Alan Dundes

Urban folklore in the paperwork empire

© Bryan Zepp Jamieson

4/8/05

http://zeppscommentaries.com/Sociology/dundes.htm

My first year in college, I took a course called "Cultural Anthropology." I had no idea what Cultural Anthropology might be – something to do with insect hive life, perhaps – but I had been assured by my friends that the class was a sop, an easy "A" and like most freshmen, I had overestimated my capacities and signed up for 22 units. I wasn’t so self-assured as to make all my classes grinds like calculus or micro. I was willing to take a sop course if one fell in my lap.

It was an easy "A" all right, but it wasn’t because it was an easy class. In fact, it was the most intellectually and emotionally demanding course I ever took. It was also the most intellectually and emotionally stimulating one, too. I got that A because I was utterly fascinated, and worked my butt off in the class. (For the curious, I dropped three courses, including calc, and wound up with 12 units. And a keener appreciation of my limitations.)

Until I took the class, my only exposure to the idea of extended marriages came from Robert Heinlein’s then recently released novel, "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" I had assumed the extended marriages described in Heinlein’s book were the product of his imagination, and didn’t know that it, like most of the more fascinating and "alien" elements of good science fiction, was grounded in nothing more than the incredible variety of earth’s life and human customs and cultures. Manny’s family would have been right at home in Polynesia.

I came away from that class with the realization that in many ways, it was the most educational and personally expanding class I was ever likely to take. Having been raised in Canada, England, and the US, and having lived in a couple of other countries, I was aware of cultural differences, but my background, wider than most folks, was still a very narrow band in a huge spectrum.

I’ve often thought that if a good, honest course in cultural world anthropology was a required course in high school, the noisome collection of misunderstandings, xenophobia and parochialism that’s known as "social conservatism" in America would never have really ever gotten off the ground. It takes profound ignorance, and a conviction that the habits of your tribe are the laws of the universe, to be a social conservative. Anyone who thunders that "marriage is a covenant established by God between ONE man and ONE woman" knows nothing of the marriage customs of most of humanity. They know nothing of the marriage customs of pre-industrial America, and disregard the informal customs of divorce and betrayal in America today. And they CERTAINLY don’t know what God’s opinions on marriage were; the Old Testament, including the part with the ten commandments, has a whole bevy of laws "handed down by God" regarding the care and feeding of plural wives, concubines, slave girls, and slave boys. (Does anyone think those kids just spent all their time waggling palm fronds at the grand vizier and being low-tech air conditioners?)

Rereading Heinlein after taking that course, I realized that he was trying to tell me all this right along. People who think the rules of their tribe are laws of the universe are boobs. I guess he must have taken the same class at some point. Or maybe he was just smarter than me.

This was all brought back to me when I read in the Sacramento Bee obit column of the death of Doctor Alan Dundes. Dr. Dundes, Professor of Folklore and Anthropology at the University of California Berkeley, had been an institution there since 1963. He won the Pitre Prize in 1993, the international award for lifetime achievement in anthropology, folklore and ethnology, and was still going strong right up until his death two days before April Fools’ Day 2005 (he wrote a book about April Fools Day, as well). He was the author of no less than 59 books, many of which sold well outside of campus bookstores, on all manner of things relating to folklore and anthropology. Some of those books were controversial, for much the same reason that the Kinseys were controversial; he informed a culture that is nearly psychotically in denial of its own nature and background. His obit was more entertaining than most such are.

Titles of his books included: "Parsing through Customs: Essays by a Freudian Folklorist," "Sacred Narrative: Readings in the Theory of Myth," and "Cracking Jokes: Studies of Sick Humor Cycles and Stereotypes"

One of his better known titles is "Why Don't Sheep Shrink in the Rain?: A Further Collection of Photocopier Folklore," a book which examines 180 of the bulletin board items and emails that continually make the rounds, including ones everyone has seen such as "Thank you for not smoking," "This is not Burger King," "Lord, grant me the serenity..." "Reasons why E-mail is like a penis," and "Five Reasons it’s a bummer to be an egg." These jokes and anti-authoritarian jabs are as indicative of the basic elements of a culture, Dundes argues, as is its literature and fine art. Perhaps more so, since neither of those usually pertain to the issues of cubicle life, or what is considered funny behavior in an elevator, things that address our quotidian existence more closely than museum pieces do.

"Life Is Like a Chicken Coop Ladder: A Study of German National Character Through Folklore" was unpopular with some Germans because in the book he examined the role of folklore and myth in the rise of Adolf Hitler.

Dundes had a series of books devoted to what he called "Urban folklore in the paperwork empire." It examines the attitudes and humor of the office place, and explains why Scott Adams’ "Dilbert" is such a resounding success as a cartoon strip.

