Monthly Archives: April 2012

Conspiracy Chant – “Because it Burned, we will Learn”

Nationality: unknown
Age: unknown
Occupation: unknown
Residence: unknown
Performance Date: unknown
Primary Language: English

On a typical morning walking to campus, I came across a large group of around 50 people at the intersection of Jefferson and Hoover. Some were holding signs with “9/11 – MURDER” written across the fronts in bright red letters. Others were simply passing out pamphlets to the students crossing the street. One man had a megaphone pressed to his lips, and was shouting the same phrase again and again “Because it burned, we will learn”. This saying caught my attention; I had heard it before. While visiting my Dad in Aspen last Christmas, a group of 9/11 conspiracy protestors were demonstrating not much unlike the group that I came across on my way to class. There was also a man on a megaphone, shouting again and again, “Why they burned, you will learn!” Normally I would not have remembered this detail, but I am particularly interested in these types of conspiracies, and spent an hour talking to the demonstrators in Aspen. After hearing that same phrase again and again for that long, it’s hard to forget.

Although I was not able to get a release form for this piece of my collection, I really wanted to include it. This piece of folklore does more than simply illustrate how chants can mutate across geographical regions. It serves the purpose of uniting and mobilizing an entire movement of people.

Venice Beach – Trayvon Martin Spoken Word Performance

Nationality: American
Age: 29
Occupation: Unsure
Residence: Venice Beach
Performance Date: 3/25/12
Primary Language: English

To supplement the pieces of Folklore that I have taken from my personal experiences and environment, I decided to head to Venice beach to pick up some performances from complete strangers. As you may know, Venice is home to hundreds of street performers, many of which have never taken a class to hone their specific skills.  I had a lot to choose from for this collection, so I decided to approach the performers whose performances would be most effectively transferred from reality to paper.

While dancers were everywhere, my phone camera did not have the capacity to effectively record their movements (upgrading to an iphone as soon as finances allow). I was, however, able to stand near a crowd of “spoken word” artists. There was a collection of 5-8 of them, standing on the pier with a crowd of nearly 30.

As I approached, I noticed that some of the performers were holding posters featuring the face of a teenage African American boy. The posters read “Justice for Trayvon”. After asking a few of the crowd members what was this gathering was all about, I learned that an African American 17 year old was shot and killed as part of an alleged hate crime.

I turned my attention to the spoken word performers on the pier. One of the most passionate speakers really grabbed my attention. He spoke from the heart about the evil nature of this and similar acts, and how there is simply not enough media coverage on these topics. I wrote down a brief portion of the passage he said, as pure, orally performed, folklore. I tried to get everything he said, but he was slurring a lot of his words and speaking with poor grammar. He might have been drunk, though what I have below should capture the jist of it.

 

We’re the people of this plain city.

We live we fight we sing so free.

How do we all sit by so comfortably

When boys die for a man’s hate?

What makes a good society?

Not us. Not this. This is dead.

Our connection is dead.

Our sensation of God’s love is dead.

Our community is dead.

The only way to bring it back

Is to see this boy be dead.

 

After he finished and another man began to speak, I walked up to him and told him about my assignment. He glady signed the release form, and asked that I title this post after Trayvon Martin in order to raise awareness for racially-backed murders.

This is without a doubt the most powerful piece of folklore that I collected for this assignment. To this point in my collecting process, I had not seen folklore truly move people at a deep emotional level. Oral spontaneous performances such as this one possess the unique quality of being completely from the heart of the performer.

Bullying Technique – Indian Rug Burn

Nationality: American
Age: 21
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: 4/15/12
Primary Language: English

While discussing childhood bullies with a group of my friends, a unique method of torture was brought up. As a child growing up, my friend experienced several types of physical bullying. Perhaps the most miserable of all, he told us was known as the “Indian Rug Burn”.

In case the reader is not familiar with this term, an Indian Rug Burn is inflicted as follows:

A bully grabs an unsuspecting shrimpy nerd by the arm, despite his desperate attempts to escape.

Said bully places both of his hands adjacent to one another on said nerd’s forearm.

When said bully has finished milking the pre-pain period, he tightens his grip, and twists each hand in opposite directions.

This causes immediate and terrible pain for said nerd.

While simple, Indian Rug Burns are effective in inflicting a large amount of pain on the victim in a very short period of time. From a folkloric perspective, it is interesting to consider two things:

  1. Why is this bullying technique called an “Indian Rug Burn”?
  2.  What makes this such a compelling method of torture?

To address these questions one at I time, I began by asking my friend from whom I originally collected the information. He replied that he was not sure where he first heard the term “Indian Rug Burn”, or when it was first done to him. He simply “Just knew what it was”. In response to the second question, he said that, as a former highly-bullied individual, the main reason for the popularity of Indian Rug Burns is that there is no accountability to the bully. It leaves no lasting marks on the victim, yet causes a great amount of pain. In addition, my friend said that it was a very common method of bullying, and therefore was difficult to trace back to a single source.

My personal take on the first question is perhaps a stretch, but possible nonetheless. We must consider the physical state of one’s forearm post-Indian Rug Burn. It is usually pretty red. Although 10 year-olds may not have known it, perhaps their actions reflected subjects (racism) that far exceeded their ages.  As we discussed in class, this is also found with the game of Bloody Mary and little girls. They do not yet have knowledge of their menstrual cycle, yet play a game that is directly tied to it.

