A Creature Without a Cave
Abstraction and (Mis)Appropriation of the Wendigo Myth in Contemporary North American Horror
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.31273/reinvention.v15iS1.906Keywords:
Wendigo, North American horror fiction, Indigenous monsters, appropriation of horror mythology, horror antagonists, Cannibalism, twenty-first century horrorAbstract
This article analyses prominent examples of the Wendigo myth in modern North American horror media and the implications of misappropriation by non-Indigenous creators for non-Indigenous audiences. This article’s cross-media analysis covers television, film and game media; Teen Wolf (2011–17), Supernatural (2005–20), Bruce Wemple’s The Retreat (2020) and SuperMassive Games’ Until Dawn (2015). This analysis will trace the process of these media, made by non-Indigenous white creators, removing the Wendigo’s indigeneity and placing it within fictional settings as an antagonist. I have named this observation of the Wendigo the ‘Caveless Creature’ phenomenon. The paper concludes that employing the Wendigo as a caveless creature is a common practice within horror as it easily creates a villain for white protagonists to defeat repeatedly. This construction is problematic in the horror genre as it presents an Indigenous antagonist that poses a threat to white culture for its otherness and indigeneity – while at the same time, misappropriating, discarding and demonising the Indigenous culture the myth comes from, at whim. Although this article is specifically observing the Wendigo, I argue that it is one of many caveless creatures, and the treatment of them by creators of non-Indigenous horror genre should be analysed in the future.
References
Published
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2022 Francesca Amee Johnson
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Authors are responsible for obtaining permission from copyright holders for reproducing through any medium of communication those illustrations, tables, figures or lengthy quotations previously published elsewhere. Authors are also responsible for adding these permissions to the acknowledgement footnote that precedes all other notes or crediting the source and copyright of photographs or figures in the accompanying captions.
The journal's policy is to ask authors to grant us the licence to publish their work, which gives us the exclusive right both to reproduce and/or distribute their article (including the abstract) in printed, electronic or any other medium, and in turn to authorise others (including Reproduction Rights Organisations such as the Copyright Licensing Agency and the Copyright Clearance Center) to do the same. In return the author(s) assert their Moral Right to be identified as the author, and we promise that we will respect their rights as the author(s). That is, we will make sure that their name(s) is/are always clearly associated with the article and, while they do allow us to make necessary editorial changes, we will not make any substantial alteration to their article without consulting them.
Copyright remains with the author(s), however, the author(s) authorise us to act on their behalf to defend their copyright if anyone should infringe it, and to retain half of any damages awarded, after deducting our costs. The author(s) also retain the right to use their own article (provided they acknowledge the published original in standard bibliographic citation form) in the following ways, as long as they do not sell it or give it away in ways which would conflict directly with our interests. The author(s) is/are free to use their article for the internal educational or other purposes of their own institution or company; mounted on their own or their institution’s website; posted to free public servers of preprints and/or articles in their subject area; or in whole or in part, as the basis for their own further publications or spoken presentations.
If you have any queries about copyright please contact reinventionjournal@warwick.ac.uk
