













































 

THE 2000 AFS COLUMBINE PANEL 

INTORDUCTION: FOLKLORE RESPONDS 

TO COLUMBINE AND ADOLESCENCE 

SIMON J. BRONNER 

It may surprise you to know that this issue on adolescent folklore is a first. Its 
special claim is being a thematic set of essays focusing on adolescence as a 
social category of folkloric production by teenagers and for folkloric response 
by adults and children. This is not to say that folklorists have not been 
listening to teenagers since adolescence became known as a prominent life 
stage in the twentieth century. Especially in American colleges, folklorists fill 
archives with collections by and from adolescents, but they have rarely used 
these materials for a focused inquiry into the age. At the same time that some 
of the best known American folklore genres, such as contemporary legends 
and initiation rituals, derived largely from teenagers, it may be argued that, 
overall, age as a social category of folkloric production has been slow to be 
recognized, and adolescence as a vague period between childhood and 
adulthood has been given even less. To drive the point home, one can note 
that standard reference works in the field such as The Standard Dictionary  
of Folklore, Mythology, and Legend (ed. Maria Leach, Funk and Wagnalls, 
1949), American Folklore: An Encyclopedia (ed. Jan Harold Brunvand, 
Garland, 1996), Folklore: An Encyclopedia of Beliefs, Customs, Tales, Music 
and Art (ed. Thomas A. Green, ABC-CLIO, 1997), A Dictionary of English 
Folklore (ed. Jacqueline Simpson and Steve Roud, Oxford, 2000), and 
Penguin Dictionary of American Folklore (by Harry Oster and Alan Axelrod, 
Penguin, 2000) lack entries for adolescence. This omission is compounded by 
folkloristic neglect of perspectives from psychological and human develop-
ment or family and youth studies, with which studies of adolescence abound. 
Indeed, such perspectives, associated with sociological and psychological 
disciplines, have not been commonly incorporated into culture studies; 
although, family and youth is one of the pillars of folklore's "social contexts." 

And why should such perspectives be incorporated into culture studies? 
The contributors to this issue may answer that inquiry into the ways that 
cultural expectations of age are formed suggests perspectives on aging. 
Within folklore studies, the field of children's folklore has been a location for 
observation of the cultural adaptation to aging. If the argument is made that 
folklore is a force in everyday life, then aging as a process all humans endure 
should be fundamental to 



 

BRONNER 

the expression of folklore. Further, if the argument is made that folklore 
persists in the modern world because it serves social and psychological 
functions for us as individuals and members of groups and society, then age 
relative to family and community raises many of the questions for which we 
seek answers of adjustment. In childhood above other ages, folklorists 
recognize rapid social change leading to cultural production as individuals 
age and form identities. Therefore the folklore in childhood that forms to 
communicate within a large semiliterate, age-stratified group is a 
conspicuous cultural marker. Folklorists are hardly alone in seeing the social 
connections that result from separation of children into school grades and 
affiliation with families. Still, they may be drawn to cultural differences by 
race, ethnicity, and gender precisely because they stand out physically 
before the ordinariness of age. They may also be lured to the analysis of 
texts categorized into genres or the context of region before age, because of 
the artistic composition inherent in folklore. 

Then came the tragedy at Columbine High School in 1999 and a cascade 
of commentaries in the popular press on the troubled and at times menacing 
teen as a problem of age. Looking for explanation, early reports speculated 
that the tragedy was racially motivated, but interviews with participants 
revealed that scenario to be unlikely. Turning to questions of what was 
occurring culturally, and emotionally, for the pair of killers at their age, 
commentators tended to exaggerate the exotic life of the American teen with 
folkloric overtones-rumors, legends, beliefs, rituals, pranks, cults, and dress. 
Writers separated the innocent child from the menacing teen, since the 
assumption could often be heard that the troubled youths were "normal," 
happy children until they entered the dark door of adolescence. In the movie 
Planet of the Apes released in 2001, an ape warns a parent thinking of adopt-
ing a youthful human pet, "Be sure to get rid of it before puberty; one thing 
you don't want in your house is a human teenager." Implicit in such popular 
texts is a search for an explanation for the violence, rebellion, and alienation 
that seemed to be in the chemical mix of adolescence and, in the case of 
school shootings, were thought to have fired affected teens to the point of 
combustion. 

