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Embodied Identity in Werewolf Films of the 1980s
Julius Koetsier & Charles Forceville1
Abstract
The Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT) fathered by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson claims that
human beings do not just use metaphor in language, but actually think metaphorically. An important
tenet in the theory is that ABSTRACT concepts are systematically understood in terms of CONCRETE
phenomena. These latter are characterized by being accessed via sensory perception and bodily
movement. For this reason, CMT is also known as a theory of “embodied cognition.” In order to further
investigate the ramications of the theory and its consequences, it is crucial that conceptual metaphors
are examined not just in purely verbal discourses, but also in multimodal ones, such as lms. In this
paper, we argue that the genre of werewolf lms, a highly “embodied” lm genre, draws systematically
on a conceptual metaphor that can be verbalized as DEVIANT IDENTITY IS TRANSFORMED BODY. We
discuss ve specimens of the genre, showing that each lm emphasizes different aspects of the “deviant
identity.” The ndings will benet both (werewolf) lm theory and conceptual metaphor theory.
Résumé
La Théorie des Métaphores Conceptuelles (TMC) de George Lakoff et Mark Johnson prétend que
les êtres humains utilisent des métaphores non seulement pour le langage, mais qu’ils pensent
métaphoriquement. Un principe important de cette théorie est le suivant : des concepts abstraits
sont compris systématiquement en termes de phénomènes concrets. Ces derniers sont présents par la
perception sensorielle et le mouvement du corps. Pour cette raison-là, TMC est connue comme une
théorie de « embodied cognition ». Pour examiner en détail les implications de cette théorie et de ses
conséquences, il importe d’examiner les métaphores conceptuelles non seulement dans des discours tout
à fait verbaux, mais aussi dans des cas multimodaux comme des lms. Le présent article prétend que
le genre cinématographique des loups-garou, un genre très « incarné », s’appuye systématiquement sur
une métaphore conceptuelle que l’on peut nommer ainsi : identité déviante est un corps transformé.
Nous analysons cinq exemples de ce genre pour montrer que chaque lm accentue des aspects différents
de l’identité déviante. Nos résultats sont pertinents non seulement pour la théorie du cinéma, mais aussi
pour la TMC.
Keywords
Embodied cognition, Conceptual metaphor theory, Werewolf lms, Identity.
1. Corresponding author. University of Amsterdam, Dept. of Media Studies, Turfdraagsterpad 9, 1012 XT
Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
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Introduction
The conceptual metaphor theory (CMT) proposed by Lakoff and Johnson and further developed by
many others (e.g., Lakoff & Johnson Metaphors; Embodied Mind; Lakoff; Johnson; Gibbs; Kövecses)
discusses metaphor as “embodied.” One of the theory’s basic claims is that conceptual metaphors
typically structure abstract target domains in terms of concrete source domains. “Concrete domains”
are domains that pertain to motor functions and sensory perception (Forceville Varda 282). Human
beings, that is, draw on “physical” knowledge (the knowledge they have acquired, ontogenetically and
phylogenetically, with respect to moving through space and thanks to their sensory organs) to understand,
or structure, abstract phenomena (e.g., “love,” “time,” “identity”). There is thus, according to this view,
a “super”-metaphor MIND IS BODY (Lakoff & Johnson Embodied Mind 235).
In order to test the implications of the Lakofan claim that we “think metaphorically” (Lakoff
& Turner 51) – or, if this should be necessary, to criticize it – it is crucial to extend the examination of
conceptual metaphors in media that do not only draw on language. There are two reasons for this. In
the rst place, the argument in favour of the conceptual status of metaphor by discussing only verbal
manifestations may be vulnerable to the criticism that the distinction between conceptual metaphors and
verbal metaphors is an articial one; since the conceptual level is rendered in language (typically: in
SMALL CAPITALS) no less than the verbal manifestations themselves, skeptics might say there is only one
level, not two. In the second place, investigating its (audio)visual manifestations may reveal dimensions
of metaphor that do not surface in its verbal varieties (see e.g., Forceville Advertising; El Refaie).
