A Look at Urban Legends: the Gothic Outweighs the Enlightened

A Look at Urban Legends: the Gothic Outweighs the Enlightened

by Julie Perry

Urban legends have been scaring people for decades, with new ones coming out every year. They are a very prolific genre of horror: everyone seems to know them, and many actually believe in them. Labeled urban not so much for their setting but to separate them from age-old folklore, urban legends are also referred to as "contemporary legends." Urban legends are ambiguous in nature and are thus an element of the gothic. They are an outlet of our human fascination with the irrational and impossible, as well as a catharsis for our feelings of cultural anxiety. Many legends, however, play on our preconceived notions of men and women, which are spoon-fed to us from birth. These legends’ women represent weakness, vulnerability, innocence, and ineffectiveness. The men are either the violent attackers bent on wreaking havoc, or the strong heroes come to save the helpless damsel in distress. Thus urban legends are gothic in that they are ambiguously so: they display gothic traits as well as characteristics that go against the gothic grain.

First off, one must understand the difference between myths, folktales, and legends. Myths are "sacred narrative[s] explaining how the world and mankind came to be," folktales are "fictional narratives," and "the third category, legend, consists of narratives, believed and or told as true set in the post-creation time period" (Bennett IX). The author breaks down this broad definition of legends into more specific categories, namely "local legends" and "migratory legends," the latter of which in the "… last decades of the 20^th century [have come] to employ a different term, namely, "urban legends" or in this bibliography "contemporary legends" (Bennett X). Urban legends also differ from myths or folktales in that the narrative deals only with the span of time in which the legend occurs; there is no past or future. Urban legends are either left in limbo, as in "the haunted house is still haunted, the vanishing hitchhiker continues to appear and disappear" (Bennett IX) or we never find out what happens to the victim. This transpires because legends that leave one in doubt create more of a scare-factor and thus are more compelling. We tend to equate the unknown with danger and a greater sense of fear, so not knowing the victims’ fate breeds anxiety, which will make one more likely to heed any warning or moral buried inside the legend.

Anxiety is the backbone of urban legends. If they did not force us to look at our fears, rational or not, they would not have the lasting power or the hordes of followers who swear to their authenticity. Urban legends play to four main anxieties: safety/security, boundaries (of our bodies, personal space), sexual, and commercial. Many legends combine several, making for a bigger punch. Legends serve their purpose, helping us deal with these fears, by teaching us vicariously. Most contain morals or warnings: don’t do this, don’t forget to do that, you shouldn’t or you’ll (fill in the blank). After reading through these legends, for example, one would not want to climb into one’s car without first checking the backseat.

Speaking of checking the back seat, the legend this stems from combines safety and boundary anxieties. Safety holds the number two spot on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs (after biological needs, such as hunger), so it makes sense that this is the most common feature of urban legends. An interesting factor, though, in these legends, is that the victim-perpetrator relationship is almost always female-male. In one prime example, a woman picks up a hitchhiker because "she" appears to be an old lady – seems safe, right? It turns out the woman is a man, usually discovered because of his large hairy arms and wrists. The woman always narrowly escapes assured bodily harm. In gruesome versions, a bag the "old lady" left in the car contains a bloody ax, a little foreshadowing effect (1). Women equal the victims because the scenario is more believable. They are more vulnerable in general; smaller size, less physical strength, and our society perceives them as helpless. For those same reasons, women cannot be the perpetrators. The rough and tough aggressive males must be the evil ones. In general people find it hard to fathom a woman committing a heinous crime. We have no concept of what could motivate such behavior by a female. As Patricia Pearson stated, "The effect of cultural explanation for individual behavior tilts women toward an interpretation of themselves as fundamentally innocent. What we all do is to equate powerlessness with innocence," (Pearson 43). It is just easier to swallow that a male rather than a female would be threatening our personal safety, a preconception that dates back to when strength was the deciding factor.

In contemporary legends, many threats to our security are made in our space, an anxiety about boundaries. One legend tells of woman who lives alone with a big dog. One day she walks in and finds him choking (minor detail: protector equals dog equals male), so she takes him to the vets. The male veterinarian tells her to go home, he’ll take care of the dog, and everything will be fine. When she arrives home, the phone is ringing off the hook. The vet has found the reason the dog was choking: two or three human fingers from an intruder in her house (2). Her boundary was broken, her bubble burst, and now she is in danger if he is still lurking around. And of course it was his call that saved her from god-knows-what. She would have been an easy victim if not for first the dog and secondly the vet. Another legend warns of men hiding in or under women’s cars and attacking them (3). Again, notice the victims’ and their attackers’ gender. If we are not safe in our homes or cars, an extension of ourselves, then where? Where can we draw the line?

