Full Transcript for Postmodern Realities Podcast Episode 522: Dowsing: A Path to Enlightenment or a Gateway to the Occult?

66 00:05:13.350 --> 00:05:18.129 he's being treated for a wound at exactly the same place. 67 00:05:18.149 --> 00:05:23.350 And that's, that's actually kind of close to the, werewolf 68 00:05:23.430 --> 00:05:28.170 logic that modern audiences immediately understand. You can even go 69 00:05:28.350 --> 00:05:33.360 farther back still to the Epic of Gilgamesh where Ishtar 70 00:05:33.439 --> 00:05:37.459 turns one of her former lovers into a wolf and 71 00:05:37.500 --> 00:05:44.509 his own dogs attack him. There's something very ironic about 72 00:05:44.550 --> 00:05:47.129 that because he becomes the very predator that his former 73 00:05:47.170 --> 00:05:51.350 life was organized around keeping away. The shepherd becomes the 74 00:05:51.410 --> 00:05:56.279 threat to the flock. So there's a long history there, 75 00:05:56.980 --> 00:06:02.579 but it's probably medieval Europe where most of these stories 76 00:06:03.379 --> 00:06:07.259 sort of come to us in their most recognizable forms. 77 00:06:08.949 --> 00:06:13.569 But the point is that there's no single werewolf mythology. 78 00:06:14.930 --> 00:06:20.209 There are transformations brought about by curses, there are divine punishments, 79 00:06:20.329 --> 00:06:25.509 there is magic... and things that are never really explained. 80 00:06:27.089 --> 00:06:30.509 And so all. 81 00:06:30.370 --> 00:06:33.680 Of that kind of made it pretty fascinating for me 82 00:06:33.720 --> 00:06:36.180 when I was doing sort of my own version of 83 00:06:36.220 --> 00:06:40.560 this story. I initially approached this archetype thinking that I 84 00:06:40.620 --> 00:06:43.439 more or less knew the mythology, right? Full moon, silver bullets, 85 00:06:43.639 --> 00:06:45.819 you get bitten by one, you become one, and that 86 00:06:45.860 --> 00:06:48.899 kind of thing. But what I ended up discovering was 87 00:06:48.939 --> 00:06:55.050 that there was a large amount of ancient folklore that 88 00:06:55.079 --> 00:06:59.870 was actually not ancient. It was actually quite recent. And 89 00:06:59.910 --> 00:07:05.170 we can talk about that. But that gave me some 90 00:07:05.290 --> 00:07:10.860 freedom as a storyteller too. Because in my take on it, 91 00:07:10.889 --> 00:07:13.449 I sort of made it hereditary where it passes from 92 00:07:13.920 --> 00:07:16.500 father to firstborn son. And I could do that because 93 00:07:16.540 --> 00:07:22.389 there's no counsel there. that has established the canonical rules 94 00:07:22.430 --> 00:07:26.069 for this character. There, there's not, you don't have the 95 00:07:26.110 --> 00:07:30.189 literary gatekeepers that you do with a Dracula or you 96 00:07:30.240 --> 00:07:37.959 do with a Frankenstein. There's no, there's no real canonical 97 00:07:38.040 --> 00:07:45.389 text or measuring stick against which you can compare the 98 00:07:45.430 --> 00:07:48.329 stories that you're, you're sort of writing about it. So, 99 00:07:49.040 --> 00:07:53.560 What we call, quote-unquote, the werewolf is really this enormous 100 00:07:53.639 --> 00:07:57.430 accumulation of stories that have been told across millennia, even. 101 00:07:58.790 --> 00:08:03.009 The creature doesn't really have one origin because at least 102 00:08:03.069 --> 00:08:06.069 the ideas that sit underneath those stories seem to be 103 00:08:06.129 --> 00:08:10.529 much older and much more persistent than any specific version 104 00:08:10.550 --> 00:08:16.709 or any specific telling. Apparently, human beings have been fascinated 105 00:08:16.769 --> 00:08:19.980 for a very, very long time by the possibility that 106 00:08:20.040 --> 00:08:24.720 the boundary between ourselves and something a little more animalistic 107 00:08:24.800 --> 00:08:27.120 might not be as secure as we would like it 108 00:08:27.189 --> 00:08:31.250 to be. And it's fairly interesting as far as a 109 00:08:31.610 --> 00:08:33.909 history of an archetype goes. 110 00:08:35.370 --> 00:08:38.309 I think that is fascinating just because, like you said, 111 00:08:38.610 --> 00:08:41.570 most people have just in their mind, you know, somebody 112 00:08:41.590 --> 00:08:43.789 gets bit by a werewolf and every so often at 113 00:08:43.850 --> 00:08:47.610 a full moon, they become a werewolf. So just before 114 00:08:47.649 --> 00:08:51.549 we get into you know, more about this particular monster, 115 00:08:51.710 --> 00:08:54.190 I would like to ask you as I normally do, 116 00:08:54.250 --> 00:08:57.990 because usually, you know, I want people to stick with us. 117 00:08:58.070 --> 00:09:00.490 I want listeners to really stick with us because I 118 00:09:00.529 --> 00:09:03.789 think this is a monster that would be helpful, as 119 00:09:03.850 --> 00:09:07.730 I said in the intro, for cultural apologetics. So why 120 00:09:07.809 --> 00:09:11.690 should Christians care about this particular monster? 121 00:09:13.070 --> 00:09:14.769 I think the first thing I would say is that 122 00:09:14.789 --> 00:09:20.750 Christians don't have to care about werewolves. We're not trying 123 00:09:20.789 --> 00:09:26.649 to establish, you know, lycanthropy as this neglected branch of systematics. 124 00:09:26.710 --> 00:09:29.789 But I do think Christians should care about the stories 125 00:09:30.769 --> 00:09:37.519 we tell, particularly stories that prove remarkably difficult to stop telling. 126 00:09:38.779 --> 00:09:43.070 And that's where cultural apologetics becomes fairly interesting, to me 127 00:09:43.110 --> 00:09:46.610 at least, because we're not really looking through pop culture 128 00:09:46.649 --> 00:09:50.289 for illustrations anymore. that we can attach to things we 129 00:09:50.330 --> 00:09:53.159 already believe. If that's all we're doing, then the story 130 00:09:53.220 --> 00:09:59.700 itself really doesn't matter. We're just raiding culture for sermon illustrations. And, 131 00:09:59.909 --> 00:10:02.759 you know, Christians tend to be really bad about that. 132

00:10:02.799 --> 00:10:05.700 We watch a movie and immediately start hunting for this 133 00:10:05.740 --> 00:10:11.059 thing called the Christ figure. Somebody sacrifices himself, so there 134 00:10:11.139 --> 00:10:15.659 is Jesus. If there's a battle between good and evil, 135 00:10:15.700 --> 00:10:19.320 now we have this Christian worldview thing, connection that we 136 00:10:19.360 --> 00:10:23.840 talk about. Sometimes those connections can be legitimate, but if 137 00:10:24.460 --> 00:10:27.269 that is the entirety of our engagement with culture, we're 138 00:10:27.309 --> 00:10:31.450 not really listening to the story itself. So I'm at 139 00:10:31.490 --> 00:10:35.690 least interested in a different question, which is why does 140 00:10:35.750 --> 00:10:40.309 this thing continue to resonate? Why does it continue to 141 00:10:42.370 --> 00:10:44.690 speak to us? And I think the werewolf is a 142 00:10:44.809 --> 00:10:50.340 wonderful case study. Because some version of this creature has 143 00:10:50.399 --> 00:10:54.820 been with us for an extraordinarily long time. The details 144 00:10:55.000 --> 00:10:59.779 change dramatically. They vary from culture to culture. But the 145 00:10:59.840 --> 00:11:05.259 central imaginative act persists. Where a human being essentially becomes 146 00:11:06.250 --> 00:11:10.409 an animal. A person crosses some boundary and becomes something 147 00:11:12.210 --> 00:11:18.580 less recognizably human. And sometimes that is... you know, desirable 148 00:11:18.659 --> 00:11:22.700 because the animal represents strength or ferocity. Sometimes it's a punishment. 149 00:11:22.759 --> 00:11:27.559 Sometimes it's horrifying because the person remains conscious of what 150 00:11:27.639 --> 00:11:31.159 he has become. And yet we keep going back to 151 00:11:31.299 --> 00:11:35.799 the transformation. I think that what we call the transformation 152 00:11:35.879 --> 00:11:39.899 scene tends to be the crux of every werewolf story. 153 00:11:39.960 --> 00:11:42.639 It's the thing you go anticipating and sort of wanting 154 00:11:42.700 --> 00:11:44.399 to see how they do it and wanting to see 155 00:11:44.440 --> 00:11:49.490 how they handle it. Um, And we don't have to 156 00:11:49.830 --> 00:11:52.470 go to ancient mythology to see why that image works. 157 00:11:53.490 --> 00:11:57.009 It's that basic scene in a werewolf movie. A man 158 00:11:57.080 --> 00:11:59.120 looks down at his own hand and it's changing. The 159 00:11:59.159 --> 00:12:03.379 fingernails become claws. The hair is lengthening. The face changes. 