Film is the medium par excellence to examine non-verbal and multimodal metaphors, both
creative and structural ones (see Forceville Advertisements; Advertising; Child; Journey; Varda;
Forceville & Jeulink; Fahlenbrach Embodied Spaces; Metaphern; Eggertsson and Forceville; Coëgnarts
and Kravanja; see also Carroll Metaphor). After all, for the creation of metaphors lm can draw on the
visual, verbal, sonic, musical and gestural modes/modalities (for discussion of what counts as a mode/
modality, see Forceville Framework; TV Commercials).
In this paper, we will examine American werewolf lms from the 1980s, a decade rich in
such lms, to show that the central transformations that give the genre its name suggest metaphorical
interpretations. Our argument is that werewolf lms exploit the notion that we tend to associate “identity”
very much with the body. While what characterizes werewolf lms more than anything else obviously
is a more or less spectacular transformation from human being into wolf and vice versa, we claim that
this is only the most embodied aspect of what is really a mental transformation: we propose that what
makes the genre interesting is that the lms exemplify variations of a conceptual metaphor that could
be phrased as DEVIANT IDENTITY IS TRANSFORMED BODY. This highly embodied metaphor, however,
gives rise to different meanings in different lms.
In the following sections, we will rst briey survey how the notion of “transformation” is
discussed with reference to the genre of the horror lm. Subsequently, we analyse ve werewolf lms
in light of the DEVIANT IDENTITY IS TRANSFORMED BODY metaphor, taking into account sources from
both metaphor and werewolf lm scholarship. In our last section we will draw some conclusions.
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Transformations in the horror lm genre
Paul Wells considers most monsters in modern horror cinema to be metaphors for certain threats to
“the prevailing paradigms and consensual orthodoxies of everyday life” (9). They disturb the order
and question our established ideas about the value and meaning of what it is to be human. In terms of
CMT terminology, monsters are the source domain in a metaphor that can be verbalized as THREATS
TO ESTABLISHED IDEAS AND VALUES OF SOCIETY ARE MONSTERS. Wells discusses the antagonists that
the animal kingdom has presented to the horror genre. He claims that the explanation for the fact that
these creatures make such popular monsters lies in the dichotomy between civilized, human society
and the primordial world, which coexist but can never become one. We use animals as providers of all
sorts of products, but when they escape our control, when they are no longer our servants, they become
threatening, turning into monsters (13). Another fear that Wells discusses that is highly relevant for
transformation horror is the fear for other people: most successful horror texts work because the reader
or viewer has a certain emotional engagement with the characters and is afraid of what might happen
to them (15). In the case of animal transformation horror, antagonist and protagonist are frequently
the same creature: it is often a major character who turns into the monster. So not only do we have a
creature that is fearful because it breaks the rules of civilisation, we also face the frightening thought
that this creature was once itself a part of civilisation. When discussing animal horror, Wells states that
this subgenre often prompts “a deeper recognition of the required consensus and constraint needed to
achieve even the most basic level of civilisation” (13). Although he does not mention transformation
horror in this context, this seems to be true for this subgenre more than any other: it is civilised humans
themselves who turn out to be capable of switching to the other side, becoming part of the primordial
world that disrupts order, and that civilisation therefore tries to suppress.
Robin Wood also links the horror genre to repression, distinguishing between basic repression,
the mechanism which tries to keep animal instincts and urges under control, and surplus repression, a
given culture’s censorship of certain minorities, alternative opinions and sexual preferences (25). In the
case of surplus repression, what is being subdued is what in psychoanalysis is called “the Other”: that
which society cannot accept and therefore must suppress or destroy (27). Woods claims that central
to the horror genre is the “dramatization of the dual concept of the repressed/Other, in the gure of
the Monster” (28). In other words, the monster metaphorically represents that which society cannot
accommodate.
Without using psychoanalytical terminology, Jason Zinoman appears to agree with Wood, stating
that almost every monster in the modern horror lm is something uncanny and abnormal (114). He
quotes horror director Guillermo del Toro singing the praise of H. P. Lovecraft, who, according to Del
Toro, often describes his monsters as “unnamable” (115): so different from everything we understand
that they cannot be captured in language.
