeah. I kind of hope nobody's checked his search history. Just saying. So anyway, and I'm joking, but I'm also not right. Um,

he's directed plenty of other things. But yeah, but it, but it's, it's weird that those three would be there, you know? Yeah. So, okay. So like, anthropos is a curse. Yeah. And, and the rise of the beast in all of these stories means the extinction of the rational human self and the, and the harder these stories are going in the horror direction, the more that is the case. Okay. Okay. Like in, like in Teen Wolf, like he's, he's wild and crazy.

And his judgment isn't there, but you know, he's not turning into a ravening killer. Right? No, he's the only, the only fear that's really aroused on purpose is his dad Making the principal piss himself Yes, you know, he's going through a hard time right now He could really use your support and then nice to see you haven't changed Like yes, yeah, that's the only malice to it. Otherwise, it's just people freaking out a little bit, but then like, absolutely embracing it. And he he goes crazy with the fame that it gets him. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And that's and that's, you know, there is an element of losing himself in the kind of character that he takes on. But that's not that's not nearly the same as an American werewolf in London,

where, like, it's a dramatic part of the climax, spoiler alert, when in full-blown gigantic wolf mode, the nurse that he's kind of fallen in love with, you know, sees him and calls his name, and there's a moment in the wolf's eyes where you can see he recognizes her, and the human is still in there and then that disappears and he lunges And gets killed in a fuse a lot of bullets from the police, right? So like that's genuinely no kidding extinction of the superego completely like no it's all gone it

That's it right yeah yeah the physical transformation is treated at least with some level of anxiety like in Teen Wolf the first time to outright shrieking body horror which again American Werewolf in London and howling you know it's it's this is the very fact of watching your fingers elongate and Feeling your teeth grow and your snout extend out of your skull like right is is played for oh my god This is terrifying right yeah so now

Looking at the real world context of these stories mm-hmm in the 1940s There was there was a spike in the number of werewolf movies during World War two like between 41 and 44 there were a bunch of them made close together mm-hmm and I only looked at the one of them that's you know iconic and kind of important for them for the evolution of the genre sure but we're looking of

course at World War II going on. And so all of these stories in the forties include this level of Romani stereotyping and the idea of this being part of this Slavic tradition, you know, right. And Americans are seeing themselves being drawn into a European problem that leads to massive chaos and violence loss of rational action uh-huh and is causing destruction to Americans yes gonna say you also have a lot of guys coming back shook like coming back I believe by then it was called

Battle fatigue it was battle for the nose. Yeah, yeah No, you're thinking operational exhaustion. Okay. Yeah battle fatigue battle fatigue. Um, yeah, they're coming back Nervous wrecks some of them and big drinking problems and remember the depression had just fucking happened So like yeah, so there's already complex PTSD going right, you know And so it's just you're stacking it on top hardcore PTSD on top of that, right? So yeah, there is there is plenty of Cultural Crying out about random violence occurring, you know and never mind the the insanity of

just all kinds of people attacking dock workers because 12 of them are black or Yeah, you know the zoot suit riots, you know Yeah, I mean you got you got a lot of fucking violence happening in America at the same time But then again, you've got guys coming back who they come back changed men, you know, it's that kind of thing Yeah, and very often one of the first things that you let go of when you're in a depressive state or when you're in a just A traumatized state is grooming so at a time where a short haircut

and a shave and a haircut two bits That's one of the things that you might let go of. I mean, that is convention for, oh, this guy's going through a hard time, look at his drinking. And drinking is now allowed because prohibition has ended by 33. And so it's not like that slowed down the drinking,

but now you have guys coming back. We talked about this with Beowulf Rocklin with the noir stuff. You have guys coming back we talked about this with the Beowulf Rocklin with the new our stuff You have guys coming back from the war Traumatized and getting lost at the bottom of a bottle and that's gonna lead to outlashing violence, too Yeah, you know and they come back and their job is taken up by a woman and and I don't mean that pejoratively I mean, these are guys who are suffering some form of cultural rage when it comes to that. Oh yeah, definitely. So, that makes a lot of sense

that it's coming out in World War II. I was thinking you were gonna get to Operation Werewolf, but that's so fucking like way out on the margins anyway. Yeah, yeah. So now in the 50s, the plot to the world. Although Gerbils did disseminate information through something he called radio werewolf. Oh yeah, that was the thing.