160 00:12:07.360 --> 00:12:11.850 The horror of it and the interesting part is recognizing 161 00:12:11.889 --> 00:12:15.789 what's happening but not being able to stop it and 162 00:12:15.870 --> 00:12:18.490 knowing you can't be able to stop it. And so 163 00:12:18.529 --> 00:12:23.269 the horror is that the animal was the man standing there, 164 00:12:23.750 --> 00:12:28.610 you know, just 30 seconds ago. And a Christian ought 165 00:12:28.629 --> 00:12:31.700 to find that at least interesting, I would say, because 166 00:12:31.740 --> 00:12:34.620 Christianity makes very strong claims about what a human being 167 00:12:34.740 --> 00:12:37.259 is and what a human being is for. This thing 168 00:12:37.299 --> 00:12:45.210 called telos, or purpose. You know, sort of the classic 169 00:12:45.250 --> 00:12:47.769 thing to point to, human beings bear the image of God. 170 00:12:49.149 --> 00:12:51.970 We can debate what that means, but very simply, we 171 00:12:52.009 --> 00:12:56.070 have a vocation within creation. We are moral creatures who 172 00:12:56.230 --> 00:13:00.129 act faithfully or faithlessly toward God and one another. And 173 00:13:00.429 --> 00:13:05.980 Christianity simultaneously has this incredibly serious account of what human 174 00:13:06.019 --> 00:13:10.980 beings are capable of becoming. And the text of Scripture 175 00:13:11.039 --> 00:13:14.879 isn't sentimental about humanity. I mean, take Nebuchadnezzar, for example, 176 00:13:16.379 --> 00:13:19.970 who is a character reduced to to quite literally living 177 00:13:20.029 --> 00:13:26.570 among the beasts. Daniel portrays empires themselves as beasts. The 178 00:13:26.690 --> 00:13:30.610 imagery of beastliness can become a way of talking about 179 00:13:30.690 --> 00:13:34.990 human power that has become distorted or predatory or opposed 180 00:13:35.049 --> 00:13:40.059 to God's order. And human beings can become grotesque because 181 00:13:40.100 --> 00:13:44.740 they were made for something else. So Christianity doesn't say 182 00:13:44.799 --> 00:13:46.919 that when a human being does something evil that he 183 00:13:46.960 --> 00:13:51.799 has finally revealed his authentic animal self. That is actually 184 00:13:51.850 --> 00:13:58.049 a fairly different anthropology. Christianity says something has gone wrong 185 00:13:58.129 --> 00:14:02.450 with a creature who was originally made good. And I 186 00:14:02.509 --> 00:14:06.789 think that gives us a more interesting approach... to a 187 00:14:06.850 --> 00:14:10.389 character like Larry Talbot. Talbot, who was very famously played 188 00:14:10.450 --> 00:14:16.389 by Lon Chaney Jr. in the 1941 Universal classic. 189 00:14:17.409 --> 00:14:18.110 The Wolfman. 190 00:14:18.730 --> 00:14:25.690 Which, you know, as we've said, there is no literary, canonical, 191 00:14:26.470 --> 00:14:29.889 you know... Source material, I guess. Touchstone, source material, something 192 00:14:29.909 --> 00:14:32.990 like that, yeah, to point to. What's interesting about this 193 00:14:33.029 --> 00:14:36.460 character is that The Wolfman is sort of it. It's 194 00:14:36.620 --> 00:14:40.019 kind of remarkable how much of what we associate with 195 00:14:40.179 --> 00:14:44.409 modern werewolf mythology was actually created by Kurt Seidmach, who 196 00:14:44.710 --> 00:14:49.090 wrote that film and was pulling from wildly

different things. 197 00:14:49.129 --> 00:14:51.090 He was pulling from known folklore, but he was also 198 00:14:51.129 --> 00:14:56.529 pulling from his own experience in Germany during the Nazi era. So, 199 00:14:56.549 --> 00:14:58.850 you know, you watch the film and the pentagram appears. 200 00:14:58.909 --> 00:15:01.909 It's very interesting stuff that's going on in that movie. 201 00:15:01.929 --> 00:15:04.889 And that sort of is like the The ultimate modern 202 00:15:04.970 --> 00:15:08.879 source material is that film. And I think everything we're 203 00:15:08.919 --> 00:15:10.700 saying here sort of gives us a much more interesting 204 00:15:10.740 --> 00:15:14.259 way of approaching a character like Larry Talbot. Because we 205 00:15:14.659 --> 00:15:17.700 don't really look at him and say, well, the wolf 206 00:15:17.840 --> 00:15:23.169 represents sin. When Talbot himself seems to be, he's kind 207 00:15:23.190 --> 00:15:25.350 of a weak man. It's sort of ironic. His father's 208 00:15:25.370 --> 00:15:28.230 played by Claude Rains, who's this little diminutive guy. And 209 00:15:28.250 --> 00:15:30.070 Lon Chaney Jr. is this big hulk of a dude. 210 00:15:30.690 --> 00:15:34.120 But his dad is real domineering and he's real soft-spoken. 211 00:15:34.519 --> 00:15:39.080 It's just a very interesting juxtaposition there. But the point 212 00:15:39.139 --> 00:15:46.340 is that Talbot, he's not a terribly harsh man. He's 213 00:15:46.460 --> 00:15:48.799 not the kind of man that you would think, oh, 214 00:15:49.710 --> 00:15:53.210 that's a werewolf. And it's not even that he's even 215 00:15:53.250 --> 00:15:57.230 got the secret sin type thing. I mean, he's not 216 00:15:57.250 --> 00:16:04.029 the brightest and he is... sort of maybe innocent, I 217 00:16:04.110 --> 00:16:06.830 hesitate to say naive, but the point is that we 218 00:16:06.870 --> 00:16:08.769 wouldn't simply look at that character and say, well, the 219 00:16:08.789 --> 00:16:13.779 wolf represents sin. Instead, we would ask why Talbot's transformation 220 00:16:13.860 --> 00:16:17.340 feels like a violation of the man, because we pity him. 221 00:16:17.940 --> 00:16:21.440 That's the horror of that film, is watching a guy 222 00:16:22.299 --> 00:16:24.850 who really kind of doesn't deserve it in one sense, 223 00:16:25.629 --> 00:16:30.149 go through this terrible transformation and recognizing there is nothing 224 00:16:30.230 --> 00:16:33.490 he can do to stop it. The original title of 225 00:16:33.570 --> 00:16:38.649 the film was Destiny, which is very interesting to me. 226 00:16:38.909 --> 00:16:41.659 I pulled from that idea when I was doing my 227 00:16:41.700 --> 00:16:45.159 own version of the werewolf story for an audio drama. 228 00:16:45.899 --> 00:16:49.470 And I was very interested in that component of it, 229 00:16:49.500 --> 00:16:52.659 this idea of fate and not being able to escape 230 00:16:52.799 --> 00:16:57.549 this thing that is is happening. And so we look 231 00:16:57.570 --> 00:16:59.629 at a story like Talbot and say, why does his 232 00:16:59.789 --> 00:17:05.150 knowledge of the transformation make the story worse? Why is 233 00:17:05.309 --> 00:17:10.650 an ordinary wolf killing someone fundamentally different from Talbot killing someone? 234 00:17:11.549 --> 00:17:18.940 Those questions that we're asking open into anthropology and moral 235 00:17:19.019 --> 00:17:23.460 responsibility and sin and judgment and grace and redemption. And 236 00:17:23.539 --> 00:17:28.049 suddenly this silly Halloween monster is asking very, very old 237 00:17:28.170 --> 00:17:30.609 questions about what it means to be human. And so 238 00:17:30.730 --> 00:17:34.789 that's the kind of cultural apologetics I find worthwhile. We're 239 00:17:34.829 --> 00:17:38.230 not forcing Christianity onto the werewolf, but we are allowing 240 00:17:38.309 --> 00:17:44.519 the idea of that creature to ask its question and 241 00:17:44.619 --> 00:17:49.140 then discover that Christianity actually has an experience extraordinarily rich 242 00:17:49.259 --> 00:17:52.450 vocabulary with which to answer it. 243 00:17:54.589 --> 00:17:58.950 I want to highlight again this episode to tell you 244 00:17:59.089 --> 00:18:01.809 about how you can regularly stay in touch with the 245 00:18:01.829 --> 00:18:06.809 Christian Research Institute. And that is by getting our weekly e-news, 246 00:18:07.279 --> 00:18:11.900 which contains all kinds of free curated resources right to 247 00:18:11.940 --> 00:18:15.500 your inbox. If you haven't already signed up for it, 248 00:18:15.990 --> 00:18:18.410 It's the kind of newsletter that you're not going to delete. 249 00:18:18.910 --> 00:18:20.789 You are going to star it. 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So how you do that 256 00:18:42.430 --> 00:18:46.410 is go to equip.org and just scroll a little bit 257 00:18:46.450 --> 00:18:49.210 down on the front page and you will see that 258 00:18:49.269 --> 00:18:51.930 there's an area there where you can just put your 259 00:18:51.990 --> 00:18:55.690 name and your email and sign up for this newsletter. 260 00:18:56.250 --> 00:18:58.519 So it's a way to stay in touch with the 261 00:18:58.579 --> 00:19:02.019 ministry and see all the different resources that we have, 262 00:19:02.500 --> 00:19:04.680 which will be the kinds of resources that you are 263 00:19:04.700 --> 00:19:06.700 going to engage with. You're going to