Noël Carroll points out that part of the reason for people’s fascination with ctional monsters
is the fact that, were we to encounter a typical horror monster in real life, we would not know how to
deal with it, as it dees our notions of what is possible and what is not (Horror 40). Carroll does not
see the monster as a representation of the repressed, but he agrees with Wood, Wells and Zinoman that
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part of the reason that monsters effectively scare people is the fact that they do not “t in” our world. In
line with this view, Anne Bartsch claims that what monster lms of the vampire, werewolf and zombie
variety have in common is that their genre-typical transformations “symbolize the unleashing of violent
and sexual impulses and the contagious spreading of moral corruption throughout society” (Bartsch
255).
Kim Newman cites the revolt of nature as an important theme of the modern horror lm. His
use of the word “revolt” suggests that certain urges had been suppressed before and, indeed, Newman
detects similar mechanisms to the ones Wells described in his discussion of monsters. Not even using the
word metaphor, Newman describes monsters as standing in for something: the rats that often populate
animal horror lms are “standing in for all the repressed, lthy, forgotten and despised elements we have
tried to squash from our lives” (89). Werewolf lms can be seen as a subgenre within revolt-of-nature
lms: a variety in which the revolt, disturbingly, takes place in the human person him/herself. Such lms
have often been described as containing the “beast within” metaphor: the werewolf as a representation
of the animal urges that society requires us to suppress (362). Steven Jay Schneider similarly argues that
the transformations of shape-shifters (of which he considers werewolves a subcategory) “do not so much
cause the existence of a physical double as manifest the existence of a mental one” (Schneider Horror
112).
What makes the ideas on the subject of monsters discussed above relevant for the study of
werewolf lms is that they all concentrate on the fundamental difference between the monster and the
human. Whatever the monster is, its effectiveness as a source of fear seems to emanate from the fact
that it represents what humans are not, or rather, what humans would not like to see themselves as. This
raises important questions about the image that werewolf lms offer us of a human being turning into a
monster: if the monster is typically something that cannot be human, then what does it mean if a human
becomes a monster? In the next section, we will analyze ve werewolf lms in some detail, showing
how in each case the physical transformation from human into monster – an “embodied” process par
excellence – invites us to construe metaphors that are variations of the metaphor DEVIANT IDENTITY IS
TRANSFORMED BODY.
Case studies
An American Werewolf in London (John Landis, USA 1981)
The title An American Werewolf in London immediately draws attention to one of the most important
subjects of the lm: difference. It emphasizes that we are not just watching a werewolf, we are watching
a werewolf in a different country than the one he hails from. Indeed, much of the lm concentrates on
pointing out that the main character, David Kessler, an American vacationing in England, is confronted
with a very different culture than the one he is used to.
Early in the lm, David and his friend Jack reluctantly enter the stereotypically English pub
“The Slaughtered Lamb,” located in a stereotypically English rural village. An awkward silence falls
the moment the two tourists step in: people are not used to strangers around here. One patron calls the
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John Wayne lm The Alamo (1960) “bloody awful” and loudly tells a joke ridiculing ”the Yanks,” to the
amusement of everyone in the pub except David and Jack. These rst ten minutes make crystal clear that
David and Jack do not belong here.
On their way back from the pub, the two get attacked by a werewolf that kills Jack and bites
David. This results in David himself turning into a werewolf at the next full moon and going on a killing
spree in London. After realizing what he has done, David attempts to get himself arrested before he
changes again. He uses his non-English-ness to offend a police ofcer, insulting English culture: “Queen
Elizabeth is a man! Prince Charles is a faggot! Winston Churchill was full of shit! Shakespeare was
French!” David wants to establish his identity as that of a threat to the values of English society. The
ofcer, however, does not realize how dangerous David truly is and refuses to arrest him. When night
falls, David transforms again and rampages through the city, starting in London’s famous Eros Cinema
and eventually causing a trafc accident involving a typically English red double decker bus. We see
his outsider-identity embodied in the shape of a monster that attacks symbols of a culture he does not
belong in. Eventually, David is shot dead by police ofcers and returns to his human form: it takes the
authority gures of this society to neutralize the threat to their culture. The central metaphor here could
be verbalized as FOREIGNNESS IS TRANSFORMED BODY.