The kind of folklore reported in the popular press through the  
spate of school shootings during the 1990s stressed the adolescent search, 
assumed to be characteristic of the age, for eerie supernatural realms, bizarre 
bonding rituals, and sexual adventures. Journalists voyeuristically 
documented shocking signifiers of identity in dress, hair, body-piercing, 
music, and tattooing, and a subversive development of alternative or counter-
mainstream lifestyles (including formation of 

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FOLKLORE RESPONDS TO COLUMBINE AND ADOLESCENCE 

gangs and even attraction to satanic and diabolical cults). For some, these are 
signs of a culture in decline, and folklore as a repository for anti-social 
values. For others, it shows a cultural creativity that comes with recognition 
of adolescence as an increasingly differentiated social movement at the heart 
of a vibrant popular culture. To be sure, it was not uncommon for published 
ethnographies and filmed documentaries to show high school culture to be 
essentially conservative, with revival of civic rituals of conformity and class 
loyalty surrounding football games, graduations, and proms. 

Statistics kept on juvenile crime showed a decline in assaults and 
violence during the 1990s, and yet opinion polls revealed a popular 
perception that youth violence is spreading and juveniles are increasingly 
considered dangerous and feared. "Teen violence, school violence, and 
gangs" consistently shows up as a significant problem "facing the United 
States" in public opinion polls. When a national sample of Americans was 
asked shortly before Columbine by the Public Agenda Foundation for the 
"first thing that comes to your mind" to describe teenagers, the largest 
percentage, 27 percent, replied "generally negative comments." The next 
largest group was "Disrespectful/Rude/Lacking manners" at 12 percent 
followed by "Rebellious/Uncontrollable/ Wild" at 10 percent (Roper Center, 
1999). And one thing for sure, they thought that teens faced more problems 
than they did (80 percent). A different survey organization asked parents of 
teenagers shortly after Columbine, "what is the most important problem 
facing people their age," and the leading answer was "social pressures (popu-
larity and 'fitting in'), at 29 percent; "crime and violence" was at 8 percent 
(Roper Center, 1999). Especially indicative of this view is the answer with 
folkloristic implications to the question, "If your teen had to choose between 
fitting in with friends or becoming outstanding in some way, which would 
your teen choose?" The survey sponsor was surprised by the high number of 
Americans who replied "fitting in" (43 percent), and yet that observation 
leads to consideration of the intensity of the social groupings in adolescence 
that often rely on expressions of folklore for a sense of identity. 

Against the background of such social surveys, folklore can be seen 
being "expressive" for teenagers and "attitudinal" for adults. Consider these 
examples of folklore of (production), and about (response), school shootings. 

-October 1,1997, Pearl, Mississippi. At the June 1998 trial for Luke 
Woodham, 16, charged with entering his high school with a rifle under his 
trench coat and killing two students and wounding seven oth- 

9 



 

BRONNER 

ers, he testifies that he was influenced by a group of youths calling itself 
"The Kroth." The youths engaged in violent role-playing games and 
conjured spells against their enemies. 

-April 28, 1998, Pomona, California. Two boys, 14 and 17, are shot to 
death at an elementary school playground after a fight escalates between 
two rival "party crews," which stage parties with music and disc jockeys. A 
13-year-old boy, whose name is withheld by authorities, is taken into 
custody and charged as a minor. 

-April 20, 2000, Columbine, Colorado. Reports on the lifestyles of 
Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold who murdered 12 classmates and a teacher 
before shooting themselves speculate on the planning of the assault to 
commemorate Adolf Hitler's 110th birthday. They are connected to a group 
called the "Trench Coat Mafia," described by columnist Joe Conason as 
"young alienated wannabes." Their preoccupation with "industrial" music, 
the columnist asserts, "suggests the possible influence of a fascistic youth 
subculture that has inspired horrific violence elsewhere." 