read, you're going 264 00:19:06.720 --> 00:19:08.859 to listen to the content, and you're going to pass 265 00:19:08.900 --> 00:19:12.170 along to a friend. So don't miss out on all 266 00:19:12.349 --> 00:19:15.599 of the great resources that we have available to you, 267 00:19:15.740 --> 00:19:22.559 which are completely free. There is no paywall on the equip.org website. 268 00:19:22.960 --> 00:19:28.690 So now back to my conversation about werewolves with Cole Burgett. 269 00:19:30.349 --> 00:19:33.309 I want to ask you a little bit more about 270 00:19:34.289 --> 00:19:36.759 what you say in your article where you argue that 271 00:19:36.859 --> 00:19:40.220 the most maybe significant thing about, you know, the werewolf 272 00:19:41.160 --> 00:19:46.329 is actually the man, not the wolf. And so you 273 00:19:46.349 --> 00:19:49.789 were talking before the break a little bit about, you know, 274 00:19:51.019 --> 00:19:55.599 whole idea throughout different stories and mythology and so forth 275 00:19:56.160 --> 00:20:01.430 of humans becoming animals. So how does that help us 276 00:20:01.750 --> 00:20:05.690 understand humanity? And I think that's important because as you 277 00:20:05.710 --> 00:20:08.829 were saying, Christianity has a certain view of man. I 278 00:20:08.869 --> 00:20:12.410 think the average person's view of man is very different now, 279 00:20:12.630 --> 00:20:18.430 because if you hold to a Darwinian view of who 280 00:20:18.490 --> 00:20:21.869 man is in terms of evolution, then man is also 281 00:20:21.970 --> 00:20:25.210 an animal, which is very different than what Christianity teaches 282 00:20:25.269 --> 00:20:26.170 about anthropology. 283 00:20:27.829 --> 00:20:30.910 Yeah, well, the word itself is pretty helpful here. The 284 00:20:30.930 --> 00:20:35.869 were and werewolf comes from the Old English were, which 285 00:20:35.930 --> 00:20:41.339 just means man. So before we get called up in 286 00:20:41.380 --> 00:20:44.730 all the apparatus of the mythology. The basic idea is 287 00:20:44.769 --> 00:20:52.089 very simple. It's the man-wolf. And we probably pay too 288 00:20:52.130 --> 00:20:56.269 much attention to the second half of that, where obviously 289 00:20:56.329 --> 00:21:02.140 the wolf matters. Historically, wolves were genuinely dangerous. They lived 290 00:21:02.299 --> 00:21:06.319 outside the boundaries of human settlement. They killed livestock. They 291 00:21:06.359 --> 00:21:11.029 threatened people. If you're if your family's livelihood depends upon 292 00:21:11.089 --> 00:21:16.599 this very small number of animals surviving the winter, you know, 293 00:21:17.720 --> 00:21:22.200 the howl is not atmospheric Halloween sound design at that point. 294 00:21:22.720 --> 00:21:24.920 It means that something can come out of the darkness 295 00:21:24.960 --> 00:21:27.859 and take what keeps you alive. So the wolf carries 296 00:21:27.980 --> 00:21:32.670 all sorts of cultural associations like this.

It's the thing 297 00:21:32.690 --> 00:21:37.200 that exists beyond the firelight. It's really difficult to sort 298 00:21:37.240 --> 00:21:40.019 of domesticate it hunts it packs it kills okay but 299 00:21:40.059 --> 00:21:45.849 that ordinary wolf is not morally horrifying if a wolf 300 00:21:46.180 --> 00:21:50.140 kills a sheep it has behaved like a wolf the 301 00:21:50.210 --> 00:21:55.289 werewolf though becomes morally and psychologically interesting because the thing 302 00:21:55.329 --> 00:21:56.569 that is behaving like a wolf is. 303 00:21:56.509 --> 00:21:59.670 A man and um. 304 00:22:01.170 --> 00:22:03.190 Once you sort of notice that you begin to see 305 00:22:03.230 --> 00:22:09.059 this larger fascination with people crossing the boundary between human 306 00:22:09.079 --> 00:22:15.240 and animal. The Norse material is particularly interesting here because 307 00:22:15.299 --> 00:22:21.380 you have warriors associated with animal identities. You have the 308 00:22:21.420 --> 00:22:26.700 very famous berserkers, as they're called, which are traditionally associated 309 00:22:26.740 --> 00:22:31.140 with bears, but there were also these wolfskins that were 310 00:22:32.440 --> 00:22:37.670 similarly associated with wolves. Old Norse literature remembers these warriors 311 00:22:38.690 --> 00:22:42.490 raging like wolves or dogs and sort of biting their shields, 312 00:22:43.069 --> 00:22:47.289 possessing what might be seen as extraordinary strength. So whatever 313 00:22:47.369 --> 00:22:51.470 we can confidently reconstruct about the historical practices behind those 314 00:22:51.529 --> 00:22:58.430 literary traditions, the imaginative logic is quite revealing. Because the 315 00:22:58.549 --> 00:23:02.109 warrior assumes something of the animal because the animal possesses 316 00:23:02.190 --> 00:23:06.069 qualities that are useful in battle, such as ferocity. violence 317 00:23:06.269 --> 00:23:12.769 or the abandonment of just restraint, ordinary restraint. So sometimes 318 00:23:13.759 --> 00:23:21.180 becoming animal is power, but that same movement becomes terrifying 319 00:23:21.480 --> 00:23:26.400 when it is involuntary because the person ceases to govern 320 00:23:26.420 --> 00:23:32.690 their appetites and reason no longer directs their action. Even 321 00:23:32.849 --> 00:23:39.400 emotion no longer directs action. Violence becomes very instinctive, and 322 00:23:39.420 --> 00:23:42.460 the human being becomes something less than we think the 323 00:23:42.500 --> 00:23:46.500 human ought to be. We mentioned Nebuchadnezzar. You can see 324 00:23:46.539 --> 00:23:51.420 something really similar in Daniel 4, although obviously Nebuchadnezzar does 325 00:23:51.460 --> 00:23:54.900 not become a wolf. He's driven away from human society, 326 00:23:55.660 --> 00:23:57.740 and he eats grass like cattle, and his hair and 327 00:23:57.769 --> 00:24:01.849 his nails become really wild. And then the text describes 328 00:24:01.930 --> 00:24:06.890 his restorations. in connection with the return of his reason. 329 00:24:08.269 --> 00:24:13.759 And that's pretty fascinating because that movement between civilization and 330 00:24:13.819 --> 00:24:18.380 beastliness is connected to a proper recognition of reality and 331 00:24:18.559 --> 00:24:22.480 ultimately of God. And we still actually, we use this 332 00:24:22.539 --> 00:24:28.809 language constantly. We call particularly cool behavior animalistic or savage 333 00:24:29.069 --> 00:24:33.920 or brutal or bestial. And strictly speaking, that That's unfair 334 00:24:33.960 --> 00:24:38.859 to animals. A lion tearing apart a gazelle is not 335 00:24:38.980 --> 00:24:43.660 committing murder. The lion is not violating a moral obligation 336 00:24:43.740 --> 00:24:48.700 toward the gazelle. Animals are not failing when they behave 337 00:24:48.809 --> 00:24:54.470 according to their nature, although the eschatological imagery in Scripture 338 00:24:54.529 --> 00:24:57.769 is fairly interesting there, and we can talk about that, 339 00:24:57.789 --> 00:24:59.970 but it's kind of a separate discussion. The point is 340 00:25:00.009 --> 00:25:02.829 we use animal language because we're trying to describe a 341 00:25:02.869 --> 00:25:06.490 human being who has abandoned something that ought to distinguish 342 00:25:06.529 --> 00:25:11.519 human action. And that's why I think the where there 343 00:25:11.630 --> 00:25:14.019 is sort of the more important half of this word 344 00:25:14.059 --> 00:25:19.619 because the horror of the story depends upon the persistence 345 00:25:19.660 --> 00:25:23.819 of the human. To use the example of Talbot, simply 346 00:25:23.859 --> 00:25:25.539 because an ordinary wolf. 347 00:25:27.430 --> 00:25:30.329 If he simply became that and remained one forever with 348 00:25:30.390 --> 00:25:32.029 no connection to the man he had been, the story 349 00:25:32.069 --> 00:25:37.420 would lose much of its power. There's also a story, Bisklavrit, 350 00:25:37.880 --> 00:25:41.259 gives us the inverse of this, which I think is 351 00:25:41.720 --> 00:25:48.140 really interesting. It's a medieval text where the body becomes animal, 352 00:25:48.160 --> 00:25:52.589 but the moral character remains very recognizable to me. And 353 00:25:52.690 --> 00:25:55.990 so the wolf can actually behave nobly while the human 354 00:25:56.069 --> 00:26:01.109 being's betray and deceive and manipulate. And so there's this 355 00:26:01.789 --> 00:26:07.930 sudden physical animality and moral beastliness. It's not the same thing. 356 00:26:08.789 --> 00:26:14.049 And so the werewolf inhabits this terrible space between categories. 357 00:26:14.890 --> 00:26:17.880 He's not just human. He's not just animal. And it 358 00:26:17.980 --> 00:26:21.720 forces us to ask what precisely we believe separates those 359 00:26:21.799 --> 00:26:24.539 categories in the first place. And the second you ask 360 00:26:24.559 -->