In "Holy Writ as Oral Lit" Dundes was the first anthropologist to apply the same yardsticks used by folklorists to determine the provenance of the stories in the Old Testament to those in the New Testament. In America, at least, it was reasonably safe to question the Old Testament stories, but the New Testament, source of Christianity, created a firestorm.

Dundes wrote, "It is not a question of ‘making’ the bible folklore; it is folklore." This upset the Christian right (social conservatives who like to hit people over the head with their god), who apparently were unaware of the fact that folklore doesn’t necessary imply falsity. In American folklore, for instance, the myth of young George Washington and the cherry tree, which never happened, stands alongside Davy Crockett at the Alamo, an event which certainly did happen. Folklore isn’t a collection of fairy stories; it’s something more integral to a society, the background hum of our lives, the dial tone of the national and cultural psyche.

Religionists like to think their folklore is above that somehow, and in the case of Dundes, were enraged because he showed how the bible borrowed liberally from existing folklore in neighboring cultures to create its own mythos. He also addressed items in the bible that made people uncomfortable, such as the incident where Jesus, enraged that a fig tree isn’t bearing fruit out of season, demands that god blow it to smithereens. People like to pretend their deities are sane and reasonable, even though there isn’t a scintilla of evidence that anyone has ever devised a deity that was sane or reasonable.

Dundes was a keen observer who realized that ballads were folklore, and that the tune in a ballad was every bit as significant as the lyrics. Imagine "Greensleeves" done in a hip-hop style. Doesn’t quite have the same impact, does it? "Suicide is Painless" makes for a rather bleak poem, but nearly everyone likes the song, better known as "The theme from M*A*S*H". There’s another case of a blues song that was done over by a rock band in the exact same scansion as a traditional hymn; "House of the Rising Sun" has lyrics that can be interchanged perfectly with those of "Amazing Grace". Both songs carry enormous emotional impact to the listener, and this suggests that the meter of the tune is every bit as important as the words themselves. The Blind Boys of Alabama have done covers of both, and it’s impossible to tell which is which.

In "Cracking Jokes: Studies of Sick Humor Cycles and Stereotypes," he looked at how society dealt with displeasure or discomfort through humor. He cited the rise of "dead baby" jokes, noting that they arose at the same time that abortion was forced into the public consciousness by Roe vs. Wade. I remember the first Challenger joke showing up on local BBSes literally within hours of the explosion ("What does NASA mean?" "Need Another Seven Astronauts").

But his most controversial stance came over a subject that most Europeans would consider trivial. He examined the role of the NFL in American life. He wrote "The Super Bowl is an example of a thinly disguised symbolic homoerotic masturbatory phallic duel."

This caused a few football fans to notice. They immediately screeched, dropped loads, and started throwing feces in all directions. It didn’t help that one wit wrote, "If it WAS a homoerotic phallic duel, it would be government subsidized, and played in junior high schools."

Dundes probably got more hate mail over that than Jesus, American history, marriage customs and teen sex combined. You can make fun of Jesus, but by god you don’t say stuff like that about the Green Bay (Fudge) Packers!

He wound up with an unlikely ally (although I don’t know if it was a deliberate attempt to be an ally, or indeed if one man was aware of the other) when the comedian George Carlin did a bit called "Baseball versus Football." In it, Carlin employed two voices, as carefully crafted as the melody and tenor in one of Dundes’ ballad examples. The first voice was soft, friendly, caring, the voice of a bookstore clerk in a New Age shop. The second was loud, stentorian, drenched in double Y chromosomes, the voice of the guy who does the ads for Monster Truck rallies. Carlin interspersed the voices, softly for baseball, loud for football. Lines in the 10 minute bit included,

"IN FOOTBALL, THERE ARE PENALTIES. In baseball, there are errors."

"IN FOOTBALL, YOU PENETRATE THE END ZONE. In baseball, you come home."

"IN FOOTBALL, THERE ARE LONG BOMBS. In baseball, there are pop flies."*

That pretty much put paid to the notion among society at large that there were no homoerotic elements to football. But of course, football fans don’t accept it, and still react in rage to jokes about tight ends and wide receivers.

Doctor Alan Dundes made a massive contribution to our understanding of ourselves, and he would probably be pleased to know that his work has, in itself, become a part of our ethological mythos, a part of that background hum like Davy Crockett and "I cannot tell a lie."

I wish I had met him at some point. I think I would have liked him.

PS: On a somewhat unrelated sidenote, Dundes and Carlin left me convinced long ago that football is for conservatives, and baseball is for liberals. I believe (and I bet Dundes would have agreed) that we form our political opinions and social stances because we have predilections to be liberal or conservatives from our youth, but that we believe ourselves as being one or the other because of our opinions. We assume this because we like to believe that we arrived at our policy stances as a result of reason and thought, and not as a product of nature and nurturing.

For this reason, it probably explains why I am a Dodger fan, and could care less that Los Angeles doesn’t have an NFL team at all.