So in the 50s, the plots of werewolf movies still had the same anti-Romani stereotypes because there's a proxy there for Slavic Russian Soviet menace, you know Eastern European Sure, you know all of those all of those all of that coding. Mm-hmm But they also very frequently include science gone mad this fear of The betrayal of scientific advancement. Well atomic energy everything. Yeah, and yeah. And the fear of nuclear annihilation, you know, is, is part of part of what's going on in these stories. Right. And in particular, in I was a teenage werewolf, we have, like we've talked about the fear of teenagers. Yes. Fear of the burgeoning youth culture. Delinquency. That was delinquency and this rock and roll. And the-

Which again, I would link back to teenagers are not segregating as sharply as their adult counterparts. Yeah. And rock and roll is evidence of that. We talked about the Alan Fried concerts I don't remember when but we talked about how like the police beat the shit out of the kids and the parents immediately Sided with the police because you shouldn't have been dancing with kids who were a different color than you Yeah, and that's due to radio. That's due to rock and roll. That's you know, you know, common culture being made

Yeah, all of that stuff. Mm-hmm and So then in the early 80s moving moving forward, we have more of that fear of loss of control Because control is incredibly important in a time when loss of control by a few important people will mean the end of the world as we know it. Makes sense? Yeah. And the conspiracy theory stuff. You have rich people at a resort. Yeah. You know, it's capitalism, cocaine. Yeah. Manic episodes, crack being,

again, these don't seem racially characterized, but this idea of like these mega drugs being out there and turning people beastial. Right. PCP. Right, oh my God. In 81, PCP was the scary one. Yeah. Oh my god. And the amount of like, oh I saw a man lift up a car. You know. Yeah. What the fuck. Yeah. Yeah. No, they shot him 25 times. He kept coming.

Kept coming. Yeah. I mean that showed up in an ER episode. Uh huh. In the 90s. In the 90s. Yeah. Um, and so the doom that I talked about in American werewolf in London, um, like there was, there was an undercurrent of, we're not going to make it out of this alive. Like the idea of mutually assured destruction was, you know, it's assured we are going to be destroyed. Yeah. You know, we, we have this this we have this deterrence that's based on the idea that if you fuck this up, we all die. Mm-hmm and the amount of confidence that the average person had in

The their government or the other side's government not fucking it up, right? Was pretty low there. Yeah,. There was this background current of, you know what, we're all gonna fucking die. We have to hope they love their children just as much as we do. Oh yeah. Yeah. Do you think? Banger of a song. Yeah, do you think there's also,

I mean, in the 80s, you also have the AIDS epidemic. Yeah. And I mean, the transmissibility of werewolfness, You also have the AIDS epidemic. Yeah. I mean the transmissibility of well werewolf this. What I, what I find interesting is 81, which is, which is where I'm, I'm looking at my, my analysis and I'm ending in, like I'm ending on the note of Teen Wolf and 85. Okay. So it's not like. That's not so much part of these narratives yet.

Right, right. Because that, I don't remember AIDS being on the cover of Time Magazine until 84. Yeah, you're right. I mean, I remember being conscious. I lived in San Francisco at the time. I remember being conscious of it. And, you know, it was, I mean,

what am I, kindergarten through second grade, right? So like really shitty kids saying really shitty things. Yeah. Like one of the things was you would accuse somebody of having AIDS, which was a proxy of accusing them of being gay, which you would do if they did something that you thought was gross. So it could be something as simple as taking your finger

into the popcorn bowl and rubbing it on the grease and then sucking it off your finger and to be like AIDS. Wow. Yeah. Really shitty people. Like it was like, Oh, San Francisco is really like, you know, really progressive place. Spend some time on it. It elected the first gay public official, but it also murdered him.

It also killed him. So, you know, you got to gotta complete that that sentence Yeah, but I do remember AIDS being a part of the consciousness But you're right. It was not a gotten into the mainstream of Where we would see it as a theme, right? Okay, so the biting being a transmissible thing Is not particularly tied to libidinous actions or to okay. All right, not so much I think it has more

connotation with the idea of You know the subconscious fear of madness being contagious Okay. Yeah, that makes sense. That's, that's, that's more of the vibe involved. Yeah. Uh, or, or the subconscious understanding of the cycle of violence is another, another kind of kind of way of looking at that. Now I'm not going to mention, uh, 1994's Wolf here, I'm not going to mention

1994's wolf here. Okay, despite the fact that it is an amazing interpretation of the werewolf myth. Okay And I don't think I've ever heard of it. Oh my god. Yeah, Jack Nicholson James Spader Michelle Pfeiffer. Oh, no I have heard of that. Okay. Yeah, I know you're talking talking about. Like it's it's amazingly well written. It is. They finally they put his hair his hairline to use. It is it is shot brilliantly and and there there is not a bad performance from really anybody but in my memory James Spader is awesome in it he he manages to pull off mega creepy in in a really really amazing way in this film and so but but I'm not going to analyze it here because my point in all of this. Mm-hmm is to get us to werewolf the apocalypse Which arrived on shelves in 1992? Okay

