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animews · 2 years ago

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“wolfwalkers (2020) is a beautiful piece of queer cinema that delicately reflects on the coming out of queer youth in this essay i will- except that i actually write the essay”

sorry in advance for the weird way this is structured i wrote it as a literature assignment to copy the writing style of virginia woolf. which. made the writing a little weird and overly formal so!!! just ignore that lmao

also to anyone who says “wolfwalkers isnt an anime why ru writing about it on an anime blog” HUSH. maybe it’s a cartoon to you, but it is like an anime to ME.

-o-

Wolfwalkers (2020) should, all things considered, be a typical coming-of-age story. But I think it’s not about coming-of-age, but instead coming out. A girl emerging from the closet, rather than from childhood. Wolfwalkers’ queer themes kept me up for a while, joining my late-night musings about stem cell ethics and the Lovecraftian horror of the Bee Movie. So here’s my thoughts. Make of them what you will.

First, let’s talk about werewolves. Werewolves are known to be general personification of “other”, so they’re a common metaphor for queerness. The separation of “wolf” and “man”, the monstrous coming to light and destroying the normal. They’re savage beasts that spend some time in human form, outcasts from society feared by the surrounding population. Whether they’re mindless and beastly or intelligent and misunderstood is up to interpretation, as Wolfwalker illustrates.

With that out of the way, let’s get started. Here’s our protagonist, Robyn Goodfellowe. Her father, Bill, has been summoned by the Lord Protector to hunt wolves. Said wolves are preventing the destruction of their forest home, which, as I am sure you agree, is truly baffling and without reason. For safety reasons, Robyn remains confined to her new home, as Bill informs her that it is “for her own good”. This will come up again later.

Of course, we would not have a story if Robyn stayed indoors, so we follow her as she sneaks into the woods. Her innocence is clearly shown here: she displays no signs of fear of death, confident that the world revolves around her. Therefore, the Robyn who accidentally shoots her precious bird is one at the beginning of her journey: a flower not yet bloomed, eyes closed to the harsh truths of the world. As she watches her bird fall from the sky, a mysterious, wild-looking girl scoops it up and runs off.

Here we take a break from Robyn’s dilemma to meet our antagonist, the religious leader of the town. It must be said that the title of Lord Protector fits him better than a simple name, unyielding and high-minded as he is. Here we see another staple of the queer narrative: religion. The Lord Protector is single-minded in his hatred of wolves: he wants them gone, and believes firmly that such action is God’s will. I don’t believe I must describe the long-held hatred of the Homosexuals by the Christian Church, but if that is something with which you are unfamiliar, feel free to visit your nearby conservative old-timey church and ask. Inherent in many religious folk is the “righteous anger”, the certainty that there is a holy mantel placed upon them to rid the world of the vermin gays, and this is certainly what the Lord Protector represents in this story.

The Lord Protector, angered at the presence of A Female, assigns Robyn to scullery duty, an appropriately womanly task. Robyn gets no support from her father, who believes it will do her good to act more like a woman should. If she conforms to the standards given to her, she won’t have any need to worry. Robyn, unswayed, escapes yet again into the forest to find her bird.

Robyn, not a particularly nimble individual, quickly gets herself caught in one of her own father’s traps after finding her bird (in the distance, a voice yells something about symbolism). Along comes a young wolf, and a scuffle ensues. After a stray bite on the arm, Robyn is set free from the trap, and follows the wolf into its secret cave, wherein it reveals its true form: the wild girl from before, named Mebh.

Mebh is a wolfwalker: she turns into a wolf when asleep. She quickly heals Robyn’s bite, and after a few mishaps, the two quickly make friends. Robyn’s preconceived notions of wolves go out the window: the wolves mean no harm. They’ve been planning to leave the forest to find safer lands, and are waiting for Mebh’s mother to return: she’s been asleep, her wolf-form missing.

There’s a particular scene here, in the middle of the movie, that really got to me. Robyn takes a brush and combs out Mebh’s hair, gently removing the forest debris; she then tucks a saved flower behind her ear. The vulnerability of letting someone touch your hair is not one to be taken lightly. Such a gesture is intimate, offered between close friends, family (or pack, rather). And to slip a flower behind one’s ear? What other indicator of blooming love might there be? This marks Robyn’s progression, as she begins the next step of her journey. As children, Mebh and Robyn believably reach this place in their relationship quickly, beginning their childhood friends to lovers (slowburn, 200k, last updated 2020) love story. They say goodbye, and Robyn runs off into the sunset, eager to tell her father her discoveries.

Predictably, Bill is furious at her breaking the rules, as well as disobeying the Lord Protector. He refuses to listen to Robyn’s pleas, dismissing her claims as “childish stories”. Such language is incredibly similar to those that a queer child’s parents would say under a situation where they are questioning their identity. They’re punished for breaking society’s rules, occasionally for fear of mistreatment by society, or because they disobey the religious conventions. Their exploration of their identity is dismissed as stories, false and made-up. Queer people don’t exist, and if they do, they’re evil and you’re not one of them, they say. You’re just tired, or hallucinating, they swear.

The next morning, Robyn goes to the scullery, as previously instructed. Bill yet again informs his daughter that this is for her own good, before leaving her to slave the day away. Exhausted and hearing mysterious voices, she escapes yet again to see Mebh in the forest (paralleling classic love story format), and ends up promising her to help find Moll, her mother.