00:26:28.309 that question, you are actually doing anthropology. You're asking what 361 00:26:28.349 --> 00:26:29.769 a human being actually is. 362 00:26:31.349 --> 00:26:35.990 So I want to go back to, you mentioned the 363 00:26:35.990 --> 00:26:40.539 1941 film, The Wolfman and the screenwriter, Kurt Sinemach. And 364 00:26:40.640 --> 00:26:45.400 he created this kind of character that if we ask 365 00:26:45.460 --> 00:26:48.359 the person on the street, describe a werewolf, they will 366 00:26:48.380 --> 00:26:53.079 probably describe it from that. So what did kind of, 367 00:26:54.180 --> 00:26:57.380 his interpretation of what the werewolf was add to some 368 00:26:57.420 --> 00:27:00.829 of the maybe historical views of it. Like you said, 369 00:27:00.869 --> 00:27:04.309 there wasn't one source material, but just kind of, you know, 370 00:27:04.349 --> 00:27:06.329 basically the mythology around this character. 371 00:27:07.490 --> 00:27:14.589 Yeah. So the, it was released by universal in 1941. 372 00:27:14.579 --> 00:27:17.700 It's probably the closest thing the werewolf has to a Dracula. 373 00:27:18.640 --> 00:27:22.740 But again, Seidmach was not adapting a definitive werewolf novel. 374 00:27:22.779 --> 00:27:25.799 There was no equivalent to Stoker sitting behind the movie. 375 00:27:25.839 --> 00:27:29.619 What he was doing was assembling a mythology. And this is, 376 00:27:29.759 --> 00:27:32.710 you know, if, if anyone has ever seen a picture of, 377 00:27:33.289 --> 00:27:35.690 you know, the Wolfman, the old black and white thing, 378 00:27:35.730 --> 00:27:40.660 and the very, very iconic Jack Pierce makeup, um, this is, 379 00:27:40.829 --> 00:27:44.599 this is what it's from. Uh, that's, that's Lon Chaney Jr. 380 00:27:44.650 --> 00:27:48.900 And his, and his, you know, iconic outfit, uh, with 381 00:27:48.920 --> 00:27:52.220 the collared shirt and lots and lots of hair. And 382 00:27:52.400 --> 00:27:56.809 if you go back and watch that film with it 383 00:27:56.880 --> 00:28:03.630 in mind, it's actually fascinating how much of the furniture 384 00:28:03.730 --> 00:28:07.269 in that movie is actually really familiar to us. So 385 00:28:07.289 --> 00:28:11.069 the character of Larry Talbot, again, this real tall guy, 386 00:28:11.950 --> 00:28:16.220 returns to his ancestral home, And he becomes involved with 387 00:28:17.200 --> 00:28:25.220 this girl, Gwen. And he encounters this character of Bela, 388 00:28:26.039 --> 00:28:33.200 who is the son of a fortune teller. And this 389 00:28:33.799 --> 00:28:41.160 character of Bela is a gypsy. And it's kind of 390 00:28:41.180 --> 00:28:46.990 interesting that Bela is played by Bela Lugosi, who's really 391 00:28:47.039 --> 00:28:54.740 well known for playing Dracula in the classic universal film, Dracula. 392 00:28:55.980 --> 00:29:01.150 So there's an interesting connection there. But Bela is himself 393 00:29:01.210 --> 00:29:01.710 a werewolf. 394 00:29:01.930 --> 00:29:04.809 By the way, I would say the average person probably 395 00:29:04.930 --> 00:29:09.109 thinks that Dracula, Frankenstein, and the werewolf were out of 396 00:29:09.130 --> 00:29:12.809 the universal monsters to think of. Mary Shelley or Stoker 397 00:29:12.930 --> 00:29:13.509 or anything. 398 00:29:13.569 --> 00:29:17.809 Yeah, it's interesting because the Universal people, and even the 399 00:29:17.910 --> 00:29:20.740 Universal theme park, they kind of have capital on these 400 00:29:20.819 --> 00:29:24.819 monsters now. The classic Universal monster movies, which are great 401 00:29:24.839 --> 00:29:28.640 and are some of my favorite films. So anyway, Bela 402 00:29:28.980 --> 00:29:33.730 attacks Gwen's friend and Larry intervenes and he kills the 403 00:29:33.769 --> 00:29:35.990 wolf with this silver headed cane, but he's bitten in 404 00:29:36.019 --> 00:29:39.099 the struggle. And then, you know, Baylor's human body is 405 00:29:39.160 --> 00:29:41.299 found where the wolf had been. And so, you know, 406 00:29:41.539 --> 00:29:45.059 today we understand that logic instantly. In fact, we can 407 00:29:45.160 --> 00:29:48.480 kind of, I don't think there's anything surprising in that 408 00:29:48.579 --> 00:29:50.869 film to us today. We go back and we watch 409 00:29:50.910 --> 00:29:53.190 it and it's, it seems like a very paint by 410 00:29:53.230 --> 00:29:58.089 the numbers werewolf movie because it, Again, it was establishing 411 00:29:58.150 --> 00:30:01.599 the tropes that we now sort of associate was just, oh, yeah, 412 00:30:01.619 --> 00:30:05.579 that's just what happens in a werewolf story. And what's 413 00:30:05.720 --> 00:30:12.079 interesting is that Siodmak is he's establishing all of the 414 00:30:12.200 --> 00:30:16.250 ideas through which later audiences will understand those things. And 415 00:30:16.390 --> 00:30:20.190 he was drawing on older traditions, certainly, but he was 416 00:30:20.250 --> 00:30:25.630 inventing things as well. The association with silver to the 417 00:30:25.670 --> 00:30:31.890 werewolf's particular vulnerability, that owes an enormous amount to the film. 418 00:30:33.039 --> 00:30:40.599 That pentagram idea becomes important. And that's coming out of 419 00:30:40.640 --> 00:30:48.180 his experiences as a Jew in the 30s. The idea 420 00:30:48.259 --> 00:30:51.670 of the werewolf curse being transmitted through an attack becomes 421 00:30:51.769 --> 00:30:55.170 part of that mythology. And, you know, later films sort 422 00:30:55.210 --> 00:30:58.089 of come in and solidify that the full moon is 423 00:30:58.190 --> 00:31:02.170 central to that transformation. Even that very famous little verse 424 00:31:02.880 --> 00:31:06.920 in the film sounds like something pulled out of medieval folklore, 425 00:31:06.960 --> 00:31:08.680 that even a man who is pure at heart and 426 00:31:08.740 --> 00:31:10.680 says his prayers by night may become a wolf and 427 00:31:11.339 --> 00:31:15.039

all of that. But that supposedly ancient bit of folklore 428 00:31:15.099 --> 00:31:17.579 was created for the film. And that's sort of a 429 00:31:17.640 --> 00:31:21.900 perfect example of what Seidmach accomplished. He sort of single-handedly 430 00:31:21.980 --> 00:31:28.920 created a modern mythology that feels old enough that audiences 431 00:31:28.980 --> 00:31:33.619 just sort of assume he inherited it from somewhere. And 432 00:31:34.710 --> 00:31:38.329 so a lot of that is just Hollywood magic. It 433 00:31:38.390 --> 00:31:42.589 takes this enormously messy collection of folklore and it sort 434 00:31:42.609 --> 00:31:49.740 of codifies this set of rules. And, you know, monsters 435 00:31:49.799 --> 00:31:52.660 tend to become less frightening if the rules are completely arbitrary. 436 00:31:52.849 --> 00:31:56.109 Once audiences understand what kind of creature this is, the 437 00:31:56.190 --> 00:31:59.690 rules create anticipation. We know what the moon means. We 438 00:31:59.730 --> 00:32:04.609 know what the silver means. And that mythology becomes legible. 439 00:32:05.650 --> 00:32:09.109 But I would sort of argue that the most important 440 00:32:09.170 --> 00:32:15.059 contribution is the character of Talbot himself. Lon Chaney Jr. 441 00:32:15.119 --> 00:32:19.890 gives us this he gives us this profoundly unhappy man 442 00:32:20.390 --> 00:32:23.910 who does not want what is happening to him. Talbot 443 00:32:24.019 --> 00:32:27.380 isn't count Dracula. Dracula possesses an enormous amount of agency. 444 00:32:28.019 --> 00:32:30.579 He knows what he is. You know, he, he enters 445 00:32:30.640 --> 00:32:34.420 the room as a predator. There's this hint of seduction 446 00:32:34.559 --> 00:32:39.480 and intelligence and intentionality to him. Talbot is cursed. And 447 00:32:39.609 --> 00:32:43.130 so that means the whole story contains this very awful, 448 00:32:43.250 --> 00:32:48.859 dramatic irony. Um, we're watching Talbot attempt to make sense 449 00:32:48.900 --> 00:32:52.740 of what is happening while knowing where it's going. He 450 00:32:52.799 --> 00:32:57.170 cannot simply choose to be the wolf man. Uh, the 451 00:32:57.309 --> 00:33:00.869 knowledge that he is dangerous doesn't cure him. And so 452 00:33:01.309 --> 00:33:05.849 what that changes is the emotional register and the way 453 00:33:05.910 --> 00:33:09.750 that you watch the film. Um, it's sort of an, 454 00:33:09.750 --> 00:33:14.839 an untraditional, uh, take on a horror movie, you are 455 00:33:14.920 --> 00:33:19.759 afraid of Dracula, but you are afraid for Larry Talbot. 