The Howling (Joe Dante, USA 1982)
Another famous werewolf lm of the 1980s is The Howling, which presents one of its central metaphors
in the opening scene. We see a psychiatrist being interviewed on a talk show, stating:
Repression is the father of neurosis. Of self-hatred. Now, stress results when we ght against
our impulses. We’ve all heard people talk about animal magnetism. The natural man, the noble
savage. As if we’d lost something valuable in our long evolution into civilised human beings.
Now, there’s a good reason for this. Man is a combination of the learned and the instinctive. Of
the sophisticated and the primitive. We should never try to deny the beast, the animal within us.
Given the subject of the lm, this monologue can already lead us to the assumption that the “beast-
within” metaphor described by Newman will be literalized in the shape of werewolves.
Indeed, immediately after the scene of the interview we meet our rst werewolf: a rapist who
lurks in an erotic-video store and invites a young woman named Karen into a booth. He makes her watch
footage of a girl being raped, telling her that “she doesn’t feel anything. None of them do. They’re not
real, the people here, they’re dead. They can never be like me.” He then transforms into a wolf-man
and assaults Karen, after which he is shot dead by police ofcers hearing her scream. With the context
provided by the psychiatrist’s explanation, we can easily construe a metaphor that can be verbalized as
PEOPLE WHO LET THEIR ANIMAL URGES RUN FREE ARE WEREWOLVES. After this traumatic experience,
Karen visits her therapist, the psychiatrist from the opening scene, who recommends her and her husband
Bill to come with him to the Colony, a secluded resort in the woods where he sends “very special
patients.” All these patients and the therapist himself, however, turn out to be werewolves who can
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shapeshift at will. The therapist apparently started the Colony in order to help werewolves accept their
“gift,” as he calls it, and he plans to persuade Karen to join them. He wants werewolves to be able to
coexist peacefully with normal people, controlling their transformations and tting in with society. An
old Colony member disagrees: “You can’t tame what’s meant to be wild, doc. It ain’t natural.”
Apart from the PEOPLE WHO LET THEIR ANIMAL URGES RUN FREE ARE WEREWOLVES metaphor
being repeated, the way this scene shows werewolves as a separate community struggling to t in with
society also conveys that MINORITIES ARE WEREWOLVES. As in An American Werewolf in London, we
see those who are different represented as monsters, but in The Howling, they are not tourists: they intend
to stay. This, however, is impossible, as they deviate so fundamentally from the norm. The solution is not
very reassuring: all the werewolves burn to death in the lm’s climax.
Cat People (Paul Schrader, USA 1982)
In Cat People, the title characters are members of a race of people transforming into black leopards
when having sex with people who are not part of their race. The only way to transform back into a
human being is to kill somebody who is not a cat person. The cat people are incestuous, as this is the
only way they can reproduce. One of them is Irena Gallier, a young woman who lives in New Orleans.
She has never known her family and at the beginning of the lm is unaware that she is a cat person. Her
brother Paul tracks her down to tell her about her inherited inclinations, and to explain to her that he is
her only possible sexual companion: having sex with anyone else would lead to a disaster. Irena refuses
to accept this fate and begins a relationship with the zoologist Oliver, keeping her cat identity a secret
from him and not consummating their love out of fear of what might happen. Eventually, however, she
can no longer restrain herself: she has sex with Oliver and transforms into a leopard. She then ees, not
killing Oliver, as even in her leopard shape she feels love for him. Irena ends up at a secluded lake house,
where she kills a caretaker in order to regain human form. Oliver manages to track her down and she
asks him to kill her, devastated by the realisation they can never have a functional relationship. When
Oliver refuses to do so, Irena answers: “Then free me. Make love to me again. I want to live with my
own.” Oliver ties Irena to a bed and has sex with her. In the nal scene of the lm Oliver is seen working
at the zoo, walking to a cage containing a black leopard. He hand-feeds and strokes the leopard, which
it allows, after which it growls at him. The implication, of course, is that this leopard is Irena, who will
now remain a caged leopard for the rest of her life.
