Author: kevinhobbs

The Meme and the Operant

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Sandy Hobbs and David Cornwell | Letters to Ambrose Merton # 27, 2002

This is an edited version of a paper read at the Association for Behavior Analysis International Conference, Venice, November 2001. Although written primarily for psychologists, we hope it will be of interest to a wider audience. It contrasts a behaviourist approach to contemporary legend (derived from B.F. Skinner’s concept of “operant conditioning”) with an approach derived from Richard Dawkins’s concept of the “meme”.

The concept of a “meme” was first proposed by Richard Dawkins, in his book The selfish gene (1976). This remarkable volume, aimed simultaneously at expert, student and layman, has been the subject of lively debate. Put briefly, Dawkins proposed a new emphasis in Darwinian thinking. Whereas Darwin had focused on the survival and evolution of species, Dawkins argued that to focus on the gene was now more powerful analytically. To this relatively prosaic proposal, Dawkins added a metaphor, taking the term “selfish”, normally applied to human behavior, and attached it to the gene as a way of highlighting his point. The fact that “selfishness” is not itself a particularly precise concept may be noted.

Returning to the more prosaic side of Dawkins’s case, the next significant feature is that he treats the gene as a “replicator”. Another example of a replicator which he suggested is something for which he felt obliged to invent a new term, the “meme”. “Meme” is suggested as a cultural equivalent to the gene. Although described rather casually in the thirteen page final chapter of Dawkins’s book, the term has met with some success. Sampling the World Wide Web on 29 August 1998, Dawkins found 5042 mentions of the adjectival form “memetic” (Dawkins, 1999). A number of books have been devoted to the meme, most notably Susan Blackmore’s The meme machine (1999), which includes a Foreword by Dawkins in which he writes (1999, p xvi):

Any theory deserves to be given its best shot, and that is what Susan Blackmore has given the theory of the meme.
Dawkins is not alone in praising the book. Another biologist, Matt Ridley, writing on Darwin in a series entitled “Giants Refreshed” for the Times Literary Supplement, presents Dawkins and Blackmore as the latest key stages in the development of Darwinian thought:

The theory of the selfish gene has swept all before it in modern evolutionary theory… But ironically, an even more unsettling theory is beginning to replace this approach: memes… Susan Blackmore has demonstrated that just as our bodies are the victims and vehicles of genes, so our minds may be victims and vehicles for ideas or memes… All this is a long way from Darwin himself, but it is his true intellectual legacy… (1999, p 13)

Note the terminology here; to the “selfishness” of the gene we now find added the idea that human beings are “victims” of memes.

Are we then in the presence of a major development in intellectual history? Perhaps, but lest we get carried away, we should note that in a subsequent issue of the same periodical, another biologist, Matthew Cobb, referred to the idea that the fittest memes survive as “tautological” and suggested it is merely a “silly dinner-party idea” (2000, p 17). Despite the enthusiastic acceptance of the concept of the meme by some writers, approval of the meme is by no means universal.

Given that there are innumerable non-behavioral terms in use which are applied to human behavior, it may be necessary at this stage to offer some justification for casting a behavioural eye over this particular example. There are two which are fairly easy to explain. First, Dawkins, who formulated the term, has written sympathetically about Skinner’s concept of selection by consequences (Dawkins, 1988), although as far as we are aware without attempting to relate the concept of the meme to that of the operant. Secondly, in her book on the meme, Blackmore, although a psychologist of a non-behavioral bent, nevertheless argues that much human behavior emerges according to the laws of operant conditioning. She acknowledges that much of what humans do is built and shaped by consequences. We tend to repeat actions which are followed by rewarding outcomes.

However, the third reason is a little more complex. It concerns a set of phenomena known usually as “contemporary legends” or “urban legends”. For several years, we have been attempting to bring a little behaviorist precision to a scholarly field where, in our view, vagueness has played too big a part (see, for example, Hobbs, 1987, Hobbs, 1989, Hobbs and Cornwell, 1991). One argument we have put forward is that the very concept “contemporary legend” should be questioned. Analysis might show that the phenomena currently so labelled might be better seen as examples of a broader, more carefully defined category. One of the leading legend scholars has suggested that this point of view which we have advocated has similarities to the suggestions of those who employ the concept of a “meme” (Brunvand, 2001). This gave us pause for thought and further encouraged us to look more closely at the meme.

But to which phenomena is the term “meme” applied? Dawkins (1976) , initially lists as examples, “tunes, ideas, catch-phrases, clothes fashions, ways of making pots or of building arches” (p 206) and later includes “the idea of God” (p 207). Blackmore deals with a wide range of topics including the origins of language, religion, the concept of an inner self and altruism. However, in explaining the concept of a meme, conveniently enough for the purposes of this paper, she starts with a contemporary legend:

Have you heard the one about the poodle in the microwave? An American lady, so the story goes, used to wash her poodle and dry it in the oven. When she acquired a brand new microwave oven, she did the same thing. Bringing the poor dog to a painful and untimely death. Then she sued the manufacturers for not providing a warning “Do not dry your poodle in this oven” – and won! (Blackmore, 1999, p 14)

Like Dawkins, Blackmore argues that a meme may be regarded as the cultural equivalent of the biological concept, the gene. The gene is a replicator and has three defining characteristics, variation, selection and retention. A meme is claimed to have those same characteristics and, at least at a superficial level, the case can be made that a story such as the one just cited has the characteristics of a replicator and hence may justifiably be termed a “meme”. These stories are told and retold, they change in the telling, and, since not all stories are passed on, those which are may thus been seen as having been selected.

However, it must be noted Blackmore deals with this contemporary legend (and indeed with other examples of memes) in a rather casual fashion. She does not refer to any specific texts collected by legend scholars and does not refer to any of the scholarly literature on such stories (see, for example, Bennett and Smith, 1993, Brunvand, 2001). In Blackmore’s defence, it might be argued that this scholarly literature has not so far presented its data in a form which would encourage her to use it. To justify the claim that contemporary legends show the characteristics of retention, variability and selection, one would need evidence which allowed us to compare different versions of a story over time. At present that is difficult to do. Difficult but not impossible.

As an illustration of the possibilities, we shall take another contemporary legend, usually referred to as The Boyfriend’s Death.

Figure 1

There were two people parked along this dark road. They were both drinking beer and after several beers the boy had to take a leak. He left the car and disappeared into the woods to position himself behind a tree. After several minutes the girl had become worried because the boy hadn’t returned. From the roof she heard a light tapping sound. She got out to call him but noticed something in the dark hanging above the car from a large tree. It was her boyfriend and he had been hung by the neck.

Text A1, collected in Kansas, 1964 (Barnes, 1966)

This single text tells us little and does not itself throw much light on whether or not we are in the presence of a meme, so we shall compare it with that in Figure 2, a text collected over twenty years later in Scotland.

Figure 2

The story was that there was a young man who had come from Aviemore who had taken his wife on honeymoon to Australia. And they were out driving in the car and the car had run out of petrol. So he was going off to get some petrol, telling her not to get out of the car. He goes off and time passes and she falls asleep. She wakes up in the darkness with a banging noise on the roof of the car and the police car sitting up ahead. And the police approach her, take her out of the car, and take her up to the police car and tell her not to look back. And she looks back and she finds an aborigine man sitting on top of the car with a pole and her husband’s head on top of the pole.

Text B3, collected by Sandy Hobbs, Paisley, 1988.

Even a casual inspection shows that there are differences between the two. The later text is about fifty per cent longer (143 words compared to 93). It contains detailed references to places, Aviemore and Australia, and to people, an aboriginal man and the police. Nevertheless the two texts contain enough in common to justify treating this as a single story: a man and a woman in a car, the man leaves the car, the man is later found dead. However, calling these texts “the same” story implies not just that there are elements in common but also that there are chains of retellings, in the course of which variations occur.

How plausible is such a claim? The main justification lies in the fact that stories with these three basic elements have been collected in different locations of the United States and the British Isles over the intervening years. Table 1 brings together information on 14 different texts (including those laid out in Figures 1 and 2). However, the manner of presentation differs from that usually adopted in contemporary legend scholarship. The common features and certain other recurring elements have been abstracted from the texts published and presented in tabular form in as near to chronological order as the information published about these texts allows us to determine.

Although these represent only a tiny fraction of the many times the story has probably been told, the information provided from this sample could actually be used by Blackmore in support of at least part of her case. The story has been retained over time and replicated. The story shows variations. The question of selection is less straightforward. We have no evidence here of this story being “selected” rather than any others. However, given that some elements not in the earliest texts become almost fixed in later versions, the story may be seen as being changed in ways which faciliate its survival.

Table 1 (a)

TEXT(b)
A1
A2
A3
A4
A5
B1
A6
A7
A8
A9
A10
B2
A11
B3

Man and woman in car
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X

On a date
X
X
X
X
X
 
X
X
X
X
 
 
 
 

Warning heard
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
X
 
X
 
 

Out of gas/petrol
 
 
X
 
 
 
 
X
X
X
X
X
X
X

Man leaves car
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X

Woman hears noises
X
X
X
X
X
 
X
X
X
X
 
 
 
X

Police arrive
 
 
X
X
X
X
 
X
X
X
 
X
X
X

“Don’t look back”
 
 
X
X
X
X
 
 
X
X
 
X
 
X

Man murdered
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X

Man found (c)
H
H
UD
U
U
D
H
U
H
H
D
D
D
D

Killer Seen
 
 
 
 
 
X
 
 
 
 
X
X
X
X

Collected
’64
’64
’68
’68
’71
’76
’79
’79
’79
’79
’79
’80
’82
’88

(a) X indicates present
(b) A USA / B British Isles
(c) H Hanged U Hanged upsidedown D Decapitated

The state of the dead man becomes more gruesome, initially hanging, then hanging upsidedown, then decapitated. The sight of the killer adds to the horror. The woman’s discovery of her companion’s fate is made more dramatic, first, by the arrival of the police and, secondly, by their warning “Don’t look back”. If these changes make the story more effective, then these variations may indeed facilitate the story’s survival.

Thus it might be suggested that if Blackmore were to look more carefully than she has so far at evidence collected by legend scholars she would not find anything likely to discomfort her. At this point, however, it is perhaps necessary to recall that the title of this paper is “The meme and the operant”. This means that another question must be raised. Is the evidence summarized in Table 1 sufficient to justify the need for the concept of the meme, as opposed to those proposed by writers adopting the perspective of behavior analysis.

Writing specifically on contemporary legend from an explicitly behaviorist perspective is fairly limited. We offered a simple behavior analysis model about a decade ago (Hobbs and Cornwell, 1991) and a social contingency analysis by Guerin and Miyazaki is currently in press. We would suggest that the evidence in Table 1 is entirely compatible with such analyses. For example, if, as Guerin and Miyazaki propose, the primary functions of such stories are to hold the attention of the audience and to entertain them, then the changes noted may be seen as faciltitating these processes. The arrival of the police and the words of the warning hold the audience in suspense as they await the disclosure to the man’s fate. It has been demonstrated by Slotkin (1988) that the same person may tell the same story quite differently on different occasions. Amongst other outcomes, this gives the individual the opportunity to learn which variations are most effective.

Our argument then is that the data collected to throw light on the plausibility of the meme, however limited, may also be interpreted as demonstrating the plausibility of an operant analysis. Is this outcome likely to be restricted to contemporary legends as opposed to other forms of cultural transmission. We think not. Consider an analysis present by Dawkins in the second (1989) edition of The Selfish Gene.

Dawkins is quite explicit in claiming the physical character of memes, writing that “If memes in brains are analogous to genes they must be self-replicating brain structures, actual patterns of neuronal wiring-up that reconstitute themselves in one brain after another” (Dawkins, 1989, p 323). He goes on to distinguish between memes and their “phenotypic” effects. However, when discussing the supposed processes whereby memes function, he is forced to deal in these “phenotypes”. In one example (Dawkins, 1989, p 328) he demonstrates that he and E. O. Wilson were independently responsible for a “mutant meme”, when they incorrectly cited a paper actually called “The genetic evolution of social behaviour” as “The genetic theory of social behaviour”. This mutated title was subsequently adopted by other authors. However, the use of this quasi-biological terminology is surely unnecessary. Dawkins himself suggests that the “mutation” was not random, but was influenced by the title of a famous work in their field “The genetic theory of natural selection”. This quite plausible suggestion is surely quite easily accommodated within an analysis which treats these titles as topographically similar operants. Dawkins’s suggestion of an underlying neuronal wiring adds nothing to our understanding of these events.