-November 25,2001, New Bedford, Massachusetts. Police arrest Eric 
McKeehan, 17, and two 15-year-olds whose names were withheld because 
of their age, for conspiring to commit a Columbine-style attack on the high 
school. The Boston Globe quoted Eric McKeehan's mother, as saying her 
son was not guilty. Ms. St. Hilaire, 52, said her son had been in rebellion 
since the sudden death of his father in September and had started wearing 
dark clothes and a Mohawk hairstyle and piercing various parts of his body. 
The New York Times on November 27 quoted parents of the three boys por-
traying the group as "harmless teenagers, somewhat troubled perhaps, but 
not capable of the violence they were accused of plotting." 

Added to the above suggestions of youth forming "esoteric" or subcultural 
folklife, are examples of "exoteric" adult lore about the shooters circulating 
on the Internet and through faxes: 

1999. One of the boys who murdered his classmates in Littleton 
prepared by designing new computer games levels that resembled his 
school and peopling them with representations of his classmates (declared 
"false" on the Urban Legends Reference Pages at http:// www.snopes2.com) 

1999. Chain letters are circulating with the text, "This forward is 
dedicated to all of the students of Littleton, Colorado. For every person this 
forward is sent to The City of Denver, Colorado will give .25 cents to the 
town of Littleton. Now this may not seem like much to you, but as soon as 
this gets around it all starts to add up. Please. If you just take the time to 
send this it will help the victims of the terrible incident that happened today. 
Send this to as many people you can and start building a new hope for the 
students." (Declared a 

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FOLKLORE RESPONDS TO COLUMBINE AND ADOLESCENCE 

hoax, on Urban Legends and Folklore page at http:// urban legends.about. 
com/librarv /blchain4 .htm) 

1999. Chain letters are circulating with the text, "As of right now, 
there are 25 confirmed dead CHILDREN and faculty and over 30 critically 
injured in yet another (High) school shooting spree. I'm asking you, as 
fellow members and friends to please pray and keep in your hearts these 
poor families of the victims." (Declared of questionable origin on Urban 
Legends and Folklore page at http://urbanlegends.about.com/librarv 
/blchain2.htm) 

Probably the first folkloristic commentary on Columbine was published 
in the New York Folklore Society Newsletter by Steven Zeitlin in the 
Fall/Winter 1999 issue. Zeitlin, co-author of the book City Play (Rutgers 
University Press, 1990) and Giving a Voice to Sorrow (Perigree, 2001), 
warned against over-reacting to violent fantasies expressed in folklore such 
as "I met her in the attic with a semiautomatic" by thinking of them as 
confirmations of the violent intent of youth. He worried that "in the wake of 
Columbine, many teachers and administrators have tried to squelch children's 
fantasies." He drew attention to the shooters' creation of "adolescent 
folklore": they proclaimed death to all enemies, dressed in black, formed a 
club, hosted a web site, devised a suicide pact, even adopted a catchy name, 
the now infamous "Trench Coat Mafia"—and projected it on to reality." But 
despite spotlighting the folkloric aspects of a public issue, Zeitlin still casts 
his net widely over "American children's folklore" and treats these teens in a 
cast of "schoolchildren." 

Bill Ellis in his book Aliens, Ghosts, and Cults (University Press of 
Mississippi, 2001) also warned of public over-reaction to "rumor-panics," 
often connecting teenagers to the threat of, or the attraction to, devil 
worshipers. Documenting oral reports in May 1987 in Lansford, 
Pennsylvania, that a satanic cult planned shooting students attending a high 
school prom, Ellis focused on the event's multiple meanings for (production) 
and about (response) adolescents. 

