Language and Written Expresion IV Teacher: Blas Bigatti Student: Valeria Niell
Urban Legends and Fables: Could “Humans Can Lick Too” do to teenagers what “The Wolf and the Seven Kids” does to children?
Are Urban Legends the older sisters of traditional fables? Urban legends imply morals in a hidden way with feasible, realistic and “mature” facts (no talking animals), whereas fables state morals explicitly, in a childish fashion (with talking animals in enchanted forests or cute hamlets). According to Susana Quiroga (1998-2004) and Marta Vega et al. (2007), in their development, adolescents undergo outbursts of rage and a sense of power that lead them to challenge adult authority. Trying to talk to them in this period is difficult, thus resorting to urban legends could help reaching them in order to warn them and/or to give them pieces of advice. Once upon a time, when we were children and we misbehaved or disregarded any instruction, our parents would alert us by telling us a fable, so that the moral would give us a lesson. For example, if children need to be left home alone, in order to prevent them from opening the door to strangers, “The Wolf and the Seven Kids” would come into play. “Remember, not to open the door to the big bad Wolf or else, he will eat you all”, said Mother Goat to her seven little Kidsi.Now, your kids are also warned. In fact, the purpose of traditional fables is to teach and to persuade children through morals. In the case of “The Wolf and the Seven Kids”, the moral would be “do not open the door to strangers”. Other instances of preaching morals are the one present in “The Shepherd’s Boy and the Wolf”: “There is no believing a liar, even when he speaks the truth” and the one in “Little Red Riding Hood”: “listen to your mother”. But how do we give pieces of advice to teenagers? As rebellious as they are, trying to teach them will produce the opposite reaction, because, when challenging authority, they do the contrary as they are told (from Quiroga, 1998-2004 and Vega et al. 2007).