An American Werewolf in London

An American Werewolf in London

My first introduction to the werewolf.

One of the first horror films that I watched an American werewolf in London has stuck with me since for several reasons; the breath taking transformation scene from human to wolf, and the unnatural howl on the mores. Before watching this film I was relatively unaware of the werewolf legend, yet the intriguing concept of a clean cut human could go through the metamorphosis from human to beast has become an integral theme within my practice.

To me it would seem that the ending scene in Piccadilly circus where the wolf rampages through the urban environment racking up the kill count as with most horror film final acts, is a metaphorically look at society’s fear of the natural world reclaiming humanity therefore forcing the human conditions evolution and development to regress.

One of the greatest scenes from the film is the first encounter upon the mores, in which we barely see the wolf, yet the unnatural howl/roar builds up all the suspense needed, this sound for me at least is one of the most memorable sounds in movie history. After watching the documentary remembering an American werewolf in London, I found that this howl was created by merging the howls of a grey wolf a Doberman and the roar of an elephant which was then played in reverse, this process therefore created the roar of a beast which was completely unnaturally and therefore unsettling for the audience.

LRRH

Throughout our culture animals have been used metaphorically to represent the sexual desires of humans, due to an animals freedom to act impulsively, more faithfully to their nature, whereas as Freudian theory suggests “society has a negative aura on sexual compulsion. Hence, most repress sexual desires.” (Wells. 2013). Of course it is easier to view an animal when referencing a sexual predator, than it is a human, as the human is familiar yet the animal can be distanced. As is the case with the Grimm fairy tales “Big Bad Wolf” from the novel Little Red Riding Hood. In which the wolf embodies the role of a sexual predator or stalker; symbolising a man of controversial desires. Freud believed that our internal conflicts are controlled by three primary states of mind, which govern our consciousness from birth to death; ID, primal desires and basic nature. EGO, Reason and self-control. Superego, The quest for perfection (Wells. 2013). Due to the wolf’s loss of control and the devouring of LRRH and her grandmother as a result, the wolf displays an ID process; He impulsively takes what he wants from the women without caring for the welfare of others, only his own satisfaction. This impulse to act upon his own primal desire and basic nature is what makes the wolf metaphor such a comfortable fit, yet its clear relevance to human sexual predators is unsettling, for it is clear that a strain of this primal monstrosity is present within our own species. Perhaps this is partly the fuel for our species’ objectification and fear of non-humans, we sub consciously resent these creatures that our honest to their primal desires, because we too have compulsions which we repress due to societies shunning of such desires.

• Wells. C. (2013) Psychoanalytic Approach to Little Red Riding Hood, Available from: https://prezi.com/f9i7iqjr2uc4/psychoanalytic-approach-to-little-red-riding-hood/ [Accessed last- 01/02/2017].

Picturing the beast

• Baker. S. (1993) Picturing the beast, Animals, identity and representation. Manchester university press. Chapter 3. Mad dogs and rhetoric of animality. 77-116.

The origin of the Werewolf legend

• Taylor. S.C. (1909) the origin of the werewolf superstition.1. Available from: https://ia802606.us.archive.org/9/items/originofwerewolf00stewrich/originofwerewolf00stewrich.pdf [Accessed last- 02/02/2017].

Clinical Lycanthropy

In the psychological field there is precedent to my realistic take on the metamorphosis from human to non-human. Although there is no evidence to suggest the physical transformation from human to animal, there is to suggest a transformation on a mental state. Clinical lycanthropy, is a rare form of reverse metamorphosis (a variant of inter- metamorphosis in which patients believe that they have transformed into another entity) wherein patients believe that they have the ability to transform into a non-human creature (Shrestha. 2014). However despite cases of clinical lycanthropy existing since the 1800’s, case in point a male patient with delusions of lycanthropy diagnosed in 1850 (Blom. 2014. 91), the condition has received very little attention, possibly because “original case studies have always been rare” (Blom. 2014. 88). Whereas it’s mythical counterpart Lycanthropy, which has been known and described since ancient times, has remained an evocative theme up until present day. So why do tales of hybrid beasts continue to interest people more than factual cases of people mentally transforming into their animalistic counterparts? Clinical lycanthropy patients reportedly display psychotic, animal-like behaviours; howling loudly in their rooms, sprinting abruptly, crawling on all fours (Shrestha. 2014).

• Blom, J. D. (2014). "When Doctors Cry Wolf. A Systematic Review of the Literature on Clinical Lycanthropy". History of Psychiatry 25: 87–102. Available from: http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0957154X13512192 [Accessed last- 21/01/2017].

• Shrestha. R. (2014) Clinical Lycanthropy: Delusional Misidentification of the self, Available from: http://neuro.psychiatryonline.org/doi/pdf/10.1176/appi.neuropsych.13030057 [Last visited- 05/02/2017].

Psychoanalysis and ecology at the edge of chaos

• Dodds. J. (2011) Psychoanalysis and ecology at the edge of chaos, Complexity Theory, Deluze/ Guattari and Psychoanalysis for a climate in crisis. Routledge.

Primary source of the study of human and non human relations and portrayals in modern media such as film in the horror and the science fiction genre.

H R Giger's alien

sources:
Giger's Alien Paperback – 3 Jan 1998

by H.R. Giger

https://psmag.com/the-horrible-philosophy-behind-the-star-of-alien-h-r-giger-s-xenomorph-fe6cce83b827

Necronom IV. (Photo: H.R. Giger)

 My work revolves strongly around the basis of using unsettling organisms to represent dark aspects of the human condition in an ambiguous style. I have always been fascinated by the alien antagonist from Ridley Scott's 1979 film "Alien", created by the Swiss artist H R Giger. I have looked into the philosophy behind the creature and its highly relatable to my own practice.

