New Moon Werewolves, Heroine Chic and Rob Pattinson's Moustache

New Moon poster revealed?

Rob Pattinson and Kristen Stewart bringing back heroine chic.

The cover of OK! Magazine is sporting the heavy-lidded stars of the upcoming film New Moon, the latest in the Twilight saga by Stephanie Meyers. At first glance Rob Pattinson and Kristen Stewart look a little heroine chic and one wonders, are they getting enough sun? Perhaps their drab appearance is the result of several leaks and other blunders that have plagued New Moon production. The above poster was scored by the Rob Pattinson fan site spunk-ransom.com and features a petulant Taylor Lautner getting between star crossed lovers Bella and Edward. And before the poster leaked, Casey Ray, the owner of a beauty salon in St. Louis found a copy of the script for New Moon in the garbage! In a classy move she didn’t try to sell the script to the tabloids. Instead, with the help of her lawyer (you need them more often than you think in the beauty business) she returned the scripts to Summit and as a reward was invited to the premier of New Moon.

New Moon pack from left to right: Alex Meraz (Paul), Chaske Spencer (Sam Uley), Bronson Pelletier (Jared) and Kiowa Gordon (Embry Call).

Pictures of the New Moon pack of werewolves have fans buzzing about the origin of these largely unknown actors. Shirtless with matching tribal tattoos on their right shoulders, the werewolf quartet shows off their bodacious bods against a backdrop of skeletal trees. In order to be cast, these actors had to pass a fitness test and provide official documentation of their Native American ancestry to director Chris Weitz. Fans might enjoy the lengths to which the New Moon production is going to stay true to the text, but the racial profiling involved in casting raises some alarm as to the representation of minorities as shape-shifting beasts.

The bestialization of minorities seems to go hand in hand with the creepy Mormon undertones of Meyer’s Twilight universe (the good vampires are all white-bread, upstanding citizens while the bad vampires are women and people of color, and shoeless to boot). But the use of werewolves as a metaphor for minority groups has been hinted at before. The werewolves are an underclass of slaves in the Underworld trilogy, and their uprising in Underworld 3: Rise of the Lycans is reminiscent of the Easter Rising in 1916 that would fuel Irish-British conflict during the early 1900s. In the campy horror flick, Mexican Werewolf in Texas (2005) the werewolf is a threat that comes from across the border and has nothing to do with illegal immigrants or swine flu. The werewolves are a creepy colony of sexual deviants in The Howling and in the Anita Blake series by Laurell K. Hamilton, the werewolf king Richard is described as having a “year-round tan.”

Granted, some of this representation is built into the werewolf and vampire metaphors. Ever since Polidori’s conception of the vampire in 1819, vampires have been part of the aristocratic elite sucking on the middle class. Werewolves on the other hand, are slavering beasts that represent mankind’s base urges making them a prime symbol for fringe groups. But New Moon takes the underlying metaphor a step further by showing the werewolves as a shirtless fraternity of buff Native Americans. One particular fan— who is Native American — was confused by the racial orientation of the pack: “The guys all look hot. But I have to be honest: They just … don’t look very Native American anymore. They look vaguely Spanish.”

Robert Pattinson in a Dalí moustache is the definition of surrealism.

Twilight's Rob Pattinson is trying to broaden his acting horizons, even after signing on for the role of Edward Cullen in Breaking Dawn, the fourth forecasted film of the Twilight saga. Pattinson takes on the persona of Salvador Dalí in Little Ashes, a film that documents the relationship between Dalí, filmmaker Luis Buñuel and writer Federico García Lorca in Spain during the 20s and 30s. The reviews for Little Ashes have been mixed, but most fall in the negative for Pattinson’s performance. MTV's Kurt Loder observes, "as soon as Pattinson steps forth with Dalí's famous up-twirled mustaches pasted to his face, the picture collapses" and reviewer MaryAnn Johanson of FlickFilosopher.com comments that "[O]nly indiscriminate vampire-swooning tweens will appreciate [Pattinson's] portrayal of the surrealistic Spanish painter and filmmaker Salvador Dalí."

Further Reading:
Twilight Gets a Lucky Break
New Moon Poster Revealed?
What Do You Think Of The ‘New Moon’ Werewolf Pic?