ABSTRACT
In mythology and in popular culture, the werewolf has been consistently aligned with the masculine. Werewolves in particular exhibit particular traits aligning hypermasculinity with social class. This chapter examines how ongoing narrative arcs in True Blood, The Vampire Diaries, and its spin-off The Originals develop their werewolf characters. It explores how the Netflix original series Hemlock Grove divided opinion by simultaneously extending and subverting some of the key features of the werewolf-vampire trope, particularly in relation to whiteness, class, and masculinity, as well as through tone and aesthetics. The episode uses the characteristic features of found footage horror to stage an exploration of masculinity via horror's clash of the mundane. The vogue for white trash werewolves may simply be a result of the political, social, and national conditions impacting on twenty-first-century US television. Yet these variations demonstrate that the werewolf, as much as the vampire or—currently—the zombie, is a malleable trope that adapts itself particularly well to serialized television.
