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Shapeshifting as an Allegory for Sexual Desire in The Company of Wolves

Essays, To Export, , , , , , , , , ,

Harry Underwood
Film Analysis
NMAC 4481
10/18/2012

Shapeshifting as an Allegory for Sexual Desire in The Company of Wolves

In literary fiction, the shapeshifting trope is one of the more popular applications of fantasy to a large body of scenarios, ranging from horror to romance. As an act of fantasy, it also has strong cultural currency, as mythologies and folk tales emanating from China to South America have utilized shapeshifting for similar effects. As such a trope is largely fantastic and psychologically-impactful, it is little wonder that shapeshifting of entities or objects is often encountered in dreams. People like Sigmund Freud made it partly their life’s work to view dreams and dream acts such as shapeshifting and animal behavior as representative of the brain’s very structure and composition, and his emphasis upon the dreamwork as a means of dream interpretation has helped to redefine the dream state. Such imagery fits easily into the dream-like scenes and scenarios of Neil Jordan’s The Company of Wolves, which utilizes various cinematic and psychological techniques in order to emphasize the shapeshifting of dream entities as both an allegory for sexual and orgasmic desires and an expression of the human dream pattern.

Sexually orgasmic imagery is evinced in at least one transformation in the film, as narrated by the grandmother. The gory transformation of the enraged lycanthrope ex-husband against his wife and his subsequent beheading results in the fall of his bloodied head into the vat of milk. The film’s slow-motion depiction of this scene dramatically evokes Freud’s theories on yonic and phallic symbolism, with the milk within the vat splashing fulsomely in reaction to the plunge of the werewolf’s head. The head’s subsequent final reversion to its human state upon its reappearance to the surface of the vat is emblematic of the ultimate realization of sexual release. However, the act of the beheading of the werewolf may also be emblematic of Freud’s statement that the “dream-work represents castration by baldness, hair-cutting, the loss of teeth, and beheading” (Interpretation 170), whereby the werewolf’s sexual desire for his wife, who is now prohibitive in her sentiments regarding him (an Oedipal reference to the “wrongness” of such a relationship between the inferior upstart and the motherly figure), have been short-circuited by the appearance of the new husband (a ‘fatherly” figure), one who is already able to assert his authority by having had children with her, resisted the werewolf’s headstrong advances and struck his wife in the face when she expresses fascination with the late werewolf’s disembodied visage (whereas the werewolf sought to do far worse to her in retribution for her remarriage).

In another segment of the film, slightly contrary to the trend from much of the film, shapeshifting is also utilized in the seeming taming, rather than unleashing, by one character of another’s sexual passions. Rosaleen’s shooting of the Huntsman, his subsequent transformation into his wolfish form, and his acquiescence to Rosaleen in his transformed state would be most emblematic of Rosaleen being able to repress her sexual desires. The Huntsman, outwardly, shows himself to be as cunning and gentlemanly as he can to Rosaleen, thus confirming himself to be a fulfillment of all that Rosaleen was told of both men and wolves by her grandmother and arousing her hackles. The camera posits this, climactically, as an oppositional moment between the two characters through repeated shots and reverse-shots, with Rosaleen being shown with lower-key frontal lighting in her fright. Yet, when revealed as the wolf underneath, he doesn’t pursue her further and sits at his position opposite to her; she realizes his station in the world and she finds herself less apprehensive against physical contact with the wolf. The high key backlighting of the moment, accented by soft fill light, helps to affect the display of new-found intimacy between the two characters. The lighting and camera work in this contrast between the two characters both before and after the Huntsman’s transformation help to identify the displacement of Rosaleen’s sexual feelings for the Huntsman from the “problematic” human form (one which was plagued by his striking yellow eyes in his semi-shifted state) to the “acceptable” wolf form (one which, in comparison to the other fantastic transformations in the film, is not shown as being especially ravenous, visibly showy or predatory, but accommodating to Rosaleen’s touch). Freud considered this to be “dream displacement”, in which “it is often an indistinct element which turns out to be the most direct derivative of the essential dream thought” (On Dreams 34).

The approach to the depiction of such transformations, or, more specifically, the resulting forms of such transformations and the sexual subtexts of their accompanying scenarios are largely influenced by the bias of the character. From the older and more soured Granny’s perspective, the bloody, hyperbolic transformation of the estranged werewolf husband reveals a churlish, fearsome creature underneath an uncontrollable, ungainly, haggardly humanoid guise, one that is wrought by frustration and rage. In contrast, Rosaleen’s werewolf is cheery, cunning and quite in control of his human guise, and is only brought to his own violent transformation through being physically, momentarily wounded. Underneath the guise, however, is the downcast, humbled figure of a gray wolf who is a stark contrast in behavior and depiction to Granny’s bellicose beast. This wolf, in fact, may be emblematic of Rosaleen’s entire diegetic time within the dream: shy, downcast and selective of to whom she will open her ears and heart, yet possessing of a yearning, unfulfilled potential sexuality which is innate to herself.