The fact that Irena’s transformation is the result of her giving in to her sexual urges conveys the
metaphor OUR NATURAL IMPULSES ARE AN ANIMAL WITHIN US that is also present in The Howling. Irena
knows that having sex with Oliver is dangerous, but she cannot help herself: the inner beast comes out.
There is another striking similarity between The Howling and Cat People: like those in The Howling, the
shapeshifters in Cat People are shown as a minority that seems incapable of nding a place in normal
society. They can only reproduce among themselves, and will cause harm if they have sexual relationships
with ordinary people: they must live in their own small, secluded society. Irena attempts to t in with
society by having a relationship with Oliver, but is doomed to fail. The idea of Irena as a character who
does not belong in the environment she lives in is also strongly present in a sequence where she dreams
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that she is in the place where the cat people originally hail from: a savannah occupied by black leopards,
where her brother Paul awaits her, saying: “Welcome home.” This is Irena’s real home, and no matter
how hard she tries to live a normal life in New Orleans, she will not succeed: she will always be the
Other. Eventually, Oliver nds a way for her to exist in conventional society without being a threat to
it by keeping her locked up. He represents a society that allows minorities to exist, but only at a safe
distance from the rest of the world. The lm thus gives a rather bleak view of minorities struggling but
failing to t in with society, and only being allowed an existence without freedom: MINORITIES ARE CAT
PEOPLE. The metaphor is similar to that conveyed in The Howling. The main difference is that whereas
the only solution The Howling provides to the problem of difference is destruction, Cat People allows
the Other to exist, as long as it is kept in control. The Howling destroys, while Cat People subjugates the
Other.
Teen Wolf (Rob Daniel, USA 1985)
Several dimensions of the werewolf metaphor can be found in Teen Wolf, in which unpopular teenager
Scott Howard is a rather uncharacteristic werewolf: his transformation is not one into a savage creature,
but into a hairier version of himself with superhuman strength and dexterity with essentially the same
personality as his “normal” self, albeit more extraverted. Here, the monster is not the senseless creature
from the lms discussed above, but essentially a strange-looking human. The lm thus breaks with the
tradition of the monster as something incapable of reason as described by Wood, Wells and Zinoman.
Scott’s transformations are not caused by the full moon, as in most werewolf movies, but occur
initially when he is in stressful situations, until he nally manages to control them and turns into a
wolf-teenager whenever he wants to. His werewolsm is not caused by an attack by another werewolf,
but inherited from his parents. It is not an unnatural force of evil, but a natural part of his development,
which starts when he is in his teens. All this makes it reasonable to construe the metaphor PUBERTY IS
WEREWOLFISM: Scott becomes hairy, his voice gets lower and he nds it difcult to deal with these
bodily changes, at rst being ashamed of them. When he tells his basketball coach that he is considering
quitting the team because he is “going through changes,” the coach interprets this as meaning Scott is
going through puberty and tells him everybody has this experience. Only after having a conversation
with his father, who shows him his own hairy wolf-face, does Scott become more comfortable with his
new identity.
Once Scott has accepted this new identity, the message of the lm seems to change to the BEING
DIFFERENT IS BEING A WEREWOLF metaphor also found in the three lms discussed above, albeit in a
more positive way. When helping him come to terms with his condition, Scott’s father tells him that
despite society’s prejudices, “Werewolves are people too,” describing them as a discriminated minority.
The idea is reinforced when Scott wants to tell his friend Styles that he is a werewolf, and Styles
replies to Scott’s statement that he has something important to say: “You’re not gonna tell me you’re
a fag, are you? ‘Cause if you’re gonna tell me you’re a fag, I don’t think I can handle it.” The idea of
werewolves as a discriminated minority is perhaps expressed strongest when a bully, aware of Scott’s
werewolsm, calls him a freak and tells him: “I’ve dealt with your kind before. Your mommy used to
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steal chickens from the backyard. Until I blew her head off with a shotgun.” But despite society’s fear
and hatred of monsters, most people respond positively to Scott’s werewolsm when they discover it
has its advantages: in his wolf-shape, Scott becomes an excellent basketball player and dancer, and helps
his friend nd a lost bag of marijuana thanks to his superior sense of smell. He decides no longer to hide
his condition, instead walking around proudly as a wolf-teenager almost permanently, and he quickly
becomes the most popular boy at school. Finally, however, he decides that wolf-Scott is an alter ego that
should not take over his life. He helps his basketball team win a game in fully human shape and from that
point onwards does not transform again. His love interest likes fully human Scott better than wolf-Scott,
and the two get into a relationship. Although Scott’s werewolsm gave him the condence required to
excel at basketball and win the girl he is in love with, it is now time to leave that part of him behind.
