An urban legend, urban myth, urban tale, or contemporary legend, is a form of modern folklore consisting of stories that may or may not have been believed by their tellers to be true.^[1] As with all folklore and mythology, the designation suggests nothing about the story's veracity, but merely that it is in circulation, exhibits variation over time, and carries some significance that motivates the community in preserving and propagating it.

Despite its name, an urban legend does not necessarily originate in an urban area. Rather, the term is used to differentiate modern legend from traditional folklore in pre-industrial times. For this reason, sociologists and folklorists prefer the term contemporary legend.

Urban legends are sometimes repeated in news stories and, in recent years, distributed by e-mail. People frequently allege that such tales happened to a "friend of a friend"; so often, in fact, that "friend of a friend" ("FOAF") has become a commonly used term when recounting this type of story.

Some urban legends have passed through the years with only minor changes to suit regional variations. One example is the story of a woman killed by spiders nesting in her elaborate hairdo. More recent legends tend to reflect modern circumstances, like the story of people ambushed, anesthetized, and waking up minus one kidney, which was surgically removed for transplantation (a story which folklorists refer to as "The Kidney Heist").^[2]

Origins and structure[link]

The term “urban legend,” as used by folklorists, has appeared in print since at least 1968.^[3] Jan Harold Brunvand, professor of English at the University of Utah, introduced the term to the general public in a series of popular books published beginning in 1981. Brunvand used his collection of legends, The Vanishing Hitchhiker: American Urban Legends & Their Meanings (1981) to make two points: first, that legends and folklore do not occur exclusively in so-called primitive or traditional societies, and second, that one could learn much about urban and modern culture by studying such tales.

Many urban legends are framed as complete stories with plot and characters. The compelling appeal of a typical urban legend is its elements of mystery, horror, fear or humor. Often they serve as cautionary tales.^[4] Some urban legends are morality tales that depict someone, usually a child, acting in a disagreeable manner, only to wind up in trouble, hurt, or dead.^[4]

Propagation and belief[link]

Like older legends and myths, these narratives can rarely be traced to an original source. Moreover, as Jan Brunvand pointed out^[6] antecedent legends including some of the motifs, themes and symbolism of these urtexts can readily be identified. Cases in which there is some likelihood that at least a partial inspiration has been located include "The Death Car," traced by Richard Dorson to Michigan, United States;^[6] "the Solid Cement Cadillac"^[7] and the possible origin of "The Hook" in the 1946 series of Lovers' Lane murders in Texarkana, Texas, USA.^[8][9] The urban legend that Coca-Cola developed the drink Fanta to sell in Nazi Germany without public backlash originated as the actual tale of German Max Keith, who invented the drink and ran Coca-Cola's operations in Germany during World War II.^[10]

The teller of an urban legend may claim it happened to a friend, which serves to personalize, authenticate and enhance the power of the narrative.^[1] Many urban legends depict horrific crimes, contaminated foods or other situations which would affect many people. Anyone believing such stories might feel compelled to warn loved ones. Not seldom, news organizations, school officials and even police departments have issued warnings concerning the latest threat.^[11] In the "Lights Out" rumor, street gang members would drive without headlights until a compassionate motorist responded with the traditional flashing of headlights, whereupon a new gang member would be required to murder the citizen as a requirement of initiation.^[12] A fax received at the Nassau County, Florida fire department was forwarded to police, and from there to all city departments. Even the Minister of Defence for Canada was taken in by the same legend; he forwarded an urgent security warning to all Ontario Members of Parliament.^[12]

Many urban legends are essentially extended jokes, told as if they were true events.^[13] Urban legends typically include one or more common elements: the legend is retold on behalf of the original witness or participant; dire warnings are often given for those who might not heed the advice or lesson contained therein (this is a typical element of many e-mail phishing scams); and it is often touted as "something a friend told me," while the friend is identified by first name only or not identified at all.^[14] One of the classic hallmarks of false urban legends is a lack of specific information regarding the incident, such as names, dates, locations, or similar information.

