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OCR Document CHILDREN'S FOLKLORE REVIEW VOLUME 24 NUMBERS 1 AND 2 2002 PUBLISHED BY THE CHILDREN'S FOLKLORE SECTION OF THE AMERICAN FOLKLORE SOCIETY WITH SUPPORT FROM THE ENGLISH DEPARTMENT AT EAST CAROLINA UNIVERSITY CONTENTS FROM THE EDITOR ..............................................................................5 THE 2000 AFS COLUMBINE PANEL INTRODUCTION: FOLKLORE RESPONDS To COLUMBINE AND ADOLESCENCE SIMON J. BRONNER ..... …………………………………………………...7 HITLER'S BIRTHDAY: RUMOR-PANICS IN THE WAKE OF THE COLUMBINE SHOOTINGS BILL ELLIS ................................................................................................. 21 THE WAR ON YOUTH: A MODERN OEDIPAL TRAGEDY JOANN CONRAD ....... …………………………………………..33 "EVERYBODY Is THEIR ENEMY": GOTHS, SPOOKY KIDS, AND THE AMERICAN SCHOOL SHOOTING PANIC ALLEN BERRES ....................................................... ………………..43 A FEAR OF ADOLESCENT CRUISING: ADULT REACTIONS To A TRADITION THAT WON'T Go AWAY CHARLIE MCCORMICK .................................................................................... 55 2001 NEWELL PRIZE PAPER REDWOOD GROVE: YOUTH CULTURE WITHIN A GROUP HOME JESSE GELWICKS ....……………………………………………… 65 CFS: 2001 ANNUAL MEETING………………………………………..88 NOTES AND ANNOUNCEMENTS…………………………………….90 ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS………………………………………..92 ON THE COVER: REPRODUCTION OF THE COVER OF W.W. NEWELL'S GAMES AND SONGS OF AMERICAN CHILDREN. FROM THE EDITOR At the 2000 American Folklore Society meetings in Columbus, Ohio, the Children's Folklore Section sponsored a session entitled "The Monstrous Child: Folklore Responds to Columbine and Adolescence." The panel was chaired by Simon J. Bronner, and papers were presented by Bill Ellis, JoAnn Conrad, Allen Berres, and Charlie McCormick. In spite of the 8:15 AM hour, the session was standing room only. This double issue of the Children’s Folklore Review presents those papers with an introduction written by Simon J. Bronner especially for this publication. The Executive Board of the Children's Folklore Section felt it was important to present the panel as a whole and authorized the presentation of them in volume 24, numbers 1 and 2, as a single publication. In a way that no one in the popular media has been able to do, the authors of these essays examine the traditional and popular culture elements pertaining to adolescence and the Columbine shootings and shed a good deal of light on a difficult subject. We are sure you will find these essays fascinating. In addition, this volume contains the 2001 Newell Prize winning paper by Jesse Gelwicks, a student of Jay Mechling's, the minutes of the annual meeting, and the usual notes and announcements. C.W. Sullivan III THE 2000 AFS COLUMBINE PANEL INTORDUCTION: FOLKLORE RESPONDS TO COLUMBINE AND ADOLESCENCE SIMON J. BRONNER It may surprise you to know that this issue on adolescent folklore is a first. Its special claim is being a thematic set of essays focusing on adolescence as a social category of folkloric production by teenagers and for folkloric response by adults and children. This is not to say that folklorists have not been listening to teenagers since adolescence became known as a prominent life stage in the twentieth century. Especially in American colleges, folklorists fill archives with collections by and from adolescents, but they have rarely used these materials for a focused inquiry into the age. At the same time that some of the best known American folklore genres, such as contemporary legends and initiation rituals, derived largely from teenagers, it may be argued that, overall, age as a social category of folkloric production has been slow to be recognized, and adolescence as a vague period between childhood and adulthood has been given even less. To drive the point home, one can note that standard reference works in the field such as The Standard Dictionary of Folklore, Mythology, and Legend (ed. Maria Leach, Funk and Wagnalls, 1949), American Folklore: An Encyclopedia (ed. Jan Harold Brunvand, Garland, 1996), Folklore: An Encyclopedia of Beliefs, Customs, Tales, Music and Art (ed. Thomas A. Green, ABC-CLIO, 1997), A Dictionary of English Folklore (ed. Jacqueline Simpson and Steve Roud, Oxford, 2000), and Penguin Dictionary of American Folklore (by Harry Oster and Alan Axelrod, Penguin, 2000) lack entries for adolescence. This omission is compounded by folkloristic neglect of perspectives from psychological and human develop- ment or family and youth studies, with which studies of adolescence abound. Indeed, such perspectives, associated with sociological and psychological disciplines, have not been commonly incorporated into culture studies; although, family and youth is one of the pillars of folklore's "social contexts." And why should such