Giger’s creature is a filthy, primal parasite whose very survival is contingent on it’s continued rape and exploitation of other species. If this sounds like a familiar concept, it’s because, at least according to Giger, it was an accurate, if a little pessimistic, reflection of humanity’s most basic function. Throughout his career, Giger made a point of highlighting the dark side of the human life cycle so often worshipped as a source of hope and positivity.

The Horrible Philosophy Behind the Star of ‘Alien,’ H.R. Giger’s Xenomorph

Pacific Standard |

By Daniel Snyder

There’s an inevitable obstacle that arises in the conceiving of fictional alien life: Our own inability to conceptualize life that is not, at least in some small way, a reflection of us. The “grays,” probably our most well-known fictional visitors, with their large heads and bulging eyes, are fairly obvious distortions of the standard human physique.

When Academy Award-winning Swiss artist H.R. Giger passed away on Monday, he left behind, among his endless menagerie of horrors across a wide array of media, including painting, film, sculpture, and music, one of the most unique depictions of alien life ever put to screen. The titular alien, heretofore referred to as the Xenomorph, from Ridley Scott’s 1979 science fiction horror classic, wasn’t inspired by the stars. Instead it came from deep within mankind (sorry John Hurt) and somehow developed into something more alien and terrifying than anything from the unknown.

Unlike many of its galactic fellows, the Xenomorph doesn’t fly around in a spotless ship of unfathomable technology. Giger’s creature is a filthy, primal parasite whose very survival is contingent on it’s continued rape and exploitation of other species.

More optimistic conceptions of alien life involve two key traits. The first is a high level of technology which has not only allowed their race to travel great distances, but, more importantly, has freed them from the need for aggression. Prior to Alien, Close Encounters of the Third Kind became a critical and commercial hit behind the idea of a mysterious but ultimately friendly and benevolent alien visitors. They possessed a level of technology that not only allowed travel at great distances, but had seemingly allowed them to eliminate the need for violence against another species. The second key trait is expanded mental capacity or enlightenment through which the aliens have achieved interstellar cooperation with other races, such as in Star Trek’s universe of largely peaceful interspecies interaction, and/or psychic abilities. The idea of the enlightened alien is an inherently optimistic reflection of humanity. It is our best qualities extrapolated into the far future. Our best hope for ourselves.

Famed science-fiction screenwriter Dan O’Bannon (Total Recall, Dark Star) and Ronald Shusett, who wrote the original draft of Alien, wanted to make a movie about interspecies rape. The script called for a creature that, after impregnating one crew member on the space freighter, The Nostromo, would go on to force itself on the rest of the crew. For that, they needed a creature that reflected not the best that life in the known universe had to offer, but the worst. O’Bannon had worked with H.R. Giger on Chilean director Alejandro Jodorowsky’s failed adaptation of Dune and remembered his terrifying designs. He gave Alien director Ridley Scott a copy of Giger’s Necronomicon. In it, they found the perfect basis for their movie monster, Giger’s Necronom IV.

Unlike many of its galactic fellows, the Xenomorph doesn’t fly around in a spotless ship of unfathomable technology. Giger’s creature is a filthy, primal parasite whose very survival is contingent on it’s continued rape and exploitation of other species. If this sounds like a familiar concept, it’s because, at least according to Giger, it was an accurate, if a little pessimistic, reflection of humanity’s most basic function. Throughout his career, Giger made a point of highlighting the dark side of the human life cycle so often worshipped as a source of hope and positivity. While we celebrated births and treasured our existence, Giger produced pieces like Erotomechanics VII, which sapped thought and feeling from the act of reproduction and reduced them to what he saw as the truth: the cold, mechanical struggle to survive. To Giger, sex and birth could be pain and even kill. Every life, he posited in his piece Birth Machine, carries the potential for suffering. In Necronom IV, we see the phallus and the monster depicted as one, a fusion of a symbol of life with its inherent potential for pain and trauma. Giger’s message was very clear: That thing between your legs is also an instrument of evil.

The facehugger. (Photo: 20th Century Fox)

Giger’s philosophy was apparent in the Xenomorph’s physical being, but it made its way into the creature’s life cycle, too. It began with forced entry, with the facehugger pushing its embryo down a host’s throat. Its birth — a forced exit — would be even more violent, bursting forth from the host’s chest cavity, inextricably linking its life to the death of another creature. As an adult, it kills with another phallus, a set of pharyngeal jaws. This is what made the cold, unthinking Xenomorph so terrifying and made Alien as much a horror film as it was science fiction. It turned our own weapon against us, so to speak, and showed us the terror of what we do to each other and the creatures we torture and exploit every day as a matter of simple survival. It was a penis come to life, running amok in a ship full of dark corners.

None of this is meant to take away from what O’Bannon, Shusset, and Scott achieved with Alien — which made Scott a household name, earned back its budget 10 times over, and made a star out of Sigourney Weaver as much as the Xenomorph itself — but they were undeniably gifted a great treasure in Giger’s creation. While others looked to the stars for inspiration, the Xenomorph was dredged from the filthy and most basic truths of our existence, a look backwards at our primordial selves. Seeing that on screen was more terrifying than any green-skinned, antennae-sporting alien in a UFO.