APS ISU – Urban Legends
What are Urban Legends?
How would one define an urban legend and what is it that differentiates it from other similar terms such as legends, myths and folklore? These terms tend to be group together, and for good reason considering they are all interrelated of each other as a means of storytelling.
A legend is established upon historic events but have a fictional component to them and possess great significance to the culture from where it was born. Examples include the legend of Robin Hood, who was an English outlaw that stole from the rich and gave to the poor.
A myth is characterised as being based upon a legend but achieves some symbolic meaning. The story is more fictional and uses supernatural accounts to attempt to explain questions that have pondered us for centuries such as “where did we come from?” Ancient Greek mythology exploits many supernatural beings in their myths such as medusa and the Cyclops.
A folklore a story that is told from one generation to the next and it may have many variations of a single story based on the storyteller or the culture. There are many types of stories that are categorized under folklore such as fairy tales, fables and urban legends. Folklores, like the above, may or may not have been based on a true occurrence.
From this we can derive a spectrum of how these stories develop and the importance of the possible event the gave birth to the tale versus the message that is conveyed. By moving from one end of the continuum to the other, its seen that the people’s interpretation of the event along with the moral message associated with it becomes of greater importance that the hard core facts.
So back to the question at hand; what is an urban legend?
Urban legend...
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...ignal for help. These types of coffins do exist down-a-days but aren’t in wide-use since today’s technology is more accurate in their diagnosis.
My Favourite: The Russian Sleep Experiment
The video was one of the two videos that inspired me to base my seminar on this topic. The story shows the horrors of science and the evil humans are capable of doing. I was extremely drawn to the story by the elaborated details that made you feel this was a real occurrence and the plausibility of human experimentation in the past was also very high. I wouldn’t be surprised that an experiment similar to this was conducted, since I know during the Holocaust in WWII the Nazi’s were attempting genocide of the Jews. In the duration of this time, inhuman and cruel experiments were conducted on what the Nazis felt were worthless trash and took meticulous documentation while doing so.
Often, when a story is told, it follows the events of the protagonist. It is told in a way that justifies the reasons and emotions behind the protagonist actions and reactions. While listening to the story being cited, one tends to forget about the other side of the story, about the antagonist motivations, about all the reasons that justify the antagonist actions.
Folklore in the movies usually focuses around a hero or heroine, that hero or heroine is in a situation that they have to overcome. The hero or heroine can come in many different forms; it could be a teenage boy a long time ago, in a galaxy far far away, or an over the hill astronaught lost in space, or a little girl who falls down a hole. I am going to show how three movies contain folklore, Star Wars IV: A New Hope, Planet of the Apes one, and Alice in Wonderland.
Folklores are stories that have been through many time periods. Folklore include Legends, Myths, and Fairy Tales. Legends are traditional tales handed down from earlier times and believed to have a historical basis. Myths are ancient stories dealing with supernatural beings, ancestors, or heroes. Fairy Tales are fantasy tales with legendary being and creators.
Over the recent centuries, the definition of myth has decayed into a word synonymous with falsehoods and lies. This idea of myths being completely false and therefore useless is a fairly modern one. To combat the rise of empirical science in the 1900s, theologians brought the idea of wholly literal, fundamental religion into being to combat ideas that did not perfectly align with the tenants of the religion (May 24). This was the final death blow to the idea of the metaphysical myth that was already wounded from thousands of years of being denounced as pagan or barbaric. The rise of empirical science also lent to the decay of the meaning of myth. Science was able to explain the natural world far better than a myth ever could; however, it lacked the metaphysical aspect. Due to these rising ideologies, myths hav...
A myth is a purely fictional story that has been passed on for generations, usually involving supernatural persons, actions or events. Hercules (also called Herakles), is one of the strongest and most celebrated mythical heroes. These myths were made up thousands of years ago and have acquired more details as they have been passed down. The story of Hercules is one of a man who was so strong and courageous, whose deeds were so mighty, and who so endured all the hardships that were given to him, that when he died, Hercules was brought up to Mount Olympus to live with the gods.