Persistent urban legends, however unlikely, often maintain at least a degree of plausibility, for instance a serial killer deliberately hiding in the back seat of a car. One such example since the 1970s has been the recurring rumor that the Procter and Gamble Company was associated with Satan worshippers because of details within its nineteenth-century trademark.^[15] The legend interrupted the company's business to the point it stopped using the trademark.^[16]

Belief and relation to mythology[link]

The earliest term by which these narratives were known, “urban belief tales,” highlights what was then thought to be a key property: they were held, by their tellers, to be true accounts, and the device of the FOAF was a spurious but significant effort at authentication.^[17] The coinage leads in turn to the terms "FOAFlore" and "FOAFtale". While at least one classic legend, the “Death Car”, has been shown to have some basis in fact,^[18] folklorists as such are interested in debunking these narratives only to the degree that establishing non-factuality warrants the assumption that there must be some other reason why the tales are told and believed.^[19] As in the case of myth, these narratives are believed because they construct and reinforce the worldview of the group within which they are told, or “because they provide us with coherent and convincing explanations of complex events”.^[20] Recently social scientists have started to draw on urban legends in order to help explain complex socio-psychological beliefs, such as attitudes to crime, childcare, fast food, SUVs and other "family" choices.^[21] Here the authors make an explicit connection between urban legends and popular folklore, such as Grimm's Fairy Tales where similar themes and motifs arise. For this reason, it is characteristic of groups within which a given narrative circulates to react very negatively to claims or demonstrations of non-factuality; an example would be the expressions of outrage by police officers who are told that adulteration of Halloween treats by strangers (the subject of periodic moral panics) is extremely rare, if it has occurred at all.^[19][22]

Other terminology[link]

The term urban myth is also used. Brunvand feels that urban legend is less stigmatizing because myth is commonly used to describe things that are widely accepted as untrue. The more academic definitions of myth usually refer to a supernatural tale involving gods, spirits, the origin of the world, and other symbols that are usually capable of multiple meanings (cf. the works of Claude Lévi-Strauss, Ernst Cassirer, Mircea Eliade, Joseph Campbell, Carl Jung, and Northrop Frye for various interpretations). However, the usage may simply reflect the idiom.

The term urban myth is preferred in some languages such as Mexican Spanish, where conventional coinage is "mito urbano" rather than "leyenda urbana." In French, urban legends are usually called légendes urbaines; the term légendes contemporaines is still preferable because "légendes urbaines" is an improper and meaningless verbatim translation, though used by some French sociologists or journalists. But neither expression is commonly used: for ordinary French people, the more genuine terms rumeur or canular, not to mention more colloquial and expressive words, describe this phenomenon of "viral spread tall story" properly enough. The term hoax (in "Frenglish") is known in the Web community.

Some scholars prefer the term contemporary legend to highlight those tales with relatively recent or modern origins. An eighteenth-century pamphlet alleging that a woman was tricked into eating the ashes of her lover's heart could be described as a contemporary legend with respect to the eighteenth century.

Documenting urban legends[link]

The Internet makes it easier to spread urban legends, and also to debunk them.^[23] Discussing, tracking, and analyzing urban legends is the topic of the Usenet newsgroup, alt.folklore.urban, and several web sites, most notably snopes.com. The United States Department of Energy had a service, now discontinued, called Hoaxbusters that dealt with computer-distributed hoaxes and legends.

Television shows such as Urban Legends, Beyond Belief: Fact or Fiction, and later Mostly True Stories: Urban Legends Revealed feature re-enactments of urban legends detailing the accounts of the tales and (typically) later in the show, these programs reveal any factual basis they may have. Since 2004 the Discovery Channel TV show MythBusters tries to prove or disprove urban legends by attempting to reproduce them using the scientific method. The 1998 film Urban Legend featured students extensively discussing popular urban legends while at the same time falling victim to them.

The British writer Tony Barrell is a collector of modern urban legends, many of which he has explored in a long-running column in The Sunday Times. These include the story that Orson Welles began work on a Batman movie in the 1940s, which was to feature James Cagney as The Riddler and Marlene Dietrich as Catwoman;^[24] the persistent rumour that the rock singer Courtney Love is the granddaughter of Marlon Brando;^[25] and the idea that in a famous 1970s poster of Farrah Fawcett, there is a subliminal sexual message concealed in the actress's hair.^[26]

See also[link]

References[link]

Further reading[link]

• Enders, Jody (2002). Death by Drama and Other Medieval Urban Legends. University of Chicago Press. ISBN 978-0-226-20788-9. 

