Manufacturing Tales: Sex and Money in Contemporary Legends (Publications of the American Folklore Society, New Series) - Softcover

Fine, Gary Alan

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0870497553 ISBN 13: 9780870497551

Publisher: University of Tennessee Press, 1992

Synopsis

Discusses the creation and diffusion of contemporary urban legends and explores their recurring themes of money, sex, and popular anxieties

About this title

From the Back Cover

The mouse in the Coke bottle, the promiscuous cheerleader, the exploding Pop Rocks candy, the Kentucky Fried Rat. If the ballad and the fairy tale were the archetypal folklore forms of an earlier age, such contemporary legends constitute the preferred narrative genre of the late twentieth century. In Manufacturing Tales, award-winning folklorist Gary Alan Fine presents a major new theory of the creation and diffusion of contemporary legends in modern society. While ballad and fairy tale arose in folk communities and spread through trade and migration, contemporary legends thrive in societies crosscut by varied communication channels and relatively open networks. By looking at the social-structural background, the performance context, the personality of the teller, and the content of the text, we gain insight into the formation, dissemination, and disappearance of these modern legends. Fine identifies sex and money as key themes in contemporary legends, reflecting the public's disguised attempts to deal with major contemporary preoccupations. From the AIDS crisis to fears of food contamination in restaurants, popular anxieties are reflected in folklore. As dramatic, moving, comic, and involving texts, contemporary legends build relationships among acquaintances and strangers; as depictions of the world that we face every day, they provide perspective on potential challenges; and as shared information, they elaborate a consensual understanding of reality.

About the Author

Gary Alan Fine is Professor of Sociology at Northwestern University. Among his books are "Kitchens: The Culture of Restaurant Work" (California, 1994), "Difficult Reputations" (2000), and "Manufacturing Tales: Sex and Money in Contemporary Legends" (1992). Patricia A. Turner is Vice-Provost of Undergraduate Studies and Professor of African American and African Studies at the University of California, Davis. She is the author of "I Heard It Through the Grapevine: Rumor in African American Culture" (California, 1993) and "Ceramic Uncles and Celluloid Mammies: Black Images and Their Influence on Culture "(1994).

Edition details

• Publisher: University of Tennessee Press
• Publication date: 1992
• ISBN 10: 0870497553
• ISBN 13: 9780870497551
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 224