For some adolescents, making such a prom deadly may have 
heightened its status as a rite of passage, making their attendance 
doubly a proof of their adult status. The participants may not have 
been simply adolescents dabbling in the occult; the Lansford death 
threats, police later discovered, were written by a parent who had 
grudges against administrators and used the cult stories as an 
opportunity for revenge. For some school administrators, turning 
the prom into a show of force may have been a way of assuring 
edgy parents that they were, after all, in control of their children. . . . 
Finally, 

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BRONNER 

for a few participants, the event may have been seen as a hoax 
proving that adolescent "quasi-satanic" rebellion was justified, since 
grown-ups are prone to hysterical delusions and really do not 
understand what [musician] Ozzy Osbourne is all about. Hence the 
event carries the seeds of future panics, and indeed, as we will see, 
the same material was recycled in the area in 1996, with similar 
results. (218) 

Implicit in these interpretations is the treatment of adolescence as a 
special age because it is a cultural "coming of age." That "coming" could 
suggest a development as much onslaught as transition. It implies a 
vulnerability of a young initiate leaving childhood, and the threat of new 
virile power confronting adulthood. By relativizing the subject of 
adolescence in other cultures, Margaret Mead in her classic study Coming of 
Age in Samoa (1928) tried to show that adolescence need not be as troubled 
as it was in America. Her observations for the cultural expectations of the 
1920s still echoes in reports after the school shootings of the 1990s: 
"Adolescence was characterised as the period in which idealism flowered and 
rebellion against authority waxed strong, a period during which difficulties 
and conflicts were absolutely inevitable" (1). Her relation of her experience 
in Samoa to the United States in the 1920s, however, differed in two respects 
from the concerns raised during the 1990s. One is that she admired the casual 
parental atmosphere that she thought led to an easy transition into adulthood. 
Many reports took the shootings of the 1990s to show the failure of 
permissive parenting. Second, she highlighted the experience of girls, not 
only because she thought that as a woman investigator she could be more 
intimate with her girl subjects, but also because she considered them more 
vulnerable as well as under-studied. In light of the reports of the 1990s that 
shooters were almost all boys, attention shifted to struggles of male identity 
in formation. Boys, once thought more in control of their situation than girls, 
suddenly appeared at risk, and much of their plight seemed cultural. In a post-
feminist world, they could be seen questioning the proper expressions of 
various masculinities in American society. 

As a coming of age, adolescence intensely involved folklore because it 
appeared to be a liminal state in need of ritual clarification. In Michael 
Moffatt's Coming of Age in New Jersey (Rutgers University Press, 1989), he 
found college students segregated by age particularly affected not only 
because of their "coming" stage of life, but also because of their transition 
between the "school life" they viewed as juvenile and the real world of the 
future. Much of the ritual clarification they sought concerned new social 
affiliations and sexual awaken- 

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FOLKLORE RESPONDS TO COLUMBINE AND ADOLESCENCE 

ing. In folklorists reports of legends, rituals, pranks, and jokes as the 
common expressive genres of "coming of age" implied ritual components to 
claim new group identity apart from family, a departure from childhood, and 
an anticipation of the power of adulthood. The kinds of questions asked of 
teenage folklore become revised when challenged by the events of 
Columbine. Instead of concerns for narrative competency and genre 
definition found in many legend collections from the 1960s to the 1980s, 
approaches are possible that address perceptions of teenage angst as well as 
menace. A reinterpretation of cultural collections along some of the 
theoretical lines found below inform, or misinform, "the restlessness of 
youth" (Mead): 

1. Disease Theory. Adolescence is an incurable or unpredictable 
pathology. Hormones rage, and strange bodily outbreaks of body piercing, 
satanic expression, and hair coloring are symptomatic of a problem outside 
of the individual's control. In much of the folklore stemming from this 
disease, there can be demonstrations of strength and bravado, and 
occasionally violence. There is the observation that the condition may be 
unrelated to the person's identity before or after adolescence, and indeed, 
these symptoms are something that individuals "get over." And some adults 
may consider "quarantining" as a response. Although the root cause of the 
disease is debatable, one common culprit is puberty, which is often assumed 
to be coming too early, or problems arise for individuals when it comes too 
late. 