456 00:33:20.700 --> 00:33:26.269 And I think that's C.M. Mack's great contribution to what 457 00:33:26.309 --> 00:33:30.589 we might call the modern werewolf. He takes this ancient 458 00:33:30.730 --> 00:33:36.039 idea of the human-animal transformation, and he puts the person 459 00:33:36.230 --> 00:33:40.660 undergoing it at the center of the tragedy. And so 460 00:33:40.700 --> 00:33:46.220 that this wolf is no longer something that just is 461 00:33:46.329 --> 00:33:50.569 prowling around outside the village. He actually is someone you 462 00:33:50.650 --> 00:33:54.009 know and you would be horrified to learn what he's done. 463 00:33:55.150 --> 00:33:57.069 And he's someone you even kind of like or you 464 00:33:57.109 --> 00:34:01.920 even feel great sympathy for. And it's a very interesting juxtaposition, 465 00:34:01.980 --> 00:34:04.630 but it has stuck with us for almost 100 years now. 466 00:34:08.409 --> 00:34:12.530 I think all three of the major monsters just have 467 00:34:12.550 --> 00:34:16.409 a different twist. Dracula, the human is afraid of being 468 00:34:16.469 --> 00:34:20.190 attacked by the vampire. In the werewolf, you are afraid 469 00:34:20.230 --> 00:34:23.829 of becoming the werewolf. And then in Frankenstein, the human 470 00:34:23.889 --> 00:34:26.369 is creating the monster. So it's kind of like a 471 00:34:26.389 --> 00:34:31.500 different take on each of the different ones. So you 472 00:34:31.639 --> 00:34:36.719 started talking about it a little bit. What's fundamentally... really 473 00:34:36.780 --> 00:34:40.199 tragic about the werewolf, especially when, you know, we, we, 474 00:34:40.400 --> 00:34:43.489 you start talking about compared to things like Dracula. Again, 475 00:34:43.510 --> 00:34:46.230 I think people are afraid of becoming a monster as 476 00:34:46.289 --> 00:34:48.230 opposed to being attacked. I mean, I think we're afraid 477 00:34:48.250 --> 00:34:50.750 of being attacked by a monster too and becoming one 478 00:34:51.090 --> 00:34:53.369 being attacked by Dracula and becoming one, but this one 479 00:34:54.010 --> 00:34:55.820 seems a little bit more unsettling. 480 00:34:56.980 --> 00:34:57.260 Yeah. 481 00:34:57.460 --> 00:35:01.420 I think what, what makes the werewolf sort of distinctive 482 00:35:01.539 --> 00:35:07.769 among the classic monsters is, is that tragedy. Um, Dracula 483 00:35:07.789 --> 00:35:11.670 is certainly capable of being portrayed tragically. Later adaptations have 484 00:35:11.710 --> 00:35:16.949 done that repeatedly and even consistently. But Stoker's Dracula is 485 00:35:17.110 --> 00:35:19.630 fundamentally a predator. He acts and he plans and he 486 00:35:19.670 --> 00:35:22.280 manipulates and he comes to England intentionally and he purchases 487 00:35:22.340 --> 00:35:25.920 property and he selects his victims. There's a will behind 488 00:35:26.000 --> 00:35:28.239 all of that. But what we think of as sort 489 00:35:28.260 --> 00:35:30.559 of like the classic werewolf story, it gives us almost 490 00:35:30.599 --> 00:35:35.590 the opposite situation. And it's different in the tragedy register 491 00:35:35.610 --> 00:35:40.150 of than a Frankenstein. Because as we said, a character 492 00:35:40.190 --> 00:35:44.179 like Talbot doesn't want to become the Wolfman. He doesn't 493 00:35:44.340 --> 00:35:49.880 discover some

wonderful freedom by throwing off civilization and embracing 494 00:35:49.940 --> 00:35:54.539 his authentic self. The transformation is an invasion. Something happens 495 00:35:54.599 --> 00:35:57.940 to him that he cannot actually master. And so as 496 00:35:57.980 --> 00:36:02.929 the audience, that changes our emotional relationship with this particular monster. 497 00:36:03.789 --> 00:36:07.070 It's the difference between seeing Dracula approaching someone down a 498 00:36:07.110 --> 00:36:10.590 corridor and seeing Talbot realize the transformation in the beginning. 499 00:36:11.170 --> 00:36:14.429 In one case, our attention is primarily on the victim 500 00:36:14.530 --> 00:36:17.340 who needs to escape the monster. But in the other, 501 00:36:17.400 --> 00:36:22.059 the person becoming the monster is himself one of the victims. 502 00:36:23.219 --> 00:36:27.079 And that's terrifying to us because the man remains morally 503 00:36:27.239 --> 00:36:31.570 present enough to understand what is happening here. He's anticipating 504 00:36:31.590 --> 00:36:34.469 the transformation. He's fearing it. He can take steps to 505 00:36:34.550 --> 00:36:39.059 present it. He can wake afterward and confront the consequences, 506 00:36:39.139 --> 00:36:43.079 but none of that knowledge is sufficient to free him. 507 00:36:43.820 --> 00:36:49.139 And so the whole affair comes wrapped to you in tragedy. 508 00:36:49.780 --> 00:36:56.030 Knowledge without liberation is very terrible. And something like a 509 00:36:56.349 --> 00:36:58.369 Roman 7 can come to mind here. I want to 510 00:36:58.389 --> 00:37:02.719 be careful there because Roman 7 is sort of routinely 511 00:37:02.780 --> 00:37:05.179 flattened into this idea that Paul is saying Christians struggle 512 00:37:05.199 --> 00:37:07.500 with sin, but he's doing something more specific and he's 513 00:37:07.539 --> 00:37:09.719 working through the problem of life under the law. The 514 00:37:09.760 --> 00:37:12.920 commandment is good. You know, you shall not covet is 515 00:37:12.940 --> 00:37:16.110 what he specifically invokes, but sin seizes the commandment, produces 516 00:37:16.159 --> 00:37:19.349 the thing the command prohibits. You know, Paul is not 517 00:37:19.409 --> 00:37:22.670 imagining someone who simply does not know any better. The 518 00:37:22.710 --> 00:37:26.210 command already named the good. The eye can agree with 519 00:37:26.250 --> 00:37:29.369 the law. Later, he could even say that he delights 520 00:37:29.409 --> 00:37:31.590 in the law of God, and yet the commandment cannot 521 00:37:31.769 --> 00:37:35.510 provide liberation from the sin that has taken him captive. 522 00:37:36.219 --> 00:37:37.940 So we have to be kind of careful saying that 523 00:37:38.380 --> 00:37:40.739 this character is sort of like an allegory for Romans 7. 524 00:37:40.739 --> 00:37:43.980 He really obviously isn't. But the point here is that 525 00:37:44.820 --> 00:37:49.420 the werewolf gives

a very physical form to a similar horror. 526 00:37:50.519 --> 00:37:52.599 The man can know what he ought to be. He 527 00:37:52.619 --> 00:37:57.119 can hate what he becomes. He can desperately not want 528 00:37:57.199 --> 00:37:59.760 to do what the beast will do. And none of 529 00:37:59.820 --> 00:38:04.300 those things are sufficient to actually free him from it. 530 00:38:05.349 --> 00:38:09.710 And so if you think about it, that's what makes 531 00:38:11.429 --> 00:38:14.269 the aftermath of the attack so important in these stories. 532 00:38:14.510 --> 00:38:17.329 Everything sort of builds up to the transformation. And then 533 00:38:17.369 --> 00:38:20.579 there's the morning after. where the man comes back, the 534 00:38:20.619 --> 00:38:25.659 claws are gone, the face is his again. But something 535 00:38:25.679 --> 00:38:27.840 has happened during the night that can't just be undone. 