Sources[link]

• Jan Harold Brunvand (2002). Encyclopedia of Urban Legends. New York City: W. W. Norton & Company. ISBN 0-393-32358-7. 
• Pamela Donovan (2004). No Way of Knowing: Crime, Urban Legends, and the Internet. New York City: Routledge. ISBN 0-203-50779-7. 

External links[link]

• Snopes - Urban Legends Reference Pages
• The AFU And Urban Legends Archive
• Nov. 2009 NY Times story about the book behind the "alligators in sewers" legend
• Urban Legends at the Open Directory Project
• "The most ridiculous urban legends." Houston Chronicle.

Danielle Harris
Harris attending Adventure Con 2008
Born	Danielle Andrea Harris (1977-06-01) June 1, 1977 (age 35) Queens, New York, U.S.
Occupation	Actress, director
Years active	1985–present

Danielle Andrea Harris (born June 1, 1977) is an American film and television actress, best known as a scream queen for her multiple horror film roles, four of them in the Halloween series:^[1] in Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers and Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers as Jamie Lloyd and in the new version of Halloween and Halloween II as Annie Brackett.

Aside from her scream queen reputation, Harris is known as a former child star whose career has grown to include various independent films as well as such mainstream hits as Marked for Death, The Last Boy Scout, Daylight and the aforementioned Halloween films. She is also noted for her voice acting, which includes the complete TV series run of The Wild Thornberrys (1998–2004, as Debbie Thornberry) and Father of the Pride (2004–05, as Sierra).

Early life[link]

Harris was born in Queens, New York, and raised by her single mother, Fran.^[2][3] Harris's family moved to Port Orange, Florida and there she attended Spruce Creek Elementary School.

Career[link]

Early beginnings[link]

Harris still lived in Florida, when winning a children's beauty contest found her in New York. Moving back there, Harris began her professional career by appearing in television commercials while maintaining an A average at PS 117 and PS 232 in Queens, New York.^{[citation needed]} Her first acting role followed in 1985, when she made her debut as little Samantha 'Sami' Garretson on ABC's One Life to Live, a part she would continue to play for three years.

[edit] Debut in the Halloween series

In 1988, at age ten, Harris auditioned and was chosen (beating out Melissa Joan Hart) for the part of Jamie Lloyd, Michael Myers's niece and intended victim, in the movie Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers. This was Harris's feature film debut. Although Halloween 4 involved older teenagers in standard slasher fashion, much of it was devoted to little Jamie and her plight as she was pursued by Michael, being his last remaining relative. One year later, Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers was released, with Harris reprising her role. The focus on Jamie was even greater, showing her recovery from her earlier trauma and her decision to confront her uncle.

The character of Jamie returned in 1995 for the following entry, Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers but Harris did not participate due to disagreements regarding the changes to her character on the script. Also, an agreement for her requested salary could not be reached.^[4] Instead, J. C. Brandy played the older Jamie, only for the character to be killed off early in the film.

Other young actress work[link]

Following her initial Halloween appearances, various other youth roles were played by Harris on film, some of them as daughter or niece to renowned action stars. Credits during this time include Marked for Death (1990) alongside Steven Seagal, Don't Tell Mom the Babysitter's Dead (1991) with Christina Applegate, The Last Boy Scout (1991) alongside Bruce Willis and Damon Wayans, Free Willy (1993), Daylight (1996) alongside Sylvester Stallone, Wish Upon a Star (1996) portraying two body-swapping characters along with Katherine Heigl, and her first horror film since her Halloween beginnings, Urban Legend (1998). During this period she also began to build upon her various television credits, with a recurring role on the sitcom Roseanne during the 1992–93 season (as Roseanne's teenage neighbor Molly), plus special appearances on Boy Meets World, Diagnosis: Murder, Charmed and ER, among others; she was a supporting player for the two-year run of CBS drama That's Life, the voice of Debbie Thornberry on the animated series The Wild Thornberrys, which ran for five seasons, and the voice of Sierra, the adolescent white lioness on the CGI-animated sitcom Father of the Pride. One of her characters originating from television, Debbie Thornberry, has otherwise featured in theatrical films: the animated The Wild Thornberrys Movie and Rugrats Go Wild.