2. Psychoanalytical/Anxiety Theory. Adolescence is a period fraught 
with anxiety, and may be the time filled with the most conflict between 
individual desires and societal taboos. Anxieties of repressed sexuality, 
conflicts of identities (sexual and social), guilt over separation from parents 
(and occasionally attraction to parents), and issues of peer conformity and 
adjustment. Folklore is particularly used in adolescence as a fictive plane to 
symbolically confront or resolve various anxieties and adapt to psychological 
conflicts. Indeed, psychoanalytical interpretations have arguably been 
applied to adolescent legends and rituals more than they have to the 
traditions of other age groups because of the perception that anxieties 
especially need expression and resolution during adolescence. Although 
related to the disease theory, anxiety theory posits a psychological rather 
than pathological response to the age. 

3. Organizational Theory. With the onset of adolescence, individuals 
gravitate to one another, and in that formation, create subversive, destructive 
organizations adults may think of as pernicious "gangs," and many teenagers 
view as identity-marking "cliques." There is the implication that these 
formations undermine the traditional val- 

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ues imparted through family and community. Another ramification is that 
these groups naturally compete for dominance rather than moving toward 
consensus. Alternative explanations for shooters are that they either fall 
outside these formations and become dangerous because of their alienation, 
or they come from one of these groups seeking to eliminate others. 

4. Societal Theory. Adolescents suffer from lack of parental attention or 
inability to properly raise children, which results in asocial or amoral 
behavior. Teachers and school administrators as surrogates of society may 
also be responsible because they do not respond to the needs of teenagers or 
continue to treat them as children rather than take them seriously as young 
adults. An explanation for shooters according to this theory is that they seek 
revenge against parents and teachers because of their treatment. There is also 
the implication that the new society that adolescents dwell in is a mass 
society, reinforced by the growing size of consolidated schools. Individuals 
may feel increasingly lost within this mass culture.  

5. Mental States Theory. This concept points to the rebellion of 
adolescence that results from states of boredom or alienation common to the 
growing number of teenagers growing up in suburbia. Although depictions of 
"juvenile delinquents" of the 1950s were set in the inner cities, and a number 
of gang violence scares of the 1990s were also placed in the inner cities, 
shockwaves of concern could be felt because of the location of teen violence 
in suburban environments assumed to be healthy. Some explanations for 
trouble in suburbia include a need for "action" in a dulling environment, some 
form of special middle-class paranoia, increase of recreational drug use, and 
the unnatural extension of childhood in high school and even through college. 
This view often comes with a questioning of the effects of affluence and 
materialism on creating a civil society among teenagers. 

6. Hegemonic Theory. Popular culture receives blame for spreading 
messages of violence and revulsion in this theory. It also may be credited for 
creating new subcultures revolving around fads and alternative lifestyles. 
Campaigns against violent or sexually explicit song lyrics, videos, 
magazines, and movies are based on the special reception that teenagers have 
for the extreme limits of popular culture. Teens are seen as dupes of 
corporate marketing of material settings of malls, shocking fashions, and 
rousing concerts. They are victims of cultural hegemony spread over 
adolescence by profit-hungry, amoral capitalists who seem insensitive to the 
destructive results of their marketing. 

7. Moralistic Theory. A different take on the messages of violence 
and revulsion encouraged in popular culture which result in formation 

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FOLKLORE RESPONDS TO COLUMBINE AND ADOLESCENCE 

of new adolescent folk cultures comes from a theory of moral decline. In the 
historical decline of structures of "traditional values," the theory holds, 
centers of moral education such as families, schools, and churches have lost 
their grip on teenagers, and there is a growing acceptance of once 
unacceptable behaviors. Instead of a value placed on following authority and 
the lessons of a previous generation, there is an attraction to defying 
authority or standing alone often in anti-social ways. Some will blame the 
decline on breakdowns in the loss of community, the breakdown of the 
traditional family, the rise of selfish individualism, or post-modern cynicism 
of organized religion. 

8. Regional/Environmental Theory. From American studies, there are 
ideas of some regional or community environments that encourage aggressive 
forms of adolescence. One can hear references to the violent legacy of the 
South, for example, or the "hunting heritage" of Pennsylvania and the Upper 
Midwest, and the "gun culture" of the West. As teen shootings were reported 
in all corners of the United States, this theory was increasingly challenged, 
but questioning still occurred about the connection of the regional 
background of teenagers to their cultural behavior. 

