Dark Deviations: TV On the Radio’s “Wolf Like Me”
The language and aesthetics of horror are all around us and seem to pop up when we least expect it. “Dark Deviations” is Haunted MTL‘s dive into those moments.
TV On the Radio
First of all, sit back, relax, and enjoy one hell of a song.
TV on the Radio is an indie rock band from Brooklyn that hit the scene around 2001. The current line-up consists of Tunde Adebimpe, David Andrew Sitek, Kyp Malone, and Jaleel Bunton. Gerard Smith, the bassist at the time of the release of “Wolf Like Me,” would later succumb to lung cancer in 2011.
TV on the Radio’s sound is eclectic. Some of the acts the band claims influence include Earth, Wind & Fire, Brian Eno, the Pixies, Prince, and Siouxsie and the Banshees.
“Wolf Like Me” was the first single from their album Return to Cookie Mountain.
Werewolves
Werewolves are a fairly common trope in music. Clearly Warren Zevon’s “Werewolves of London” immediately come to mind. There are other great songs that touch on themes of lycanthropy. The Cramps’ “I Was A Teenage Werewolf,” Ozzy Osbourne’s “Bark At The Moon,” and First Aid Kits’ “Wolf” are some great examples.
Lycanthropy can be defined in a few different ways. Most common is the folkloric concept of humans undergoing transformation into bestial forms. Often this is a wolf-like transformation. However, we see lycanthropy displayed in all sorts of forms across literature and folklore. Asia, in particular, has several instances of werecats.
But really, it is all about the werewolf in the context of western media.
“Wolf Like Me” and Lycanthropy
Both the song and video for “Wolf Like Me” use tropes of lycanthropy for metaphorical purposes. Particularly key to the song is the association of werewolves being a release. The chorus states this pretty clearly:
My mind has changed
My body’s frame, but, God, I like it
My heart’s aflame
My body’s strained, but, God, I like it
We see instances of inhibitions being released in the video. Examples include the car-ride, the dancing at the club, and finally the girl biting the lead male.
That of course also evokes one of the more… interesting associations of lycanthropy; that of lust. Werewolves are second only to vampires when it comes to being objects of desire. I mean, a search of Wattpad really showcases this.
Is lust all over that video?
How about in the song itself?
Dream me, oh dreamer
… a, yep. Check.
Down to the floor
Open my hands and let them
Weave onto yours
Feel me, completer
Down to my core
Open my heart and let it
Bleed onto yours
Feeding on fever
Down all fours
Show you what all that
Howl is for
Wrap it up
TV on the Radio is not really a horror band. They’ve got a wide variety of amazing tracks and a song about werewolves isn’t entirely out of their stylings. Even still, “Wolf Like Me” is just one of those little offbeat tracks by an offbeat band that would be a great addition to any horror fan’s playlist. It evokes werewolves, and we think that is awesome.
Sometimes it pays not to be seen, especially if there are things that want to eat you or if you have to sneak up on things to eat them. So this time on Nightmarish Nature we’re going to look at some of the creatures known for being invisibles among us. Some of these critters engage in mimicry, intentionally looking like other specific things, but a lot of them engage in camouflage, just wanting to blend in. In this segment we’ll consider both but focus more on the latter.
Buggin’ Ya
Some of the most notable invisibles are masters of camouflage in the insect world… Moths and beetles that look like bark or dead leaves. Mantids and other insects that look like leaves or flowers. Those stick bugs and walking sticks that I’m not sure how to classify (are they some kind of weird relations to assassin bugs or their own thing?). And my personal favorite, Umbonia Crassicornis, a type of tree hopper better known as the thorn bug. And don’t even get me started on spiders and scorpions… You could come face to face with pretty much any of these critters while mucking around in your garden and be none the wiser for it unless their movement betrays their location or you happen to scan the area with a blacklight before you dig in. It’s jump scare central, for sure!
Leapin’ Lizards
Lizards and amphibians are also masters of disguise, often resembling their surroundings much like the insect world does. Chameleons are celebrated because of their ability to change color to match their surroundings, but there are several lizards that do this, just not to that extreme. Like anoles. Take a trip to Florida and you’ll soon find that you’re being stared at by a lizard you didn’t even know was there, seeing as how anoles are everywhere and get into everything (one recently startled my mother after making its home in a hallway decoration). You don’t even have to go to Florida, they range anywhere from Texas to North Carolina, and there are other lizards that range further north that do this as well.
Cunning Cats
All those coat patterns you see on cats and other ambush hunters aren’t just for show – the spots and stripes allow our feline friends to blend into their surroundings while on the prowl. Sneaky sneaky. This helps them to be the amazing hunting machines that they are. Assuming they don’t raise the bird alarm and draw attention to their whereabouts. Because birds do love to raise a stink when there’s a feline predator about, and we can’t say we blame them.
