Folklore 101

At this year's ICFA, I heard a paper by folklore scholar Jeana Jorgensen and was so impressed that I immediately ordered her book FOLKLORE 101. This isn't a book OF folklore, but an introduction to the study of folklore. Jorgensen explains her field in a breezy, colloquial style but also includes an extensive bibliography of books for further, deeper exploration, should readers be so inclined. She defines folklore as "informally transmitted traditional culture." It's shared and passed on outside of official, institutional structures. Thus, while an established religion isn't folkloric, folk religion does exist, e.g., wearing saints' medals for protection or burying a statue in the yard to ensure a quick sale of one's house. Variation and flexibility characterize folklore, whereas an institutional product such as a printed novel by a known author has a fixed form (unless the author or film director releases a revised official version). Tradition need not stretch back centuries or even years to be "traditional." Moreover, the "folk" don't mean just people in preindustrial eras or present-day tribal societies. Folk groups can include hobby clubs, coworkers in an office, people serving in a branch of the military, online virtual communities, even the members of a single family—any group that shares a common culture. It surprised me to read about "personal narratives" as a folklore category. Did you know the retelling of an anecdote about your wedding day constitutes folklore within your family's tradition? Coincidentally, earlier this week I read an article about the top ten stories from their own lives people tell over and over. (Frustratingly, the article didn't list the ten topics.) Older people don't repeat stories mainly because they're forgetful; they do it because those anecdotes hold vital meanings they want to pass on to the younger generations. Just as we all speak prose, we all belong to folk groups and practice folklore.

I ordinarily think of folklore mainly in terms of verbal culture, such as songs, tales, legends, and anecdotes. Proverbs, jokes, and slang also fall into that general area. As Jorgensen's book explains, however, folklore includes many more categories, e.g., foodways, rituals, superstitions, arts and crafts, dance, holiday customs, folk medicine, internet memes, and various other human activities.

Is fan fiction folklore? Yes, although her book mentions it only once, in passing. It's produced informally, outside official, commercial structures. It exhibits variation and is communicated within a folk community. The fanfic community has its own traditions and dialect, e.g., the invention of the term "slash" for same-sex romance between fictional characters. Filk music is certainly folklore. Songs can be set to either composers' original tunes or existing music. The latter can consist of either parody or serious rewriting. The videos made by some fans by combining clips from movies or TV shows would also count as folklore, although they don't come into Jorgensen's book. So material originally produced by official, institutional, and/or commercial sources can become appropriated by folk culture, subject to variation and traditional transmission.

When does a commercial product created by a known artist become folkloric? How old does it have to be? Does it have to be in the public domain? Woody Guthrie's song "This Land Is Your Land" is probably thought of by many Americans as a folk song. Guthrie himself encouraged others to add verses. Nineteenth-century composer Stephen Foster's "I Dream of Jeanie with the Light Brown Hair" was parodied by Bugs Bunny, a commercial song being "filked" by a commercial animated character. Similarly, the tune of the Civil War song "Aura Lea" was used by Elvis Presley for "Love Me Tender." There's a filk song about the Apollo 13 near-disaster sung to the tune of "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald." Despite Jorgensen's lucid explanations, I'm still a little fuzzy on the boundaries of "folk" transmission and variation. To cite a shift in the other direction, Jean Lorrah wrote a collection of Star Trek fanfic stories called the "Night of the Twin Moons" series—folkloric variation on a commercial popular culture product. However, her professional Star Trek novels THE VULCAN ACADEMY MURDERS and THE IDIC EPIDEMIC clearly belong to the same fictional universe as her fanfic, although with "the serial numbers filed off," as the saying goes. And the origin of the commercial bestseller FIFTY SHADES OF GREY as thinly veiled TWILIGHT fanfic is well known.

The richly diverse nuances of folk creations in the overall category of songs and stories can be endlessly fascinating.

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt