Category Archives: Stereotypes/Blason Populaire

Don’t Wear White After Labor Day.

Nationality: American
Age: 22
Occupation: Student/Gemini
Residence: Los Angeles, California
Performance Date: 4/10/18.
Primary Language: English
Language: Spanish.

Bella Estrada, a senior studying History at the University of Southern California, who hails from Los Angeles, California, provided four pieces of folklore for this collection.

The interview was run, amidst dinner and drinks, at the University of Southern California located Greenleaf, a popular post-class bar for many students at the prestigious institution.

Folk Performance: Don’t Wear White After Labor Day.

Folk Type: Proverb.

“You’re pretty into fashion, right? Any folklore related to that?” – Stanley Kalu

STORY: So…I’m not sure if this is a nation-wide thing or just specific to California but I was always told growing up to not wear white past labor day. I don’t know what the origins of this social faux-pas/fashion faux pas is but it’s a proverb nonetheless.

Background Information:

The fashion rule came into effect late 1800s and early 1900s. Post Civil War, there was a sudden rise in “new-money” families and the sudden rise in millionaires threated the way of life for the “more respectable, old-money families.” In the 1880’s, the old money women created a bunch of rules designed to exclude the “new-money families.” This folk-practice was one of the many exclusionary rules.

Context Performance: As aforementioned, this was a practice used to exclude “new-money families” from high-society situations. This would include balls, galas, garden parties, and the opera.

The context of Bella’s rehashing of the tale was done after our “Forms of Folklore” class taught by Tok Thompson because the both of us had a folklore collection project due.

Thoughts: This appears to be an inversion of the traditional function of “folklore” as described by Abrahams, in the sense that it is folk that was spread by high-society, which is to say it is top-down, rather than the traditional bottom-up movement.

 

 

 

 

The Old Man, The Young Man and the Donkey

Nationality: Armenian
Age: 83
Performance Date: 04/02/18

There is this guy, this man, you know, uhh, with his grandson and their donkey. So he’s going from one village to another village. The grandson is sitting on the donkey and the old man is walking next to it. There’s a bunch of people… they look at him and say, “Look at this young guy. He’s so heartless and so selfish; letting this poor old man walk while he’s sitting on the donkey.” The young kid gets very upset, gets off the donkey and makes the old man sit on the donkey… he walks next to it. So another group of people see them and said “Look at this mean old man, he lets this poor kid walk in the sun and he’s sitting on the donkey.” So the old man gets embarrassed and he gets off the donkey. Then what he does is ask the little kid to sit on the donkey and they end up both sitting on the donkey. Then there’s another group of people who see them and they say, “Look at these horrible people they’re torturing the poor donkey.” So they both get off and pass another group of people who say “Look at these stupid people, they might as well have the donkey ride on there.”

Sometimes you can never win no matter what you’re gonna do some people are gonna say you’re doing bad and some people will say what you’re doing it right. So do your best with what you’ve got and ignore other people.

My Thoughts:

I have always been told “Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me.” This is a variation on that story I suppose, whereas listening to peoples words will only cause problems. Do what you think is best and don’t be distracted by others… the haters… if I may.

The Cook and the Cowhands

Nationality: American
Age: 50
Residence: Campbell, CA
Performance Date: 3/20/17
Primary Language: English

There was a joke that my grandpa used to tell. It’s a little off color but not so bad. But he told the story, and then my mom told the story, and I haven’t really told it but I can tell it to you so you can hear it. It’s a little bit racist but you can take the race out of it and it works just the same. This is a story that my grandfather’s older brother and father told him. So there was a ranch in the West somewhere, probably Colorado or California. There were cowhands, and they were working all day on the ranch, and they had a cook named Wong. They thought they would play some practical jokes on him. When Wong was sleeping, the cowhands they would tie his shoes together with lots of knots. The next day they waited for a reactions, but nothing happened—he just fixed his shoes and didn’t mention it. The next day they put thumbtacks on his seat. They waited to see his reaction, and when he sat down he kind of grimaced, but just swept them away and didn’t really care. The next day they either short-sheeted his bed or soaked his sheets with water—I don’t really remember. They waited for a reaction, and no reaction. So they finally decided to talk to him. “So Wong, you’ve been a really good sport, tying your shoes in knots and putting thumbtacks on your seat, and messing with your sheets, so we won’t do that to you anymore.” In a different voice; “You no more put knots in my shoes?” “No, no more knots in your shoes.” “You no more put tackies on my seat?” “No, no more tacks on your seat.” “You no more soak my sheets in water?” “No, we won’t soak your sheets in water anymore.” “Good, well I no more pee pee in your soup.”

This story is important to the informant because of its history, and it having been passed down for multiple generations. It reminds him of how different the world used to be regarding the treatment of minorities, and their portrayal.

I find it interesting that the racist aspect of this narrative isn’t actually essential to the story– it could be told just about the same, without making stereotypical voices or mentioning the races of the characters.

Prejudiced beliefs about Jewish People

Nationality: Caucasian
Age: 61
Occupation: Private Chef
Residence: Santa Monica
Performance Date: 4/16/17
Primary Language: English

Informant related this while at tea, when interviewer mentioned a Jewish holiday in passing.

First of all, I don’t believe any of this, but these are things my grandparents said to my mother and she said to me.

I did tell you before, didn’t I? How my grandfather used to take my grandmother to the opera, and he had a box because he was a successful early ad magnate or tycoon or what have you, and he would pick out the Jew in the audience by their pointed ears. I never asked for an explination because you know, you don’t need one with something that batty.

My mother grew up in Indiana and they had a cook and a maid and one day, you know, Mom and I were driving up at 19th and California, there’s a little tiny temple school, and my mother says in ths really sweet voice she used sometimes, “when I was growing up, my I was told by the maid that Jews took Christian babies and ate them and drank their blood.”

I think it must have been the German help because my mother never saw her parents and they tended to try to at least keep their prejudices, you know, tasteful. At no point did I ever press my mom for more details about this because, you know I was stunned.  Schtunned.

Informant’s grandparents are of English and German extraction, and their beliefs do reflect historical attitudes held by many Europeans at various points in time, generally emphasizing the otherness of a group of people who lived and looked different and may have, at times, competed for economic resources; by identifying the strangers as ‘bad,’ these groups may have felt more justified in protecting scarce resources for themselves during hard times; and the stories created for this purpose were then passed down through generations.

 

These beliefs, and other similar ones, are discussed in John Efron’s Jews: A History. Taylor & Francis, 2013.

 

Tom and Jerry

Nationality: American
Age: 18
Occupation: Student
Residence: California
Performance Date: April 26, 2017
Primary Language: English

“When me and my brother were younger, and even still to this day, my grandfather compares us to Tom & Jerry.  Like the cartoon, Tom & Jerry.  But it’s not just for me and my brother, he believes every pair of siblings follows that dynamic.  Like the younger one being like Jerry and always fooling around and bothering the older one, Tom, who’s just trying to ignore the younger sibling.  It’s probably because that’s the way he was with his younger brother and he likes to think everyone’s the same as him.”

ANALYSIS:

It’s interesting that this folk belief is based around someone’s experiences with watching a cartoon.  Because of the informant’s grandfather noticing a parallel between his own life and the lives of his grandchildren and two characters in a cartoon show, the grandfather made an assumption about the entire human population, which I find really funny, and honestly not entirely inaccurate; I definitely understand where the grandfather is coming from, as I do believe that me and my own older brother follow this dynamic as well.  I wonder in the creators of Tom & Jerry based the cartoon off of a prominent sibling dynamic they noticed, or just thought Tom & Jerry were funny characters and that’s all.