The memetic and the operant approaches to the evolution of human culture have some features in common. This is clear in the following passage from Baum’s Understanding behaviorism:

A group’s culture consists of learned behavior shared by members of the group, acquired as a result of membership of the group, and transmitted from one group member to another. Evolution of culture occurs in a manner parallel to shaping of operant behavior and genetic evolution – variation coupled with selective transmission. The unit of selection – the things that vary and are selectively transmitted – are replicators. A replicator is any entity capable of producing copies of itself. A good replicator possesses longevity, fecundity, copying fidelity and efficacy. (Baum, 1994, p 231)

The key differences between the approaches is surely a matter of parsimony. To the behavior analyst the reference to underlying neural structures is unnecessary as it adds nothing to our understanding. However, given that both parties deal for the most part in generalities in discussing culture and have in the past been unable to cite evidence beyond the anecdotal level, it is difficult to imagine either side succeeding in demonstrating the superioity of their model. However, we do not suggest that we should conclude from this that dialogue is pointless.

We challenge the advocates of the “meme” on two fronts. First, as Baum has done, we should question what the reference to a supposed neural underpinning is adding to our understanding of cultural replicators. Secondly, we invite them to produce or consider data on transmission so that the relative strengths of memetic and operant analyses may be tested. It is in this latter respect that revised ways of examining contemporary legends may play a useful part.

It is probably necessary to end by making clear what we are saying about the data in Table 1. First, although it is “abstracted” from the various texts, it is nevertheless based on verbal behavior. Secondly, although the data contained in Table 1 is obviously limited, there are substantial possibilities of expanding it, by adding information on other tellings of the same story, by undertaking similar analyses of other stories and even for generating analogous data in controlled experimentation.

References

Barnes, D. R. (1966) Some functional horror stories on the Kansas University campus, Southern Folklore Quarterly, 30, 305-312.

Baum, W. M. (1994) Understanding behaviorism: Science, behavior and culture. New York: HarperCollins.

Bennett, G. and Smith, P. (eds.) (1993) Contemporary legend: A folklore bibliography. New York: Garland.

Blackmore, S. (1999) The meme machine. London: Oxford University Press.

Brunvand, J. H. (2001) Encyclopaedia of urban legends. Denver CO: ABC-Clio.

Cobb, M. (2000, 18 February) Darwin and human behaviour, Times Literary Supplement, 17.

Dawkins, R. (1976) The selfish gene. London: Oxford University Press.

Dawkins, R. (1988) Replicators, consequences, and displacement activities, pp 33-35 in Catania, A. C. and Harnard, S. (eds.) The selection of behavior: The operant behaviorism of B. F. Skinner: Comments and consequences. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Dawkins, R. (1989) The selfish gene. (2nd Ed.) London: Oxford University Press.

Dawkins, R. (1999) Foreword, pp vii-xvii in Blackmore, S. The meme machine. London: Oxford University Press.

Guerin, B. and Miyazaki, Y. (forthcoming) Rumors, gossip, and urban legends: A social contingency theory, Summa Psicologica.

Hobbs, S. (1987) The social psychology of a “good” story, pp. 133-148 in Bennett, G., Smith, P. and Widdowson, J. D. A. (eds.) Perspectives on contemporary legend Volume II. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press.

Hobbs, S. (1989) Enough to constitute a legend?, pp 55-75 in Bennett, G. and Smith, P. (eds.) The questing beast: Perspectives on contemporary legend Volume IV. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press.

Hobbs, S, and Cornwell, D. (1991) A behavior analysis model of contemporary legend, Contemporary Legend, 1, 93-106.

Ridley, M. (2000, 28 January) From the bottom up, Times Literary Supplement, 13-14.
Slotkin, E. (1988) Legend genre as a function of audience, pp 89-111 in Bennett, G. and Smith, P. (eds.) Monsters with iron teeth: Perspectives on contemporary legend III. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press.

Note: The correct citation for the paper noted above as “Guerin and Miyazaki (forthcoming)” is:
Guerin, B and Miyazaki, Y. (2003) Rumores, chisme y leyenda urbanas: una teoria de la contingencia social, Revista latinoamericana de Psicologia, 35, 257-272.

A Ghostly Hitcher

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Bill Nicolaisen | Letters to Ambrose Merton # 13, 1998

A businessman was driving home to Scotland after a two-day trip down south, when, in the darkness, he saw a small figure walking along the hard shoulder. There was something odd about the way they were walking, he says, and stopped to see if they needed help. The figure, a young woman, never said a word and looked as if she was in shock, and he assumed she had been in an accident so insisted he take her to the nearest police station or hospital. She wordlessly got in the back of the car and he drove off. A few minutes later, when he glanced in the rear view mirror, she was gone. Shaken he went straight to the police, who, when he gave details, reacted oddly, quizzing him endlessly. It turns out he was the fourth driver to report exactly the same story involving te same woman and the same place, over a period of a year. More horrifying still, the site they all reported picking her up was the exact spot of a fatal crash a year ago, when a young woman passenger was thrown clear of the wreck and found dead some distance along the hard shoulder. She matched the description of the phantom hiker.

