Ad Litteram Film Folklore and Urban Legends
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FILM • FOLKLORE KOVEN rom Alien to When a Stranger Calls, many fi lms are based on folklore or employ an element of urban legend to propel the narrative. But once folklore aspects within such F fi lms have been identifi ed, do they warrant further scrutiny? In Film, Folklore, and Urban Legends, Mikel J. Koven explores the convergence of folklore with popular cinema FILM, studies, bringing attention to the signifi cance of these intertwined modes of storytelling. Going well beyond the identifi cation of traditional motifs in popular cinema, Koven reveals FILM, FOLKLORE, FILM, FOLKLORE, new paradigms of fi lm analysis that expand through the lens of folklore. In particular, this book focuses on the study of urban legends and how they inspired numerous fi lms. FOLKLORE, This book begins with a general survey of existing literature on folklore and fi lm, predominantly from the perspective of folklore studies. Subsequent chapters address discourses of belief, how urban legends provide the organizing principle of some fi lms, and how certain fi lms “act out” or perform a legend. Movies discussed include Alligator, Candyman, The Curve, URBAN Dead Man on Campus, I Know What You Did Last Summer, Urban Legend, Weekend at AND Bernie’s, and The Wicker Man, as well as zombie fi lms, killer-bee movies, and slasher fi lms, including Black Christmas, The Burning, Halloween, and Terror Train. Koven also devotes attention to such key television shows as The X-Files and Most Haunted. LEGENDS AND In his analysis, Koven explains not only how fi lm and television narratives are built upon preexisting popular culture beliefs but also how those beliefs are recycled back into popular culture. Film, Folklore, and Urban Legends stands on its own both as the fi rst book-length URBAN LEGENDS study of folklore and popular cinema and as an introductory textbook for the study of folklore and fi lm. MIKEL J. KOVEN is senior lecturer in fi lm studies at the University of Worcester. He is the author of Blaxploitation Films (2001) and La Dolce Morte: Vernacular Cinema and the Italian Giallo Film (Scarecrow, 2006). For orders and information please contact the publisher SCARECROW PRESS, INC. ISBN-13: 978-0-8108-6025-4 ISBN-10: 0-8108-6025-2 A wholly owned subsidiary of The Rowman & Littlefi eld Publishing Group, Inc. 4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200 Lanham, Maryland 20706 1-800-462-6420 • fax 717-794-3803 www.scarecrowpress.com MIKEL J. KOVEN Cover image from Urban Legend (1998), Tri-Star Pictures/Photofest © Tri-Star Pictures Cover design by Allison Nealon Film Folklore and Urban_PBK.indd1 1 9/28/07 9:58:34 AM 07_428_01_FM.qxd 10/3/07 12:42 PM Page i Film, Folklore, and Urban Legends Mikel J. Koven The Scarecrow Press, Inc. Lanham, Maryland • Toronto • Plymouth, UK 2008 07_428_01_FM.qxd 10/3/07 12:42 PM Page ii SCARECROW PRESS, INC. Published in the United States of America by Scarecrow Press, Inc. A wholly owned subsidiary of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. 4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706 www.scarecrowpress.com Estover Road Plymouth PL6 7PY United Kingdom Copyright © 2008 by Mikel J. Koven All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Koven, Mikel J. Film, folklore, and urban legends / Mikel J. Koven. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN-13: 978-0-8108-6025-4 (pbk. : alk. paper) ISBN-10: 0-8108-6025-2 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Motion pictures. 2. Folklore in motion pictures. I. Title. PN1994.K675 2008 791.43—dc22 2007022349 ϱ™ The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992. Manufactured in the United States of America. 07_428_01_FM.qxd 10/3/07 12:42 PM Page iii Contents Acknowledgments v Introduction vii Part I: The Study of Folklore and Film 1 Chapter 1 Folklore and Film 3 Part II: The Search for a Methodology 23 Chapter 2 Based on Some Forgotten Lore: The Wicker Man, Frazer, and the Ancient Celts 25 Chapter 3 Searching for Tale-Types and Motifs in the Zombie Film 37 Chapter 4 Orality as Methodology for Understanding Vernacular Comedies and the Comic Corpse 51 Part III: Issues of Belief 67 Chapter 5 Discourses of Belief in The X-Files 69 Chapter 6 “Buzz Off!”: The Killer Bee Movie as Modern Belief Narrative 83 iii 07_428_01_FM.qxd 10/3/07 12:42 PM Page iv iv Contents Part IV: Urban Legends and Film 97 Chapter 7 Studying the Urban Legend Film 99 Chapter 8 The Slasher Film as Folkloristic Social Script 113 Part V: Ostension 135 Chapter 9 Film and Ostension: The Case of