Sunday, May 30, 2010

Teen Wolf: For Real



I came across an interesting item at the science fiction website io9 with a post titled "Teens pretending to be werewolves." You will see the news report out of San Antonio, Texas accompanying this post that describes a group of teens who identify with werewolves and gather in groups they call packs. When I came across this item I wondered whether this had any relationship to the Otherkin, those individuals who consider themselves to be something other than human. Perhaps, or it may be something that overlaps with it without being a part of this interesting pop culture phenomenon. At any rate, it is an indication of the power of fantastic mythic creatures in identity formation in late modernity.

Related posts:

"Rethinking the Sacred and Profane"

"Joseph Laycock: Vampires Today"

1 comment:

Jarred said...

Very interesting! I'm not sure how well these teens were represented by the selected quotes, but from what I heard, they don't seem to be much like many of the otherkin I've met in the past. With the exception of the one boy's comment about "everyone having something non-human in them," all talk about being werewolves and the "accessories" (for a lack of a better term) seemed to be about fashion and indicating group membership.

At any rate, they seemed like a great group of kids.