Film, Folklore, and Urban Legends. Review

Film, Folklore and Urban Legends consists of slightly reworked essays previously published by Mikel Koven between 1995 and 2007, collected with the hope, he says, of drawing “a line underneath these preliminary explorations,” and so that “future scholarship will develop” the ideas contained in the collection. The book is divided into five sections: part one is a partial survey of scholarship concerning film and folklore, part two consists of three methodological studies (of The Wicker Man and Frazer’s Golden Bough, and of the use or misuse of tale-type and motif indices in understanding some horror films and some film comedies), part three is concerned with exploring the feedback-loop of certain legendary beliefs created by their depiction on television and in the movies, part four discusses various aspects of urban legends and their depiction, and part five presents an essay on “ostension,” the enactment of legend in film and on “reality” television.

As a whole, this group of essays provides a useful entry point to many important theories, practices and arguments about folklore and visual narrative, not least because it is in the form of essays aimed at specific questions rather than aiming to serve directly as a primer. The citations and bibliography alone are a valuable resource for anyone wishing to take up the subject. The down side of any such published collection, though, is that while ideas and methods may recur, there is no consistent argument sustained throughout. Everything has the defects of its virtues. Some consistent themes, do, however, hold many of these essays together conceptually: first, the position that mere “motif-spotting” is a pretty sterile enterprise; second, the question of the extent to which popular films participate in the production and dissemination of folklore; and third, an examination of the usefulness, or lack thereof, of applying the methods of folklore to the study of film.

Chapter one is a quick review of many different ways of applying folklore to films and a justification of studying film from a folkloric perspective on the grounds that film is the dominant modern mode of dissemination and propagation of narrative. Chapter two takes on the much-discussed (and much reviled) film, The Wicker Man (1973, directed by Robin Hardy) pointing out the irony that, while entirely reworking its sources, the film itself became a source for modern neo-pagan ritual. Koven here also raises the issue of ostension, which becomes the major subject of his penultimate essay in this volume.

Read the rest of this entry »