Film, Folklore, and Urban Legends

Film, Folklore, and Urban Legends PDF Author: Mikel J. Koven
Publisher: Scarecrow Press
ISBN: 9780810860254
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 220

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Book Description
From Alien to When a Stranger Calls, many films are based on folklore or employ an urban legend element to propel the narrative. Films, Folklore and Urban Legends explores the convergence of folklore with popular cinema studies and focuses on the study of urban legends and how these narratives are used as inspiration for a number of films. Beginning with a general survey of the existing literature on folklore/film, this book addresses discourses of belief, how urban legends provide the organizing principle of some films, and how certain films "act out" or perform a legend.

Film, Folklore, and Urban Legends

Film, Folklore, and Urban Legends PDF Author: Mikel J. Koven
Publisher: Scarecrow Press
ISBN: 9780810860254
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 220

Get Book Here

Book Description
From Alien to When a Stranger Calls, many films are based on folklore or employ an urban legend element to propel the narrative. Films, Folklore and Urban Legends explores the convergence of folklore with popular cinema studies and focuses on the study of urban legends and how these narratives are used as inspiration for a number of films. Beginning with a general survey of the existing literature on folklore/film, this book addresses discourses of belief, how urban legends provide the organizing principle of some films, and how certain films "act out" or perform a legend.

Film, Folklore, and Urban Legends

Film, Folklore, and Urban Legends PDF Author: Mikel J. Koven
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 220

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Book Description
From Alien to When a Stranger Calls, many films are based on folklore or employ an urban legend element to propel the narrative. But once those traditional aspects have been identified, do they warrant further scrutiny? Indeed, why is the study of folklore in popular film important? In Films, Folklore and Urban Legends, Mikel J. Koven addresses this issue by exploring the convergence of folklore with popular cinema studies. Well beyond the identification of traditional motifs in popular cinema, Koven reveals new paradigms of filmic analysis, which open up when one looks at movies through the lens of folklore. In particular, this book focuses on the study of urban legends and how these narratives are used as inspiration for a number of films. Divided into five sections, the book begins with a general survey of the existing literature on folklore/film, predominantly from the perspective of folklore studies. Subsequent chapters address discourses of belief, how urban legends provide the organizing principle of some films, and how certain films "act out" or perform a legend. Movies discussed in this book include Alligator, Candyman, The Curve, Dead Man on Campus, I Know What You Did Last Summer, Urban Legend, Weekend at Bernie's, and The Wicker Man, as well as zombie films, killer bee movies, and slasher films (including Halloween, Black Christmas, The Burning and Terror Train). Koven also devotes attention to key television shows such as The X-Files and Most Haunted. In his analysis, Koven explains not only how film and television narratives are built upon already-existing popular culture beliefs, but also how films and television shows recycle those beliefs back into popular culture. Taken as a whole, Film, Folklore and Urban Legends both stands on its own as the first book-length study of folklore and popular cinema, and as an introductory textbook for the study of folklore and film.

Encyclopedia of Urban Legends

Encyclopedia of Urban Legends PDF Author: Jan Harold Brunvand
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 9780393323580
Category : Reference
Languages : en
Pages : 566

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Book Description
Presents descriptions of hundreds of urban legends and their variations, themes, and scholarly approaches to the genre, including such tales as disappearing hitchhikers and hypodermic needles left in the coin slots of pay telephones.

Urban Legends

Urban Legends PDF Author: Peter L'Official
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674238079
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 321

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Book Description
A cultural history of the South Bronx that reaches beyond familiar narratives of urban ruin and renaissance, beyond the “inner city” symbol, to reveal the place and people obscured by its myths. For decades, the South Bronx was America’s “inner city.” Synonymous with civic neglect, crime, and metropolitan decay, the Bronx became the preeminent symbol used to proclaim the failings of urban places and the communities of color who lived in them. Images of its ruins—none more infamous than the one broadcast live during the 1977 World Series: a building burning near Yankee Stadium—proclaimed the failures of urbanism. Yet this same South Bronx produced hip hop, arguably the most powerful artistic and cultural innovation of the past fifty years. Two narratives—urban crisis and cultural renaissance—have dominated understandings of the Bronx and other urban environments. Today, as gentrification transforms American cities economically and demographically, the twin narratives structure our thinking about urban life. A Bronx native, Peter L’Official draws on literature and the visual arts to recapture the history, people, and place beyond its myths and legends. Both fact and symbol, the Bronx was not a decades-long funeral pyre, nor was hip hop its lone cultural contribution. L’Official juxtaposes the artist Gordon Matta-Clark’s carvings of abandoned buildings with the city’s trompe l’oeil decals program; examines the centrality of the Bronx’s infamous Charlotte Street to two Hollywood films; offers original readings of novels by Don DeLillo and Tom Wolfe; and charts the emergence of a “global Bronx” as graffiti was brought into galleries and exhibited internationally, promoting a symbolic Bronx abroad. Urban Legends presents a new cultural history of what it meant to live, work, and create in the Bronx.