536 00:38:28.079 --> 00:38:31.590 There's a body somewhere. There's blood on his clothes. Someone 537 00:38:31.630 --> 00:38:34.469 he loved may now be dead, and becoming human again 538 00:38:34.570 --> 00:38:38.150 physically doesn't erase what the beast did. And, you know, 539 00:38:38.730 --> 00:38:41.090 I think that is much more interesting than just saying, well, 540 00:38:41.110 --> 00:38:44.829 there's a bad side inside of everybody. The tragedy is 541 00:38:45.010 --> 00:38:48.400 not that there is a beast. The tragedy is that 542 00:38:48.440 --> 00:38:53.139 the man remains sufficiently present to know that he has 543 00:38:53.539 --> 00:38:54.099 become one. 544 00:38:56.019 --> 00:38:58.739 I want to go back a little bit. You were 545 00:38:58.780 --> 00:39:02.780 saying that you kind of delved into the history of 546 00:39:02.880 --> 00:39:06.260 this monster. And while there's no source material, I do 547 00:39:06.280 --> 00:39:10.090 want to ask you about someone named Clements Hausman. She 548 00:39:10.130 --> 00:39:13.150 was a writer in the 1800s and she wrote this 549 00:39:17.000 --> 00:39:22.119 short novel called The Werewolf. And so she basically takes 550 00:39:22.159 --> 00:39:25.690 that mythology and makes it, you know, very Christian. So 551 00:39:25.869 --> 00:39:28.599 what does her use of some of the themes in 552 00:39:28.679 --> 00:39:33.059 her story kind of talk about with regard to you 553 00:39:33.079 --> 00:39:36.400 know redemption and sacrifice and then add to this whole 554 00:39:37.079 --> 00:39:40.719 you know genre of the werewolf and different things that 555 00:39:40.760 --> 00:39:43.920 contributed to what we know about the werewolf now. 556 00:39:44.619 --> 00:39:48.139 Yeah this is sort of interesting um I knew when 557 00:39:48.159 --> 00:39:50.300 I was doing the article, if I had the chance, 558 00:39:50.320 --> 00:39:52.820 I would, I would bring this up depending on how 559 00:39:52.980 --> 00:39:54.800 I did it, because I think. 560 00:39:55.440 --> 00:39:56.739 I think you need to tell us a little bit 561 00:39:56.760 --> 00:39:58.179 about who she was as an author. 562 00:39:58.199 --> 00:40:01.639 I don't know how many people are familiar with her. Yeah. 563 00:40:01.659 --> 00:40:03.880 She's very unknown. And this is kind of why I 564 00:40:03.960 --> 00:40:06.820 wanted to bring it up because nobody knows who she is. 565 00:40:08.079 --> 00:40:10.599 She was this, she was, she was an author, but 566 00:40:10.659 --> 00:40:16.199 she was an activist and, in the late 1800s, early 1900s, 567 00:40:16.400 --> 00:40:20.940 in the women's suffrage movement. She was the sister of 568 00:40:21.340 --> 00:40:27.300 the English classical scholar A.E. Houseman and Lawrence Houseman, who 569 00:40:27.340 --> 00:40:32.269 was the English playwright. And again, leading figure in the 570 00:40:32.309 --> 00:40:37.110 suffrage movement. She was out of England. And she died 571 00:40:37.150 --> 00:40:41.900 very old. It was close to 100. And they lived 572 00:40:42.260 --> 00:40:50.380 in Somerset, if I recall correctly, in England. But anyway, 573 00:40:50.820 --> 00:40:54.260 practically no one knows who she is. But she wrote 574 00:40:54.320 --> 00:41:00.110 this little story that is... It's kind of an allegory. 575 00:41:00.590 --> 00:41:04.010 And it's just called The Werewolf. And it was published 576 00:41:04.409 --> 00:41:05.019 in 1896. And I... Again, I. 577 00:41:05.010 --> 00:41:05.150 So.... 578 00:41:10.210 --> 00:41:12.820 Case it hasn't been sort of clear the werewolf is 579 00:41:12.840 --> 00:41:16.300 sort of my favorite of of these old classic monsters 580 00:41:17.239 --> 00:41:20.079 and you know there's there's you know reasons for this 581 00:41:20.739 --> 00:41:23.340 but i have very distinct memories of a kid watching 582 00:41:23.840 --> 00:41:28.510 um the 1941 the wolfman film and falling in love 583 00:41:28.550 --> 00:41:33.050 with with that that character um and that story so 584 00:41:33.070 --> 00:41:35.289 when i when i was doing my own sort of 585 00:41:35.869 --> 00:41:40.260 spin on the werewolf for this uh this audio drama. 586 00:41:40.300 --> 00:41:42.280 It was originally a film. It was originally a screenplay. 587 00:41:43.460 --> 00:41:47.139 And in, in doing that, I was sort of immersing 588 00:41:47.179 --> 00:41:49.400 myself in all of this werewolf literature and kind of 589 00:41:49.440 --> 00:41:52.840 realizing there is no such thing as the definitive werewolf novel. 590 00:41:55.420 --> 00:42:01.690 And part of that research, I came across this story that, 591 00:42:01.789 --> 00:42:06.809 that Hausman wrote. And it, what was, what's interesting is 592 00:42:06.909 --> 00:42:11.280 how Christian it is. And I was very, very much 593 00:42:11.380 --> 00:42:18.760 drawn to this. I ended up doing a screenplay adaptation 594 00:42:18.800 --> 00:42:23.360 of this. I actually tried to run down Hausman's relatives 595 00:42:24.019 --> 00:42:27.059 to figure out where the rights to this thing were

lying. 596 00:42:27.239 --> 00:42:30.590 And I contacted people. It was up in Canada. I 597 00:42:30.639 --> 00:42:33.050 ended up talking to some people up there who kind 598 00:42:33.090 --> 00:42:37.769 of knew where the family was. But they had lost 599 00:42:37.889 --> 00:42:40.750 record of them. And so it became a bit of 600 00:42:40.789 --> 00:42:43.230 a fool's errand, but I wrote the screenplay anyway. And 601 00:42:43.269 --> 00:42:45.429 I figured, well, you know, I'll deal with the fallout 602 00:42:45.449 --> 00:42:47.610 of that later. If it, if somebody ever comes along 603 00:42:47.630 --> 00:42:50.510 and actually wants to make this film and it ended up, 604 00:42:50.920 --> 00:42:54.219 there's a particular director. I won't name who it is, 605 00:42:54.260 --> 00:42:57.880 but who, who loves, loves the story. And of course 606 00:42:57.940 --> 00:43:00.719 I can't take any credit for that because I just 607 00:43:00.820 --> 00:43:02.400 put the screen, what sure. And of course I had 608 00:43:02.420 --> 00:43:04.409 to put my own spin on it, but the, the 609 00:43:04.489 --> 00:43:07.329 core beats were, were this, this story. 610 00:43:08.650 --> 00:43:09.130 The werewolf. 611 00:43:10.030 --> 00:43:14.989 So a little bit about the story itself. The character 612 00:43:15.409 --> 00:43:20.369 of White Fell, who's sort of the werewolf in this one. 613 00:43:20.380 --> 00:43:22.079 And this was also the thing I thought was interesting, 614 00:43:22.119 --> 00:43:23.780 is that the werewolf in this story is a woman, 615 00:43:24.360 --> 00:43:25.739 which you don't really see a lot of. 616 00:43:26.119 --> 00:43:27.780 Oh, that is very interesting. I don't know if you've 617 00:43:27.860 --> 00:43:31.199 ever heard of a character as a woman. It's usually 618 00:43:31.239 --> 00:43:31.579 a guy. 619 00:43:31.599 --> 00:43:33.699 Yeah, this is one of the reasons I was like, oh, 620 00:43:33.760 --> 00:43:36.469 this is very modern in one sense. This could This 621 00:43:36.510 --> 00:43:38.869 could really, really get some people turning their heads. 622 00:43:39.150 --> 00:43:40.989 Especially because she wrote it in the 1800s. 623 00:43:41.389 --> 00:43:45.349 Exactly, yeah. It was very interesting. And so the character 624 00:43:45.389 --> 00:43:50.070 is just called Whitefell, which was the title of the screenplay, 625 00:43:50.489 --> 00:43:52.150 or is the title of the screenplay. I still have it. 626 00:43:53.590 --> 00:43:56.690 But that character is very different from Larry Talbot because 627 00:43:56.789 --> 00:44:01.780 she is not this pitiable victim of transformation. She sort 628 00:44:01.820 --> 00:44:04.710 of arrives from the outside. It's very much like a 629 00:44:04.769 --> 00:44:07.250 fairy tale. It's allegorical. So it kind of exists in 630 00:44:07.289 --> 00:44:11.869 that almost like a fairy tale type register. She arrives 631 00:44:11.889 --> 00:44:15.090 from outside this household and she's this very

beautiful and 632 00:44:15.130 --> 00:44:20.500 mysterious stranger. And, you know, she's dressed very strikingly in 633 00:44:20.519 --> 00:44:22.260 this white cloak. I mean, it's the kind of it's 634 00:44:22.280 --> 00:44:24.780 very visual, right? Like you can see it on screen. 