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This study seeks to understand how horror urban legends undergo changes over time and the possible reasons for their alterations. Past researchers have yet to analyze the shifts that have occurred within the retellings of these dark tales, and through this analysis, light will be shed onto what truly affects the media's storytelling behavior. Building upon meme theory, this study will use narrative and historical context analyses to uncover the objectives, narrative elements and temporal environments surrounding 10 replications of three horror urban legend memes over the past century. This research will uncover how these memes have mutated over time and inform the world as to how context plays a role. A total of 30 horror urban legend artifacts (10 per meme) were analyzed using qualitative research methods in order to uncover the similarities and differences that appeared in the replications of each of the memes. Also, the contemporary thoughts, attitudes and values of the various time periods in which each of the retellings existed were analyzed to understand how historical events and movements may have led to a change in the story. The findings revealed that social movements played a large role in the alteration of horror urban legend memes, particularly in regards to the second wave of Feminism. Additionally, the findings showed that memes that heavily portrayed racism were altered in more recent decades to include leading actors and characters of various ethnic backgrounds. Because of these findings, this research aligns with and expands upon the work completed by Joel Best and Gerald Horiuchi (1985). / Master of Arts / This study looks at how three icon horror urban legends have changed over the past century. Specifically, this study analyzes "Bloody Mary," "Sleepy Hollow" and the "Wendigo" in order to track the changes each tale has gone through, in addition to uncovering what might influence their change. Researchers have yet to understand this occurrence, and this study will serve as a way to answer why the media would be interested in revisiting and reviving older stories. Remakes of movies and TV shows are found in abundance within society, so this research will help assign a reason as to why ancient tales are dug back up from the grave. Using meme theory, this study examines how a story is able to be retold, remade and eventually changed by analyzing 10 remakes per urban legend, with each remake coming from a different decade between the 1920s and the 2010s. The findings reveal that history plays a role in the remaking and altering of previous tales, mainly due to the older versions of horror urban legends no longer being relevant or culturally appropriate. Occasionally, the older adaptation of a story will have material or revolve around a subject matter that is no longer acceptable within a more modern society, such as women being shown only as a damsel in distress. Because of this, in order for the story to not be forgotten, it must be remade and altered to align with where the world is today.

Esta tese é dedicada ao estudo de narrativas do gênero lendas urbanas dentro de uma perspectiva discursiva. Com base em um corpus composto de mensagens trocadas em uma comunidade virtual sobre o tema na Internet no período entre 2005 e 2006, busca-se fundamentalmente investigar os modos pelos quais tais narrativas se situam, enquanto enunciados, entre uma ordem de discurso dotada de uma certa sistematicidade e uma instância de acontecimento único, materializada na enunciação. Propõe-se a reflexão de que as lendas urbanas, sendo geradas no seio da vida cotidiana e trazendo elementos que fazem parte desse cotidiano de um modo bastante acessível - embora em muitos casos representando ameaças novas e impensadas -, configuram-se como narrativas que reelaboram velhos enredos (ou intrigas) da experiência social em combinações potencialmente variadas, multiplicando-se, assim, as possibilidades de formulação de acontecimentos enunciativos dentro de uma estrutura mais ou menos estável e reconhecível. A ênfase na dimensão de prática discursiva em que as lendas se materializam - sendo elas retomadas, contestadas, (re)contextualizadas no interior dessa prática - revela o modo como tais narrativas se entretecem em uma rede particularmente heterogênea, freqüentemente polêmica, na qual antigos medos, ansiedades e apreensões sociais são articulados e na qual os sujeitos envolvidos são confrontados com seus pressupostos de verdade e relações de poder/saber. A partir das análises empreendidas, conclui-se que a tensão dialética entre regularidade e singularidade - ou, de forma mais geral, estrutura e acontecimento - se encontra na base mesma das práticas discursivas estudadas, manifestando-se em diferentes níveis de análise e sob uma multiplicidade de formas, que vão desde a definição do gênero lenda urbana, passando pelos movimentos de arquivamento e atualização das narrativas, até as representações identitárias construídas e reencenadas pelos textos. / This thesis is dedicated to the study of the genre of narratives known as urban legends from a discursive perspective. Based on a corpus composed of messages exchanged in a virtual community on the Internet between 2005 and 2006, we aim at investigating the ways in which these narratives are situated, as utterances, between a discursive order which is marked by a certain regularity and the domain of the single event which is materialized through enunciation. We argue that urban legends, being generated in the midst of daily life and carrying elements that are part of this daily life in an acessible form - although in many cases enacting new and unexpected threats -, present themselves as narratives which reelaborate certain ancient plots of social experience into potencially varied combinations, thus enabling the multiplication of possible formulations of enunciative events within a more or less stable and recognizable structure. An emphasis on the discursive practice dimension through which the legends are materialized - their being recovered, contested, (re)contextualized in the space of such practice - reveals how those narratives are woven into a particularly heterogeneous and often polemical network, in which old social fears, anxieties and apprehensions are articulated and in which the subjects involved are confronted with their assumptions on truth and power/knowledge relations. From the analyses conducted, we conclude that the dialectical tension between regularity and uniqueness - or, more generically, between structure and event - can be found at the very basis of the discursive practices under scrutiny, manifesting itself on different levels of analysis and in a multiplicity of forms, which include the definition of the urban legend genre, the movements of archiving and updating of legends, and the identity representations that are built and re-enacted in the texts.

