Urban Legends

Urban legends are improbable stories that circulate from person to person. Usually odd and amusing, they are repeated as true stories about strange occurrences or bizarre events. A kind of folk narrative, they are typically validated because the source is personally known, is one or two steps removed (such as a “friend of a friend”), or is attributed with a vague mention that “I heard it somewhere.” Modern technology also plays a role in spreading urban legends in chat rooms and on the Internet, where the stories spread around the country with amazing speed. Capturing the public imagination and told and retold, most urban legends are harmless and amusing, but when analyzed, they frequently yield rich information about contemporary culture. While difficult or impossible to validate or discredit, the stories sound just true enough to be believable.

Urban legends tend to touch on some subliminal fear or deeply held social concern that reflects the stress and anxiety of contemporary life, and issues of race and ethnicity are often explicit or implied. One long-lived example takes place in a fancy hotel: A large Black man with a dog on a leash gets into an elevator with two elderly White women. Politely moving to the back of the elevator he says, “Sit, lady!” The women, assuming he is dangerous, instantly sit on the floor. He laughs, explains he was talking to the dog, and introduces himself; it turns out that he is a celebrity. Over time, both the celebrity and the location of the incident have changed. It has been told with the setting in San Francisco and the celebrity as O. J. Simpson, but variations place the elevator incident in major cities all over the country—and the celebrity is identified as Reggie Jackson, Mike Tyson, Eddie Murphy, or one of many others. Clearly expressing anxiety about race, particularly Black men and White women, this urban legend bases its humor on the idea that the wealthy Black man is at the upscale hotel and is not recognized by the women, who fear all Black men equally. The mental image of two white-haired ladies dropping to the floor, to the surprise of the man, completes the joke.

Ethnic and economic anxieties interact in another urban legend. In this one, a woman is shopping for sweaters at a department store. As she digs through a pile of recent imports, she feels a sting and suddenly collapses. The woman is rushed to a hospital, and doctors conclude that she was bitten by a poisonous snake. [Page 1353]Tracing her steps back to the sweater display, authorities discover that some small, deadly snakes are mixed with the imported sweaters. As with the previous urban legend, there are different variations mentioning any number of large department stores; various types of soft goods, such as rugs or blankets; and many different countries, but the premise is the same.

This urban legend implies that the items were made by foreigners who are “different” and cannot be trusted. It plays on people's fear of poor countries and anxiety over cultural differences. Concerns about pollution and contamination to the point of imagined snakes in the imported textiles are mixed with economic concerns. Many Americans are unable to resolve the conflict between their desire for low-cost consumer goods and a fear of dependence on foreign sources for those goods. However subliminally, many Americans also feel guilty about the exploitation of desperately poor foreign workers—a combination that one might imagine is certain to “come back to bite us” eventually.

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