Seriously, though spader is top form if you haven't seen it go see it like oh You've done watching this listening to this episode like oh my god now I think this is gonna be a good place for us to draw all this together and start the next episode with Focusing on sure the game Do the history do the game do the history do the game to the history to the game? Yes, and so Where where where are you at with this right now? What's your takeaway? I think there's a lot of interesting things happening with a werewolf lore in the movies specifically. That you had, I almost want to say you had more popular culture surrounding vampire stuff prior to the films

existing, but they also always focused on Dracula, you know, it wasn't like a coven of vampires. It was like one iconic kind of character, or an ex-be for that really iconic character. Right. And so what I find that I keep returning to is that werewolves kind of seem to represent a, and I don't know enough to say this with authority, but they represent a racial anxiety that white people have. Okay. They could also represent a economic anxiety that white people have. Okay. Because the teenagers could get radicalized and it's transmissible and it's when they're alone.

I also, and again, I brought it up with the Teen Wolf thing, but there's possible racial aspects to it, considering how many people are spoken of as though they are beasts from different groups, but also I think that there is a sexuality anxiety. There's a lot of anxieties being expressed through this, whereas Dracula was an acknowledged evil, alluring thing, but it wasn't as diffuse and therefore hard to put a stake in. Hard to pin down. Center of the chest, slightly to the left.

Like, that's where you go. See the nipple? Go left. But see the nipple go left. But it's, so I just, there's something different in the brew about werewolves in terms of what they're, what they are expressing. Where, yeah, whereas you could, you could lock the Dracula away as a singular thing a singular horror werewolves

Again seem to be a thing that spreads and and I'm not saying that vampire movies didn't eventually have like oh you made me a vampire And so they did but werewolves did that from the jump? Yeah, they did that from the beginning Dracula didn't yeah so I I think that there's some really interesting like I don't think werewolves are an anti-semitic trope Whereas I think vampires are an anti-semitic trope. Oh, yeah. Totally are. Yeah werewolves are vampires. Yeah. Yeah werewolves like if there if there's a

If there's a if there's a win when not if there's a racial element to yeah, damn it Teen Wolf There's a racial subtext to werewolf stories. It's the Barbarian yeah, it's the it's the outsider hypers. Yeah the the hyper aspect of it the the hyper Aggressive the hyper violentredator, if you will. Thank you, Hillary Clinton. God damn it. Yeah, but there's those aspects of it, right? And you go back to looking at descriptions of Nat Turner.

You go back to looking at descriptions of other people who were enslaved who escaped or fought back. Yeah. Oh yeah. And there's... Ravening wild animal comparisons. Exactly. And then you bring it forward to like CBS Sports and Jimmy the Greek saying that like... Right? But that's the thing is like, oh, they're hyper athletic. And then you think about who gets killed first in most horror films. It's the black guy. Why? Because it pulls on that. And so there's just like this stew that's going around on this in my mind at least. And I really want you to do a deep dive on werewolves now. So you don't have to. But God, it looks like I like I said last time, I'm like, you know, now, now I

kind of do need to do a deep dive on on vampires and now You know, yeah all of these well certainly these two. Yeah, maybe not so much on on the other stuff I'm gonna be talking about with the other with the other games in this you're fine. Certainly these two. Yeah Yeah, so I I have to agree with you. There is I mean we did it for Batman. I mean why not as well I have to agree with you there. I mean we did it for Batman. I mean why not as well So but anyway, I find that stuff deeply fascinating. I also think it's interesting that I have always really really enjoyed the concept of werewolves and I've never really enjoyed the concept of vampires until

somebody put it in terms of the the depression of eternal life. Eternal existence. Yeah. Then I was like, oh, that's an interesting aspect of them. I don't give a shit about their hungering and their blood sucking and all this. Yeah. But that part I find fascinating. Whereas werewolves, there's not a single part of it that I don't find fascinating Yeah, there's something yeah, I

for me there's something about the Vitality That's that's at the core of of the werewolf archetype Think also the the vulnerability of the werewolf archetype. Think also the vulnerability. Yeah, they are very killable. You just have to have the right bullet.

Like, yeah, yeah, you you you just yeah. Yeah, vampires are. Vampires are a more at least in a way I've always the waiting that I've always sensed, you know, emotionally on them. A vampire is a more, I don't want to say more supernatural, but it's a more tied to the night and darkness and those kinds of themes of fear and that makes it

Harder to touch harder to kill like you said, right? you know, whereas whereas a werewolf is is a A more tangible. Yeah thing you could have a reaction. There's more. Yeah, you know um, and so yeah, i'm i'm i've always been much more interested in werewolves than vampires, too And as we'll talk about in the next episode I was much more interested in werewolf as a game than I was in vampire the masquerade So there is another aspect I just thought about with yeah Pirates versus werewolves right and it doesn't have to be a versus there can be people who love both perfect. Oh, yeah, it's certainly yeah

But for spooky shit for me. It's cool werewolves are us 28 out of 29 days a month Vampires are not us forever Yeah So like we all lose a little control from time to time. Mm-hmm. We, you know.