635 00:44:24.980 --> 00:44:26.480 It's kind of an obvious like, how has no one 636 00:44:26.500 --> 00:44:32.449 made this? And she's dressed very strikingly, and there's something 637 00:44:33.989 --> 00:44:37.070 wild about her, and she's fascinating to the people around her. 638 00:44:37.719 --> 00:44:41.900 But she doesn't initially look dangerous. But there's one character 639 00:44:42.880 --> 00:44:46.840 who is rather wonderfully named Christian– again, this is an 640 00:44:46.880 --> 00:44:52.380 allegory– who recognizes what she actually is. But he has 641 00:44:52.420 --> 00:44:55.579 a brother named Sven who does not believe him. And 642 00:44:55.679 --> 00:45:01.380 Sven is captivated by Whitefell. And so that makes this story, 643 00:45:01.760 --> 00:45:03.619 you know, it's far more interesting than just a simple 644 00:45:03.679 --> 00:45:09.780 monster hunt. Because Christian's problem isn't that he's identifying, you know, 645 00:45:09.820 --> 00:45:13.000 the werewolf. It's that he knows what she is. The 646 00:45:13.139 --> 00:45:15.840 problem is that the person he's trying to save does 647 00:45:15.889 --> 00:45:19.130 not believe him. He reads her as soon as he 648 00:45:19.170 --> 00:45:22.920 meets her and he sees through all the stuff. So 649 00:45:22.940 --> 00:45:25.599 you have this situation in which the character of Christian 650 00:45:25.739 --> 00:45:29.739 knows the danger. He can't persuade his brother of it. 651 00:45:30.579 --> 00:45:35.920 And he, you know, eventually saving his brother cost him 652 00:45:35.960 --> 00:45:39.800 his life. And so Houseman is very explicit about the 653 00:45:39.860 --> 00:45:43.099 Christian imagery. And you get this sort of, you know, 654 00:45:43.179 --> 00:45:45.420 wonderful scene that you can, again, you can just see 655 00:45:45.460 --> 00:45:47.980 it on camera. It's one of those obvious how has 656 00:45:48.019 --> 00:45:50.010 no one made this kind of things where Christian is 657 00:45:50.070 --> 00:45:53.469 pursuing her through the snow. And he ultimately, you know, 658 00:45:53.750 --> 00:45:58.429 dies to save his brother. And his death is presented with, like, 659 00:45:58.489 --> 00:46:03.280 cruciform imagery. She's not subtle about this, Houseman. And it 660 00:46:03.300 --> 00:46:07.840 was actually, you know, his blood is the thing that 661 00:46:07.900 --> 00:46:12.739 kills the monster. It accomplishes what the holy water he 662 00:46:12.780 --> 00:46:16.480 had previously tried could not. And so, you know, holy 663 00:46:16.519 --> 00:46:19.079 water in these types of stories function as almost like 664 00:46:19.099 --> 00:46:23.000 a magical object, you know. and so Christianity gets reduced 665 00:46:23.019 --> 00:46:29.219 to supernatural tech. But Haussmann sort of shows that it 666 00:46:29.300 --> 00:46:33.610 doesn't do any good. The decisive thing about the possession 667 00:46:36.050 --> 00:46:39.030 of a correct religious object is that it doesn't actually 668 00:46:39.090 --> 00:46:44.530 help you. What wins the day is self-giving love, and 669 00:46:45.550 --> 00:46:49.429 the blood that is shed is blood willingly shed for another. 670 00:46:50.269 --> 00:46:53.760 And so that that approach to this type of story, 671 00:46:53.920 --> 00:46:56.699 it kind of changes some of the questions we ask 672 00:46:56.739 --> 00:46:58.780 about it. Cause we've, we've spent all this time asking 673 00:46:59.360 --> 00:47:03.159 what makes a human being monstrous, but Hausman actually asks, 674 00:47:03.239 --> 00:47:07.780 you know, what, what overcomes that monstrosity? And the answer 675 00:47:07.820 --> 00:47:11.119 is sacrifice more specifically, it is one person willing to 676 00:47:11.199 --> 00:47:15.199 give himself for another. And so I think it's, it's 677 00:47:15.219 --> 00:47:20.940 a very interesting, um, Christian reading of the werewolf tradition. 678 00:47:21.000 --> 00:47:26.699 Christianity doesn't just possess a more sophisticated diagnosis of human evil. 679 00:47:27.300 --> 00:47:29.460 If all Christianity can tell us is that people are 680 00:47:29.500 --> 00:47:32.900 sinful and they're capable of terrible things, well, we already 681 00:47:32.940 --> 00:47:37.079 knew that. You know, Christianity makes a far more astonishing 682 00:47:37.119 --> 00:47:42.840 claim that restoration comes through another who bears a cost 683 00:47:43.039 --> 00:47:46.420 on behalf of the person who cannot rescue himself. And 684 00:47:46.480 --> 00:47:50.820 so the story that Houseman tells in this tradition, it's 685 00:47:50.920 --> 00:47:53.179 blood willingly shed for another, and that's a completely different 686 00:47:53.320 --> 00:47:57.059 use of that image. The character of Christian sheds blood 687 00:47:57.119 --> 00:48:00.909 because he gives his, and that imagery of the monster 688 00:48:01.489 --> 00:48:06.250 is taken and turned toward atonement, if you will. And 689 00:48:06.369 --> 00:48:09.989 it's sort of a stunningly and remarkably Christian thing to 690 00:48:10.030 --> 00:48:13.710 do with a werewolf story that we don't really see 691 00:48:13.750 --> 00:48:17.449 very much. And it is very... It's just not what 692 00:48:17.489 --> 00:48:20.050 you expect. It's sort of subversive in its own right. 693 00:48:20.730 --> 00:48:24.530 Definitely. It seems like it was before its time. So, 694 00:48:25.190 --> 00:48:29.829 you know, just basically thinking of our conversation today, what 695 00:48:29.849 --> 00:48:35.699 does Christianity maybe offer in the werewolf story that, you know, 696 00:48:35.739 --> 00:48:38.619 just if we just reduce it down to the simple 697 00:48:38.880 -->

00:48:45.059 monster within all people type of interpretation wouldn't actually be sufficient. 698 00:48:47.500 --> 00:48:51.000 Yeah, the monster within reading, you know, it's not entirely wrong. 699 00:48:51.179 --> 00:48:54.909 There's sort of an obviousness to it. Human beings are 700 00:48:54.929 --> 00:48:57.030 capable of doing terrible things, and we have appetites that 701 00:48:57.070 --> 00:48:59.010 can become disordered, and we can become violent, and we 702 00:48:59.030 --> 00:49:02.510 can act in ways we later regret. Obvious. And there 703 00:49:02.550 --> 00:49:05.190 is a version of the werewolf story that fits comfortably 704 00:49:05.230 --> 00:49:09.309 into that framework. Civilization is the thin veneer, and underneath 705 00:49:09.349 --> 00:49:11.329 it is the animal. It's the kind of thing that 706 00:49:11.670 --> 00:49:15.860 you expect to hear in, like, a gen ed... english 707 00:49:16.059 --> 00:49:19.099 class where you read a story about monsters, right? The 708 00:49:19.119 --> 00:49:21.980 transformation just strips away all these social restraints and allows 709 00:49:22.019 --> 00:49:25.539 the real creature underneath to emerge. But that's kind of 710 00:49:25.559 --> 00:49:27.469 boring and it's been done to death. And I think 711 00:49:27.489 --> 00:49:30.449 Christianity gives us a much richer anthropology than just saying 712 00:49:30.469 --> 00:49:32.389 there is a civilized part of us and a beast 713 00:49:32.429 --> 00:49:38.139 lurking underneath it. Because that formulation actually implies that the 714 00:49:38.179 --> 00:49:42.280 beast is a real person, which is why it's so lazy. 715 00:49:42.860 --> 00:49:48.219 That civilization is the mask and morality is repression. It's 716 00:49:48.260 --> 00:49:52.900 all sort of this weird pseudo-Marxist reading of things that 717 00:49:52.940 --> 00:49:55.820 we have to do for everything now as a result 718 00:49:55.860 --> 00:50:00.369 of post-modernism and all that stuff. So you remove the 719 00:50:00.429 --> 00:50:03.829 restraints and you can finally discover what you actually are. 720 00:50:04.789 --> 00:50:08.510 Christians don't believe that. The beast is not your authentic self. 721 00:50:09.809 --> 00:50:14.329 Christianity begins with creation, not the fall. Humans are creatures 722 00:50:14.429 --> 00:50:17.860 made by God and commissioned to bear his image within creation. 723 00:50:17.920 --> 00:50:21.579 Before Genesis tells us about human rebellion, it tells us 724 00:50:22.320 --> 00:50:24.519 that what God has made is good and that humans 725 00:50:24.559 --> 00:50:26.860 have a role in that. Sin doesn't step in and 726 00:50:27.019 --> 00:50:30.820 uncover what we were always meant to be. It distorts 727 00:50:31.139 --> 00:50:35.050 something that was made good. And so In that respect, 728 00:50:35.110 --> 00:50:41.909 becoming monstrous is genuinely tragic. If human beings were fundamentally 729 00:50:42.010 --> 00:50:46.400 monsters