“Austin Healey’s diary”, The Scotsman, 29 November 1997,

Vanishing Hitchhiker Update

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Teresa Cannon | Letters to Ambrose Merton # 5, 1996

Teresa Cannon has sent us a photocopy of a three page comic strip called “The strange story: The one who got away”, which appeared in Tammy Girls Annual 1982, published by PIC Magazines Ltd.

A truck has a puncture on a bleak moor. AS the driver and hs daughter are repairing it, a prison warder approaches with an escaped convict in his custody. Their dress is old-fashioned and the warder demands they drive to Fleetwood, a prison that had been pulled down several years before.

The passengers’ destination turns out not to be the prison but a fancy dress party being hosted by the chief constable. When the truck driver’s daughter tells the chief constable that she had thought the two men were ghosts, he replies:

“Ghosts, eh? Now that’s strange. Well about fifty years ago – almost to the day, in fact – a prisoner escaped from Fleetwood. He was the only one who was never recaught… A year after he escaped someone else admitted committing the crime our escapee was put inside for. If he’d really got away, he’d have shown up for his pardon, but he never did, so I reckon he lost his life trying to cross the moors.”

He goes on to say that he started by hitching a lift in a truck, but was seen by a young girl and ra away when the truck was stopped.

“Crikey” says the driver’s daughter. She remembers that she saw a second person in convict uniform get in the back of the truck. Looking out of the window, she sees the second “convict” get out of the back of the truck. When she mentions this friend to the other two passengers, they deny all knowledge of him. Only the two of them had set out for the party.

“B-but who did I see then?”

The girl’s question is answered in the final frame of the strip by the narrator, a man in evening dress holding a glass of wine. Addressing the reader, he says:

“Perhaps it was simply someone gatecrashing the party. But I don’t think so – and neither do you, do you?”

Vanishing Hitchhiker Update

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Paul Smith | Letters to Ambrose Merton # 5, 1996

Under the heading “A haunting we will go”, the Pittsburg Post-Gazette (31October 1995) printed letters from readers about their experiences of “ghosts and other haunts”. These include the following account from Christopher Cservak, aged eight, of Bridgeville.

One night last fall I was coming home from a football game with my mom and dad and brother Reid when it started to rain. Then it started to pour, lightning flashed, and the thunder was so loud it almost woke u my brother.

Just then my dad slammed on the brakes, and I looked out the window. I saw a little blond girl standing there soaking wet. I wondered what she could be doing out by herself late at night.

My mom asked her if she needed a ride home. She said she would be grateful if we could drop her off at her house about a mile up the road. When she got in the car, she was shivering because she was so wet and cold. I offered her my green sweater s she could keep warm, and she put it on.

WE drove down the street to her house, it was still raining hard, and I was looking out the window at the lightning. When we reached her house, my dad stopped the car. I looked over to where she was sitting, and she was gone! I couldn’t believe it.

My mom ran up to the house t see if she had gone inside. A woman answered the door, and my mom asked if she a had a little girl about 8 years old with blond hair. My mom explained that we had found her by the side of the road and were worried about her.

The woman looked upset and said that she did have an -8year old daughter named Mary, but that she had died three years ago on that very night. Well, my mom couldn’t believe it! The woman told us to go back to where we had found the girl. Nearby was a cemetery where Mary was buried.

My dad drove back to the cemetery, and we got out and found Mary’s grave. Ext to her name on the headstone was hanging my favorite green sweater.

A Note About “The Vanishing Hitchhiker”

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Bill Ellis | Dear Mister Thom # 35, 1994

Bill Ellis has written to suggest that maybe the earliest clear reference to the “Vanishing Hitchhiker” plot line can be found in William Henderson’s Folklore of the Northern Counties of England (1866) The story pp 273-4 of the American edition of 1973 (Ottowa: Rowman and Littlefield) has the “hopeless pilgrimage” motif common in “Vanishing Hitchhiker” stories but unusual in a ghost story of the period. Here is the story:

“On St Thomas’s eve and day, too, have carriers and waggoners been most alarmed by the ghost of the murdered woman, who was wont to haunt the path or lane between Cradle Well and Neville’s Cross. With her child dangling at her side, she used to join parties coming or going out of Durham in carriers’ carts or wagons, would enter the vehicles and there seat herself, but always disappearing when they reached the limit of her hopeless pilgrimage.”

