Monthly Archives: May 2016

Stubborn as a mule

Nationality: Mexican
Age: 18
Primary Language: English

The informant, J, is 18 years old born and raised in Coachella, California. His mom is from Delano, California, while his dad is from Indio, California. He is majoring in Print and Digital Journalism with a Media, Economics, and Entrepreneurship minor. He also considers himself Mexican.

J-“In the Mexican folklore there is a saying, ‘mas terco que una mula’. It means more stubborn than a mule in English”

What does the saying mean to you?

J-“It literally means what it translates to. It means that someone is being very stubborn or hard-headed and doesn’t want to change how they are thinking”

When would you use this?

J-“You would tell someone they are more stubborn than a mule, again if they are being really stubborn and don’t want to listen to reason. If they keep insisting about something and they want to be right all the time. I always yell this at my brother since he’s always thinking that he is always right”

Analysis- It can be seen that the proverb originated in a specific area of Mexico at a specific time. Mules were used to help with farming and pulling the ploughs. They are also known to be very stubborn and do not like to listen or do what the owner wants them to. Farming is also more common in northern Mexico. Therefore, the proverb must have originated somewhere in northern Mexico during the farming period before the industrialism changed agriculture and machines, instead of mules or donkeys, were used to turn the fields and harvest the crops.

La Llorona

Nationality: Mexican
Age: 18
Primary Language: English

The informant, J, is 18 years old born and raised in Coachella, California. His mom is from Delano, California, while his dad is from Indio, California. He is majoring in Print and Digital Journalism with a Media, Economics, and Entrepreneurship minor. He also considers himself Mexican.

J-“So the folklore story that we used to hear was La Llorona and that was a big thing in Mexican culture. La llorona is this ghost of a woman and she lost her children while looking by the river they drowned and you can hear her crying and crying. Parents would tell their kids this stuff this story whenever they would do something that seemed pretty dangerous or they’re like behaving badly. So like I remember going to the park and doing something I wasn’t supposed to be doing and like my parents telling me ‘oh you’re going to end up like la llorona’s kids like they drowned in the river because they were doing something they weren’t supposed to be doing.’ Just like when you were behaving bad they’re like ‘I want la llorona to come after you’ and stuff like that. I remember my aunts and uncles would tell me this stuff before going to bed, ‘I would hear her crying at night’, just trying to freak me out. Now as an older person is funny but then it wasn’t funny because you take that stuff pretty seriously when you’re that young”

Do you remember what age you were when you heard this?

J-“I think I was like 7 or 8. Oviously you’re not going to tell a 6 year old that because like they’re still naïve. But like when you’re 7 or 8 you have a better concept of the world around you. That’s when you can start telling kids stuff like this”

Do you still hear the story?

J-“Uh, like everyone that surrounds me is like pretty much grown up so they think its like a running joke like ‘remember when tio (uncle) would talk about la llorona?’ There’s like no little kids in our family”

Do you think there is a specific reason why they told you that story instead of another?

J-“Well I’m Mexican. The area that I grew up in California is mainly Mexican citizens and so that’s something very popular at least in Mexico folklore. So yea that’s probably the reason why. That’s what they grew up with in Mexico”

Are there any forested areas or bodies of water nearby where you lived?

J-“By my house there was this park that also serves as a rain ditch so whenever it rains that park takes all of the water so that way it doesn’t go into the streets. That place is full of grass 8 of 10 times of the year and then like the other 2 is filled with water. So that was usually a point of interest with la llorona because like she’s crying by the river so this would be considered the river by the house”

Analysis- In this version of la llorona, the children died accidentally while playing near the river. Traditionally, la llorona was the one that drowned her children. This could have changed so that it would not be so harsh and scary to the children who it was being told to. The body of water also changed to fit even the rain ditch. This shows how the folklore changes according to its context and who its being to. Since there are no more children to tell the story to, the legend is beginning to die away. It is now only a memory from time to time. If there are no children added to the family, the story may be completely forgotten. It is evidence that while the story is known by everyone, it is predominately used as a legend for children, and it is otherwise not really spoken about.

A Mexican Christmas

Nationality: Mexican-American
Age: 19
Primary Language: English

The informant, K, is 19 years old. She was born in Long Beach, California but was raised in Los Angeles. Her dad is from Guadalajara, Mexico (Southern Mexico) but moved to the United States when he was 2. Her mom was born in Obregon, Sonora (Northern Mexico) but grew in Mexicali (a US-Mexico border town), and she moved to the United States when she was 18. She is majoring in Applied Mathematics with a Computer Science Minor. She considers herself Mexican-American (or Chicana).

K- “For Christmas every year my family makes tamales and posole. My mom’s side makes tamales and my dad’s side usually makes posole. We celebrate it Christmas Eve and Christmas day. Depending on the family since we interchange every year. One day we have posole and the other we have tamales. When it comes to opening the gifts, we always wait until 12 midnight. We basically start on Christmas Eve and end at midnight. If we have little kids, we let them open their presents up at 10. And that’s it, only the little kids. Everybody else has to wait until 12.”

What is a tamale and posole?

K-“Ok a tamale is like maza (corn dough) with meat inside, or it can be cheese and chile, or sweet with pineapple or strawberry. Posole is like a soup with grano (white hominy) and we make ours red because there is usually red, white, and green. We always do ours red. You can put cabbage and onions and chile if you want, lemon, or radish.

How long, that you are aware of, has this tradition been going?

K-“Since I was born. Before I was born. “

Analysis- This Christmas tradition gives some background into the way the informant’s culture functions. They are a culture centered around family that likes to maintain its traditions. They like to include everyone by switching families every year. Even though the family is no longer in Mexico, they continue to have the traditions that they grew up, which will be later adopted by their children. They also belong to a culture that likes to celebrate and enjoy every moment together. It is very good that everyone is part of the tradition, even the small children.