9. Emergence Theory. Performance theory suggests that adolescence is a 
particularly ripe age for emergence of new cultural forms. The desire to 
differentiate from other teens in school with whom adolescents are 
segregated, perhaps the need to symbolically express identities or confront 
suppressed desires and anxieties, the need for attention-often revealed in 
shocking or creative ways-and to structure experience around novelty and 
fashion lead to a constant renewal of cultural creativity. In this view, the 
formation of new cultural groups such as Goths and Wiccans, often with 
reference to tradition, is a natural and healthy process, but individuals who 
turn the emergent performance into sociopathic spectacle show the risk 
inherent in an open society. 

Then there is the theoretical question of when adolescence begins and 
ends as a distinct physiological or cultural period. Popularly, adolescence is 
thought of as the teen years, or physiologically as a period between puberty 
and physical maturity. One cultural marker is the sharp break between a 
sense of adolescent production, or cultural creativity, and adult response 
indicated in a survey conducted by American Demographics/Harris 
Interactive (December 2001, 10). It asked a sample of Americans to associate 
visible tattoos or body piercings with certain characteristics. The survey was 
driven by the observation that young adults are the most active body artists, 
and demographic factors of race, gender, and ethnicity are not as much 
predictors of who is likely to have such work as age. 

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BRONNER 

PERCENT OF ADULTS WHO ASSOCIATE THE FOLLOWING TERMS 
WITH VISIBLE TATTOOS OR BODY PIERCING, 

 BY AGE 

CHARACTERISTIC 18-24 25-29 30-39 40-49 

Rebellious 63 49 71 68 
Experimental 57 59 53 50 
Immature 29 32 45 47 
Freakish 29 34 37 32 
Alternative 58 77 42 41 
Artistic 53 34 29 23 
Normal 46 19 20 19 
Stylish 29 25 13 16 
Fun 34 27 15 10 
Gay 12 10 16 9 
Sexy 22 25 12 12 
Tough 8 10 9 7 

One way to read these responses is the large change among age groups as to 
the issue of whether the behavior is "normal." The response for the group in 
their late twenties to the one from the late teens to early twenties dropped 27 
percent. This response suggests a perception of some customs as normative 
for adolescents. Note, for instance, the rise of the perception of the custom as 
immature from 29 percent among the group in their late teens to early 
twenties to 45 percent among the group in the early thirties. The group in its 
early thirties also felt more strongly than the group in its late twenties that the 
behavior was "rebellious." In this regard, one wishes that the survey had also 
asked about the characteristic of "adolescent," to see if there is a correlation 
between a perception of rebellion and adolescence. One of the traits one has 
to notice in the above survey is that the youngest group felt much more 
artistic than the group in the late twenties. One has to question the largest 
change in viewpoint concerning "alternative" from the group in its late 
twenties to the group in the early thirties. This response might suggest that 
the group in the thirties associated the distinction of the body markings with 
adolescence while a considerable portion of the group in the late twenties 
considered the markings still an option or choice that could be "sexy," "fun," 
or "stylish," rather than a sign of a younger age. But the answers to 
"immature" and "artistic" beg the question of traditions associated with a 
period we might designate as adolescent. From there we might question how 
"adoles- 

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FOLKLORE RESPONDS TO COLUMBINE AND ADOLESCENCE 

cent" becomes not only a marker of age, but an adjective for kinds of 
behavior and customs. So we are left again to ask about folklore as an 
expression of age. 

I could argue that folklorists have to get over their sense of surprise at 
adolescent folklore before confronting theoretical questions of age. In 
folkloristic literature, authors frequently express surprise that recognition to 
adolescent folklore came so late, and further, they express astonishment that 
adolescents produce as much material for folklorists as they do. The surprise 
in the former stems from the admission that many folklorists are teachers of 
adolescents, and yet have not adequately examined them as a folk group. The 
shock in the latter probably owes to the perception that adolescents discard 
the rhymes, songs, and tales abundantly collected among pre-pubescent 
children. What is not anticipated are the new materials generated in the form 
of legends, jokes, speech, and rituals. And what is generally not interpreted 
are the ties of this material to a sense of cultural disconnection. Oriented as 
they are to finding continuities, historical and social, folklorists are 
challenged by adolescent material to explain the cultural emergence, and 
frequent social fragmentation, common among teenagers. 

