The non-bina­ry sub­text of Wolfwalkers

Wolfwalk­ers, the fourth film by Irish ani­ma­tion stu­dio Car­toon Saloon, is heav­i­ly root­ed in the his­to­ry of Irish sub­ju­ga­tion by the Eng­lish. Set in the Kilken­ny of 1650, the self-pro­claimed Lord Pro­tec­tor brings an influx of Eng­lish mil­i­tary sol­diers and set­tlers to ​“tame” the sav­age lands of wolves whilst plun­der­ing the forests of their resources.

The locals and set­tlers are kept in line by fear, force and cultural/​religious impo­si­tion. Its themes explore that destruc­tion of, and igno­rance against, native Irish cul­ture by out­siders who wield their reli­gion more like a puri­tan­i­cal cru­sade – patri­ar­chal, dom­i­neer­ing, cap­i­tal­is­tic, pow­er-mak­ing right, ​“work is prayer” – con­trast­ing with the free­dom and envi­ron­men­tal har­mo­ny of Ireland’s myth­i­cal cul­ture the Eng­lish seek to repress.

Its visu­als, art style, and board­ing take full advan­tage of the medi­um to com­mu­ni­cate this dichoto­my through gor­geous 2D ani­ma­tion. The Eng­lish town set­tle­ment is rigid, tight­ly organ­ised, heav­i­ly sym­met­ri­cal and ordered with a delib­er­ate z‑axis flat­ness which calls to mind Anglo tapes­tries. Its colour scheme is heav­i­ly mut­ed with lots of chalk-like greys. All of its denizens have thick black out­lines and stiff move­ments empha­sis­ing their arti­fi­cial­i­ty and for­eign pres­ence in this space. By con­trast, the Irish forests that the wolves and wolfwalk­ers call home are vibrant­ly coloured and painter­ly in their flow, with a depth and scale that the town is denied. This is fur­ther rein­forced by both the smooth pack-like motion of the char­ac­ter ani­ma­tion, and the con­scious deci­sion to keep the pen­cil out­lines and scrib­bles of both envi­ron­ment and char­ac­ters, empha­sis­ing a relaxed nat­ur­al state of being with the self and world around them.

But whilst Tomm Moore & Ross Stewart’s film is specif­i­cal­ly focussed on that Irish cul­tur­al his­to­ry, what most res­onat­ed with me was how those same artis­tic and nar­ra­tive tech­niques trans­ferred over nat­u­ral­ly to the non-bina­ry sub­text Wolfwalk­ers also car­ries. The sto­ry of and rela­tion­ship between Eng­lish town­ie Robyn and Irish wolfwalk­er Mebh finds applic­a­bil­i­ty with that of a young child unable to fit in with society’s expec­ta­tions and rigid­ly enforced gen­der roles who dis­cov­ers – when exposed to alter­na­tive view­points and sim­i­lar chil­dren who have man­aged to actu­alise their sense of self – and lat­er accepts their nascent queerness.

At the story’s begin­ning, Robyn chafes under the strict puri­tan­i­cal gen­der roles set forth in occu­pied Kilken­ny. Her hunter ambi­tions con­stant­ly belit­tled and ignored due to her gen­der, by the town’s rot­ten chil­dren, by the rul­ing guards, by even her own father albeit there out of a mis­guid­ed desire to ​“pro­tect” her. She ful­ly buys into the insti­tu­tion­alised demon­i­sa­tion of the local wolves, but a chance encounter with wolfwalk­er Mebh, who heals Robyn’s injured bird Mer­lin, changes her world­view even before she begins her offi­cial wolfwalk­er awakening.

The arc of said awak­en­ing in par­tic­u­lar mir­rors the strug­gles of wrestling with sex­u­al and gen­der dys­pho­ria for many queer teens grow­ing up. Robyn expe­ri­ences an ini­tial over­whelm­ing mess of con­fu­sion, shame and fear, exac­er­bat­ed by the very first trans­for­ma­tion hap­pen­ing with­in her own home, result­ing in her being chased with intent to kill by both town guards and her own father. The inabil­i­ty to artic­u­late her­self prop­er­ly to her puri­tan­i­cal­ly brain­washed father sees their com­mu­nica­tive divide widen after this awakening.