Candyman 137 Chapter 10 The Convergence of Folklore, Belief, and Popular Media: The Case of Most Haunted 153 Afterword 175 Filmography 177 Bibliography 181 Index 191 About the Author 201 07_428_01_FM.qxd 10/3/07 12:42 PM Page v Acknowledgments Although the chapters in this book have been considerably reworked, they have appeared elsewhere in the following places: chapter 1 originally ap- peared as “Folklore Studies and Popular Film and Television: A Necessary Critical Survey” in Journal of American Folklore 116.2 (2003); chapter 2 first appeared in the book The Quest for the Wicker Man: History, Folklore, and Pa- gan Perspectives, edited by B. Franks, S. Harper, J. Murray, and L. Stevenson (2006), as “The Folklore Fallacy: A Folkloristic/Filmic Perspective on The Wicker Man,” and then, in an alternate form, in Fabula (48.3–4, 2007); chap- ter 4 appeared in the book Of Corpse: Death and Humor in Folklore and Pop- ular Culture, edited by Peter Narváez (2003), as “Traditional Narrative, Pop- ular Aesthetics, Weekend at Bernie’s, and Vernacular Cinema”; chapter 5 appeared as “The Folklore Files: In(corp)orating Legends in The X-Files” in The X-Files and Literature: Unweaving the Story, Unraveling the Lie to Find the Truth, edited by Sharon Yang (2007); an alternate version of chapter 5 also ap- peared in the edited collection by Jay McRoy and Richard Hand, Monstrous Adaptations: Generic and Thematic Mutations in Horror Film (2007), as “Adapt- ing Legends: Urban Legends and Their Adaptation in Horror Cinema”; chap- ters 6, 7, and 9 appeared in the journal Contemporary Legend as “‘Buzz Off!’: The Killer Bee Movie as Modern Belief Narrative” (in new series 4, 2001), “Filming Legends: A Revised Typology” (in new series 5, 2002), and “Candy- man Can: Film and Ostension” (in new series 2, 1999); chapter 8 appeared as “The Terror Tale: Urban Legends and the Slasher Film” in the online journal Scope (April 2003); and chapter 10 originally appeared in the journal Folklore v 07_428_01_FM.qxd 10/3/07 12:42 PM Page vi vi Acknowledgments (118, 2007) as “Most Haunted and the Convergence of Traditional Belief and Popular Television.” So a very special thank-you to all the editors who have worked on these papers with me. Of course, all rights are hereby reserved. In addition, versions of these various papers were presented at the follow- ing conferences: Perspectives on Contemporary Legend (1997, 2000, 2002, 2003, 2004, and 2006); The Wicker Man: Rituals, Readings, and Reactions— An Interdisciplinary Conference (2003); American Quality Television (2004); the American Folklore Society (2004 and 2006); Narratives, Roles, and Beliefs in the New Age Era: Homo Narrans–Homo Ludens–Homo Reli- gious (2005); Charming and Crafty: Witchcraft and Paganism in Contem- porary Media (2006); and the Screen Conference (2006). Thank you to the organizers of those conferences who included my work and those who gave me feedback on my presentations. I would also like to particularly thank the following colleagues who en- couraged these writings and always could be counted on for constructive feedback, in no particular order. Diane Goldstein, Paul Smith, Jan Brunvand, Peter Narváez, Bill Ellis, Martin Barker, and Theo Meder. 07_428_01_FM.qxd 10/3/07 12:42 PM Page vii Introduction For the past ten years or so, I have focused much of my research on the rela- tionship between urban legends and popular cinema. Film, Folklore, and Ur- ban Legends is a collection of some previously published articles I have writ- ten on this subject. One of my reasons for wanting to republish these essays is that they originally appeared in some obscure publications and remain known to only a select few. With this book, I hope to broaden the debate be- yond the narrow confines of folklore studies. And this gives me the opportu- nity to correct some foolish mistakes I made in their initial publication. So, far from being some kind of “Greatest Hits” collection of singles trying to pass itself off as a new album, these papers have been reworked and restruc- tured into a single book that I hope demonstrates a coherent and explicit tra- jectory. I have structured the book into five parts: part I is a survey of much of the previously produced research into the folklore/film debates, predominantly from the perspective of folklore studies. These arguments, like the ghosts I talk about in chapter 10, keep coming back to haunt the folklore/film dis- cussions, when most of them belong to a kind of conservatism no longer prevalent in folkloristics. It is my hope that by including this chapter in this current book, we can move the discourse forward.