What is folklore?
When most think of folklore or folk tales they conjure unto themselves
images from Grimm fairy tales or Hans Christian Anderson stories.
These certainly do, in fact, constitute the
most recognizable of folk stories.
But,
do modern novels or films meet the standard?
Are your stories folklore?
When the brothers Grimm traversed Europe they gathered local
tales from communities and villages throughout.
They compiled these into a collection that has entertained and even
frightened generations. These European
stories of valiant princes and noble heroines, heroic underdogs and monstrous
villains have long been staples of what most consider folklore. But this is not the measure of a folk tale.
Almost by definition, folklore is a story or collection of
stories unique to the people, or folk, of a specific geographic region. Folklore speaks to the hopes, fears and
traditions of an area and helps to form a geographic identity. In this way, the western world and even the
United States has it’s own folklore, and these might include many modern
stories.
In colonial and post colonial America, in the North East
stories like Washington Irving’s The Legend of Sleepy Hollow or Rip Van Winkle or
the fictionalization of the life and times of John Chapman, known to posterity
as Johnny Appleseed, are examples of early American folklore.
As settlers moved across the plains From their observations and their shared
experiences western tales of Cowboys, Pecos Bill being one such example, became
dime store fodder. Often depicting the
Native American culture inaccurately and even vilifying them as well as
sometimes glorifying renegade outlaws like Billy the Kid, western stories
became some of the most successful folktales in the world. These stories were even sold and told in the
“old world” and came to solidify a world image of America and it’s people as
fiercely independent.
of the Western U.S.,
they created their own folklore based on the harsh untamed lands they settled,
and the pioneer attitudes that often accompanied such an exodus.
Soon and into the 20th century, America’s West
Coast was settled, and like other regions before, they began to shape a
geo-specific cultural identity. Among
the many genres that have come from this region, one of the most prominent is
the detective mystery noir. In Chandler
stories or others, the American West Coast is as prominent a character as the
protagonist or the antagonist. Hard-boiled
private eyes, defiant of traditional law enforcement, the iconic femme fatale
and the stark city-after-dark descriptions unique to this region rapidly
skyrocketed the genre.
Since the inception of these staples of the American story,
they have pushed and stretched the boundaries of folklore beyond the
fantastical and into the almost surreal.
A new phenomenon in folk tales has emerged in the late 20
th
and early 21
st centuries.
The
geo-specific nature of folklore has been challenged.
The emergence of cinema and the worldwide web
has helped shape a new kind of collective community.
This time, instead of geographic commonality,
members of this community tend to be distinguished by age, experiences or other
social standards.
In this way,
subcultures have formed making stories of nearly all genres folksy by virtue of
their distribution or popularity among a specific global social segment.
With all of the story components of traditional folklore,
heavy drama, unlikely heroic characters, damsels or innocence in distress and
the rise of underdogs to defeat sometime terrifying and melodramatic villains, as
well as their proliferation of society’s pop-culture, it is arguable that the
Harry Potter stories or Star Wars could be considered a kind of non-geo-specific
generational folklore.
With this understanding of classic and modern folklore, do
your favorite stories qualify as folklore?
Do you write folklore?
Don’t we all?
G.W. Pomichter's Lot 28 on iBooks
