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When Urban Legends Go Wrong
Oct. 24th, 2007 08:28 am If you know anything at all about urban legends, you probably know this one, the classic "Hook on the Hand" tale of young lovers who narrowly escape death at the hands of an escaped maniac. It's fairly standard stuff.
I was going to go all academic on your asses and write a massive essay comparing urban legends to fairy tales in terms of moral messages encoded in apparently fantastical stories, but I got caught up watching Hollyoaks last night (ZOMG, the incest!) so instead I'm going to explain why this particular urban legend is utter tripe. Hey, it's almost Halloween! You can do this at Halloween.
Lets take the basic scary elements of the story: teenagers alone in the dark engaging in illicit sexual behaviour (probably). Okay, I can roll with that. That's the template of slasher flicks the world over. So, next: teenagers hear warning on the radio that a lunatic/mass murderer/serial killer has escaped from a nearby mental home and can be indentified by a hook on his hand.
Now, having worked for the police for a while, I can say in complete confidence that no convicted lunatic/mass murderer/serial killer would be allowed to keep his hook. It would be taken away from him to prevent him using it against himself or others. And as we can assume that the hook is his primary murder weapon, it would be evidence and therefore confiscated from him. I doubt they'd give it back afterwards.
Next: our hooked psycho uses the hook to open the car door, which is why the teens then find the hook later when they've sped away to safety. So, let me ask you this: if you had one fully functioning, normal hand and one hook instead of a hand, which would you use to open a car door with? Keeping in mind that you're probably going to want the hook free for disembowelling?
Yeah, thought so.
In a sense, these details are superfluous to the point of the story, which is don't have sex in the back of your car before you're married (and possibly even then), but it's interesting how these cliche and frankly ridiculous story elements have embedded themselves into our culture. I read somewhere that urban legends are a form of meme, passing down cultural information in an easily absorbed form, which would tie in nicely with my intellectual ramblings about urban legends being a modern form of fairy tale... But I'll save that for later...
I was going to go all academic on your asses and write a massive essay comparing urban legends to fairy tales in terms of moral messages encoded in apparently fantastical stories, but I got caught up watching Hollyoaks last night (ZOMG, the incest!) so instead I'm going to explain why this particular urban legend is utter tripe. Hey, it's almost Halloween! You can do this at Halloween.
Lets take the basic scary elements of the story: teenagers alone in the dark engaging in illicit sexual behaviour (probably). Okay, I can roll with that. That's the template of slasher flicks the world over. So, next: teenagers hear warning on the radio that a lunatic/mass murderer/serial killer has escaped from a nearby mental home and can be indentified by a hook on his hand.
Now, having worked for the police for a while, I can say in complete confidence that no convicted lunatic/mass murderer/serial killer would be allowed to keep his hook. It would be taken away from him to prevent him using it against himself or others. And as we can assume that the hook is his primary murder weapon, it would be evidence and therefore confiscated from him. I doubt they'd give it back afterwards.
Next: our hooked psycho uses the hook to open the car door, which is why the teens then find the hook later when they've sped away to safety. So, let me ask you this: if you had one fully functioning, normal hand and one hook instead of a hand, which would you use to open a car door with? Keeping in mind that you're probably going to want the hook free for disembowelling?
Yeah, thought so.
In a sense, these details are superfluous to the point of the story, which is don't have sex in the back of your car before you're married (and possibly even then), but it's interesting how these cliche and frankly ridiculous story elements have embedded themselves into our culture. I read somewhere that urban legends are a form of meme, passing down cultural information in an easily absorbed form, which would tie in nicely with my intellectual ramblings about urban legends being a modern form of fairy tale... But I'll save that for later...
