Animality and fairy tales in contemporary European girl movies: Wolf imagery in Sarah Plays a Werewolf

Contemporary European cinema insistently depicts female teenagers in association with non-human animals. This chapter focuses on Sarah Plays a Werewolf (Katharina Wyss, 2017), which tells the story of a troubled teenager victim of sexual abuse who turns to animality as her only escape. Sarah performs animality by behaving like a wild wolf. This way, the film responds to wolf imagery popularized by different versions of the fairy tale Little Red Riding Hood, in which this animal incarnates a sexual threat for vulnerable teenage girls. This idea informs Sarah Plays a Werewolf, but the film mobilizes its original meaning by recontextualizing the initial wolf metaphor. Lastly, the film opposes animal abjection to culture and proposes animality as an alternative to the protagonist’s oppressive experience of human girlhood.

Book chapter published in Communication and Gender. Sette Cittá, 2023: https://www.settecitta.eu/catalogo/libro/9791255240785-communication-and-gender-Rb4ynd