Well, things have been coming up a lot recently, but it's time to blow some steam off by taking a look at everyone's fun buddy, the Loup Garou! AKA the Werewolf, the Lycanthrope or Fuzzy-Wuzzy.
Well, just kidding about the last one.
Hollywood's treatment of the werewolf typically sees him as an impotent man who suddenly gets accidentally bitten by a wolf and soon becomes an alpha male, sort of a 'from zero to hero' kind of thing.
With the unfortunate side effect of becoming a man-killing freak in the process, and one who has to use the lunar calendar, of all things.
And it's interesting that over the years, people used to be really conflicted, nay, tormented over this sort of thing, blood of the innocent and all that.
But lately it seems like werewolf victims treat it all as just a really big inconvenience or vent on people using the Texan 'He Had It Coming' principle.
Oh sure, they're officially looking for a cure, but whether it's An American Werewolf in London, Wolf, Werewolf the TV series or any number of other recent werewolf films too wretched to utter their names, (I'm looking at you, Wes Craven) it seems the 'heroes' really dawdle at finding the cure.
It takes half the episode/film to figure out they're even a werewolf, and then there's the ranting around like they'd never heard of the things.
It makes you just want to throw your hands up in the air like you don't care.
For me, I always saw the roots of our primal fear of the werewolf grounded in the idea of a person who is out of control, who returns to a bestial, savage state, becoming feral and murderous.
And perhaps, in an odd paradox, they're not completely 'wild' and 'carefree' beings of pure chaos. After all, their existence is now guided by the regularity of the lunar cycles.
It's savage, but largely predictable.
The werewolf strikes me as a being we dread for fear of reversions. Well, yes, and the big pointy teeth.
And what strikes me more is the more forgotten lore that werewolves used to be people who MADE THE CHOICE to be so. Beings whose monstrous natures were not bestowed by accident, but design. Which I find an intriguingly more horrific idea.
Tuesday, October 17, 2006
Creature Feature: The Werewolf
Tuesday, October 10, 2006
Creature Feature Short Take: The Aswang
During the recent Arcana convention I wound up on the Asian Horror Movies Panel, and one film I brought up was a terrible, terrible movie called Aswang, which is a pity because the mythic Filipino creature itself is quite interesting in comparison.
I should have known any film whose plot hinges on someone taking their new bride to meet his mother in Wisconsin was bound to be terrible.
The guy's mother turns out to be an Aswang.
Arguably, the Aswang do look like normal people during the day and like to be in professions involving meat, like butchers, for example, so hanging out in Wisconsin might actually make a bit of sense, but my brain is still reeling from the sheer awfulness of Aswang, the movie.
It was like watching a Troma film sober.
The Wikipedia has a long entry on the Aswang that in its short form describes it as:
"A ghoul in Filipino folklore. The myth of the aswang is popular in the Western Visayan regions such as Capiz, Iloilo and Antique. The trademark or major feature of Aswangs which distinguish them from other Filipino mythological creatures is their propensity to replace stolen cadavers with the trunk of a banana tree carved in the cadaver's likeness. They are also said to like to eat small children. Their favorite body parts are the liver and heart. Other local names, especially in Capiz are tik-tik and wak-wak."
I get the impression we're selling the Aswang a bit short in terms of its overall terror and power.
I wonder why the Aswang think anyone will ever fall for the old switch-the-cadaver trick.
Anyway, true to form, as terrifying as the Aswang is, it still brings out the toymaker in people, and you can find all sorts of macabre statuettes and drawings of it all over the web and the street vendor stalls.
There are some elements that make this sound similar to the Hmong Vampire stories up here in St. Paul, but not enough to make me say there's any great relationship between the two.
Both creatures apparently like to hang around funerals, however.
It also likes to walk with its feet facing backwards, like some folk accounts of the poj ntxoog in Hmong folklore.
I should say I may be reading it wrong, but the Aswang's entry in the Wikipedia kind of sucks. It points out there are two ways to distinguish it from a normal human, then proceeds to list just one: Bloodshot eyes from staying up all night looking for mischief to make.
The Encyclopedia Mythica at Pantheon.Org has a much more interesting, albeit short entry on the Aswang.
