Monday 11 October 2010

Essay question idea

Ok, i have come up with another idea for my essay question. I'm going to do werewolves, and look at the film Van Helsing directed by Stephen Sommers as my focus but also use other films as reference (yet to decide which ones, planning on using Underworld as possible) and my question is something like:

'How do werewolf transformations vary in films and how do they relate or differ from original folk lore stories'

Basically, my idea in my head is based around the whole story about the full moon and whether the werewolf needs to be in the moonlight to transform, whether they can transform at will or whether the moon affects them regardless of where they are.
What do you think?

1 comment:

  1. Okay - the significance of the moon aspect seems a little over-stated here. Like a number of students, there's a danger of your comparisons becoming too descriptive - i.e. comparing one kind of transformation to another; much more interesting is looking at the symbolic purpose of the werewolf tranformation; to put it another way, it's actually irrelevant 'how' the transformation is depicted (fake-fur/cg/whatever), the point IS the transformation and it's 'meaning' - so, in Company of Wolves, the transformation is associated with male, predatory lust - it's a hyper-visualisation of male attributes - body-hair and an indiscriminate appetite - that said, what is the symbolic value of the transformation in the girl-wolf film 'Ginger Snaps'?

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