It’s Not Weird… Like Werewolves.
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.15353/cjds.v8i2.497Abstract
This paper is both a theoretical and creative exploration using fan ficion. Monsters have drawn my interest because they are often metaphors for marginalized folks. Through histories of marginalized experiences represented as monsters and villains, I claim the monster as my own. In more recent iterations of the monster, I have observed this pull towards the normate looking at the show Teen Wolf in comparison to the 1984 movie by the same name. The monster becomes the protagonist, but in doing so, ends up becoming predominantly white, heterosexual, cisgender, abled, thin, and conventionally attractive. Furthermore, the representations of the monster consist of bodies that draw closer to the normate, but are exemplary of the norms of desirability. In short, they find the hottest models to play as monsters. The monster is no longer the marginalized subject, but becomes an expected, unattainable norm of desirability like Audre Lorde’s “mythical norm”.
In response to this mythical norm, I have rewritten the scripts as fans sometimes do. In Teen Wolf, the protagonist, Scott McCall becomes abled upon becoming a werewolf. What if he stayed disabled and wasn’t drawn closer to the normate? What if instead, he stayed a disabled nerd and ended up in a relationship with his best friend, Stiles, another disabled nerd? This little slice of life explores a little about what it’s like to be disabled, queer, racialized, and a monster that’s a little more representative of what it’s like to be marginalized.
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