Fakelore

Fakelore or pseudo-folklore is inauthentic, manufactured folklore presented as if it were genuinely

traditional. The term can refer to new stories or songs made up, or to folklore that is reworked and modified for
modern tastes. The element of misrepresentation is central; artists who draw on traditional stories in their work
are not producing fakelore unless they claim that their creations are real folklore.[1] Over the last several
decades the term has generally fallen out of favor in folklore studies because it places an emphasis on origin
instead of ongoing practice to determine authenticity.

The term fakelore was coined in 1950 by American folklorist Richard M. Dorson.[1] Dorson's examples
included the fictional cowboy Pecos Bill, who was presented as a folk hero of the American West but was
actually invented by the writer Edward S. O'Reilly in 1923. Dorson also regarded Paul Bunyan as fakelore.
Although Bunyan originated as a character in traditional tales told by loggers in the Great Lakes region of
North America, William B. Laughead (1882–1958), an ad writer working for the Red River Lumber
Company, invented many of the stories about him that are known today. According to Dorson, advertisers and
popularizers turned Bunyan into a "pseudo folk hero of twentieth-century mass culture" who bore little
resemblance to the original.[2]

Folklorism also refers to the invention or adaptation of folklore. Unlike fakelore, however, folklorism is not
necessarily misleading; it includes any use of a tradition outside the cultural context in which it was created.
The term was first used in the early 1960s by German scholars, who were primarily interested in the use of
folklore by the tourism industry. However, professional art based on folklore, TV commercials with fairy tale
characters, and even academic studies of folklore are all forms of folklorism.[3][4]

Contents
Controversy
Examples
See also
References

Controversy
The term fakelore is often used by those who seek to expose or debunk it, including Dorson himself, who
spoke of a "battle against fakelore".[5] Dorson complained that popularizers had sentimentalized folklore,
stereotyping the people who created it as quaint and whimsical[1] – whereas the real thing was often
"repetitive, clumsy, meaningless and obscene".[6] He contrasted the genuine Paul Bunyan tales, which had
been so full of technical logging terms that outsiders would find parts of them difficult to understand, with the
commercialized versions, which sounded more like children's books. The original Paul Bunyan had been
shrewd and sometimes ignoble; one story told how he cheated his men out of their pay. Mass culture provided
a sanitized Bunyan with a "spirit of gargantuan whimsy [that] reflects no actual mood of lumberjacks".[2]
Daniel G. Hoffman said that Bunyan, a folk hero, had been turned into a mouthpiece for capitalists: "This is an
example of the way in which a traditional symbol has been used to manipulate the minds of people who had
nothing to do with its creation."[7]
Others have argued that professionally created art and folklore are constantly influencing each other, and that
this mutual influence should be studied rather than condemned.[8] For example, Jon Olson, a professor of
anthropology, reported that while growing up he heard Paul Bunyan stories that had originated as lumber
company advertising.[9] Dorson had seen the effect of print sources on orally transmitted Paul Bunyan stories
as a form of cross-contamination that "hopelessly muddied the lore".[2] For Olson, however, "the point is that I
personally was exposed to Paul Bunyan in the genre of a living oral tradition, not of lumberjacks (of which
there are precious few remaining), but of the present people of the area."[9] What was fakelore had become
folklore again.

Examples
In addition to Paul Bunyan and Pecos Bill, Dorson identified the American folk hero Joe Magarac as
fakelore.[2] Magarac, a fictional steelworker, first appeared in 1931 in a Scribner's Magazine story by the
writer Owen Francis. He was a literal man of steel who made rails from molten metal with his bare hands; he
refused an opportunity to marry in order to devote himself to working 24 hours a day, worked so hard that the
mill had to shut down, and finally, in despair at enforced idleness, melted himself down in the mill's furnace in
order to improve the quality of the steel. Francis said he heard this story from Croatian immigrant steelworkers
in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; he reported that they told him the word magarac was a compliment, then laughed
and talked to each other in their own language, which he did not speak. The word actually means "donkey" in
Croatian, and is an insult. Since no trace of the existence of Joe Magarac stories prior to 1931 has been
discovered, Francis's informants may have made the character up as a joke on him. In 1998, Gilley and
Burnett reported "only tentative signs that the Magarac story has truly made a substantive transformation from
'fake-' into 'folklore' ", but noted his importance as a local cultural icon.[10]