There, the entry makes the Aswang sound much more similar to the Hmong poj ntxoog, but again, it's highly unlikely that this similarity is anything more than coincidence. It's not likely to be the result of any prior exchange of folklore between the two cultures.
But there you have it, one of the most evil, terrifying creatures from the Phillipines. Or maybe it's just misunderstood.
I should have known any film whose plot hinges on someone taking their new bride to meet his mother in Wisconsin was bound to be terrible.
The guy's mother turns out to be an Aswang.
Arguably, the Aswang do look like normal people during the day and like to be in professions involving meat, like butchers, for example, so hanging out in Wisconsin might actually make a bit of sense, but my brain is still reeling from the sheer awfulness of Aswang, the movie.
It was like watching a Troma film sober.
"A ghoul in Filipino folklore. The myth of the aswang is popular in the Western Visayan regions such as Capiz, Iloilo and Antique. The trademark or major feature of Aswangs which distinguish them from other Filipino mythological creatures is their propensity to replace stolen cadavers with the trunk of a banana tree carved in the cadaver's likeness. They are also said to like to eat small children. Their favorite body parts are the liver and heart. Other local names, especially in Capiz are tik-tik and wak-wak."
I get the impression we're selling the Aswang a bit short in terms of its overall terror and power.
I wonder why the Aswang think anyone will ever fall for the old switch-the-cadaver trick.
Anyway, true to form, as terrifying as the Aswang is, it still brings out the toymaker in people, and you can find all sorts of macabre statuettes and drawings of it all over the web and the street vendor stalls.
There are some elements that make this sound similar to the Hmong Vampire stories up here in St. Paul, but not enough to make me say there's any great relationship between the two.
Both creatures apparently like to hang around funerals, however.
It also likes to walk with its feet facing backwards, like some folk accounts of the poj ntxoog in Hmong folklore.
I should say I may be reading it wrong, but the Aswang's entry in the Wikipedia kind of sucks. It points out there are two ways to distinguish it from a normal human, then proceeds to list just one: Bloodshot eyes from staying up all night looking for mischief to make.
The Encyclopedia Mythica at Pantheon.Org has a much more interesting, albeit short entry on the Aswang.
There, the entry makes the Aswang sound much more similar to the Hmong poj ntxoog, but again, it's highly unlikely that this similarity is anything more than coincidence. It's not likely to be the result of any prior exchange of folklore between the two cultures.
But there you have it, one of the most evil, terrifying creatures from the Phillipines. Or maybe it's just misunderstood.
Friday, October 06, 2006
Giant Robot Aftermath
My E-mail has been swamped with "How was the Giant Robot lecture"
so here's my report:
First, traffic was a pain trying to get there.
Second: In a bizarre twist of physics that would put H.P. Lovecraft's non-euclidean, cyclopean walls to shame, amazingly, the Walker space becomes increasingly non-intuitive to navigate in direct proportion to the urgency with which you want to catch a presentation.
The audience was jam-packed with more punks than APAs, and some who were both. More people within the 20-30 something demographic for a change, and not all the 'usual' crowd one expects to find at an art museum.
Unfortunately I wound up getting seated behind a fellow whose sense of personal hygiene gave new meaning to the term funky, and I don't say this often, but it actually became hard to hear all of the GR conversation because of it. :/
But I'm not going to dwell on that... He was more of the exception rather than the rule.
There were the usual shots at A. Magazine and Yolk that have become par for the course.
The talk was an affirming reminder of the power of indie DIY mindsets, seeing how they went from being a photocopied 'zine to a glossy full-color magazine today that scooped the arrival of Jet Li before Jet Li started sucking (although they feel he's now on a rebound) and many other stars.
They showcased some great artists and musicians across the country because they liked their stuff, and not because some corporate guy wanted to get some PR out.
They explained why art is now on the cover of GR and not photographs of people.
To their credit, they came off as people who really print what they really like, and not what someone tells them or pays them to. And the result is going to be somewhat eclectic as a result, and will suprise readers from time to time. And even themselves.
Their approach is more reminiscent of punk's approach than the techniques of traditional Asian American activism and identity politics.
We were given an interesting insight into how they approached the business, and how they ultimately diversified into stores and even the Giant Robot restaurant where you can get a tofu taco.