Bizarre Tales of a Mysterious Hitchhiker

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Bill Ellis | Dear Mister Thom # 34, 1994

FRACKVILLE – If someone walked up to you and told you a story about an experience they had or about which they heard concerning a hitchhiker who foretold “The end is near” and disappeared from “inside” a vehicle, what would you think?

Like most people, you would probably doubt the report or maybe turn the TV set to the popular “Unsolved Mysteries” show and try to summon its host, Robert Stack, to unravel the bizarre event.

Editorial sceptics

Such a story was brought to the attention of the Evening Herald recently and the reactions of editorial department personnel were predictable “Yeah, right”.

A check with state police, however, revealed troopers had received several calls relating to the hitchhiker incident.

Sgt. Barry Reed, station commander at Frackville, confirmed receiving three or four calls about the mysterious vanishing hitchhiker, from reliable and credible individuals who all shared the same experience.

The “hitchhiker” was described as a tall, thin man with long dark hair and wearing a long dark coat. He was picked up on Route61 near Frackville’s southern end on Monday, Jan 31, between 6 and 7 a.m.

Several stories

However, contrary to the “unofficial” reports, state troopers said they received no reports about the “hitchhiker” in conversation about the weather, the turbulence of society or the Angel Gabriel “tooting his horn for the second time”.

However, troopers did say reports made to them concerned the hitchhiker having said ‘I am here to tell you the end is near,’ before vanishing into thin air.

Some reports relayed to the Evening Herald alleged the mysterious hitchhiker warned, ‘Jesus is coming! Jesus is coming’ and then disappeared.

Sgy. Reed recalled that while he was stationed in Lancaster County about 10 years ago, a similar ‘hitchhiker tale was circulated.

Think it was a hoax

In reference to the Lancaster County incidents and the Schuykill County reports, Sgt. Reed said, ‘I believe it is a hoax. But the people are reliable.’

Sgt. Reed said he travels ‘up and down’ the Frackville grade to Saint Clair daily and never noticed anything.

‘Even people who never pick up hitchhikers pick them up,’ said Sgt. Reed, who particularly pointed to a case involving a Frackville woman who apparently had never before stopped for a hitchhiker.

Motorists tend to feel sorry for hitchhikers, especially during the cold winter weather, and subsequently act contrary to their beliefs by picking them up.

Sgt. Reed said, ‘In at least one of the reports, I regarded the person as the most reliable.’
No calls elsewhere

A check with the Hazelton and Schuyhill Haven state police revealed there were no calls about the mystical man.

Sgt. Reed offered this advice to motorists, ‘Don’t pick up any hitchhikers. That’s always good advice.’

Story by Rosanne M. Hall, Evening Herald (Shenandoah, PA), 4 February 1994.

Haunted by a Song

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Mark Moravec | Dear Mister Thom # 30, 1993

Mark has found the clipping below which recounts an English “Vanishing Hitchhiker” story. He asks whether any reader has heard the specific legend mentioned. The item comes from New Idea, a popular Australian women’s magazine. It is also, he observes, “an example of the exploitation of contemporary legend storylines by popular culture, this time as the basis for a song”.

If any DMT reader with access to local newspapers in the South East would like to check whether the story rally did form the basis for a court case in Southend, we would dearly love to hear from you.

“Haunted by a Song

Several times over the past few years rock star and actor Jon English has made the big decision to drop the ghost song She Was Real! From his concert performance.

But for some inexplicable reason, at the last minute before he steps on stage, he always changes his mind.

It’s now 10 years since Jon wrote and first performed She Was Real! Which tells the eerie story of a ghostly sighting of Susie, a teenage girl who had been killed in a traffic accident. And he still can’t bring himself to put the song to rest permanently.

‘Susie’s ghost is just hanging around and haunting me’, Jon lightheartedly confesses wit a hint of nervousness. ‘I could have killed her off from my concerts long ago, but here we are 10 years since I wrote the song and she still won’t go home. I’m beginning to wonder if I’ll ever get rid of her.’