The late folklorist Sue Samuelson expressed amazement in her review 
of adolescent folklore published in 1995 that the first American study to 
consider adolescent folklore separately from childhood was Martha Dirks' 
"Teen-Age Folklore from Kansas," appearing in Western Folklore in 1963. 
Dirks' point was to show that teenagers, often dismissed as tradition-bearers, 
had a formidable repertory of humor, slang, customs, and songs. Her survey 
sought to find continuities of this material with other traditions, but lacked a 
developmental approach. Even before Dirks' survey, groundbreaking studies 
by Brian Sutton-Smith sought connections between distinctive genres of ado-
lescence and the developmental needs of the age. His "The Kissing Games of 
Adolescents in Ohio," first appearing in the journal Midwest Folklore (1959), 
posed the question of the social and psychological function of such games in 
the post-pubescent sexual development of teenagers during the 1950s. Other 
"adolescent" genres receiving this treatment included drinking games (see 
Monique Young's 1981 M.A. thesis at the University of California, 
Berkeley), graffiti (see Peter Peretti, Richard Carter, and Betty McClinton, 
"Graffiti and Adolescent Personality" in Adolescence 1977, and Susan 
Gelman's "Toward a Study of Postal Graffiti: Text and Context in an 
Adolescent Girls' Genre" in Western Folklore 1978), scary and sexual 
legends (see Gary Alan Fine and Bruce Noel Johnson, "The Promiscuous 
Cheerleader: 

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An Adolescent Male Belief Legend" in Western Folklore 1980, and Sue 
Samuelson, "The White Witch: An Analysis of an Adolescent Legend" in 
Indiana Folklore 1979), legend trips (see Patricia Meley, "Adolescent 
Legend Trips as Teenage Cultural Response," Children’s Folklore Review 
1991), gross jokes (see Simon Bronner, "What's Grosser than Gross?" in 
Midwestern Journal of Language and Folklore 1985), ritual insults (see 
Millicent Ayoub and Stephen A. Barnett, " Ritualized Verbal Insult in White 
High School Culture," Journal of American Folklore 1965), ritual and play 
(see Michael Licht, "Some Automotive Play Activities of Suburban 
Teenagers," New York Folklore Quarterly 1974), and material culture (see 
Ariane Sains, "The Latest Teen Rage? Embroidery" Children’s Folklore 
Review 1990). It is not coincidental that the word "rage" frequently enters 
into the rhetoric of these works, both to reflect the quick circulation of 
material among adolescents and the trope of aggression in adolescent 
folklore. 

There is a decided emphasis in these previous studies on defining the 
limits of adolescent genres and documenting characteristics of folkloric 
performance, but interpretations of social and psychological function can 
lead to more developmental approaches. Kenneth A. Thigpen in his 
extensive survey, "Adolescent Legends in Brown County" (Indiana Folklore 
1971) for example, declares his textual purpose of "a survey of legend 
content of a segment of a community," but concludes with a developmental 
observation of the "basic adolescent need for adventurous involvement." 
What he means by this is a distinctive theme of using legends in adolescence 
for tests of daring designed to show maturity. He noted a sense of danger, a 
simultaneous attraction to and revulsion by death, and a building on tensions 
between teenagers and adults that is inherent in these adventures. Although 
he did not comprehend the full implications of folklore representing 
subgroups, or friendship cliques, of teenagers, he offered balance to the 
stereotypical view of the menacing teen. One group he called "Middle 
American" is characterized as "highly individualistic; politically, religiously, 
and socially conservative; rebellious against authority as it pertains to them 
individually, but not opposed to the concept of the present system; preferring 
alcoholic stimulation, particularly beer and liquor, as symbols of maturity 
and substances of experimentation and titillation" (209). The other he called 
"counter-culture: communal in social orientation (especially within the peer 
group); politically apathetic, though leaning toward liberalism; religiously 
apathetic, though tending to substitute ideas associated with the occult for 
traditional religious concepts; preferring non-alcoholic drugs (except for 
wine) such as marijuana, as symbols of maturity and substances for 
experimentation and titillation" (209). 