You may observe yet another deviation from the typical girl’s coming-of-age path that Robyn has declined to follow: the absence of a male lead. Men instead appear as antagonists, through the Lord Protector, and to an extent, Bill. Thus, the movie further establishes itself as a less male-focused story, focusing instead on the girls (one might refer to the Korean word for girl: 어린애- female child: not a teenager but a child, innocent in their understanding and exploration of gender, as Robyn is here, on the cusp of discovery, still androgynous in the conduction of herself, unaware of who she is). As a fellow wolf (or is it Woolfe?) once mentioned, a problem in fiction is the absence of women and their inter-relationships: in this work, we are exposed to girls at their core, wild and genderless, before society attempts to corral them into their proper gender roles.

Robyn returns home to sleep and is shocked to awaken in wolf form. At this moment her father discovers her: a wolf perched atop the sleeping body of his daughter. Another aspect of queer adolescence emerges: fear of discovery. When one has watched their family openly condemn their kind, can they trust their promised unconditional love? If one’s family recognized them as “the enemy”, would they be accepted? Robyn wrestles with this as she stares her father in the eyes and runs into the streets for fear that he will kill her, runs haunted by the fear that he would raise his sword even if he knew it was her. With this, she finds Mebh in the forest and demands answers.

Mebh, confused, insists that she healed the transforming bite, but is distracted by the prospect of teaching Robyn the joys of wolfing (as children do), and so I shoulder the burden of explanation in her place. While the reason for Robyn’s wolfification could be the failure of Mebh to properly heal the bite, I would urge you to consider that Robyn, unconsciously recognizing the bond that she held with Mebh, created the wolf within her even after healing. Rather than getting “infected” by Mebh (as so many believe queer people do), the wolfwalker was within her all along, merely brought to the light.

While trying to sneak back through the gates, wolf-Robyn is discovered and a hunt ensues. To hide, she sneaks into a secret passage in the castle, and stumbles upon Mebh’s missing mother, Moll (alliteration abounds), trapped in a cage. Moll begs her to tell Mebh to flee the forest and stay safe, unknowingly paralleling Robyn’s father. Robyn, out of time, fails to free Moll, and rushes home to ‘wake up’ and turn back from wolf to human, refusing to sleep for the rest of the night.

After another day of grueling work in the scullery, Robyn has lost hope. Her safety hinges even more on her compliance, as her father has been demoted for failing to kill the wolves. Mebh, worried that Robyn hasn’t yet returned, sneaks into town to check on her. Appalled, Robyn begs her to return to the forest and leave without her mother, breaking her promise to help free Moll. Robyn, broken, has forced herself to grow into the role that the world assigned her, becoming exactly what her father and the Lord Protector wanted her to be. In this, she reflects the queer youth forced to stifle their identity to reflect their family’s and society’s expectations, simply to maintain a normal life.

Just then, the Lord Protector holds an announcement. He reveals a chained Moll, restraining her with the help of several soldiers. Seeing her, Mebh is enraged, and after an emotional scuffle with Robyn, who desperately tries to stop her, she jumps onstage. Moll bites Robyn’s father to stop him from catching Mebh, Mebh runs to gather her wolf pack, swearing revenge, and an enraged Lord Protector shouts for all troops to set the forest on fire and drive out the wolves (much like homophobic religious folk attempt to invade the safe spaces of queer people in an attempt to “eradicate” them). Robyn, stunned, can do nothing but watch her friend fight against her father.

Finally, Robyn chooses to side with the wolves (embracing her inner girlboss, etc.), standing against her father and freeing Moll. After a tearful reunion with Mebh and her now moll-ified pack (do you get it? do you????), tragedy strikes: Bill shoots Moll, who collapses. This is not dissimilar to the actions of many parents of queer children, who hurt people not only because of preconcieved notions of danger, but because they fear their children’s “corruption”. Robyn, heartbroken, shifts into wolf-form and runs off, in a twisted coming-out of sorts. Finally, Bill chooses to accept Robyn as both his daughter and a wolfwalker, at which point his own bite takes effect, helping him defeat the raging Lord Protector.

Moll is healed, the pack moves, and the story ends with Robyn and Mebh falling asleep, then running ahead in wolf form. The ending expresses Robyn’s final transformation and acceptance of her wolf-self not as an alter ego but merely as another part of herself, just as queer youth learn to accept their queerness as a intrinsic, unchangeable quality.

The movie isn’t groundbreaking in the way that most people crave queer films to be. The queerness isn’t explicit, and there could be arguments made for a “friendship movie”. But this movie isn’t about that, to me. For someone who has seen so few movies where queerness as an exploration isn’t punished, where the “bury your gays” trope isn’t implemented, where the main characters are children without themes of inherent corruption… I won’t lie, it made me cry.

It’s just. Isn’t it beautiful to see such a simple movie about love between girls? Isn’t it lovely to know that cinema is allowed to be like this? Wolfwalkers (2020) is many things, a stepping stone and a soft touch, a children’s movie and a mature film, a work of art and a labor of love. all that, and most of all, it is deeply, intrinsically, queer.

#wolfwalkers #movies #cartoons #queer love #animated movies #wolfwalkers meta #meta #long post #honeyspeak

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