A big door was left open in the suggestion that what they've accomplished could be replicated, although I wonder if this is true- as little discussion assessed unique conditions of their time and the social-political and economic circumstances of the time that have effects on the process.
The big thing they wanted to convey was that they were ordinary people, well, actually, "obsessive dorks," in their own words, who happened to be willing to commit to long hours and strange routines at first. Boy, that sounds familiar.
It was a handy overview for people just starting to become familiar with Giant Robot, but I think the most interesting insights to their process, approach and potential came at the periphery of the core discussion, particularly around the issues of Asian American culture and how that will be communicated at a mass level.
I'm glad I went. There were definitely things to take away from the discussion that I'll be applying to some future projects of mine, even as I don't agree with all of their approaches.
so here's my report:
First, traffic was a pain trying to get there.
Second: In a bizarre twist of physics that would put H.P. Lovecraft's non-euclidean, cyclopean walls to shame, amazingly, the Walker space becomes increasingly non-intuitive to navigate in direct proportion to the urgency with which you want to catch a presentation.
The audience was jam-packed with more punks than APAs, and some who were both. More people within the 20-30 something demographic for a change, and not all the 'usual' crowd one expects to find at an art museum.
Unfortunately I wound up getting seated behind a fellow whose sense of personal hygiene gave new meaning to the term funky, and I don't say this often, but it actually became hard to hear all of the GR conversation because of it. :/
But I'm not going to dwell on that... He was more of the exception rather than the rule.
There were the usual shots at A. Magazine and Yolk that have become par for the course.
The talk was an affirming reminder of the power of indie DIY mindsets, seeing how they went from being a photocopied 'zine to a glossy full-color magazine today that scooped the arrival of Jet Li before Jet Li started sucking (although they feel he's now on a rebound) and many other stars.
They showcased some great artists and musicians across the country because they liked their stuff, and not because some corporate guy wanted to get some PR out.
They explained why art is now on the cover of GR and not photographs of people.
To their credit, they came off as people who really print what they really like, and not what someone tells them or pays them to. And the result is going to be somewhat eclectic as a result, and will suprise readers from time to time. And even themselves.
Their approach is more reminiscent of punk's approach than the techniques of traditional Asian American activism and identity politics.
We were given an interesting insight into how they approached the business, and how they ultimately diversified into stores and even the Giant Robot restaurant where you can get a tofu taco.
A big door was left open in the suggestion that what they've accomplished could be replicated, although I wonder if this is true- as little discussion assessed unique conditions of their time and the social-political and economic circumstances of the time that have effects on the process.
The big thing they wanted to convey was that they were ordinary people, well, actually, "obsessive dorks," in their own words, who happened to be willing to commit to long hours and strange routines at first. Boy, that sounds familiar.
It was a handy overview for people just starting to become familiar with Giant Robot, but I think the most interesting insights to their process, approach and potential came at the periphery of the core discussion, particularly around the issues of Asian American culture and how that will be communicated at a mass level.
I'm glad I went. There were definitely things to take away from the discussion that I'll be applying to some future projects of mine, even as I don't agree with all of their approaches.
Cancel My Trip To Quincy
Wow. Thanks to Power and Politics' reminder, I'd have to say Quincy needs an image makeover if it plans on appearing hospitable to Asian Americans.
Not that it was exactly top on my list of cities to visit in the near future, but getting told to forget my heritage AND the chance of getting beaten up by the police for a parking issue isn't exactly my idea of fun. And this is all in one year!
I mean, what do they do for an encore?
Kick puppies?
Also known as "The City of Presidents," they have a population around 88,025 and formed in 1792. Howard Johnson's and Dunkin Donuts also were founded here.
Not that it was exactly top on my list of cities to visit in the near future, but getting told to forget my heritage AND the chance of getting beaten up by the police for a parking issue isn't exactly my idea of fun. And this is all in one year!
I mean, what do they do for an encore?
Kick puppies?
Also known as "The City of Presidents," they have a population around 88,025 and formed in 1792. Howard Johnson's and Dunkin Donuts also were founded here.
And after all, this fellow looks like he REALLY enjoys their donuts. A little too much, perhaps, but hey, wouldn't you want to have a donut that tastes THAT good?
And now you know.
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