Myths relate to events, conditions, and deeds of gods or superhuman beings that are outside ordinary human life and yet basics to it” ("Myth," 2012). Mythology is said to have two particular meanings, “the corpus of myths, and the study of the myths, of a particular area: Amerindian mythology, Egyptian mythology, and so on as well as the study of myth itself” ("Mythology," 1993). In contrast, while the term myth can be used in a variety of academic settings, its main purpose is to analyze different cultures and their ways of thinking. Within the academic setting, a myth is known as a fact and over time has been changed through the many different views within a society as an effort to answer the questions of human existence. The word myth in an academic context is used as “ancient narratives that attempt to answer the enduring and fundamental human questions: How did the universe and the world come to be? How did we come to be here? Who are we? What are our proper, necessary, or inescapable roles as we relate to one another and to the world at large? What should our values be? How should we behave? How should we not behave? What are the consequences of behaving and not behaving in such ways” (Leonard, 2004 p.1)? My definition of a myth is a collection of false ideas put together to create
Multiple nations have folktales as well as songs in their history such as Arabic, African, Australian, and European. So, folktales are widespread surrounding the world. Some folktales are for kids to have a good wisdom helping their parents to grow up them. Some of them are for adult to take a wisdom to make a control in their life or to see the best to live. Some folktales are created by senior people to give a lesson for their sons. Some of them are reported through people who lives true stories. According to Dictionary.com “Folktale is a tale or legend originating and traditional among a people or folk, especially one forming part of the oral tradition of the common people.” So, the
Folklore is very important on a culture relating to legends, myths and fairy tales. The generations will keep telling the legends, myths and fairytales to the next
I originally became very interested in this phenomenon after seeing the film Urban Legend several years ago. My curiosity on the subject matter was rekindled when Stacey Burleson presented on "Legend" in our class. To be quite honest, I did not realize that UL was considered as being part of a genre of literature until Ms. Burleson's presentation. This newfound interest in the subject, as well as a desire to dig beyond the surface of the subject matter, is the reason I chose this topic. In doing this research, I realized that I have been participating in UL's every since I was a young boy. The simple fact that I never used the term "urban legend" is why I thought I was so unfamiliar with this subject area. During my childhood, my family and peers always referred to these legends as "campfire stories". It was not until college, when I saw the previously mentioned movie, that I associated the term with the countless stories I had heard and told to others.
Essentially, there are three typical characteristics of mythology. Classic myths often include gods or supernatural heroes, are “closely linked to religion,” and “generally take place in a primordial age, when the world had not yet achieved its current form” (“Mythology” Wikipedia). Furthermore, myths provide an explanation for the existence of life and how the world came to be.
From folklore and propaganda to inspiration and identity, how and why a story is skewed, changed, and evolved to fit the agenda is very telling. As for the “outlaw hero” tale, it has been used throughout time to influence and control perceptions and people. It has also been adapted and used as an effective marketing tool to attract men, women, and children of many different target segments, in many different media outlets. Stories have immense power; told the right way to the right people, they can alter governments, religions, and cultures, even society as we know
The definition of a fable is “a literary genre: a succinct fictional story, in prose or verse, that features animals, legendary creatures, plants, inanimate objects, or forces of nature that are anthropomorphized and that illustrates or leads to a particular moral lesson, which may at the end be added explicitly as a pithy maxim”.
Mythology is defined as a collection of interrelated stories of a given culture. Myths are intended to explain and describe the mysteries of nature and give understanding about the world that surrounds us. Each culture has their own mythology that reflects their values and beliefs. Myths were also generated to tell the story of the first people to inhabit the earth. The Egyptian mythology elevated these people to the level of Gods and Goddesses by giving them supernatural and special powers. These myths of creation were passed from one generation to the next, either orally or by hieroglyphs painted in sacred temples, pyramids, and sanctuaries.
Folklore is a collection of stories passed down from generation to generation that include Legends, Myths, and Fairy Tales. Legends are traditional stories that are passed on and have an important meaning Myths are stories that happened and involve supernatural beings that are still known for. Fairy Tales are make-believe/that don’t exist. German Folklore is the folk tradition which has developed in Germany over a number of centuries. Germans heavily concentrated folklore is Fairy Tales because, they lived in a oral area where they teached their kids to not go in the woods. The values that are reflected germans culture is about the Pre-christian pantheon.
Folklore is a body of expressive culture shared by a group of people and therefore encompasses the morals and ideals of that group. The main objective in folklore is not to express the narrow interests of any one person, but to aid in the understanding of an entity of life all the while entertaining the masses. Since these stories are often impossible to attribute to a sole individual, the tales told tend to deviate on a regional basis in terms of the characters and, to some extent, the plot. However, despite generations of interpretations and alterations, the message often remains the same. Separating and analyzing the components of the word folklore help better understand its meaning. The term, folk, was coined by Englishman William Thomas,