Interspecies
Love is an excellent story device through which to make observations on and
suggestions for the way we humans treat each other, both as individuals and as
societies, nations, and races. It is also a clever way to portray the more
animal-like or just plain weird aspects of our human nature.
With so much
romance, love, lust, and just plain sex going on between humans and vampires,
humans and werewolves, humans and zombies, humans and who-knows-what let us
first define Interspecies Love.
If the human
is mating with anyone that is now or ever was an actual human who has been compromised
by a DNA override such as a curse, a bite, the phase of the moon, that is not
Interspecies.
Some
creatures are on the borderline between human and non-human, such as fairies,
elves, and gnomes, depending on the mythology and the story. In mythology there
are myriad examples of humans mating with animals, angels, and deities. A
modern version is Wim Wenders’ Wings of
Desire wherein an angel falls in love with a human and gives up his angelic
form to be with her.
Examples in Myth and Legend
Sphinxes,
griffins, centaurs, gorgons, Anubis and other such Egyptian gods, mermaids....
With so many part human/part animal creatures in the myths of the world one
begins to wonder if there might not have been some facts behind the stories. Is
it racial memory, the preservation of deep history in myth, the fanciful
telling of science experiments gone bad? Or perhaps a misunderstanding of the
complexity of evolution and the branching of the tree of life from single-cell forms
to today’s humans? Many very interesting, fun, exciting, inspiring, or scary
stories center around some mix of humans and other species.
Greek king
god Zeus was a rampant womanizer of mortal females, immortal females, and
half-mix females. Seduction was often easy because, well, he was king of the
gods. Often though the mortal girls knew about his goddess-wife Hera’s jealous
rages and preferred not to be turned into a cow so Zeus disguised himself for
many of his affairs. As a bull, he kidnapped young Europa. As a swan, he
seduced Leda, who bore him Pullox and Helen (later of Troy).
In a similar
case of bird-to-human mating Christianity portrays the divine Holy Spirit as a
dove, visiting the mortal virgin Mary – the result being Jesus.
Joseph
Campbell tells the tale of a native American princess who marries a buffalo god
to help save her people.
Examples in Media
His Monkey Wife by
John Collier is an amusing and pointed allegory for miscegenation. In this book
an Englishman comes back from Africa with an astonishingly literate female
chimpanzee who is in love with him. [Collier also wrote the screenplay for The African Queen.] Rudyard Kipling’s
short story Bimi features a male
orangutan who is dangerously jealous of his human master’s new wife.
Avatar is an excellent example of
technologically advanced cultures taking advantage of other beings seen as “less
than”. There is Interspecies romantic Love between Jake and Neytiri and a
generalized respect and love by the human scientist Grace for the Na’vi.
In The Little Mermaid fairy tale a
fish-girl gives up her voice in order to get legs and be able to walk on land
and marry the prince.
The first Alien film shows female human
crew-member Lambert being brutally and fatally raped by the Alien. Earlier, the
male crewman Kane was orally raped and in the grossest case of interspecies
breeding ever, gives birth to the new alien as it bursts out of his chest.
Symbols
Mixed
creatures such as centaurs, sphinxes, mermaids, etc.
Two very
different versions of the same thing in juxtaposition...eyes, hands, sex
organs, etc.
In Avatar the helicopters and the flying
dragons represent the differences between the race of humans and the Na’vi.
Clothing or lack thereof can also represent differences.
In Your Stories
Compare and
contrast – how are their heads/limbs/mouths/sex organs alike or different? Make
the descriptions either wondrous or horrifying, depending on the nature of the
impending relationship between the human and the alien.
Be clear
about the purpose of the point of contact. In Star Trek Captain Kirk going after alien chicks reveals his
character and creates character arcs. In Alien
the ‘mating’ is a story arc and drives the plot forward.
Give us the
actual mating act, as with Leda and the swan [Zeus] in the poem by William
Butler Yeats http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/leda-and-the-swan/.
Show the
differences before you get them together. In Galaxy Quest the aliens forget to turn on their Appearance
Generators so the earthlings see them in their true form of tall upright octopi
not even faintly resembling humans.
If positive
results -- A stronger bond to something higher and different.
If negative
results – unfortunate, dreadful, or deadly.
Interspecies
Love is a really rich situation you can use to make all sorts of statements and
send all sorts of messages in your FF&P stories while greatly entertaining
us in either heart-warming or terrifying ways.
© 2012 SHOW
ME THE LOVE! book by Pamela Jaye
Smith & Monty Hayes McMillan
www.mythworks.net www.alphababeacademy.com
I hope you will join my
class on
BEYOND THE HERO'S JOURNEY
Hosted by
Fantasy-Futuristic&
Paranormal Romance Writers
This 4 Week class starts March 4,
2013
For more information click
HERE
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