Second class

First of all, some references for you, re: Top Gun and homoeroticism. This is the monologue from Sleep With Me, as performed by Quentin Tarantino (written by Roger Avary, his frequent co-writer). Here is a YouTube link to it as well. Furthermore, here is an Australian article on "An Ideological Analysis of Top Gun". Just type "homoeroticism of top gun" into Google and you will get 406,000 references.

The point (inasmuch as there is one) is that texts which are creations of a marketing apparatus, created for mass-appeal and thus typically crafted to be interpreted in a way to appeal to the broadest spectrum of the population, can be reinterpreted by audiences in whatever manner appeals to them. Did Simpson and Bruckheimer set out to create a homoerotic film? Unlikely, but it has been embraced by two complementary subcultures: those who ironically self-identify with it and those who merely revel in the ironic interpretation, in addition to the (presumably larger) population who interpret it more or less as it was meant to be interpreted.

This is not a unique phenomenon: certainly, in this day and age, the process of adopting and re-interpreting the products of popular culture at the folk level can be demonstrated virtually everywhere. Think of how you may employ Simpsons references in everyday speech, going beyond quoting and performing tracts of dialogue therefrom (which is a similar activity) but using a word or catchphrase in a parallel context to act as a linguistic shorthand: by using, for example, Homer's "D'oh" or Burns' "Excellent", one hopes to evoke for the listener aspects of those respective characters and the Springfield worldview. It is a form of insider speech, using a shared known text: it is no different from using Shakespearean references or - dare I say it - folklore, both of which build on an assumed shared cultural background. We ascribe greater gravitas to Shakespeare (it is a sign of being 'lettered'), or greater 'authenticity' to folklore (it is a sign of immersion in a community's customs and traditions), but the process is identical.

One final example, blissfully obscure. If I can track down the precise episode name, I will supply it, but in an episode of BBC's Yes, Minister (it could have been Yes, Prime Minister, but something tells me no), Bernard tells Hacker that a certain protocol was "more honoured in the breach than the observance." Hacker chastises him for using such an ugly and cliched phrase, reminding him that English is "the language of Shakespeare," which forces Bernard to gently remind Hacker that he was, in fact, quoting Shakespeare directly.

And hilarity ensues.

Read the Statement of the American Folklore Society On Research with Human Subjects for Monday.

First class: Introductions, administrata, and hopscotch

Welcome to those who were able to recover from the fun times available at lunch and show up the cavalcade of fun that is introductory folklore. You now have seen me and have had the opportunity to size me up: those who choose to slink away are wished the best.

For those who are prone to losing paper, the syllabus is available here as an Adobe Acrobat file. I will try to make all handouts available in this way. You should still hold on to things as a rule, but, speaking as one who tends to use important things as coasters, I can only speak from experience.

And yes, I can hear it calling in the air tonight: hold on.

So lonely, the first post

Greetings:

I give you the preamble for the course, lovingly taken from the course outline.

‘Folklore’ is the study of informal culture: the behaviours, activities, texts, and customs that exist among the more formally structured and institutionalised modern living. It is a study of ‘traditions’ only inasmuch as (a) these items are often repeated and (b) a previous occurrence is given as a sufficient basis and rationale for this repetition. As such, a tradition may date back before recorded time or from the beginning of the semester. The locus of any item of folklore is the ‘group,’ which likewise can exist on a scale of scope and time-depth ranging from, on the macro-scale, an ancient globally-situated people (‘The Celts’; ‘First Nations’) to, on the micro-scale, recently formed ad hoc locally-situated small groups (‘three people from Sydney Mines I carpool with’; ‘Margaree Chamillionaire fans’).

As a consequence of studying living traditions, folklorists do much of their research ‘in the field,’ in addition to the research tools of the library and the archive. This course is an introduction to the basic techniques of field research, cumulating in a short essay which draws on both primary sources (the student’s own fieldwork) and secondary sources. By the end of the course, students will be able to apply these tools to any ethnographic project.

That's it. No one (presumably) will have read this without having been to the first class but you never know.