Today in Non-Olympic Blogging: Teen Wolf

[sabotabby]

treehavn asked for a post about Teen Wolf. This amuses me greatly. Apparently I have many thoughts about werewolves with shirt allergies.

Okay, first of all, it's probably obvious that, in general, I watch much more TV than movies. Part of this is convenience, but also I think that TV is, by and large, telling more interesting and varied stories, and I'm a fan of long-form narrative. I like to be engrossed in media. There are some really brilliant shows out there at the moment that I'd consider Great Art.

Teen Wolf is, of course, not one of them.

This said, it succeeds at a lot of things, possibly by complete accident, and there's a reason I was sucked into it in a way that I didn't connect with, say, True Blood or The Walking Dead or supernatural drama in general.



So, if you haven't seen this masterpiece of lulzy television, it's based on that 1980s movie with Michael J. Fox, except it's much better. It is not, contrary to what someone observing the fandom might think, about a guy named Sterek. Nor does anyone at any point get a wreath of flowers around their head. I am actually glad I started watching the show before I knew much about the fandom or I'd probably have been put off.

Anywaaaaay, regular teenager Scott gets bitten by a werewolf and thus becomes bad CGI that must rip off his shirt on a regular basis or die, apparently. This is great for his athletic career—this show takes place in a very strange universe where lacrosse is a big deal—and his overall confidence; less okay in that the girl he's falling for, Allison, is from a family of werewolf hunters. Also along for the ride are Stiles, Scott's deadpan snarker best friend, Lydia, who is basically Cordelia Chase from Buffy, and Derek, a creepy-if-you-think-about-it older dude who was born a werewolf, because this is a thing, and whose entire family has apparently been burned to death by Allison's family (spoiler: not all of them). There's a secondary cast of thousands.

So, on paper, pretty typical teenage supernatural angstfest. The production values are delightfully terrible (protip: If you are going to make a show about werewolves, you should probably make sure that you can convincingly render something that looks like a werewolf), though clever editing and lighting cover a multitude of sins.

The acting is—well, that brings me to my first point about why I enjoy this show. The acting is not good. The acting is, in fact, faintly reminiscent of a certain genre of film. Come to think of it, the shooting is reminiscent of that genre as well. Yes, this is teenage supernatural angstfest as gay porn. Of the various things that the show gets right, this is one that I know is actually intentional. The shooting objectifies the female characters a little—they're pretty, Lydia in particular has great legs and wears short skirts—but it revels in the bodies of the male characters. Shirts get ripped off at least once per episode. Depictions of torture and pain are frequent and eroticized. I can't quite stress enough as a female fan of violent media how rare this is to see in mainstream television; it's this very deliberate, often very funny inversion of the male gaze. The objectification of male characters is a Thing in supernatural teen drama (which is almost all aimed at women these days); the homoerotic subtext, though, is far less of a Thing, and the fact that it's all done with obvious irony is unique to anything I've seen from this side of the Atlantic.

In terms of actual representation of gender and sexuality, the show doesn't do too badly, and actually does far better than anything else I've seen in the genre. Allison goes from generic boring love interest to generic action chick to someone who's actually interesting; Lydia's development, and Lydia in general, is genuinely excellent. There's the odd sexist trope, but half the time it's subverted. (Ditzy, snotty, fashion-obsessed Lydia is, in fact, a mathematical genius who is well aware of the expectations people have of her, and uses an entirely fabricated persona to survive and manipulate people around her. And she's awesome at bowling.)

It does even better with sexual orientation. There are several queer characters, one of whom, Danny, gets increasingly important to the various storylines. None of the kids, even the jock bullies, are ever shown to be homophobic (quite the opposite; Stiles, despite ever only being shown as attracted to women, is frequently distressed at the thought that he's not attractive enough to gay men); it's as if the milieu that they inhabit has completely been freed of homophobia. But, and this is where the show is truly subversive, homophobia exists and the characters have consciously rejected it. One of my favourite scenes from the first season has Scott, who's been banned from the school dance, caught by one of the teachers sneaking in. He does the Fake-Out Make-Out routine with Danny, whereupon the stuttering teacher must agree to let him stay lest he appear to be a massive bigot.

Naturally, its Achilles heel is still race and class, because it's an American show. So while Scott's family is working class, he never seems to be materially worse off than anyone else. The show is reluctant to permanently kill off white male characters but you can pretty much expect POC to get slaughtered. (Though, notably, Scott is Latino, Danny is Hawaiian, and Dr. Deaton is not always a Magical Negro, despite being black and magical.)

The plots are, well, cracktacular. There's a guy that turns into a lizard monster. There is a lady with no face. They've brought in banshees as a thing. As you might expect, I am all over that, and the sillier it gets, the more entertained I get, so I'm not saying that the plots are nonsensical as a criticism, understand?

Oh yes, and it has moments of being genuinely scary, which is ultimately the most surprising thing about it. Because it shouldn't be. It's a silly show with laughable special effects and terrible acting, and then every so often it throws out a bit of visceral horror that is made all the more creepy by contrast. So I like that about it too.

I think the real reason people get into it is the fandom. It has a massive fandom. I have nothing to do with this fandom, and yet I know things about it like the aforementioned flower wreath thing, which I don't quite understand because I am 200 years old in internet years. I do like that this is a show I can bond with my kids over (because of course they are fanatical about it and are probably the ones Photoshopping flower wreaths onto people's heads) and posting it on Tumblr, and I can't not feel deep affection for that sort of community. It's not really a show you want to watch along because of all the aforementioned silliness; you want to see it with friends and laugh about the contrived plot and the lulzy CGI and the lascivious camera angles. It's an inherently social thing.

Anyway, so, that would be my guilty pleasure if I felt remotely guilty about any of my guilty pleasures.

Still happily taking requests for anything that people want me to blog about, BTW.

Comments

[pofflewomp.livejournal.com]

I have been wanting to rewatch Teenwolf a lot in recent years but have not got round to it. I must have watched it umpteen times when I was 10-12 ish. The main thing about it I remember is that his girlfriend is called Boo. I never got my head round that. I think it is a great name, but unusual. I could never work out why they decided to call her Boo rather than, say, Jane.

[sabotabby]

Maybe there were other Janes in the class?