underneath a thin layer of social convention, well, there 730 00:50:46.440 --> 00:50:49.840 would be nothing particularly tragic about becoming one. You're just 731 00:50:49.900 --> 00:50:54.139 revealing what was there all along. Christianity says the opposite. 732 00:50:54.179 --> 00:50:57.730 The tragedy of sin is precisely that human beings can 733 00:50:57.809 --> 00:51:02.170 become profoundly unlike. what they were made to be, while 734 00:51:02.289 --> 00:51:07.210 remaining the human beings God made. Again, I go back 735 00:51:07.269 --> 00:51:09.369 to the story of Nebuchadnezzar. Look at the movement of 736 00:51:09.409 --> 00:51:11.969 that story. Here's a king at the height of human 737 00:51:12.030 --> 00:51:15.329 civilization and political power. He looks over Babylon, and he 738 00:51:15.469 --> 00:51:18.630 boasts about what he's built, and then he's driven from 739 00:51:18.690 --> 00:51:21.699 human society. He lives with the beast, and the great 740 00:51:21.780 --> 00:51:28.079 king becomes animal-like, and his restoration begins when his reason returns, 741 00:51:28.320 --> 00:51:34.630 and he looks toward heaven. The biblical answer to that 742 00:51:34.769 --> 00:51:39.670 beastliness is not that Nebuchadnezzar finally discovered his true self 743 00:51:39.869 --> 00:51:43.530 while he was out eating grass in the field. That 744 00:51:43.679 --> 00:51:48.480 beastliness is a judgment. His restoration is a return to, 745 00:51:48.500 --> 00:51:53.320 let's call it, proper creatureliness. And then Christianity goes further still. 746 00:51:53.360 --> 00:51:57.360 It says knowledge isn't enough. Again, knowing what you ought 747 00:51:57.420 --> 00:51:59.340 to be is not the same thing as possessing the 748 00:51:59.380 --> 00:52:02.320 power to become it, and that sounds remarkably close to 749 00:52:02.340 --> 00:52:06.599 the tragedy of Larry Talbot. Talbot doesn't need someone to 750 00:52:06.659 --> 00:52:09.559 come in and explain to him that murdering people is bad. 751 00:52:10.360 --> 00:52:14.289 What he needs is deliverance. If the problem is ignorance, 752 00:52:14.730 --> 00:52:18.650 you need instruction. If the problem is poor habits, then 753 00:52:18.769 --> 00:52:23.199 you need discipline. If the problem is simply social repression, 754 00:52:23.320 --> 00:52:27.500 then you need liberation from the rules. But if the 755 00:52:27.559 --> 00:52:32.869 problem is captivity, you need someone capable of setting the 756 00:52:32.909 --> 00:52:38.010 captives free. And that is where the Christian account moves 757 00:52:38.070 --> 00:52:42.429 beyond that really generic monster-within metaphor, because Christianity does not 758 00:52:42.489 --> 00:52:45.510 simply tell the monster to exercise greater self-control. 759 00:52:46.650 --> 00:52:46.730 Um. 760 00:52:47.960 --> 00:52:51.800 nor does it tell him that monstrosity is his authentic 761 00:52:51.940 --> 00:52:55.840 identity and he ought to accept it. Christianity talks about 762 00:52:56.000 --> 00:53:00.139 rescue and new creation and liberation from enslaving powers and 763 00:53:00.219 --> 00:53:03.619 restoration to what human beings were created to be. And 764 00:53:03.659 --> 00:53:09.719 that restoration is costly. It is costly. This is where, again, 765 00:53:10.010 --> 00:53:14.030 Halston's story is such a, Fascinating way to kind of 766 00:53:14.050 --> 00:53:17.010 end the discussion, because she understands that somebody has to 767 00:53:17.050 --> 00:53:20.980 go after the person who cannot save himself. Christian dies 768 00:53:21.059 --> 00:53:24.340 for his brother. The one who sees the danger bears 769 00:53:24.380 --> 00:53:28.960 the cost for the one who doesn't. And even if 770 00:53:29.000 --> 00:53:36.539 that 19th century novella doesn't carry the weight of Christian soteriology, 771 00:53:36.940 --> 00:53:41.380 the imaginative structure is still profoundly Christian. And so, you know, 772 00:53:41.980 --> 00:53:45.849 I don't think the The werewolf is this convenient metaphor 773 00:53:45.909 --> 00:53:52.070 for sin. The entire dramatic structure of the kinds of 774 00:53:52.179 --> 00:53:56.719 stories that feature this creature change depending upon your anthropology. 775 00:53:57.489 --> 00:54:01.019 If the wolf is who you really are, then transformation 776 00:54:01.099 --> 00:54:04.019 is revelation. But if the wolf is what you were 777 00:54:04.039 --> 00:54:08.739 never meant to become, then transformation is a tragedy. And 778 00:54:08.800 --> 00:54:12.860 if what has been distorted can actually be restored... then 779 00:54:12.960 --> 00:54:17.849 suddenly that werewolf story can accommodate something beyond horror. It 780 00:54:17.869 --> 00:54:23.929 can accommodate redemption. And Christianity doesn't accomplish that by minimizing 781 00:54:23.989 --> 00:54:27.239 the tragedy. It doesn't pretend the transformation is harmless. It 782 00:54:27.280 --> 00:54:33.420 doesn't call evil authentic. It doesn't imagine that simply knowing 783 00:54:33.480 --> 00:54:36.960 the good will restore us. But it does make the 784 00:54:37.059 --> 00:54:43.449 extraordinary claim that even profound deformations does not erase the 785 00:54:43.530 --> 00:54:48.929 good thing that God made. You know, Christianity has never 786 00:54:49.030 --> 00:54:55.389 had trouble believing in monsters. The more interesting question is 787 00:54:55.489 --> 00:54:59.250 whether the man who has become monstrous can come back again. 788 00:54:59.289 --> 00:55:02.389 And the Christian answer to that is yes, absolutely. But 789 00:55:02.449 --> 00:55:05.079 not without, you know, someone bleeding to bring him home. 790 00:55:06.619 --> 00:55:10.239 Well, this has been a very interesting conversation today about, 791 00:55:10.260 --> 00:55:13.800 and it's kind of maybe having us think more deeply 792 00:55:13.880 --> 00:55:17.300 about some, you know, monster tropes we just had made 793

00:55:17.340 --> 00:55:20.300 a lot of assumptions about in the past. Well now 794 00:55:20.639 --> 00:55:23.219 on a much lighter note, it is October of course. 795 00:55:23.760 --> 00:55:26.070 And so there's a lot of candy around. Do you 796 00:55:26.139 --> 00:55:31.329 prefer chocolate or do you like non-chocolate candies like Skittles 797 00:55:31.789 --> 00:55:32.909 and gummy worms? 798 00:55:33.309 --> 00:55:35.469 I'm probably going to say non-chocolate. 799 00:55:36.570 --> 00:55:38.269 Ah, your team, not chocolate. 800 00:55:38.389 --> 00:55:38.849 Okay. 801 00:55:38.869 --> 00:55:38.989 Yeah. 802 00:55:40.139 --> 00:55:43.059 That's a new one. Well, thanks again, Cole, for being 803 00:55:43.159 --> 00:55:45.639 a guest on the Postmodern Realities Podcast. 804 00:55:45.860 --> 00:55:46.800 Always a pleasure. Thank you. 805 00:55:47.619 --> 00:55:53.510 You've been listening to episode 521 of the Postmodern Realities 806 00:55:53.610 --> 00:55:59.489 Podcast from the Christian Research Journal. Today's guest was Cole Burgett. 807 00:56:00.309 --> 00:56:04.050 He has written an exclusive online article in the cultural 808 00:56:04.170 --> 00:56:08.449 apologetics column of the Christian Research Journal. His article is called, 809 00:56:09.250 --> 00:56:14.469 A Man Among the Monsters, Werewolf Mythology, and the Christian Imagination. 810 00:56:15.110 --> 00:56:19.550 You can read it for free at equip.org. Please make 811 00:56:19.610 --> 00:56:22.659 sure you're subscribing to all of the podcasts available from 812 00:56:22.679 --> 00:56:27.599 the Christian Research Institute. We have our flagship podcast, the 813 00:56:27.639 --> 00:56:32.079 Daily Bible Answer Man podcast from CRI President Hank Hanegraaff. 814 00:56:32.619 --> 00:56:35.920 This is a question and answer format that is available 815 00:56:36.320 --> 00:56:40.019 available Monday through Friday, and also there's a Best of 816 00:56:40.099 --> 00:56:43.920 the Week episode on Saturdays. You'll want to make sure 817 00:56:43.960 --> 00:56:48.380 that you are subscribed to Hank Unplugged. And in this podcast, 818 00:56:48.400 --> 00:56:53.039 Hank will take you beyond soundbites and into thoughtful, in-depth 819 00:56:53.139 --> 00:56:59.070 explorations of critical issues that are confronting Christians today. Hank 820 00:56:59.110 --> 00:57:04.780 draws on scripture, history, theology, and culture. and will equip 821 00:57:05.219 --> 00:57:09.440 listeners to think Christianly about the questions that matter most 822 00:57:10.000 --> 00:57:14.099 and how to contend for the faith with knowledge and 823 00:57:14.139 --> 00:57:18.079 with wisdom. Of course, we have our two podcasts from 824 00:57:18.099 --> 00:57:21.500 the Christian Research Journal, the one you're listening to right now, 825 00:57:21.619 --> 00:57:27.659 Postmodern Realities, which is author interviews and discussions based on 826 00:57:28.269 --> 00:57:31.449 the articles that you will find on our website, equip.org. 827 00:57:32.050 --> 00:57:36.650 Also our sister podcast, which is audio articles of the 828 00:57:36.789 --> 00:57:39.889 articles that we're talking about in postmodern realities. It is 829 00:57:39.949 --> 00:57:43.750 the full audio article and it is the podcast called 830 00:57:43.809 --> 00:57:48.489 Christian Research Journal Reads. And you won't want to miss 831 00:57:48.679 --> 00:57:51.719 out on our very newest podcast. It was only launched 832 00:57:51.760 --> 00:57:56.599 this year in 2026. It's called Commitment to Reality. It's 833 00:57:56.679 --> 00:58:01.780 from Dave Hanegraaff. All of our podcasts are available on 834 00:58:02.000 --> 00:58:06.679 every podcasting subscription platform. So make sure you add. 835 00:58:06.739 --> 00:58:07.659 In all of these. 836 00:58:08.380 --> 00:58:12.369 And as always, thank you so much for your partnership 837 00:58:13.050 --> 00:58:14.110 and for listening.