140 Children’s
Folklore
children as well as children in other environments. Examination of the show’s lyr-
ics archive reveals how successfully
Sesame Street
has represented children’s folk-
lore. Traditional songs include the clapping game “Down Down Baby” and “Miss
Mary M M M.” The latter begins with cleverly altered wording: “Miss Mary
M M M / Made mucho mess, mess, mess / Spilled chocolate milk milk milk /
All down her dress dress dress”
(Sesame Street Lyrics Archive).
Other songs, such
as “Monster
in the Mirror,” reflect legends about mirror apparitions. Some of the
most amusing songs are parodies, such as “Cereal Girl” (based on Madonna’s
“Material Girl”) and “Chariots of Fur” (based on the theme song from the film
Chariots of Fire
).
Some television series have dramatized legends from children’s and adoles-
cents’ oral tradition. Rod Serling’s
Twilight Zone
(1959–64), for example, capti-
vated young viewers with its presentation of stories
that straddled the domains
of folklore, fantasy literature, and science fiction. The episode “The Living Doll”
(1963) introduced a doll named “Talky Tina,” given as a birthday gift to a little
girl named Christie. Based on children’s “China Doll” legends and the popular
“Chatty Cathy” doll of the 1960s, Tina uttered the memorable line “My name is
Talky Tina, and I’m going to kill you.” A well-developed version of the “China
Doll” legend is included in chapter 3.
A more recent series,
Are You Afraid of the Dark?
(1992–96),
appealed to pre-
adolescents who were enjoying the “good scares” of slumber parties and sleep-
away camp. Presented on the Nickelodeon channel for children, this series used
many traditional tales and legends as a basis for its episodes. In one of the first
episodes, “The Tale of the Lonely Ghost” (1992), a girl visited a haunted house,
where she found a sad little ghost. “The Tale of the Phantom Cab” (1992) intro-
duced two brothers who had gotten lost in the woods.
After meeting a reclusive
scientist and a mysterious cab driver, the boys saved their own lives by solving a
traditional riddle. One of the most suspenseful episodes of the show’s first season
in 1992 was “The Tale of the Prom Queen,” loosely based on the “Vanishing
Hitchhiker” legend that has entertained children and adults for centuries. Jan
Harold Brunvand’s
Th
e Vanishing Hitchhiker
(1981) explains this legend’s travels
through different cultural areas over a long period of time.
Reality television shows have also included some elements of children’s folk-
lore.
Kid Nation,
which began in the fall of 2007, showed 40 children trying to
form a society of their own in the New Mexican desert. The
producers divided
the children into four districts—yellow, blue, green, and red—for a color war that
would determine their class: upper class, merchant, cook, or laborer. At schools
and summer camps, many children have played competitive games as members
of
color-coded teams, but
Kid Nation
’s color war gave the familiar pattern a new
kind of social stratification. Besides vying for class status, the children competed
for gold stars worth $20,000. One child took the role of bully, and others became
Contexts 141
the bully’s targets. Fascinated and horrified by this show,
journalists and others
compared it to William Golding’s novel
Lord of the Flies
(1954), in which chil-
dren stranded on a desert island form a society of their own that disintegrates into
brutal misbehavior.
Television commercials have also included children’s folklore. An Oreo cookie
commercial in the summer of 2007, for example,
shows boys at camp passing
along a message by whispering in each others’ ears. The first boy whispers “Billy’s
got an Oreo cakester!” When the chain of transmission ends, the message has be-
come “Billy’s got his first chest hair!” This commercial succeeds in getting viewers’
attention by combining a familiar summer camp scene with a popular message-
whispering game that is often called Telephone. This commercial reminds viewers
of the importance of “firsts” in the march toward maturity.
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