perspectives be incorporated into culture studies? The contributors to this issue may answer that inquiry into the ways that cultural expectations of age are formed suggests perspectives on aging. Within folklore studies, the field of children's folklore has been a location for observation of the cultural adaptation to aging. If the argument is made that folklore is a force in everyday life, then aging as a process all humans endure should be fundamental to BRONNER the expression of folklore. Further, if the argument is made that folklore persists in the modern world because it serves social and psychological functions for us as individuals and members of groups and society, then age relative to family and community raises many of the questions for which we seek answers of adjustment. In childhood above other ages, folklorists recognize rapid social change leading to cultural production as individuals age and form identities. Therefore the folklore in childhood that forms to communicate within a large semiliterate, age-stratified group is a conspicuous cultural marker. Folklorists are hardly alone in seeing the social connections that result from separation of children into school grades and affiliation with families. Still, they may be drawn to cultural differences by race, ethnicity, and gender precisely because they stand out physically before the ordinariness of age. They may also be lured to the analysis of texts categorized into genres or the context of region before age, because of the artistic composition inherent in folklore. Then came the tragedy at Columbine High School in 1999 and a cascade of commentaries in the popular press on the troubled and at times menacing teen as a problem of age. Looking for explanation, early reports speculated that the tragedy was racially motivated, but interviews with participants revealed that scenario to be unlikely. Turning to questions of what was occurring culturally, and emotionally, for the pair of killers at their age, commentators tended to exaggerate the exotic life of the American teen with folkloric overtones-rumors, legends, beliefs, rituals, pranks, cults, and dress. Writers separated the innocent child from the menacing teen, since the assumption could often be heard that the troubled youths were "normal," happy children until they entered the dark door of adolescence. In the movie Planet of the Apes released in 2001, an ape warns a parent thinking of adopt- ing a youthful human pet, "Be sure to get rid of it before puberty; one thing you don't want in your house is a human teenager." Implicit in such popular texts is a search for an explanation for the violence, rebellion, and alienation that seemed to be in the chemical mix of adolescence and, in the case of school shootings, were thought to have fired affected teens to the point of combustion. The kind of folklore reported in the popular press through the spate of school shootings during the 1990s stressed the adolescent search, assumed to be characteristic of the age, for eerie supernatural realms, bizarre bonding rituals, and sexual adventures. Journalists voyeuristically documented shocking signifiers of identity in dress, hair, body-piercing, music, and tattooing, and a subversive development of alternative or counter- mainstream lifestyles (including formation of 8 FOLKLORE RESPONDS TO COLUMBINE AND ADOLESCENCE gangs and even attraction to satanic and diabolical cults). For some, these are signs of a culture in decline, and folklore as a repository for anti-social values. For others, it shows a cultural creativity that comes with recognition of adolescence as an increasingly differentiated social movement at the heart of a vibrant popular culture. To be sure, it was not uncommon for published ethnographies and filmed documentaries to show high school culture to be essentially conservative, with revival of civic rituals of conformity and class loyalty surrounding football games, graduations, and proms. Statistics kept on juvenile crime showed a decline in assaults and violence during the 1990s, and yet opinion polls revealed a popular perception that youth violence is spreading and juveniles are increasingly considered dangerous and feared. "Teen violence, school violence, and gangs" consistently shows up as a significant problem "facing the United States" in public opinion polls. When a national sample of Americans was asked shortly before Columbine by the Public Agenda Foundation for the "first thing that comes to your mind" to describe teenagers, the largest percentage, 27 percent, replied "generally negative comments." The next largest group was "Disrespectful/Rude/Lacking manners" at 12 percent followed by "Rebellious/Uncontrollable/ Wild" at 10 percent (Roper Center, 1999). And one thing for sure, they thought that
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