This classic fairytale could be damaging Europe’s wolf rewilding efforts
Wolves are making a comeback across Europe; but not in the UK and Ireland, where public support is lukewarm at best. While ecologists point out their benefits, farmers are also worried about their animals. But another influence on public opinion is rarely discussed: Hollywood’s obsession with viewing the wolf as a monster.
This is a particular problem in places where wolves are native but have been extinct for centuries. Although wolves once roamed Britain and Ireland, for most people there today they exist only in stories or on the big screen. The tropes we absorb through entertainment can carry much more weight than scientific facts and have a huge impact on how we think and feel about these animals.
Think of the big bad wolf or Little Red Riding Hood. Almost every child in the English-speaking world is introduced to the bad wolf from an early age. They are cunning, cruel and greedy.
However, we do not leave these images behind in childhood. Horror cinema keeps our nightmares full of wolves by drawing on familiar and often completely inaccurate tropes. Recent films provide particularly clear examples.
In Guillermo Del Toro’s latest Frankenstein adaptation, wolves are depicted as villains. After escaping from Dr Frankenstein, the Monster takes refuge on an isolated farm and tries to help its inhabitants. Wolves attack the farm twice; He not only takes the sheep, but also breaks into the house and attacks people.
During the first attack, the beast thinks: “The hunter didn’t hate the wolf. The wolf didn’t hate the sheep. But violence was inevitable between them. That was the way of the world. He would hunt and kill you just because you were you.” Del Toro uses wolves as a metaphor for the brutality in the world. To establish this connection, he portrays conflict between wolf and man as “inevitable” and portrays wolves – very inaccurately – as determined home invaders.
This negative portrayal is not taken from Mary Shelley’s novel, which does not contain such scenes. Del Toro seems to have placed this to increase tension and scare the audience.
Metaphors and monsters
Robert Eggers’ Nosferatu offers another example of a big budget. When Nicholas Hoult’s character tries to escape the vampire Count Orlok’s castle, he is pursued by a pack of wolves. This is very close to the old fairy-tale wolf characters who were depicted as overtly evil or demonic.
This was reinforced by the film’s promotional campaign. In a widely reported interview, Hoult claimed he was “almost attacked” by “real wolves.” In fact, the animals in question were Czech shepherd dogs, who played their roles a little too convincingly; not a wolf at all. Horror producers sometimes portray events like this to heighten the sense of threat and increase ticket sales, in this case they use a glitchy wolf attack to do so.
This isn’t just limited to big budget cinema. The recently released independent horror film Out Come The Wolves follows two men and a woman who are attacked by wolves on a weekend getaway. Meanwhile, a menacing love triangle scenario plays out in which a jealous would-be lover abandons his rival to a wolf attack.
The behavior of wild predators is presented as an allegory for an opportunistic approach to romance. All is fair in love and wolves. The film also includes a clear reference to the wolf’s reappearance: Upon hearing of the wolf attack, one of the characters is skeptical and says, “There have been no wolves in this area for years!” he says. The message here is clear: As wolves return to the area, the danger of attack increases.
Each of these films draws on existing tropes and fears in slightly different ways. That’s what horror as a genre does: it works with what already scares us and amplifies it for entertainment. However, in doing so, they risk being misperceived by the public as high-profile cinema events. Since most people in Britain and Ireland will never encounter a wolf in the wild, these fictional wolves become their reference points.
On screen and in reality
There are justified concerns about wolves preying on sheep, calves or other animals, but attacks on humans are extremely rare. A pack of wolves surrounding a house and terrorizing it over and over again simply cannot happen.
There is a strong ecological case for reintroducing wolves to areas where they once lived. As apex predators, they often reduce populations of deer and other animals that could harm the environment through overgrazing. In Yellowstone national park in the US, the reintroduction of the gray wolf has triggered unexpected biodiversity benefits as overgrazing elk mobilize, trees recover, rivers stabilize and beaver populations increase.
About the author
Cormac Cleary is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Institute for Climate and Society at Dublin City University.
This article is republished from: Speech It is under Creative Commons license. Read original article.
The same situation is happening in Europe, with the spread of wolves to their original habitat. But to reintroduce wolves to the UK or Ireland, conservationists will need to physically transport them there. Opinion polls show the approval rating in Ireland is 52%, while in the UK it is only 36%.
It’s hard to extrapolate these figures from the cumulative influence of centuries of storytelling, from ancient folklore to Victorian gothic novels to modern Hollywood horror. They all contribute to the idea that wolves are dangerous, unpredictable, and should not be near humans.
It is for entertainment purposes. But fear’s reliance on the wolf as a symbol of evil or violence could harm efforts to promote coexistence with healthy wild populations. Our natural landscapes need wolves. And right now the wolves need all the good PR they can get.