The importance of shapeshifting as a shift to a more animalistic state is key to understanding the sexual and wishful undertones of such events. As shapeshifting usually involves the changing of the physical image of an entity from one state to another, on dreams. The transformation of characters into other species is emblematic, superficially, of a core mantra of the film, that men are sexually-charged animals. However, as it is a young woman who holds the dreams depicted, Freud holds that such dreams “fulfilled wishes which were active during the day but had remained unfulfilled. The dreams were simple and undisguised wish fulfillments” (On Dreams 21). Granny, on one hand, represents an authority figure who represses such thoughts as loathsome and perverse, although Granny is an expression of Rosaleen’s fears of her own sexuality. On the other hand, Rosaleen utilizes men in the film as figures of both fear and admiration, those who are able to hide themselves in public yet contain the most rapacious desires, thus imbuing the transformations in the film with new meaning.

In conclusion, The Company of Wolves succeeds in exhibiting characters and their actions as composite conveyances of the relationship between both the most instinctual desires from within the human mind and the most rigid repressions which are integrated from outside. In particular, the transformation of the lycanthropes in the film best conveys the eruption of desire – be it violent or from behind the dream facade, while giving due importance and reason to both aspects. Through targeted lighting, cinematography and special effects, the film testifies to shapeshifting as a tool of wish fulfillment, sensory distortion and sexual desire in one’s individual dreamscape.

Works Cited

Company of Wolves, The. Dir. Neil Jordan. Per. Sarah Patterson, Angela Lansbury, and Stephen Rea. Henstooth Video (Video & DVD), 1984. DVD.

Freud, Sigmund. Interpretation of Dreams, The. 3rd Edition. MobileRead. 2009. Print.

–. On Dreams. New York, New York. W.W. Norton & Company, Inc. 1980. Print.

Response 2: Snow White

Essays, To Export, ,

Response 2: Snow White

By Harry Underwood

September 16, 2009

 

“The Queen’s Looking Glass” is an essay which evaluates the story of Snow White from a feminist-critical viewpoint which does rather well in its comparison and fusion of the divergent personalities of the wicked stepmother and Snow White. The essay renders both characters as essentially two personalities of the same female figure, akin to the psychiatric appraisal of the relationship between the modern-day comic book characters of Batman and Joker: to Gilbert and Gubar, the two characters complement each other in their opposite exhibitions of femininity, with the character of the wicker stepmother being more assertive, more creative, more intelligent, more expressive and, hence, more evil and masculine and hateful, and the character of Snow White simultaneously positing a more “ideal” femininity, retaining a child-like body and a lack of both voice and intelligence. Thus, to Gilbert and Gubar, the entire story of Snow White is an exercise in the demonization of expressive, intelligent, diverse femininity, that which is best expressed in the adult, mature, “uppity” wicked stepmother and queen as opposed to the docile child princess.

“The Huntsman’s Story”, by Milbre Burch, is a short story, based upon a real-life incident, which, from the onset, gradually morphs the setting of the huntsman in “Snow White” into the unbidden, real-life kidnapping and murder of a 12-year-old girl. It is a damning story of how the “new huntsman” came to the young girl to perform the deed without the prior bidding of anyone, let alone a wicked stepmother queen; furthermore, unlike the happy ending of most other fairy tales, “The Huntsman’s Story” details how there was no joyous reawakening from the permanent sleep placed upon the 12-year-old some two months before her body was found.

The Merseyside Fairy Story Collective’s reworking of “Snow White”, on the other hand, goes against the grain of the traditional rendition by reappraising the young girl as a young adoptee of the dwarves in the nearby mines rather than an exalted, quiet princess. She, horror of all horrors, also has a mind (and a voice) to reject and subvert the intentions of the tyrant queen, and to win and turn the hearts of male and female, serf and soldier alike, against the potentially-murderous actions and machinations of the queen’s roughshod vanities, but she also personally and unequivocally rejects being made the princess of the queen, as she neither favors becoming the quiet, docile utility of the queen’s vanities nor becoming beholden to the same infatuation with beauty as is possessed by her would-be familial superior.

“Snow White and the Seven Dwarves”, as told by feminist poetry icon and suicidaire Anne Sexton, exudes something of a cynical, deadpan reappraisal of the characters in the story, while not completely reforming the story toward modern-day proclivities. Snow White is seen by Sexton as a “dumb bunny” when she forgets her hosts’ warnings and bites the poisonous apple given to her by the disguised queen. Ultimately, one gets the feeling that Sexton is exemplifying her taste for multi-layered poetry interpretation in the way by which she retells the story from a viewpoint which is much less charitable than that provided in the original telling.

Finally, “Snow Child” bears very little resemblance to “Snow White” other than the Snow Child in question is the object of a male figure’s passing fantasy in a travelling coach. When the Count piques his wife’s own rage by wishing for a child composed from supernatural, child-like beauty, the Countess decides to do everything she can accomplish to kill the naked little girl who assumes more of the Countess’ clothing. When she does succeed in speeding the girl to her last breath, the Count becomes so remorseful that he has sex with the seemingly-dead body of the child before it decomposes. Angela Carter’s telling of this original story is a testament to the feminist critique of male standards for, and sexualization of, female beauty and chastity.