Scott’s werewolsm was a temporary period of change that helped him grow and turn from a boy into a
man.
Silver Bullet (Daniel Attas, USA 1985)
One important difference between Silver Bullet and the lms discussed before, is that here the werewolf
is not the main character. Silver Bullet is a whodunit, in which the main characters gure out the identity
of the shapeshifter terrorizing their rural community. It turns out to be the trusted reverend of the local
church, Lester Lowe, who believes he is on a holy mission. His victims are mostly people the church
would consider sinners: the rst victim is a notorious drunk, the second a teenage girl who is planning
to commit suicide and states to herself: “Suicides go to Hell. Especially if they’re pregnant. And I don’t
even care,” before the werewolf storms in and kills her. Lowe believes, we nd out, that by preventing the
girl’s suicide he has saved her soul from going to Hell. In a dream sequence, Lowe sees the population of
the village transform into werewolves while he is giving a sermon in his church, suggesting he considers
them, the sinners who refuse to listen to his view of morality, as the monsters.
Being a respected gure in the community and using his shapeshifting ability to enforce Christian
morality, Lowe seems a different kind of werewolf than the ones discussed before: he is not the outsider
we normally see transforming in this genre. He also remains capable of rational behaviour when in
wolf-form, having plausible motivations for all his murders. In Silver Bullet it is not the monster but
its killers who are outsiders: Lowe is eventually defeated by wheelchair-bound pre-teen Marty and his
older sister, a book smart, introverted girl who is bullied by other children in the rst scene in which
she appears. Marty enjoys the company of his eccentric uncle Red, a possible alcoholic who allows him
more freedom than his parents. “You oughta realize there’s more to Marty than him not being able to
walk,” Red criticizes Marty’s concerned mother. When the parents are conveniently away, it is this trio
of social mists that manages to kill the werewolf by shooting it with the eponymic silver bullet, which
was created from amulets worn by Marty and Jane. While resting from the ght, Marty turns to his sister
and says: “I love you, Jane.” Jane replies: “I love you too.” The lm ends with retrospective voice-over
narration by the now older Jane: “I wasn’t always able to say that. But I can say it now. I love you,
Marty.”
The social mists destroy a monster that represents the suppressive force of Christian morality
at its most extreme, using a weapon that can be seen as a symbol of their personalities. Having rid
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themselves of the oppressing force, they are nally able to show their love for each other. Thus, in Silver
Bullet, THE OPPRESSOR (rather than THE OPPRESSED) IS A WEREWOLF.
Concluding remarks
On the premise that monsters are typically seen as fundamentally un-human, we asked the question what
it means for a human to become a monster in so-called werewolf lms. We argued that the profoundly
embodied transformation from human into (were)wolf should be understood in terms of varieties of the
conceptual metaphor DEVIANT IDENTITY IS TRANSFORMED BODY. In the case of An American Werewolf
in London, The Howling and Cat People, the monster represents an aspect of the shapeshifter’s human
character, namely that these characters in one way or another deviate from the norm. The fact that they do
not t into their cultural community and are thus the Other, makes them un-human in the eyes of society;
this idea is literalized by their transformation. They are not normal people turning into abnormalities;
they were abnormal to begin with. Teen Wolf also exemplies this metaphor of minorities as werewolf
monsters, but also portrays werewolsm as a normal and acceptable stage in a young man’s life by
showing the transformation as a source domain in the metaphor PUBERTY IS TRANSFORMED BODY. Silver
Bullet goes against the convention of showing the werewolf as an outsider, even in his human form, by
making him a respected authority gure. Here, the werewolf monster represents the oppressing nature of
certain moral values, to be eliminated by the outsiders. However, what all these lms have in common,
is that the werewolf is a literal representation of the identity of the person who turns into it. In werewolf
lms the metaphor DEVIANT IDENTITY IS TRANSFORMED BODY is thus central to the genre, but the
dimensions of that “Otherness” identity differ for each lm. This interpretation is commensurate with
that proposed by Schneider, who combines psycho-analytic and CMT approaches to horror lms. In
shapeshifter lms (of which he considers Werewolf lms a subcategory) the transformed body reects
universal, subconscious fears but always does so in the context of a specic time and place – and thus of
specic socio-cultural concerns (Schneider Monsters).