The Vanishing Hitchhiker: American Urban Legends and Their Meanings

The Vanishing Hitchhiker: American Urban Legends and Their Meanings PDF Author: Jan Harold Brunvand
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393346536
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 225

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Book Description
The groundbreaking book that launched America's urban legend obsession! Folklore scholar Jan Harold Brunvand assembles the best-known urban legends—including "The Hook," "The Spider in the Hairdo," and "The Baby-Sitter and the Man Upstairs"—and provides an enlightening and entertaining analysis of their variants and evolution. The Vanishing Hitchhiker was Professor Brunvand's first popular book on urban legends, and it remains a classic. The culmination of twenty years of collection and research, this book is a must-have for urban legend lovers.

Urban Legends

Urban Legends PDF Author: Ngaire E. Genge
Publisher: Crown
ISBN: 0307560937
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 354

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Book Description
Urban Legends is a remarkably complete collection of the modern myths that make the rounds in offices, college dorms, and every other place where people tell the stories that spring from our deepest fears and fascinations. Every culture has its folktales including ours. Except, instead of involving gods and goddesses or princes and princesses, ours involve "some guy my sister's best friend knows" or "someone who woke up in a motel room." They happened, supposedly, to real people, usually recently, in a particular place. And they touch the most sensitive nerves of our psyches with ironic twists, gross-out shocks, and moral lessons learned the hard way. From the classic tale "The Mexican Pet" in which the "dog" turns out to be no Chihuahua to the more unappetizing story of condoms as fast-food burger garnish, from surgically skilled kidney thieves to sexual experiments that end in the emergency room, Urban Legends relates more 300 of the most enticing, macabre, and unforgettable tales. Expertly told, they are arranged in such chapters as "Crazy Little Thang Called Sex," "Oh, Scare Me," "Campus Capers," "Corporate Convolutions," and "So Much For Comfort Food." Fascinating, chilling, and occasionally repulsive, Urban Legends has all your favorites and hundreds more.

Be Afraid Be Very Afraid

Be Afraid Be Very Afraid PDF Author: Harold Jan Brunvand
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 9780393326130
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 262

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Book Description
A collection of over ninety frightening urban legends, arranged by theme.

The Cultural Gutter

The Cultural Gutter PDF Author: Carol Borden
Publisher: Lulu.com
ISBN: 0557958393
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 218

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Book Description
Science fiction, fantasy, comics, romance, genre movies, games all drain into the Cultural Gutter, a website dedicated to thoughtful articles about disreputable art-media and genres that are a little embarrassing. Irredeemable. Worthy of Note, but rolling like errant pennies back into the gutter. The Cultural Gutter is dangerous because we have a philosophy. We try to balance enthusiasm with clear-eyed, honest engagement with the material and with our readers. This book expands on our mission with 10 articles each from science fiction/fantasy editor James Schellenberg, comics editor and publisher Carol Borden, romance editor Chris Szego, screen editor Ian Driscoll and founding editor and former games editor Jim Munroe.

Blaxploitation Films

Blaxploitation Films PDF Author: Mikel J. Koven
Publisher: Oldacastle Books
ISBN: 1842434101
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 176

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Book Description
Fully updated to include Baadassss and The Hebrew Hammer and to cover the deaths of Isaac Hayes and Rudy Rae Moore In the early 1970s a type of film emerged that featured all-black casts; really cool soul, R 'n' B, and disco soundtracks; characters sporting big guns, big dashikis, and even bigger 'fros; and had some of the meanest, baddest attitudes to shoot their way across the screen. An antidote to the sanitized "safe" images of blackness that Sidney Poitier and Bill Cosby presented to America, these films depicted a reality about the world which African-American audiences could identify with, even if the stories themselves were pure fantasy. This guide reviews and discusses more than 60 Blaxploitation films, considering them from the perspectives of class and racial rebellion, genre, and Stickin' it to the Man. Subgenres covered include Blaxploitation horror films, kung-fu movies, westerns, and parodies.

Holy Terrors

Holy Terrors PDF Author: Arthur Machen
Publisher: Read Books Ltd
ISBN: 1528785258
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 131

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Book Description
This vintage book contains a collection of chilling and macabre stories by Welsh author and mystic Arthur Machan. The stories include: “The Brightest Boy”, “The Tree of Life”, “Opening the Door”, “The Marriage of Panurge”, “The Holy Things”, “Psychology”, “The Turanians”, “The Rose Garden”, “The Ceremony”, “The Soldiers' Rest”, “The Happy Children”, “The Cosy Room”, “Munitions of War”, “The Great Return”, and more. These unsettling supernatural tales are not to be missed by lovers of horror or mystery fiction, and they would make for worthy additions to allied collections. Arthur Machen (1863 – 1947) was a Welsh author and renowned mystic during the 1890s and early 20th century who garnered literary acclaim for his contributions to the supernatural, horror, and fantasy fiction genres. His seminal novella “The Great God Pan” (1890) has become a classic of horror fiction, with Stephen King describing it as one of the best horror stories ever written in the English language. Other notable fans of his gruesome tales include William Butler Yeats and Arthur Conan Doyle; and his work has been compared to that of Robert Louis Stevenson, Bram Stoker, and Oscar Wilde. Many vintage books such as this are increasingly scarce and expensive. It is with this in mind that we are republishing this volume now in an affordable, modern, high-quality edition complete with a specially-commissioned new biography of the author.