Being the Lord of the Rings nerd that I am, the first thought of contemporary werewolf leads me to the character Beorn from J.R.R. Tolkien's book The Hobbit. Though this book was published almost 80 years ago, I still would consider it contemporary since the movie portrayal of this character was released within the past five. In the story, Beorn is a skin-changing man who lives on the outskirts of the "wild". I find this interesting as we have discussed before that the classic example of a monster is to view them from the outside of society, where Beorn is physically living. What is intriguing about this adaptation of the werewolf though is the way that Beorn acts. He is half man and half bear. Despite being what would be considered a werewolf, there are differences in his adaptation that stand out against the old, more classic description of one. In the story Beorn is able to transform at will, and once transformed he is very fond (not that he isn't in human form) of all animals, and also all that are deemed his allies. I find this as a striking contrast from our readings. It seems that the classical werewolf image, which was one that evoked incredible fear and distrust, is completely broken by the portrayal of Beorn. It seems as though that some of the fear and confusion that the image of the werewolf from ages ago evoked has been lost through time, and rather, the image of the werewolf is being used as a thing of entertainment rather than a symbol of fear. I don't think that those feelings of fear have completely vanished necessarily, as the werewolf would be entertaining if there weren't. I think this can also tie back to Daston and Park's interpretation of using the monster as sport. In today's world for both werewolves and witches it seems that they have lost their value as being completely monstrous and are now having their monstrosities be used as a form of entertainment.
Good pick on the contemporary werewolf. I agree that Beorn stood apart from most of our readings we've had on werewolves. He reminds me of the first tale Topographia Hibernica from Otten’s A Lycanthropy Reader: Werewolves in Western Culture. The werewolves in the tale were depicted as friendly and harmless to the priest. They were also fully transformed wolves that displayed human characteristics, similar to how J.R.R. Tolkien described Beorn in his bear-form. I believe Beorn still invoked fear and distrust because when first meeting Beorn the dwarves, Gandalf, and Bilbo had to approach in pairs at decent intervals to not enrage Beorn. All the characters were fearful of Beorn until he housed them and gave them supplies. The hesitancy and process the party had to go through to meet Beorn setup a feeling of fear towards the character for me. It showed me that this character was someone you don’t want to mess with.
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