Aquatics
Then when you go underwater, you take it next level. Camouflage is taken up a notch with seahorses, nudibranchs, and more that look exactly like random flotsam. Some critters, such as Majoidea crabs, even decorate themselves with ocean debris to blend in. And octopuses are like underwater chameleons on steroids that also utilize their surroundings to create a sort of protective armor that blends in, like when they carry anything they can grab to protect their squishy selves when sharks are about. There are even true invisibles like shrimp, fish, and jellyfish that are actually clear except for their internal organs that don’t necessarily register with everything floating about underwater. Even whales can appear to come out of nowhere depending on your angle to them to start with!
If you’ve enjoyed this segment of Nightmarish Nature, feel free to check out some previous here:
So, now that it’s getting cold, here on Nightmarish Nature we’re going to talk about a different kind of terror – the starvation diet. It’s winter, and food is becoming ever scarcer, so many creatures will slow down to conserve energy. Let’s take this a step further to the sleep of the damned… But I’m not talking hibernation, or settling in for a sort of long winter nap version of seasonal affective disorder on steroids. No, I’m talking hummingbirds.
Sugar Rush
Hummingbirds are about the polar opposite of what you’d think of when you talk about inactivity. They’re more the picture-perfect speed demons. And yet, due to their crazy high metabolisms and constant need to refuel by consuming all the nectar and insects they can get their little beaks in or on, they have near death experiences on a regular basis. Even during the summer at night whenever the temperature falls too low. It’s like all their systems have to go offline for a bit just so they can survive.
Energy Suck
Essentially a hummingbird burns so much energy that he can die in less than eight hours of not eating. The little sugar daddy needs another fix just to keep going. This lifestyle is a far cry from the Energizer bunny. Essentially he has to enter a torpor state in sleep so he doesn’t succumb to his own starvation diet. Not every time, but when the temperature drops or food is scarce.
A hummingbird in torpor may, by all accounts, appear dead. He can be frozen in place, his tiny feet clasped rigidly around a branch as if rigor mortis has sunk in. He can be cold to the touch and unresponsive. He can face upwards, unmoving, breathing and heart rate slowed to near indiscernibility. He can even be hanging upside down, oblivious to the world. In fact, the hummer’s heart rate can reduce to almost one tenth of his waking state, and his temperature can drop by ~5o degrees Fahrenheit (~ 30 degrees Celsius).
Miracle Mavericks
Honestly, as shown in this article on Journey North, this ability to exercise such fine control over metabolic rate on a nightly cycle makes the hummingbirds more marvelous than terrifying, switching between cold- and warm-blooded. And they are very well-adapted to their eating regimens, especially given their diminutive size. But such is the cost of burning so much energy to keep going without much room to store fuel. Like I said, a strict starvation diet.
If you’ve enjoyed this segment of Nightmarish Nature, feel free to check out some previous here:
This time on Nightmarish Nature, in honor of Thanksgiving, we’re exploring scads of scat! And not just because of the aftermath of all that eating we’re going to be doing, given that everything that goes in must come out eventually. But because turkeys are weird.
But, how weird?
Apparently, the shape and size of a turkey’s poop can tell you the sex and age of the bird. Male and female birds poop different shaped turds, and bigger ones with age. Your poop can’t do that, we’re pretty sure. And no, we don’t want to check, even if it does come in a whole host of rainbow colors with all the dyes in our food nowadays. Keep your weird quirks to yourself.
Fecal Fetishes
Vultures have very acidic scat that helps to keep their feet and food clean of bacteria from hopping in and around dead things. Somehow, this doesn’t seem like a step up to us, but I guess if you’re a carrion crawler you take what you can get. At least you’d know where it’s been I suppose, and that’s more than you can say for some of your long dead food sources…
Rabbits must process their food twice in order to break down the grassy matter they digest (like cows chewing cud). And so they eat their own partially digested matter, the cecotropes they produce after the first digestion. This isn’t true poop per se, that fecal matter comes after second digestion, but it does work its way through the same way.
And that brings us to koalas. They are one of only a few mammals that can eat eucalyptus leaves (and are closely related to wombats, one of the other two). Koala offspring eat their mother’s pap, which is a specialized form of poop that allows the baby to transition from nursing milk to eating solid leaves. It is green, smeary, mushy, and can get everywhere. Just like you’d expect.
We aren’t exempt.
For all that we have learned to be poop averse, a lot of animals eat others’ scat and glean a lot of nutritional value from their detritus. It’s not just your dog raiding the cat litter box and then licking you in the face. And we humans have even fought wars over rights to seabird guano, which was used as a form of fertilizer in the late 1800s.
Anyway, that’s the scoop on poop for now. Maybe we’ll revisit this load later on, seeing as how there’s still plenty of content here.
If you’ve enjoyed this segment of Nightmarish Nature, feel free to check out some previous here:
-
Movies n TV4 days agoGoosebumps The Vanishing, Back on Track With The Haunted Car
-
Book Reviews2 days ago
The Midnight Feast: Come for a romp in the Woods.
-
Original Creations6 days ago
Alice – A Haunting Tale of Isolation and Betrayal by Baylee Marion
-
Original Series3 days ago
Nightmarish Nature: Invisibles Among Us