Robyn’s out­lines start to soft­en after­wards, mak­ing her appear even more out of place in Kilken­ny but still just a touch too thick to ful­ly belong in the forests with Mebh and the wolves either, at least until the movie’s clos­ing third when they ful­ly soft­en into pen­cil sketch­es. Cru­cial­ly, Wolfwalk­ers big cen­tre­piece scene, in which Robyn and Mebh dis­cov­er the joy of their wolfwalk­er forms togeth­er whilst AURORA’s tri­umphant­ly soul­ful ​“Run­ning with the Wolves” cries out over the sound­track, also dra­ma­tizes the unbound free­dom of a safe queer space. The thrill and exha­la­tion in the abil­i­ty to be your full true self with some­body who tru­ly sees you.

In terms of fur­ther trans under­cur­rents, the scene where Robyn reveals her wolfwalk­er side to her father has unmis­tak­able par­al­lels to a child com­ing out to their par­ent, espe­cial­ly in the defen­sive pain of Hon­or Kneafsey’s vocal per­for­mance. Her father is con­fused and afraid of what this means, sat cradling her sleep­ing body in his arms for much of the finale until his grow­ing empa­thy for the wolves, brought upon by both see­ing Robyn lead the defen­sive charge against the Eng­lish and his own wolfwalk­er trans­for­ma­tion due to an ear­li­er bite from Mebh’s moth­er, leads him to embrace her true self ful­ly and recog­nise that Robyn is still Robyn deep down.

As for Mebh, they proud­ly reject the ​“girl” label Robyn and pass­ing towns­folk mis­tak­en­ly put on them, almost only ever refer­ring to them­selves as either a ​“wolf” or ​“wolfwalk­er” indi­cat­ing that they don’t feel any strong con­nec­tions to arbi­trary bina­ry gen­der con­structs. Mebh also fre­quent­ly blurs into one with the for­est and the pack they run with, the des­ig­na­tion between indi­vid­ual bod­ies ceas­ing to mean­ing­ful­ly exist due to such col­lec­tive comfortableness.

Out­side of our two leads, there’s also the man­ner by which the Lord Pro­tec­tor cor­rals his vil­lagers. A rule by fear, the demon­i­sa­tion and scape­goat­ing of a neb­u­lous ​“oth­er” intend­ed to keep the pro­le­tari­at in line, a ​“wild” ​“sav­age” group who need to be ​“tamed” and ​“civilised” as sym­bols of unques­tioned author­i­ty when said oppressed peo­ples mere­ly want to live in har­mo­ny with their fel­low working-class.

These have been cor­ner­stones of mod­ern cis patri­ar­chal social sys­tems towards gay, les­bian, bi, trans, and queer peo­ple for cen­turies. You can even see it in how the film con­scious­ly choos­es to depict vio­lence. The Eng­lish are all offen­sive, quick to resort to chains and arrows, active­ly hunt­ing and pil­lag­ing. The wolves, on the oth­er hand, only ever resort to vio­lence as an act of des­per­ate self-defense when cor­nered yet are paint­ed as sav­age mon­sters because of it, again par­al­lel­ing the his­to­ry of queer activism and push­back against vio­lent need­less­ly aggres­sive institutions.

Almost all of this queer sub­text is unin­ten­tion­al – direc­tor Tom Moore has stat­ed as much in inter­views – but it is nonethe­less deeply res­o­nant for some­body like me, a queer lover of ani­ma­tion. A not-insignif­i­cant part of me won­ders what might have been if a movie like this had exist­ed when I was an ado­les­cent. If see­ing a movie like Wolfwalk­ers so beau­ti­ful­ly exam­ine feel­ings of gen­der dys­pho­ria and queer­ness would’ve helped me be more aware, under­stand­ing, and accept­ing of my non-bina­ry self at a much ear­li­er age. To be seen in the media I love.