Boundaries are not always outer. Inner boundaries can be sexual or even as simple as what we put into our bodies unknowingly (i.e. ingesting), or both rolled into one disgusting story. The scare over a "new drug," Progesterex, a supposed horse sterilizer men can now slip into women’s drinks to facilitate rape without consequences (for the man), illustrates sexual anxiety (4). Rape is a total violation of one’s boundaries, sexual and personal, and forced sterilization is an even scarier breach. This affects the rest of the victim’s life. It also highlights the woman-as-victim paradigm: only women would have to be sterilized to prevent an incriminating pregnancy, and only men would have to worry about being incriminated. In the following example, only men could be the perpetrators, for obvious reasons: a girl eats out at a buffet bar and gets sick. When her stomach is pumped and its contents analyzed, or the food at the bar is tested, doctors discover she’s eaten semen kitchen workers had put in the food (5). Not only is this a sexual violation, but also a violation of her body’s boundaries. She eats the food none the wiser, unwillingly ingesting something that makes her sick. Worse yet, it takes away her sexual innocence, pushing her sexual limits. In more horrendous retellings, she contracts an STD, such as AIDS or herpes, which just amplifies this story’s effect. Not only has she been violated, but she’s also been invaded by a nasty virus that will never fade. Then there’s the tale of a girl eating cockroach eggs in a Taco Bell taco. They get lodged in her mouth and start gestating until a male doctor discovers them and cuts them out (6). The major gross-out factor of bugs growing inside her pads out the anxiety of not knowing where your body ends and of unknowingly breaking that boundary. Another example of bugs growing our bodies is the female tourist who gets bitten by a spider, which somehow lays its eggs in her cheek. They end up spewing forth, a most horrifying prospect (7). We constantly worry about what goes in our bodies; these stories are one way of saying that no matter what we do, we could still be the victims. As women, we could still be violated.

The Taco Bell story fits right in with today’s growing commercial anxiety. These days, everything is mass-produced, especially fast food and other goods we often use. A more disgusting variation of the roach egg story is of a (guess who…?) woman who is licking envelopes. She cuts her tongue on one, lodging a roach egg inside. It gestates fully in her tongue, and when she goes to the doctor and he cuts it open, out crawls a live roach (6). This plays on not only the boundary of our bodies, but of the products we use everyday. What does it say about big business if envelope glue is infested with roach eggs? The general consensus on consumer goods these days is that not much care taken to make them. Urban legends manifest this anxiety by telling about cockroach eggs or contaminated food. For example, some woman has supposedly bitten into a McDonald’s chicken sandwich (hold the mayo) and found what she thought to be just that. It turns out to be a pus filled tumor, which exploded on impact with her teeth (8). That’s enough to make anyone cringe, just like the story of the toxic tampons stuffed with asbestos (9). The manufacturers supposedly add this "secret ingredient" to make women bleed more, with the sole purpose of increasing their revenue. The gothic theme of anxiety manifests itself in these scare stories, which warn of a dire form of increasing convenience breeding decreasing quality.

Other gothic themes also surface in urban legends besides anxiety. The settings, for instance, are rather gothic. All the urban legends involving a victim-attacker relationship take place in such a setting: the vast mall parking lot where women are accosted by men claiming to need rides to span its distance, the dark, gloomy deserted street at night, an eerie, broken into home. These scenes isolate the woman, with few or no bystanders immediately around to help her, adding to society’s view of her as vulnerable. When she does receive aid, it is by accident and at the hands of another man.

Could it also be said, then, that in urban legends starring two men, they could be doppelgängers? Firstly, if the savior is a stranger, the woman mistakes him for her attacker. In the gas station scenario, she thinks the attendant (also sometimes her pursuer by car) means her harm, when he is in fact saving her from the maniac in her backseat (10). Secondly, why would the second man go to such trouble to save a stranger? It is a lot of work, especially in the car-chase scenario. Perhaps he is simply a Good Samaritan, brought up well, or perhaps he sees a reflection of himself in the attacker. If so, it would be an eerie picture to see a dark side of oneself reflected in another. He would no doubt be disturbed, and one good way to dispel this image would be to intervene, save the woman, thus telling himself, "See, I can’t be the bad guy. I just did a good deed." It reaffirms his sense of self-worth and pushes any scary parts of himself safely away. In the case of the savior being an authority figure, such as a doctor or policeman, there are other similarities with the attacker. They both hold power over the woman, the attacker in his strength, weapons, and desire to cause harm, and the savior in rank and ability to save her. As John Stuart Mill noted, "…whatever gratification of pride there is in the possession of power, and whatever personal interest in its exercise, is… common to the whole male sex,’ (Mill 11). The act of saving another, of having a major impact on her life, is as thrilling to the "good guy" as destroying that life is to the "bad guy." Doing either gives a rush of power and the sense of "I DID THIS," so for the same reasons the two men performed different actions. Smells a lot like doppelgängers.

