Response Assignment # 6

For next Tuesday, please read/listen to the following:

• Read: Perry, Julie. “A Look at Urban Legends: the Gothic Outweighs the Enlightened”
• Listen to: Commentary: Living Urban Legends, NPR (National Public Radio)

Afterwards, choose your own urban legend to discuss (NOT one of the examples provided in the reading/NPR show). If you can’t think of one (and please provide the legend or its link), then you can visit any number of sites to find one, though this is a good one: http://www.snopes.com/. The reading also highlights numerous sources for urban legends at the bottom of the article.

Then, consider your chosen urban legend and discuss how it relates to any of the concepts, characteristics, or themes discussed in the reading. Here are some questions to get you started (and that illustrate how I want you to approach this assignment):

1. Perry suggests that urban legends usually “play to four main anxieties;” how so? And how does your legend speak to one or more of these anxieties? What is the effect? What does your legend suggest about culture or our cultural anxieties?

2. Perry also discusses the “theme of excess” that seems to thrive within urban legends. In what ways is your chosen urban legend excessive? What does this (or these) excesses potentially suggest about our contemporary culture, and why?

3. What role does gender play in urban legends, and how are those characteristics reflected within your chosen urban legend? Again, what might these types of urban legends suggest about culture or our attitudes? Elaborate on all of this using your own urban legend as an example.

* While some of what you discuss will certainly be your own suppositions or opinions, you MUST make reference to the reading and explain how some of the concepts discussed are relevant to your chosen urban legend.