Modern scholarly theories of oral folk narrative suggest that urban legends contain expressions of cultural beliefs that can be understood both through the contexts in which these stories are told and through the elements of the stories that remain constant across multiple tellings by various narrators. This study centers exclusively on stories and popular culture products that utilize missing or damaged fingers, hands, or arms, in order to identify the cultural values that are attached to hands in American culture. These stories in particular were chosen because the severed hand was perceived at the onset to be a common element within stories that had not been broadly analyzed. The particular theories that drive this study are drawn from the fields of folklore, disability studies, psychology, and neuroscience, and suggest that stories about severed hands express belief about the nature of humanity. Once the hypothesis was formed, I turned to the Fife Folklore Archives of the Merril-Cazier Library at Utah State University in order to collect transcripts of interviews in which severed hand legends had been told. Three hundred fifty potential texts were initially identified, and two hundred fifty featured a mention of severed hands. Those texts were then classified by what role the severed hand played in the course of the story into three distinct categories: villains with severed hands and prosthetics, victims who lose hands in the course of the narrative, and severed hands appearing in pranks or as contaminants. The narratives of each category were then analyzed, and themes of evil, risk, safety, and crossed boundaries began to emerge. To verify the cultural themes of the textual study, popular culture narratives were then analyzed to determine if similar themes were expressed. This set of narratives included movies, television, comic books, and novels. While the same themes were expressed in these narratives, the categories of evil and crossed boundaries each featured subverted forms of heroism and hands as characters as well, all of which supported the original interpretation. The results indicate that severed hands in American narratives represent lost humanity, and therefore that the hand is a vital part of how individuals within the culture might perceive their own humanity.

The purpose of this study is to examine how the severed hand in the animated film I Lost My Body (2019) is presented as its own character, based on Jens Eder character analysis: the clock of character. This study aims to answer the question: How is the severed hand in a specific scene in the animated film I Lost My Body (2019) presented as both an artifact and fictional character according to the clock of character ? Through the application of Jens Eder character analysis model, a specific scene in the film was captured through screen shots, described, and analysed. The theoretical framework of this study includes characterization theories on anthropomorphism, body form, body language, and emotions in fictional characters as well as a cognitive theory examining the connection between hand and mind. The study’s result suggest that the severed hand is conveyed as a character due to its behaviour, characteristics, and body movement, which place it on the border between animal, human and a fictional creature. The human intelligence of the hand, along with its animal-like reactions and luck in navigating its environment, lends credibility to it as an independent, conscious character. Furthermore, this study discusses ways that this research could be expanded on and how it can be used by filmmakers and animators. This paper also includes a design documentation after page 43 called “Familjens Förmedlare”, which is part of the degree project that this paper was part of at the Visual Communication program at Malmö University.“Familjens Förmedlare” is a short film that highlights problems that arise when children are given the responsibility to interpret for their parents.