[edit] Return to Halloween

Harris made her eventual return to the Halloween franchise to portray a different character, chosen to re-create Michael Myers's original babysitter victim Annie Brackett for Rob Zombie's Halloween, a 2007 re-imagining of John Carpenter's 1978 original. In this film, she appeared nude in a sex scene and afterwards as she faced off against Michael Myers, the first such turn in her career. She stated "[It] is something that I wanted to do because everyone's like, 'Oh, she's little Jamie. She's 14.' And it's like, no, actually, I'm 30. It's something that I've never done before."^[5] Also, whereas Annie is the first of the teenage friends to die in the earlier version, in the remake she is tortured but lives. This let Harris return to play the character in Rob Zombie's Halloween II, released in 2009. In the sequel, her part was expanded from the previous film and once again had her meeting Michael Myers in a violent encounter.

Further scream queen and independent film roles[link]

Her more recent work, next to the newer Halloween entries, includes the films Debating Robert Lee, Race You to the Bottom (an Outfest prizewinner) and the Halloween-themed Left for Dead, as well as an appearance in the music video for the song "The Bleeding", by Five Finger Death Punch. She also starred alongside Lance Henriksen, Bill Moseley, AFI's Davey Havok, and Battlestar Galactica's Nicki Clyne in the Illustrated Film series Godkiller. For Fearnet, she hosted Route 666: America's Scariest Home Haunts.

Harris has further continued to expand her horror and fantastic film credits. Her films Godkiller and Blood Night: The Legend of Mary Hatchet saw DVD release by the time Fear Clinic, a Fearnet original web series featuring Harris as well as Robert Englund, Kane Hodder, and Lisa Wilcox, made its debut the week of Halloween 2009, and her own upcoming horror resources website, horrorgal.com, was announced.^[6] She can also be seen as Felicia Freeze in the comedic superhero film Super Capers, and alongside Robert Patrick in The Black Waters of Echo's Pond.^[7] Beginning with 2010's Hatchet II, Harris has taken over the leading role of Marybeth in the Hatchet series, after Tamara Feldman declined to reprise her character.^[8][9][10] Some of Harris's subsequent genre credits include Jim Mickle's second feature film^[11] the vampire/post-apocalyptic epic Stake Land,^[12] Cyrus: Mind of a Serial Killer, Chromeskull and Michael Biehn's The Victim, in addition to providing the voice and basis for a computer-animated Barbara in Night of the Living Dead: Origins 3D, director Zebediah de Soto's prequel/re-telling of George A. Romero's 1968 original.^[13] She is set to star in William Forsythe's directorial debut, the vampire film New Blood.^[14] Harris's own directorial debut is the horror comedy Among Friends, in which she also makes an appearance.^[15]

In 2010, Danielle Harris was identified as 'horror's reigning scream queen' by the NY Daily News.^[16] She has provided the cover feature for such horror/glamour publications as Girls and Corpses and Gorezone magazine,^[17][18] as well as a subject for the photo-book The Bloody Best Project.^[19]

In 2011, Harris won the Best Actress award at the Shockfest Film Festival, for her starring role in the short Nice Guys Finish Last.^[20]

Personal life[link]

Harris is Jewish.^[21] She has a sister, Ashley.^[22] Fellow actors Harris had been in a romantic relationship with include Michael Rosenbaum and Corin Nemec.^[23]

Stalking incident[link]

In 1995, Harris was stalked by an obsessed fan, Christopher Small, who wrote letters threatening to kill her. Small was later arrested after bringing a shotgun and a teddy bear to her home. On January 29, 2007, Harris appeared on an episode of The Dr. Phil Show, sharing her experience with other affected people.^[24] The stalker was obsessed with Molly, her character on the TV show Roseanne. In October 2009, Harris was granted a restraining order against Small, who began sending her messages on Twitter.^[25]

Filmography[link]

References[link]

External links[link]

• Danielle Harris at the Internet Movie Database
• Danielle Harris at the TCM Movie Database
• Danielle Harris at AllRovi
• Danielle Harris at Yahoo! Movies
• Danielle Harris at TV Guide
• Danielle Harris at TV Tropes
• Danielle Harris on Myspace
• Danielle Harris on Twitter