Also, by the way, we didn't really cover this. We have really, I think, and I call myself on this as well, I think we've done a disservice to connecting werewolfism to male fear of femininity. We are talking about somebody who is based on the fucking moon. That's Diana. That's Artemis. But also, you've got lunar cycles.

Oh yeah. I mean, you've got the term lunatic that comes from this. But like, we're talking menstruation. We're talking like the- You're making me mentioning that. Yeah, we're talking like birth cycles We're talking like the- You're beating me to mentioning that. Yeah, we're talking like birth cycles. And I think we, again, you know, we look through our own biases,

but I feel like we missed something by not including that in our analysis. So. Yeah, well, and on a deep dive of the lore for the sake of the lore, that's definitely an aspect. Good, yes. Like, yes, that is there. I'll put a pin in that while I'm doing that research.

Definitely, because there is something very, that's some of that anxiety too. Yeah, that is definitely something very primal. Yeah, men not understanding so much about women's bodies. Almost anything, really. Yeah, so anyway Okay, so that's what I've taken from it. I am I'm looking forward to your deep deep dive on werewolves. Yeah cool What are you recommending to people to imbibe? I am going to very strongly recommend again,

an American werewolf in London and wolf, um, as examples of the, the werewolf myth, um, brought into a modern context because, and I didn't, I didn't get into analysis of Wolf, but Wolf brings up ideas about aging and it brings up ideas about, um, sexual politics and it ties, uh, you know, the idea of, of alpha wolves, beta wolves, all that kind of stuff. Sure.

And that hierarchy and it's it's It's just so good. Just so good and American werewolf in London again is is worth watching Just because it it's it's a brilliant piece of cinema that that deserves everybody's eyeballs Hmm, so so that's my recommendation. How about you? All right, so I'm gonna recommend two movies one is called the shadow of the vampire it has if you it is it is so many people have panned it because it's as though someone stitched together two completely different acting styles into a movie and That's largely because they did

Like you have John Malkovich and Willem Dafoe Okay, couldn't get more opposite but it's essentially have a hard time. Yeah. Yeah, and just for funsies. Let's go ahead and throw in Carrie Elwes playing a German um It gets weird it gets really weird. It's so already weird just description Yeah, so this movie is operating from the perspective of what if Max Shrek was actually a vampire? It's so goddamn ridiculous It's like the same kind of people who did from hell like what if Jack the Ripper was?

The doctor to the you know to the syphilitic royal family royal family So but it is I love it. I think it's such a good movie first off. It's very stylized. It's 1920s Willem Dafoe does such an amazing job John Malkovich does a sleeper great job like most people don't recognize How good a job he does He's just this like avaricious prick kind of like the director that Jack Black plays in King Kong Like all right matters the shot not your life, you know that kind of stuff Yeah, but it's such a good fucking movie. Oh Catherine McCormick is in it also playing a German woman But so yeah, just a really fun movie really good movie. I liked it a lot

I'm also going to recommend that people actually do go watch Teen Wolf and see if I'm just up my own ass about it or if You can see what I'm talking about like see now you mention it I don't think you're up your own ass at all. Yeah, I feel like oh my god I'm I'm outing myself as such a sheltered prick See now you mention it. I don't think you're up your own ass at all. Yeah, I feel like oh my god I'm outing myself as such a sheltered prick How did I not fucking see that? Oh, you don't know what you don't know until you realize it. It's fine But anyway, i'm recommending people go watch teen wolf. Um, okay the original, um with michael j fox

Uh, and and let us know what you think. So, cool. You remain a shadow in the warp. Where can they find us? We, collectively, can be found on our website, first of all, at wubba wubba wubba dot geekhistorytime dot com. And there you can go through our archive, find the really really deep, like Marianna's trench deep dive we did on Batman if you really want to get into that and a host of any number of other things that'll catch your interest Find something that does Start there bounce around however you like through those archives

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But again, May 2nd, June 6th and July 11th, Capital Punishment is at the Sacramento Comedy Spot. Slinging puns, spinning that wheel. If you come to the July 11th show, that is our nine year anniversary. You should go to, I know, you should go to saccomedyspot.com and click on the calendar

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There you go. That's where you can find me. Me and the crew at Capital Punishment. So. Well, I guess that's it. So for A Geek History of Time, I'm Damian Harmony. And I'm Ed Blalock. And until next time, keep rolling 20s.