Presented article analyzes oral narratives usually defined as contemporary (urban) legends with emphasis on their main characteristics as a folklore genre. The article focuses on definition, terminology and presentation of history of international and Czech research of contemporary legends along with examples of local contemporary narratives. Czech contemporary legends can be characterized as showing clear parallels with East European as well as global folklore repertoire. The most popular Czech cautionary legend was legendary 'Black Ambulance', narrative about mysterious black ambulance kidnapping children, current mainly in 1988 and 1989. Widespread is corpus of comical narratives ('Hilarious Accidents'), in Czech oral transmission popular at least from the 1960s. Narratives showing clear parallels with traditional Czech folklore are relatively lacking in the contemporary Czech repertoire - single exception being cycle of legends about undead Nazi soldier Hagen, popular in tramping movement since the 1980s. Czech contemporary xenophobic narratives deals mainly with Romani (Gypsy) people, 'Chinese Restaurant Legends' from global repertoire and anti-Turkish legends from repertoire of German-speaking countries. Newer narratives current from the end of the 1990s show more parallels with international contemporary legends.
An expressive cultural practice of invoking a ghostly female figure, most often called Bloody Mary, an important part of the folklore of children and adolescents in the West, represents a unique amalgamation of ritual practices, folk beliefs, and demonological narratives. This phenomenon, extensively studied by Western folklorists since the 1970s, is closely connected to a wider discourse of children and youth ghostlore, and interpreted as a girls’ ritual reflecting prepubescent menstrual anxiety, reflexion of process of ontological psychological development devoted to mastering emotion of fear of schoolchildren, or, in later adolescence, a reflexion of archetypal self-development processes in a Jungian sense. The paper, using data documented during longitudinal field research of Czech contemporary folklore, presents the growing popularity of this expressive practice in a Czech setting in the last fifteen years, starting with the late 1990s. Comparing the Czech situation with similar cultural processes analysed in Sweden, Spain, and especially Russia, the paper describes the diffusion of this practice by global popular culture and its glocalization to suit peculiar Czech youth ghostlore inspired by historical personages. Reflecting global, ever-shifting contemporary culture flows, especially changes in local realities of “ethnoscapes”, “mediascapes” and “ideoscapes” during the 1990s, the practice of invoking Krvavá Mary seem to be both parallel and the transformation of local practices such as school- children’s spiritism and horror stories of the 1970s and 1980s.
This theoretical-methodological text is focused on contemporary legends and rumours narrated in the context of the interactive process of social communication. The aim of the study is to draw to the possible approach to research these narratives. The text presents a perspective that understands the contemporary legends and rumours as a text narrated in context, while context is seen as a crucial factor influencing the content, form and transmission of these narratives. The basis and inspiration is a framework for contemporary legends and rumours research – "The Folklore Diamond", proposed by G. A. Fine. The study seeks to demonstrate the perspective of the Fine´s model of interconnection among several elements of contemporary legends and rumours. Then it tries to outline view of the use and limitations of the framework in field research in a particular environment.
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