Tuesdays are Supernatural!

[WizarDru]

Whatever the reason, everybody I know knows the story, as do half my acquaintances. That's just a fact.

I wasn't questioning your anecdotal evidence...just that it was anything other than anecdotal. Having a creature named a Wendigo in WoW, a villian from the X-men and the Hulk and a bunch of folks from a Native American literature class don't really qualify as making it mainstream. I mean, let's be honest here, how many of your friends play D&D or are fans of fantasy and mythology? I would venture that they (and anyone who posts here) has a much higher awareness of more obscure mythologies. I would also suggest that knowledge of a particular mythology like the wendigo would also vary from region to region. How many people are that familiar with the specifics of the Jersey Devil outside of New Jersey? How many even knew of it before the advent of the hockey team? IME, very few. I'm sure folks in Mass. are more likely to know about the Dover Demon than someone in Flagstaff, for example.

Take a look at the wikipedia entry for the wendigo. Eliminate gaming references, and you have a handful of pop-culture references to the wendigo made in the last 20 years or so. Exclude Charmed (lord knows I DO ) and you've got Ravenous (a relatively obscure cult film) and the movie Wendigo...which has suprisingly little to do with the legend. Ginger Snaps (which was just plain obscure, with no US release) is a werewolf film/trilogy with some references to the wendigo. Charmed's episode was in 1999, while the previous films were in 1999, 2001 and 2000, respectively. All the book and poem references go back considerably further. And in most cases, they're using the wendigo because its relatively obscure.

It may be common knowledge and a household name amongst gamers and the area where you live...but I'm just not seeing the wendigo as commonplace by any measure. If anything, I'm seeing it as a vague legend used when more common legends (like vampires, ghosts and werewolves) aren't desired.

 

[Captain Tagon]

Pretty much the same as the Grim referenced in Harry Potter. I'd hardly call that obscure, but it did use a variant name, at least.

Still no clue man.

 

[Desdichado]

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban? The Grim?

Well, I can understand if you haven't either read the book or seen the movie, but anything Harry Potter by default isn't obscure.

 

[Wayside]

I mean, let's be honest here, how many of your friends play D&D or are fans of fantasy and mythology?

None, but they've all seen Ravenous and encountered the basic "eat human flesh go bestial become immortal" shtick before. Lots of Robert Carlyle fans.

I would venture that they (and anyone who posts here) has a much higher awareness of more obscure mythologies.

Certainly true in my case, but I'm not relying on myself here.

I would also suggest that knowledge of a particular mythology like the wendigo would also vary from region to region. How many people are that familiar with the specifics of the Jersey Devil outside of New Jersey?

That's certainly possible, but the Jersey Devil can't be a good example. I mean there are whole videogames devoted to it, are there not?

Take a look at the wikipedia entry for the wendigo.

I mentioned this a page or two ago.

Eliminate gaming references, and you have a handful of pop-culture references to the wendigo made in the last 20 years or so. Exclude Charmed (lord knows I DO ) and you've got Ravenous (a relatively obscure cult film) and the movie Wendigo...which has suprisingly little to do with the legend. Ginger Snaps (which was just plain obscure, with no US release) is a werewolf film/trilogy with some references to the wendigo.

But these things aren't obscure at university. This is where people go nuts for things that are "obscure" by other peoples' standards, but then there are so many kids on this same path that these things more or less cease to be obscure at all. I know tons of people who've seen the Ginger Snaps movies.

It's all about what void you hope Supernatural will fill. Someone in another thread mentioned they wanted it to be the new Buffy. I don't think that's going to happen, but I'm sure hoping for more creative fringe ideas and fewer blah man-beasts. That said I enjoyed last night's episode much more. It wasn't perfect by any means, but there were some great moments, from "I'm agent Ford, this is agent...Hamil" to those couple shots of the kid's corpse in the water at the end, and many things in-between. I loved when he popped out of the water up to his eyes like some kind of zombie frog. I think I may have cheered out loud. In general I thought the cinematography was a lot stronger too (especially what felt like some changes in fps when they were filming liquid, which made it more sinister), although there were a few cheesey fades and some soundstage car scenes (don't see the point of that, since they went on location anyway).

 

[Wayside]

Well, I can understand if you haven't either read the book or seen the movie, but anything Harry Potter by default isn't obscure.

Maybe we need to define obscure. I'm pretty sure fewer people have read Harry Potter than haven't, even just in the western world. The ratio probably balloons negatively after that.

 

[Crothian]

And just because people are familiar with the term Windigo doesn't mean they actyually have a good understanding of it. I imagine that if you request actually details from all these people saying they know of it you'd find that some of them actually don't.

To really know if Wendigos are obscure you have to go hit middle america or similar places with the term. What we are doing is like going to MIT and talking to people about computers.

 

[Desdichado]

Maybe we need to define obscure. I'm pretty sure fewer people have read Harry Potter than haven't, even just in the western world. The ratio probably balloons negatively after that.

Are you trying to convince us that the wendigo is old-hat familiarity, while simultaneously claiming that Harry Potter references are obscure?

Yes, defining obscure would be good here, but relatively speaking, the wendigo is way more obscure than Harry Potter for just about any segment of the population, barring extremely odd, small, and rare outlier groups. The books have sold more copies than just about anything besides the Bible, and the movies have been huge mainstream successes. The current generation of kids and teenagers will probably see Harry Potter much as my generation sees the original Star Wars movies, if not even moreso. And the original Star Wars movies were not at all a geeky thing for my generation; I've literally only met one person ever of my generation who, as an adult, had not ever seen the first movie.

Granted, like I said, Harry Potter uses "the Grim" instead of "Black Dog" or "Black Shuck" or barghest, but they are all really just alternate names for the same element of folklore.

 

[WizarDru]

But these things aren't obscure at university. This is where people go nuts for things that are "obscure" by other peoples' standards, but then there are so many kids on this same path that these things more or less cease to be obscure at all. I know tons of people who've seen the Ginger Snaps movies.

Right, and that's exactly my point. Anecdotally, among the folks you know, the wendigo is pretty common knowledge. You're not describing the general public, nor even the greater majority of sci-fi fans, let alone the majority of Supernatural's viewers or the viewing public in general.

Ravenous was an art-house film that made about $2 million dollars (roughly $1000 a screen)...and cost $12 million dollars to make. Almost no one saw it....it was a flop, opening at 17th for the week. [For comparison purposes, Forces of Nature, which also opened that same weekend, made $13.5 million on twice as many screens, earning $6500 per screen...and that was a Ben Affleck flop). Ginger Snaps didn't even have a US release...it was only released in Canada, if IMDB is to be believed (and I know I'd never heard of it before wikipedia's wendigo page). Plus you have to consider that, as Crothian says, many may have heard the name, but not really get it. Ginger Snaps is billed as a werewolf film at IMDB; the first review listed describes it as an 'almost underground' film. So if these are the strongest examples of the wendigo being overexposed, I'd say it's much closer to dying in obscurity than the other way around.

 

[Captain Tagon]

The thing is I've SEEN Prizoner of Azkaban, twice even. Just don't remember any dogs in it.

 

[WayneLigon]

The thing is I've SEEN Prizoner of Azkaban, twice even. Just don't remember any dogs in it.

It's before Harry gets on The Knight Bus, where you see the dog coming out of the bushes at him; Sirius in his dog form, watching Harry. His name is even a reference to it: Sirius Black who changes into a dog.