This shift seems to have happened from the mid-90s on, arguably, but it is very noticeable since maybe the mid-2000s. And you see it in everything, from kids’ shows to adult series to films.
What I mean is, in classical literature and fairy tales, generally supernatural beings want to become human. Gods and demigods don’t, I guess, but most other beings, and indeed most anthropomorphic animals, do.
This carries over into most early and mid-Disney stuff, from The Jungle Book through to Tarzan and The Little Mermaid. Obviously most of that is based on earlier stories. And then..? Shit went the opposite way.
First we had Felix the Cat and Brother Bear, and obviously “mutants” in comic series, and it seems to have ever-expanded from there, to the point where vampirism and lycanthropy for example are seen as less a curse or punishment, and more “a gaining of powers”…
One good example, perhaps, is to compare the original Grimm fairytales to the ridiculous tv show they made, supposedly “based” on those stories. Or Supernatural, similarly. Or Prometheus vs Alien. Or, for another slant, Bicentennial Man and AI vs something like Humans or Deus Ex Machina…
To me, at least, this is a very noticeable trend, across both fantasy (in particular) and sci fi, and it seems to carry with how obsessed people are now with mutilating their bodies, “transcending” gender and race and all that sort of shit…
Also noteworthy that we’ve gone from curing disabilities, in fiction, to portraying becoming disabled as a positive thing, and a form of “superpower”, rather than the thoroughly net-negative experience it usually is…
They even do that shit in kids’ programming, now, too…
So yeah, just something else be noticed and have been thinking about…
Bran Stoker be rolling in his grave…
I guess you could argue this all ties back in to our desire, now, as a society, to feel “special” and “different”, and to be “recognized”, but I do not see it as the sign of a healthy, self-respecting civilization, imho…
It’s notable that in many of these shows and movies, being human is portrayed as “a weakness”.
That seems to be a recurring theme in children’s programming now, too. But obviously it’s there in everything from X-Men to Grimm to the Australian show Glitch (about people coming back from the dead, lol). And instead of humans proving their worth by fighting back, and overcoming the supposedly “superior” others, the characters turn themselves into the monsters, instead, to gain “powers”…
I would be fairly confident this is a deliberate, if not necessarily always conscious, trend…
And also the portrayal of the humans is always some innuendo for racism. X-Men is the most obvious example. Oh no, they hate us because they're racist. But the same goes for True blood and numerous other IPs.
In Greek mythology many Gods did envy humans. Same is implied in Christianity, with Lucifer being jealous of the love God has for humans, his favorite creation. Or how angels/gods desired humans so badly they mated with them and created nephilim/ demigods.
In Pinocchio he wanted to be a real boy and the evil powers tried to pervert him and the other boys into animals.
So historically yes, the narrative was that being human was good. Now the trend has reversed in media as well as in real life. Furries for example. Or being a human is so bad you should kill unborn babies to spare them the curse of human existence. Or kill yourself.