The Bunny Man Myth

Nationality: Irish
Age: 30
Occupation: Exec. Assistant of the Dean of USC School of Architecture
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: 25 April 2012
Primary Language: English

“Halloween Night comes around. Nothing happens until midnight. Right before midnight supposedly a bunny or two enters the bridge. Right before midnight his soul (a dim light) walks the tracks above the bridge. When Midnight hits, his soul stops right above the bridge (dead center), and disappears, only to reappear inside the bridge. From then on it’s his soul which lights up the whole area, so brightly that you can’t even see him. That’s when he instantly kills you by slitting your throat and slashing your chest, only to hang you at the edge of the bridge. You can even see the rub marks that have worn away at the rock where the body’s were swinging. Who ever is inside the bridge ends up dead.” -Forbes

This informant grew up in Washington D.C., she would always hear about the urban legend of The Bunny Man Bridge in Virginia, which she claims was also the inspiration for the bunny in Donnie Darko. There is a very old tunnel with an overpass in Virginia. She says that in the early 19th century, an accident occured over the tunnel and it was transporting all these convicts, violent types. Some of the passengers escaped and the police were eventually able to find all of them except for one men. When they were searching for these men, they kept finding half eaten rabbits. So, they named him The Bunny Man and now that tunnel is called The Bunny Man Bridge. Also, my informant said that she heard from her friends if you go to the bridge and you walk halfway through and then turn around you will see The Bunnyman standing there. She had never tried it, but many of her friends had.

The legend of the Bunny Man is actually a very prominent legend in Virginia. The tale goes back to 1903 in Clifton, Virginia where there used to be an asylum, which was later relocated and is now called “Lorton Prison”. In Fall of 1904, many convicts were put on a bus and to get sent to the prison, but an accident happened and many of them fled to try to escape into the woods. They actually had trouble finding two of the convicts, Marcus and Douglas. However, they never found, Marcus, whom they later named The Bunny Man. Then, that October, people started seeing dead bunny’s along the roads again. On midnight Halloween night, a few kids that had gone to the bridge saw a bright light in the tunnel and then were murdered by the same kind of tool that they found in Marcus’ hand almost a year before. “Not only were their throats slashed, but all up and down their chests were long slashes gutting them” and then both guys were hung from the bridge and then the woman on the other side. This then happened for many years in the same way.

So, for this piece of folklore there was a legend component as well as a myth. My informant told me that many teens today still go and try to see the Bunny Man, but the murders only occurred around midnight on Halloween night. Some of the variations on the legend also involve the murderer wearing a bunny suit. Although this story seems farfetched, many of the articles regarding it swear on its truth. I think that these kinds of myths represent the country’s fascination with ghost stories and mysterious unknown. Also, by creating haunting figures and urban legends like the Bunny Man, it could be an attempt to stop teenagers from going to the bridge at night or partying on Halloween Night. In my research about this story, there was actually one girl who stayed away from the bridge at midnight while her other friends stayed to see if the Bunny Man legend was actually real. Supposedly, at midnight, she heard the screams of her friends and by the time she got to the bridge, all her friends were hung. In fact, she was later accused of their murders and ended up being put in an insane asylum for shock. Like other sinister figures, such as Bloody Mary, it seems like each folklore has a myth component as well as a legend behind it and they get more complex in variation as the stories get spread around.

Annotation/Additional Comments: This legend and myth can be found at this source: http://www.castleofspirits.com/clifton.html and http://www.fairfaxcounty.gov/library/branches/vr/bunny/

Supposedly, the Bunny Man had been reported in a few other towns in 1973 and the Fox Family Channel series “Scariest Places on Earth” did a segment called “Terror on Bunnyman Bridge’ in 2001.

 

Right of Passage – Rail Tradition

Nationality: American
Age: 22
Occupation: Student
Residence: New Hampshire
Performance Date: Collection: 4/12/12
Primary Language: English

When I was in my early teenage years, I attended Camp Deerwood. This camp taught me a lot of life lessons. Being away from home for 7 weeks as a 12 year-old is never easy, but in retrospect it was completely worth it. One of my most valuable takeaways from my four summers there is the importance of recognizing seniority. At this camp, there were many traditions that imprinted this idea in my brain, but one stands out from the rest. Every Sunday night, one of the older counselors was given the opportunity to speak to the entire camp. When we were all packed together, this number was upwards of 100 individuals. We would sit on the back porch of the administration building, looking out over the lake. The speaker would face us, and impart his valuable experiences.

Whie this all sounds great now, at the time I could not BEAR to sit on the hard wooden floor without any support for my back for hours on end. It made the entire experience miserable. It was not until I was a “senior camper”, meaning I had attended the camp for 3 or more years, that I was granted the privilege of sitting on the railing that surrounds the porch. This railing had a comfortable back to it, and gave is occupants an elevated vantage point for the speech. Naturally, these spots were highly desired, but only an option for the “senior” campers. If a younger camper attempted to sit on the railings, the counselors would give the senior campers full license to push him off. This tradition, like many rights of passage, was never recorded or officially declared. Instead, its transfer was entirely achieved through the oral communication and imitation of the camp’s members. This speaks to the power of seniority in not only a “Lord of the Flies” scenario. There is something to be said about the power of precedent, and its ability to infiltrate the actions of even the most stubborn of people.