One aspect of these stories that screams our "gothic!" is the theme of excess. Urban legends are off the wall in nature, dealing with what is not possible or only theoretically so. It’s our way of attempting to lessen the represented anxieties by telling ourselves it is too ridiculous to happen to us. Especially now in the epoch of email, legends become more and more embellished as they pass through our lives. Anyone can easily add his or her two cents in at the click of a button. The story about the girl who eats semen at a buffet bar doesn’t just eat the product of one man: "After analysis of her stomach contents, it was found that the garlic sauce she had eaten contained ten(!) different Quacks of semen…(5)." The crazed hitchhiker’s intended weapon is not a simple pistol or knife but a bloody, previously used ax (1)" A woman who desires a perfect tan in an unreasonably short timespan does not merely burn herself but COOKS herself to death, from the inside out (11). The illicit cactus, instead of merely breaking, EXPLODES and scatters millions of spiders or tarantulas everywhere (12). Urban legends are by nature irrational, so the more embellished they can be, the more scare factor they have. Even though the reasonable side of us says "cacti can’t explode, and there wouldn’t be that many spiders anyway," it is still a disgusting, disturbing thought, enough to make us think twice about bringing one home. An urban legend with excess piled upon excess will not only ring more gothic; it will be more effective.

Another milder form of excess in these tales is the role men and women play. They are standard and sexist to the core: excessively so, one might say. Especially this being the liberal era with the "women can do anything men do" mantra, it surprises me that only a scant few legends give the woman the power. I found only two instances where the intended victim effects her own escape; tricking the hitchhiker out of her car and avoiding a trap laid by predatory men (1, 13). Instead, participants are prototypical, paradigms of male and female images. Again, women are powerless, weak, stupid, unaware: perfect victims. Men, on the other hand, are powerful, strong, smarter, and competent: either the brave hero or the psychotic attacker. As Mill mentioned, "And this, indeed, is what makes it strange to ordinary ears, to hear it asserted that the inequality of rights between men and women has no other source than the law of the strongest," (Mill 6). Fitting right in with the aforementioned inequality of rights, another story, in the form of a petition, tells of a girl whose boyfriend is forcing her to get an abortion to avoid his responsibility (14). This petition pleads people to sign it to try and rectify the situation, implying that only huge numbers (of mostly females) will outweigh the decision of one person, a male.

Going with the weaker, more incompetent sex: in urban legends stupid women bring bad situations unto themselves, only rectified, if at all, by a male authority figure. It is almost invariably women who bring home the Mexican sewer rat, thinking it a poor stray dog, which eats the beloved family pet, and it is always a male veterinarian who informs the unsuspecting lady of the animal’s true species (15). It is the woman who brings home the cactus full of spider eggs, which either explodes in her house or is caught in time by the proper authorities, assumed to be male (12). A woman (a blonde, at that) thinks she’s been shot in the head when in fact it’s a wad of Pillsbury dough, only discovering this when a man sees her and calls paramedics (16). A woman boils her brains by thinking she can dry her hair by sticking her head in the microwave (17). Men never seem to suffer from these vanity problems, nor do they seem stupid enough to try even so. If they did, it would be considered gender bending: males taking on feminine characteristics, a gothic feature urban legends lack.

Women are also portrayed as sexually pure, at least at the beginning of the legends. The young college coed at the movies with girlfriends, the poor girl who ends up eating semen, victims of Progesterex, and the young teenager on a date all start out as seemingly unsoiled. This just serves to horrify us more, that something could happen to one so innocent. Sexual anxieties surface in the tales where the women don’t fit this mold, and they are punished or warned. A young couple parks in a secluded area, and the boyfriend ends up brutally murdered (18). In this instance, his murder is more of a punishment to the female because of the emotional stress she suffers. If it is merely a warning, the couple instead narrowly escapes a crazed one-handed madman because the girl is uncomfortable; had they proceeded with their amorous plans, they would have died (19). In another tale, a bride-to-be at a bachlorette party gets a louse embedded in her eye after partaking in a male stripper (20). Then there’s AIDS Harry, who seduces and then infects his "victims" a.k.a. girlfriends with AIDS (21). These legends stress that women should be sexually innocent, another perception of females in our society. It is a double standard that men are expected to be sexually active at earlier and earlier ages, yet women should remain chaste until marriage. If this taboo is broken, something distasteful or horrendous happens to the offending female, teaching the rest of the sex a lesson.