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FOLKLORE RESPONDS TO COLUMBINE AND ADOLESCENCE 

In light of Columbine, the adolescent social landscape appears more 
complex and ideas of adolescent imagination more challenging. One needs to 
account for previously unheard of groups such as "The Trench Coat Mafia," 
as well as more widely spread labels of Goths, Raves, Skinheads, Jocks, and 
Wiccans. The commentary on school shootings was as much a cultural 
critique of adolescence and its baffling social landscape as it was a political 
concern for school violence. Folklorists as cultural professionals frequently 
working with teenagers began reviewing their positions. The Children's 
Folklore Section of the American Folklore Society opened discussion on the 
folkloristic response to Columbine at its meeting in 1999 and invited 
participants to share research that would shed light on the traditions of teens 
in modern society. The hope was to promote more studies that would offer 
folkloristic views on the publicized problems of teenagers and schools. The 
gathered panelists in 2000 spoke to a standing-room only crowd, and the 
heated discussion inspired this publication to continue the initiative for 
folkloristic inquiry into adolescent traditions-both dangerous and benign. 
Children’s Folklore Review, as a location for this folklore first, is appropriate 
because of its inclusion of developmental approaches to age-related folklore 
in its illustrious publishing run, but the essayists hope that other journals will 
subsequently take up the theme. 

The theme intentionally goes beyond Columbine and the issue of school 
violence to the cultural worlds of adolescence today. It has to integrate the 
folk culture that adolescents construct for themselves and the popular belief 
that adults express about naturally rebellious or violent youth. The essayists 
tackle the interconnections of identities that adolescents pursue and the 
threatened feelings about those identities that popular culture perpetuates. Bill 
Ellis, for example, considers the significance of "Hitler's Birthday" as an 
occasion for the rumors of school violence that circulated. JoAnn Conrad 
deals with the cultural implications of political reactions to violent youth in 
California. Responding to the public perception of the danger of "Goth" iden-
tity among school shooters, Allen Berres separates the esoteric lore of Goth 
identity that adolescents commonly practice and the exoteric beliefs about 
Goths in popular culture. Charlie McCormick reminds readers in his essay on 
"cruising" about precedents for the kind of discourse on the menacing 
adolescent encountered in school violence discourse. This issue's theme of 
"folklore that responds to Columbine and adolescence" is therefore both in 
the form of practice traditionalized by adolescents and narrative or belief 
expressed by 

19 



 

BRONNER 

adults. As evidence for a developmental study of culture and a reflection on 
folkloristic purpose, it reveals the coming of age. 

PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIVERSITY 
MIDDLETOWN, PENNSYLVANIA 

WORKS CITED 

Ellis, Bill. Aliens, Ghosts, and Cults. Jackson: UP of Mississippi, 2001.  
Mead, Margaret. Coming of Age in Samoa: A Psychological Study of Primi- 

tive Youth for Western Civilization. 1928. New York: American Museum of 
Natural History reprint, 1973. 

Public Agenda Foundation. "Kids These Days '99: What Americans Think About the 
Next Generation Survey." Roper Center at University of Connecticut Public 
Opinion Online. Accession Number 0328701. 3 May 1999. 

Thigpen, Kenneth A. "Adolescent Legends in Brown County." Indiana Folk- 
 lore 4 (1971): 141-215. 
Whelan, David. "Ink Me, Stud: Tattoos and Piercings Decorate 15 Percent of 
 American Bodies, But Even More Still Disapprove of Them." American 
 Demographics (December 200 I), 9-11. 
Zetlin, Steve. "Bang, Bang, You're Dead: The Play Paradox." New York Folk- 
 lore Society Newsletter (Fall/Winter 1999). 
 See http://www.nyfolklore .org/pubs/news/nlfw99/bang.html 

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