News Flash: ModernFolktales.com is currently accepting folktale submissions. See our open submission request for details.
Modern Folktales is a new project. The goal is to identify contemporary stories that are currently affecting large groups of ordinary people in discernible and important ways.
The fundamental premise is that these stories are not really being told by the mass media. Probably for the first time in human history, average people, like you and me, don’t have access to contemporary stories about our lives and our world, or the role we play in it. To make a simple point simpler: We don’t have folktales anymore. And what we do have are pretty old. While some of this may still be relevant; it’s not enough.
To a very large extent, what we have is what television and movies offer. By and large, the stories that we see, read, and hear have been created for us by very rich and powerful people whose main purpose is to become even richer. This is a pity for it’s in the street (not the studio) alongside the common man where the real drama, tragedy, and comedy actually exist.
Over the course of the last 100 years, the common man has become the invisible man. His customs and traditions, as well as the stories he tells about himself, have been gradually stripped away. Today’s media leave him two options:
1. To sit passively and watch stories about characters who are richer than he is, more beautiful, and usually more educated. It is for these people that the American dream exists and the common man fulfills his social mission by watching them act out lives that are completely out of reach and which he has no realistic hope of ever obtaining.
2. The other option is to allow himself to be convinced that he is a Jerry Springer-like sub-human whose only goal in life is to not get caught cheating on his wife (or husband, as the case may be). Or, if he happens to be a little more money-driven, watch himself on so-called “reality shows” groveling in the most humiliating circumstances for some type of prize.
There are many reasons why this state of affairs exists. But all of them can probably be traced back to the fact that one who is strong in his identity and belief-systems, and is proud of them, is much harder to enslave than one who is not so equipped.
We are what we believe. If all we’re ever told is we’re meant to serve, then serving our masters will seem like the right thing to do. It is the total collection of our stories that defines who and what we are—both as individuals and as a people. With these, we have the power to create the essence of our own humanity.
So, if we stand up on our hind legs and begin to define the world on our own terms, many of us will discover a choice:
1. Continue living in a world of slaves and masters; or
2. aspire to create a world where each one of us works to fulfill his own potential—be it small or great.
The mission of ModernFolktales.com, then, is to discover the hidden stories of divided and isolated groups of people; and bring them together around the campfire through a communion of stories that touch their (and our) lives in an immediate and important way. To, in a very real sense, give back the light.
In the end, what this site offers is a mirror in which to view ourselves and our world. The question is have you got the guts for it?
