Ghostly hitchhikers vanishing mysteriously, missing links
prowling the night, or aliens abducting people and their beloved
pets from their homes ““ whether fascinating us, scaring us,
or just making us laugh, urban legends continue to attract our
interest and attention.
Professor Patrick Polk is teaching an extension class dealing
with urban legends and popular culture at UCLA this quarter to help
deal with the meanings and functions of legends in our society.
“Urban legends speak to very central and key beliefs about
the nature of life in the world … particularly about social
relationships,” Polk said.
Many students in the class, such as University High School
student Rebecca Niakan, expressed their enthusiasm for the
course.
“I saw the movie and I like urban legends, I think
they’re cool and interesting,” Niakan said.
Lisa O’Leary, who is finishing her English degree at UCLA
after a hiatus in which she started a family, said she is glad she
finished her major requirements and can now take different types of
classes.
“You read about (urban legends) all the time, and you hear
about them. I want to know if there really are alligators in the
toilet,” O’Leary said.
Lawyer and author Susan Goldstein has a professional interest in
learning about contemporary legends.
“I think the topic is fascinating; I’m interested in
the research for a character I’m contemplating writing, and
I’ve always loved scary urban legends,” Goldstein
said.
College campuses are a prolific breeding ground for contemporary
legends, due in part to the socialization that accompanies
them.
UCLA has its own story about a female student who was killed
during Midnight Yell. Legend has it that no one came to her aid
because her voice was drowned out in the loud background noise.
Like many folk tales, this story serves the function of
dissuading a behavior that potentially harms members of the
community, Polk said.
He added that Southern California is a creative hotbed for urban
legends because of its ethnic diversity. Legends rely on a
community with shared experiences to make sense, and often serve to
protect that community from outsiders.
“(Urban legends) are told as true, things that if they
aren’t real they could be real or they should be real …
there is a belief that somewhere, sometime things could be as they
are in the story,” Polk said.
There are many examples of urban legends that attempt to protect
their members from other groups.
One legend tells of a man who ordered a carpet from the Middle
East and was bitten by a poisonous snake curled within and shipped
with the carpet.
The legend about government doctors who target African Americans
for organ harvesting shows that urban legends sometimes have valid
historical and factual basis.
The Tuskegee Syphilis Study was a government experiment from
1932 to 1972 to learn how syphilis spreads and kills. About 400
black sharecroppers with the disease were falsely told they had
been cured so the government could study its long-term effects.
Because of the immediacy and abundance of contemporary legends
in people’s daily lives, Polk’s class includes a
research project involving observations collected from the
world.
Polk said legends and rumors often appear as fact on television,
in newspapers, and on the Internet. Last Christmas, a rumor spread
that five Middle Eastern men had infiltrated the United States,
which was quickly disproved by the FBI.
“People want to have answers and a sense of control over
the world. True or not, urban legends often provide a relief and a
way of dealing with these concerns … lacking certainty, people go
to expectations, popular beliefs and urban legends,” Polk
said.