Other American folk heroes that have been called fakelore include Old Stormalong, Febold Feboldson,[2] Big
Mose, Tony Beaver, Bowleg Bill, Whiskey Jack, Annie Christmas, Cordwood Pete, Antonine Barada, and
Kemp Morgan.[11] Marshall Fishwick describes these largely literary figures as imitations of Paul Bunyan.[12]
Additionally, scholar Michael I. Niman describes the Legend of the Rainbow Warriors – a belief that a "new
tribe" will inherit the ways of the Native Americans and save the planet – as an example of fakelore.[13]

See also
False etymology
Old wives' tale
Hoax
Snopes.com
Urban legend
Mythopoeia
Invention of tradition

References
1. Dorson, Richard M. (1977). American Folklore (https://archive.org/details/americanfolklore00do
rs). Chicago: University of Chicago Press. p. 4 (https://archive.org/details/americanfolklore00do
rs/page/4). ISBN 0-226-15859-4.
2. Dorson (1977), 214–226.
3. Newall, Venetia J. (1987). "The Adaptation of Folklore and Tradition (Folklorismus)". Folklore.
98 (2): 131–151. doi:10.1080/0015587x.1987.9716408 (https://doi.org/10.1080%2F0015587x.1
987.9716408). JSTOR 1259975 (https://www.jstor.org/stable/1259975).
 4. Kendirbaeva, Gulnar (1994). "Folklore and Folklorism in Kazakhstan". Asian Folklore Studies.
53 (1): 97–123. doi:10.2307/1178561 (https://doi.org/10.2307%2F1178561). JSTOR 1178561
(https://www.jstor.org/stable/1178561).
5. Dorson, Richard M. (1973). "Is Folklore a Discipline?". Folklore. 84 (3): 177–205.
doi:10.1080/0015587x.1973.9716514 (https://doi.org/10.1080%2F0015587x.1973.9716514).
JSTOR 1259723 (https://www.jstor.org/stable/1259723).
6. Dorson, Richard M. (1963). "Current Folklore Theories". Current Anthropology. 4 (1): 101.
doi:10.1086/200339 (https://doi.org/10.1086%2F200339). JSTOR 2739820 (https://www.jstor.or
g/stable/2739820).
7. Ball, John; George Herzog; Thelma James; Louis C. Jones; Melville J. Herskovits; Wm. Hugh
Jansen; Richard M. Dorson; Alvin W. Wolfe; Daniel G. Hoffman (1959). "Discussion from the
Floor". Journal of American Folklore. 72 (285): 233–241. doi:10.2307/538134 (https://doi.org/1
0.2307%2F538134). JSTOR 538134 (https://www.jstor.org/stable/538134).
8. Olson, Jon (1976). "Film Reviews". Western Folklore. 35 (3): 233–237. JSTOR 1498351 (http
s://www.jstor.org/stable/1498351). According to Newall, 133, the German folklorist Hermann
Bausinger expressed a similar view.
9. Olson, 235.
10. Gilley, Jennifer; Stephen Burnett (November 1998). "Deconstructing and Reconstructing
Pittsburgh's Man of Steel: Reading Joe Magarac against the Context of the 20th-Century Steel
Industry". The Journal of American Folklore. 111 (442): 392–408. doi:10.2307/541047 (https://d
oi.org/10.2307%2F541047). JSTOR 541047 (https://www.jstor.org/stable/541047).
11. American Folklore: An Encyclopedia, ed. Jan Harold Brunvand, Taylor & Francis, 1996, p.
1105
12. Fishwick, Marshall W. (1959). "Sons of Paul: Folklore or Fakelore?". Western Folklore. 18 (4):
277–286. doi:10.2307/1497745 (https://doi.org/10.2307%2F1497745). JSTOR 1497745 (http
s://www.jstor.org/stable/1497745).
13. Niman, Michael I. 1997. People of the Rainbow: A Nomadic Utopia, pp. 131-148. University of
Tennessee Press. ISBN 0-87049-988-2

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