She was real! Is based on an 1982 court case in Southend, England, where Jon’s family lived. A young motorcyclist had faced the court charged with causing malicious mischief, and in his defence he said he’d been riding his motorcycle around midnight in Southend when he was hailed by a girl hitchhiker of about 18.

They stopped to have coffee at a café, and she told him her name was Susie. She told the motorcyclist where she lived so he could drop her off.

When they came to the Cheltenham Road roundabout the bike went over a bump and the young man thought he heard a thud from behind. He looked around and the girl was not there.

He rode to the nearest police station to report the accident. The police returned to the roundabout with him and after a lengthy search there was no sign of the missing girl. So the police went to the address the motorcyclist gave them. A middle-aged woman gave them the astonishing information that her daughter Susan had died in 1970 in a motorcycle crash at the Cheltenham Road roundabout.

Police tracked down the motorcyclist and, although he stuck to his story, he was arrested for the trouble he had caused.

‘The guy was so convincing in court, they let him off’, says Jon.

‘It’s a story that fascinated me so much I just had to write a song about it’, he says.

‘She just won’t disappear, Creepy, isn’t it?’

Story: Alan Veitch”

The Phantom Meaning-Giver Strikes Again

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Gillian Bennett | Dear Mister Thom # 23, 1991

In an article, “modern-day folk tales too strange to be true”, in the Sacramento Bee (31 May 1991), the writer, Katherine Bishop, goes on a quest for urban legends and finds Jan Brunvand and Alan Dundes. Brunvand keeps to description, but Dundes engages in some pretty fancy interpretation when asked to comment on thefamiliar legend of “The Vanishing Hitchhiker”.

“Dr Alan Dundes” says Bishop, “a professor of anthropology at the University of Caifornia, Berkeley, said the story was widespread and the the driver was always a man and the hitchhiker was always female.

“Instead of viewing the events in the ale from the point of view of the driver, he said, thetale should be told from the point of view of the young woman, since it is usually told by adolescent girls to one another.

“It is a cautionary tale” he said, warning girls that if they allow themselves to be “picked up” – an idea loaded with sexual innuendo and threat – their punishment will be that they can ever go home again.”

There is only one thing wrong with this statement – it is ridiculous.

Unfortunately it is typical of the sort of things that modern legend scholars are coming up with these days – no better, no worse. Grated, if a journalist called me up while I was having my lunch and asked me to say something interesting about ”The Vanishing Hitchhiker”, I probably would say something silly too. But many respected academics are making similar statements in respectable professional journals too, so these sorts of interpretations can’t all be blamed on the importunateness of the press.

The trouble is that meaning is thought to reside in the plot or the content of the story, not in the minds of the tellers and hearers who share it. In effect, therefore, these meanings actually reside in the mind of the commentator him/herself.

In fact, the stories can be fitted into almost any preconceived intellectual formula. Max Muller would have seen that “The Vanishing Hitchhiker” was plainly the remnant of a moon myth. Its central character is a pale virgin who walks the night, disappears at regular times ad places, only to reappear once more at the spot where she was first seen. Obviously the vanishing hitchhiker is the vanishing moon. Even the car can be fitted in to the scheme: it is dark, it is enclosed and secret, it swallows her up – it is plainly the night.

Frazer would have seen it as a very interesting and important vegetation myth. With the aid of comparative data from the Bonka-Bonka tribe of the Upper Limpopo Valley, he would have shown that it is the last remnant of a goddess cult. And very exciting it would have been, for usually the vegetation God who dies and is revived again is a male, but here the hitchhiker who dies and reappears and dies again is a female.

Nowadays the fashion is for psychoanalytic-symbolic approaches, allied to a functionalist orientation which demands that modern legends are dire social warnings. Hence, the Dundes interpretation of the legend as a sexual cautionary tale. However, even given this framework, it doesn’t make sense to say that the story warns girls that if they get picked up by men they’ll never go home again. In these stories, the girl is already dead before she takes the ride. If anything, it would go to prove the reverse – that her only, last chance of life is to be picked up (what’s more it would actually accord with many girls’ opinions).

So, personally, if we have to have a modern “psychological” explanation of the story, I prefer te interpretation which my friend Professor Toni Baloni, a keen student of modern folklore, proposes.