The Lollypop Guild

Nationality: American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Culver City, California
Performance Date: 4/26/16
Primary Language: English

Folklore Piece

“So I’m from Culver City, and it’s kind of “The Heart of Screen Land” is what it’s called. So a lot of the movies, productions that were made in the earlier 1900s that were said to be made in Hollywood were actually made in culver city. And since we didn’t have a lot of entertainment life around us, we had a lot of entertainment related happenings. So we have this hotel, called the Culver Hotel, and it’s said to be haunted, of course, cause why wouldn’t it be. But also, there’s this story about the munchkins from The Lollipop Guild, from, uh, The Wizard of Oz. So The Wizard of Oz was filmed in Culver City, and so to house all of the people, the stuck them all in the Culver Hotel. The Hotel is really small, so I don’t even know, how they even, I don’t know. That’s like a clown car, like, hotel I guess. But the munchkins were said to be, like, really, really, rambunctious, and just like crazy Lollipop Guild kids. But they were adults! And so they were on the top floor, or something like that, and they got raging drunk, and destroyed the room, threw stuff out of windows, jumped off of stuff, and it was just crazy. And like, I don’t know if it’s true or not.

 

Background information

“Well, the hotel is in Culver City, like downtown Culver City, so I spent a lot of my childhood there. Movie theaters there, and a lot of eateries there and stuff. So any time I walked past it, not like anytime, but like when I asked ‘Oh what is that?’ because I never really knew what it was, it was just kind of a nondescript building in the middle of downtown, they would say “Oh, that’s the Culver Hotel, did you hear about the time when The Lollipop Guild just wrecked it.” I think I just accepted the story because it’s a funny story, if the story was like ‘The Lollipop Guild was just awesome, they were just pristine visitors’…”

Context

“I think this is one of the first times that I’ve actually told this story. I’m not, like, that culturally diverse or anything and there aren’t many things from my hometown so I’ve never really had to think about it. But yeah, I mean, I guess that’s one of them.”

Analysis

This legend about The Lollipop Guild is hilarious. In the movie, sure, they can seem creepy and adult-like to a viewer, but they’re dressed up in little kid outfits doing a jig and singing along with the rest of the crazy characters. It’s clear even in the movie that these are full grown men, both by their voices and their faces, but they’re also clearly not dressed in the manliest attire.

Oftentimes, legends and humorous stories are so funny because they subvert the preconceived notion of what that person or figure should be acting like. In this circumstance, it is that we wouldn’t expect The Lollipop Guild to get blackout drunk and destroy a hotel room. If a group of college students, or a rock band, were to do it, then who cares? But The Lollipop Guild? Now that’s good.

Also interesting is the type of folklore that this participant shared. I asked her if there were any traditions, or cultural artifacts, or jokes, or anything that she could tell me. “I mean, we’re funny people. But we don’t believe in pre-written jokes.” She’d also say “I mean, I’m American, I don’t have anything like that.” She almost seemed to begrudgingly give this story, because she said she felt she “lacked a cultural identity or ethnicity.” In this sense, folklore can be exclusionary of some people entirely; not in that they don’t have folklore to share, but that they don’t have any that they identify with or take pride in.

The Stump Murderer

Nationality: USA
Age: 22
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: 4/23/16
Primary Language: English

Folklore Piece

“So this is just an old ghost story from camp, in northern Wisconsin. But this guy who was an old janitor at the camp went out to the woods to start chopping trees to make room for this new court they wanted to build. So he started chopping down trees with an axe and he cut off his leg. So he only had one leg after that, and um, so he uh, filled that with a stump that he had found and used that as his leg. This scared the campers so much that the camp fired him and sent him away. But what ended up happening that next summer, a boy was taking a shower on his own at the shower house at night. And then he would hear footsteps and a log kind of dragging. The story is that each year he comes back once and takes one kid and buries them in the back.”

Background

“Yeah I like the story, It’s pretty morbid actually. I mean, like, here we have these pretty young campers, talking about someone chopping his leg off and stealing children, and yet, like, it’s totally OK, because it’s summer camp. How crazy is that, when you think about it, really? Like, ok, if I went up to some kid at a school, and I told the same story about a janitor working in the woodshop, like, I’d probably be arrested! It’s just funny to me. But, uh, yeah, I love telling this story”

Context:

“We’d usually do the whole campfire thing. You know, uh like we would get all the campers around at night and go around telling stories. We would tell this story one of, like, the first nights. It’s actually a pretty clever way to get them to, like, stick together”

 

Analysis: Upon first listen, I didn’t think much of this story. It seemed like a hodgepodge of a number of different classic folk-tales: the peg-legged pirate, the axe murderer, the former camper turned raging homicidal maniac, etc. However, I think there is something deeper to be found here. At the centerpiece of the story is this rivalry between the janitor and the camp. The camp’s work is what made him lose his leg, and yet the camp are the ones who banished him. Then, when he comes back, he takes retribution upon the camp in the form of taking kids that are alone. This serves two functions. First, it teaches the kids to respect the camp and its dangers, but more importantly, and implicitly, to never wander off alone. The informant mentioned later, once I prompted him with this question, that it is why they tell this story, for fun but also so that they don’t go wandering out at night alone.

As someone who did not grow up going to sleepaway camp, it was also intriguing to me that these nights of sharing scary stories around a campfire during summer camp actually happen. It sounds like a modern ritual to me if I’d ever heard one. The ambiance of the night time, the fire, and the stillness of the forest all provide the perfectly eerie ambiance for a scary ghost story, and now because of its association, one cannot come without the other.