The male in contemporary legends is the one teaching that lesson through his actions in the story. He kills or intends to, disfigures (another blow to women, who are portrayed as being so attached to their image), or infects. Again, he holds the reigns of power, a perfect foil to the woman’s weakness. These legends objectify the women, yet another gothic feature. The worst example I found (or perhaps best, as it illustrates the point) was of a study reporting that, "ogling over women's breasts is good for a man's health and can add years to his life, medical experts have discovered (22)." Women are seen as pieces of meat, trophies for the attacker. Bringing the hitchhiker back into this, he didn’t even bother to clean his weapon of its previous victim’s blood. Was he proud of that? Perhaps the splatters of blood were his "stickmarks^*," keeping track of how many he’d gotten (1). His weapon of choice was also something normally used on objects, such as trees, not people. Also consider the legend where again, a male hides in the backseat or underbelly of a female’s car, only this time his objective is to cut off some piece of her, the bigger the better (10). This is his trophy, something he can show his gang that he really did the deed. Instead of, say, a normal tourist buying a souvenir to prove he’s been somewhere, an attacker collects fingers, toes, and hair.

Urban legends are chockfull of gothic features, yet one of the most important, gender-bending, is missing. Although this could be considered "excessively" normal, it’s a stretch. Mill noted, "the subjection of women to men being a universal custom, any departure from it quite naturally appears unnatural," (Mill 13). Wouldn’t it make sense, then, that gothic, unnatural legends would play around with this? Carol Clover stated that gender is merely theater; people acting out certain roles they’ve been taught. In that case, these legends would be a perfect place to distort that theater, as they distort everything else. Instead, they embrace those gender roles, making urban legends ambiguous. They represent gothic themes in traditional, enlightened ways, an interesting contradiction.

In this manner contemporary legends work to alleviate our cultural anxieties by allowing us to talk about them. It is easier to tell people, "I heard x, y, and z happened to so-and-so," rather than "I’m afraid that x, y, and z could happen to me." The other is expected to say that it is preposterous, thus allaying the narrator’s fears. These legends’ double purpose is also to warn people. Obvious undertones are along the lines of "be careful of your surroundings, especially at night," "sex should be saved until marriage," and "caveat emptor." The key word in many is "could," as the warnings take the form of close calls, making them more effective. "It could’ve happened to her" easily translates to, "it could’ve happened to me," providing a bigger punch. Perhaps these gothic warnings take the form of good man saving helpless woman from evil man because that’s what we’ve been inundated with: damsels in distress since the days of Saturday morning cartoons, and their knights in shining armor. Our brains are accustomed to this and thus process it faster, making the legend click in our minds. The rest of the gothic features serve to heighten the impact. It is all pieced together to make these legends easier to swallow.

Bibliography

Bennet, Gillian. Contemporary Legend: a Folklore Bibliography. New York: Garland, . 1993.

Mill, John Stuart. The Subjection of Women. Edited by Susan Moller Okin. Indianapolis: . Hackett Pub. Co., 1988.

Pearson, Patricia. "Maybe You Mistook Me for an Angel. Perceptions of Female Violence and . the Vocabulary of Motive." When She Was Bad. How and Why Women Get . Away with Murder. New York: Penguin Books, 1998.

Website citations, in order of appearance:

1: http://www.snopes2.com/horrors/robbery/slasher.htm From there, click on the "shopping mauled" link (about a third of the way down) – it will pop up in a separate window.

2: http://www.snopes2.com/horrors/animals/doberman.htm

3: http://www.snopes2.com/horrors/robbery/slasher.htm

4: http://urbanlegends.about.com/science/urbanlegends/library/blprogesterex.htm?terms=progesterex

5: http://www.snopes2.com/horrors/food/semen.htm

6: http://www.snopes2.com/horrors/food/tacobell.htm

7: http://www.snopes2.com/horrors/insects/spiderbt.htm

8: http://www.snopes2.com/horrors/food/tumor.htm

9: http://urbanlegends.about.com/science/urbanlegends/library/weekly/aa111898.htm

10: http://www.snopes2.com/horrors/madmen/backseat.htm

11: http://www.snopes2.com/horrors/vanities/tanbed.htm

12: http://www.snopes2.com/horrors/insects/cactus.htm (the first example is a rare find where the male brought back the offending plant.)

13: http://www.snopes2.com/horrors/robbery/carjack.htm