This last comment is also pertinent to an evaluation of the role played by the visual and the verbal
modalities, respectively, in the werewolf metaphors discussed. The transformation of human into
werewolf, with its threat of violence, is usually visualized: it is the most embodied, spectacular dimension
of the metaphor and arguably feeds on the universal, atavistic fear of transformation of the human
body. The cultural dimension of the mappings from TRANSFORMED BODY to DEVIANT IDENTITY are
invariably rendered via dialogues and monologues, that is, in the verbal modality. It is the transformation
aspect of the metaphor that makes it typically cinematic; the cultural motivation for the metaphor, as one
anonymous reviewer pointed out to us, could appear equally effectively in the medium of the novel (see
Forceville et al. Adaptive Value for some further discussion of the embodied versus cultural dimensions
of metaphor). All this serves as a reminder that “lm” should not be equated with “moving images,”
but constitutes a truly multimodal medium, with different modalities serving different functions. Film
scholars restricting their focus to features of lm that it does not share with other media are guilty of
an undesirable essentialism. In this respect, we agree with Carroll that “the lm theorist benets from
thinking about what lm has in common with other arts” (Metaphor 222).
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Together with LIFE IS A JOURNEY (Forceville Journey; Varda; Animation; Forceville and Jeulink;
Kromhout and Forceville), the DEVIANT IDENTITY IS TRANSFORMED BODY metaphor is a conceptual
metaphor that is worth examining more consistently in the analysis of IDENTITY in lm (see also
Teodorescu). Both LIFE IS A JOURNEY and DEVIANT IDENTITY IS TRANSFORMED BODY are highly
embodied metaphors and eminently visualisable, and thus are attractive options for cinematic narratives
to exemplify protagonists’ struggles with their deviant identities and with the life goals they want to
pursue. As discussed, the werewolf belongs to the larger category of shapeshifters that also appear
for instance in vampire and zombie lms. It will be pertinent for the delimitation of these respective
genres as well as for a theorization of the possible metaphorical mappings from TRANSFORMED BODY
to DEVIANT IDENTITY to systematically investigate how monsters “contaminate” innocent people in
these various subgenres (we owe this observation to Anne Bartsch, personal communication at SCSMI
conference, Berlin, June 2013). Finally, we submit that the central metaphor also deserves sustained
attention in science ction lms and in the medium of animation.
Acknowledgment
We want to thank the anonymous reviewers of an earlier draft of this paper for their thoughtful comments
and their pointers to pertinent bibliographical references.
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Julius Koetsier graduated in the lm track of the Media Studies department at University of Amsterdam
in 2012. The title of his MA thesis is “Transformation metaphors in the lms of David Cronenberg.”
E-mail: juliuskoetsier23@gmail.com
Having studied English language and literature, Charles Forceville now works in the Media Studies
department of the Universiteit van Amsterdam. His teaching and research pertain to multimodal rhetoric
& narrative, in relation to cognition. He examines discourses in various genres, including feature lm,
documentary, animation, comics, cartoons, and advertising. By systematic research on audiovisual
narrative and persuasive texts he aims to help build bridges between the humanities, social science
research, and AI. The Adventures in Multimodality (AIM) blog he co-administers with Natalia Sanchez-
Querubin can found at http://muldisc.wordpress.com; Forceville’s online course on pictorial and
multimodal metaphor can be accessed at http://semioticon.com/sio/.
E-mail: c.j.forceville@uva.nl