“The Vanishing Hitchhiker”, she wrote only recently, “is best understood as a poignant story about an unwanted pregnancy and the consequent stillbirth. The car in which the passenger travels is obviously the womb – an enclosed space in which the stranger travels for a short time, lulled by the drone and vibration of the body’s engine, the parent heart. The hitchhiker – unnamed, unknown, mysterious – is an unborn child. This much is quite clear and allows us to reconstruct the rest of the allegory.

The hitchhiker flags down the driver and imposes herself unexpectedly on him (we can see here the monstrous effect of out paternalistic society, where even the procreative function is linguistically and metaphorically attributed to the male) – so plainly this is not a planned pregnancy. The hitchhiker appears out of nowhere with no past: it appears then that the woman does not know who the father is.

But there the child is, to be carried, silently and passively, to her destination. Alas! The pregnancy doe not continue to full term: the “hitchhiker” disappears from the “car” in mid-journey. Very little is left to mark her short passage of life – a pool of water on the floor (waters of life? Amniotic fluid?), a marker on te grave, maybe a picture. She never arrives at her destination. All that is left of her is grief.

Plainly this is a cautionary tale put out by the London Rubber Company.”

Apostrophe Watch

/ kevinhobbs

Sandy Hobbs | Letters to Ambrose Merton # 23, 2000

In his column in The Guardian newspaper on 6 June 2000, Matthew Engel declared:

“The apo’strophes days done!”

Engel noted that, although the chain store J Sainsbury is being “rebranded” Sainsbury’s (as opposed to Sainsburys), many existing British company and brand names are “apostrophe-free zones”, citing Barclays, Lloyds, Mothers Pride amongst his examples. This is balanced by what he calls “the greengrocers’ apostrophe” which “sneaks into everything from apple’s to yam’s”.

According to Engel, the apostrophe “was introduced from France (like rabies) in the mid-16th century, and has caused nothing but trouble ever since”. In the late 17th century some regularity began to appear in the use of the apostrophe in the genitive singular. However, place names “were and are shambolic”: Golders Green but St John’s Wood; Barons Court but Earl’s Court. Engel also notes the confusion over singular names ending in “s”. “Do they take an extra ‘s’ or not?”

“The rules governing the apostrophe are incoherent, illogical and of dubious provenance. Why did whose replace who’s?… Bernard Shaw had the answer 100 years ago. Do away with the apostrophe.”

In contrast to Engel, Inspector Morse and Sergeant Lewis, the Oxford detectives created by Colin Dexter, both show a concern with misused apostrophes in the latest (and last?) book in the series. Does their concern reflect the point of view of the author?

First, Morse:

Morse watched his visitor waddling somewhat steadily towards the police car parked confidently in the ‘Resident’s Only’ parking area. (Yes! Morse had mentioned the apostrophe to the Chairman of the Residents’ Welfare Committee). (p. 28)

Later Lewis interviews Biff, a pub landlord wearing a T-shirt bearing the words “The Maidens Arms” (p. 122). As Lewis leaves, he asks:

“Shouldn’t there be an apostrophe before the ‘s’?”

Biff grinned. “Funny you should say that. Fellow in here last night asked me exactly the same thing!” (p. 125)

The “fellow” was Morse.

Thirdly, we are told the text of instructions issued staff at a dump site:

MEMO FROM SITE MANAGER

Thames Valley Police have advised of the possibility of a human body, probably bagged, being recently conveyed from the Redbridge Centre in Oxford. Everyone is asked to be extra vigilant and to report anything unusual (or usual provided its a body).

The author comments:

Morse himself would have been pleased to write such a succinct note – though inserting, of course, an apostrophe in the humorous parenthesis. (p. 135)

Colin Dexter, The Remorseful Day, London: Pan Books Paperback Edition, 2000. (Hardback Edition, 1999)

Apostrophes

/ kevinhobbs

Sandy Hobbs | Letters to Ambrose Merton # 22, 2000

Under the heading “Farewell, My Lovely, in the last issue, I suggested that popular usage was leading the the death of “apostrophe s”. here are two more pieces of evidence.

A pub in central Paisley calls itself “Hamishes House”. Is there one Hamish? Or are there more? Hamish’s? Hamishs’?

Ira Levin’s novel The Stepford Wives was recently republished for Sight and Sound by Bloomsbury of London. On page 32 there is a reference to “a pitcher of Bloody Mary’s”. This book was first published in Britain in 1972 and presumably earlier in the United States. Was the punctuation the same originally?