Esta tese é dedicada ao estudo de narrativas do gênero lendas urbanas dentro de uma perspectiva discursiva. Com base em um corpus composto de mensagens trocadas em uma comunidade virtual sobre o tema na Internet no período entre 2005 e 2006, busca-se fundamentalmente investigar os modos pelos quais tais narrativas se situam, enquanto enunciados, entre uma ordem de discurso dotada de uma certa sistematicidade e uma instância de acontecimento único, materializada na enunciação. Propõe-se a reflexão de que as lendas urbanas, sendo geradas no seio da vida cotidiana e trazendo elementos que fazem parte desse cotidiano de um modo bastante acessível - embora em muitos casos representando ameaças novas e impensadas -, configuram-se como narrativas que reelaboram velhos enredos (ou intrigas) da experiência social em combinações potencialmente variadas, multiplicando-se, assim, as possibilidades de formulação de acontecimentos enunciativos dentro de uma estrutura mais ou menos estável e reconhecível. A ênfase na dimensão de prática discursiva em que as lendas se materializam - sendo elas retomadas, contestadas, (re)contextualizadas no interior dessa prática - revela o modo como tais narrativas se entretecem em uma rede particularmente heterogênea, freqüentemente polêmica, na qual antigos medos, ansiedades e apreensões sociais são articulados e na qual os sujeitos envolvidos são confrontados com seus pressupostos de verdade e relações de poder/saber. A partir das análises empreendidas, conclui-se que a tensão dialética entre regularidade e singularidade - ou, de forma mais geral, estrutura e acontecimento - se encontra na base mesma das práticas discursivas estudadas, manifestando-se em diferentes níveis de análise e sob uma multiplicidade de formas, que vão desde a definição do gênero lenda urbana, passando pelos movimentos de arquivamento e atualização das narrativas, até as representações identitárias construídas e reencenadas pelos textos. / This thesis is dedicated to the study of the genre of narratives known as urban legends from a discursive perspective. Based on a corpus composed of messages exchanged in a virtual community on the Internet between 2005 and 2006, we aim at investigating the ways in which these narratives are situated, as utterances, between a discursive order which is marked by a certain regularity and the domain of the single event which is materialized through enunciation. We argue that urban legends, being generated in the midst of daily life and carrying elements that are part of this daily life in an acessible form - although in many cases enacting new and unexpected threats -, present themselves as narratives which reelaborate certain ancient plots of social experience into potencially varied combinations, thus enabling the multiplication of possible formulations of enunciative events within a more or less stable and recognizable structure. An emphasis on the discursive practice dimension through which the legends are materialized - their being recovered, contested, (re)contextualized in the space of such practice - reveals how those narratives are woven into a particularly heterogeneous and often polemical network, in which old social fears, anxieties and apprehensions are articulated and in which the subjects involved are confronted with their assumptions on truth and power/knowledge relations. From the analyses conducted, we conclude that the dialectical tension between regularity and uniqueness - or, more generically, between structure and event - can be found at the very basis of the discursive practices under scrutiny, manifesting itself on different levels of analysis and in a multiplicity of forms, which include the definition of the urban legend genre, the movements of archiving and updating of legends, and the identity representations that are built and re-enacted in the texts.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.