Memes and ostension: legend and life interacting
Theo Meder
(Meertens Instituut, Amsterdam)
We have to accept
that fact can become narrative
and narrative can become fact.
In June 2004, an observing citizen
of Almere saw a car driving by with a crying, seemingly panicky Dutch child in
the backseat. The person driving the car appeared to be dressed in a long garment,
wearing some kind of veiled cap, sun glasses and gloves. Because of recent
incidents (not in the Netherlands but elsewhere in the world), the citizen
thought to be witnessing an abduction by a Muslim terrorist, wrote down the
number of the license plate and notified the police. After tracking down the
license plate number, the police arrived at an ordinary home in Almere, where a
frail Dutch woman, 49-year-old Jacqueline, opened the door. Jacqueline turns
out to be the mother of the crying child, and she suffers from a rare light
allergy. Outdoors, she needs protective clothing to prevent her from being
exposed to the sunlight. Due to stories circulating about Muslim extremists,
facts had just erroneously been misinterpreted.
The next story goes back a little
further in time. It is supposed to have happened in Utrecht in the Netherlands.
One evening, some Dutch friends end up in a Turkish restaurant, and they decide
to have some doner kebab. They choose the garlic sauce to go along with it.
Shortly after eating the kebab, the friends turn violently ill. They need to be
hospitalized and have their stomaches pumped. After examination, the doctor
asks them if they had oral sex that evening: sperm of several different men had
been found in their stomaches. Shortly after this, the Turkish restaurant is
closed down by the commodity inspection department after discovering that the
garlic sauce contains the semen of seven different men.
Of course, the story is not true: it
is a so-called urban legend or contemporary legend, internationally known under
the title ‘Masturbating into food’. According to Dutch narrators, the events
happened not only in Utrecht, but also in Amsterdam, Arnhem, Delft, Leiden, The
Hague, Rotterdam and Enschede. The garlic sauce can contain the semen of one
man, but in some versions of the story no less than seventy-two men had
masturbated into the sauce. In most cases, the owner of the restaurant is
Turkish or Moroccan. We have other ethnic restaurant stories in the Netherlands
too, for instance about the Chinese using pets like cats or dogs or taboo
animals like rats in their food, but the masturbation legend is almost
exclusively told about Muslims. Although it is seldom explicitly said, the
subliminal message of the tale is that Muslim men masturbate into the food out
of contempt for their Dutch customers.
In Utrecht, Mr. Atteya got fed up
with the nasty rumours about his Turkish grill room Piramiden and contacted the
local press in 1996. In the newspaper Utrechts
Nieuwsblad, he explained that the rumours were false. An official from the
commodity inspection department even confirmed that no semen had ever been
found in the garlic sauce. However, the newspaper article only made things
worse: now even more people had read
and heard about the nasty rumour, and Mr. Atteya closed down his grill room
anyway. It was not the first time that the debunking of an urban legend in the
news media resulted in an even wider distribution of belief in the legend by
the public. For some reason, a lot of people seem to prefer to believe the
urban legend – even though they should know better.
For most journalists and folk
narrative researchers, the distinction between reality and folktale appears to
be quite clear: an urban legend like the masturbation tale is untrue, even
though the general public may believe otherwise. Fact is, that the boundaries
between true and false are not always that clear. Anthropologists and modern
ethnologists have tried to put the sharp contrast between true and false into
perspective. Some rumours, tall tales and urban legends may have a grain of
truth in them. In many cases there is at least a connection between legends and
the general conception of reality,
which gives people the impression they have good reason to believe the tales.
This principle works the other way around as well: pre-conceived tales in
people’s heads influence their interpretation of reality - like in the case of
the woman with the light allergy. What is more: narratives and legends can be a
source of inspiration for human behaviour and action. This is why folk
narrative researcher Bill Ellis, in a somewhat provocative manner, puts it like
this: “Legends are not folk literature but folk behavior”. Although the masturbation
legend was untrue, the tale led Dutch customers to avoid Mr Atteya’s
grill room.
Reality, or at least the
conception of reality, brings forth narratives every day. Conversely,
narratives influence people’s conception of reality, and consequently their
daily behaviour. Therefore, the motto of this paper is a quotation from the
anthropological legend researcher Linda Dégh: “We have to accept that fact can become
narrative and narrative can become fact.”
Ostension
In their narrative research on the boundary
line between legend and reality, both Dégh and Ellis made use of the concept of
ostension or ostensive action. Ostension is the occurrence of events and
behaviour in daily life in the way they occur in legends. It is all about
real-life action guided by pre-existing narrative - or as Ellis puts it: about
“dramatic extension into real life”. Ostension is neither narration nor a
theatrical act. Ostension is the more or less conscious or unconscious
reproduction of narrative scenarios. In short, the concept of ostension deals
with “legends we live”. An american example of this could be the appearance of
poisoned candy and apples with razor blades during Halloween, well after all kinds of horror stories
circulated. In their turn, these facts spread fear and generated new stories.
Incidents generating narratives is, of course, considered to be the standard
routine. However, Bill Ellis takes a more provocative stand in stating:
"Events provoke stories; but it is far more likely that stories provoke
events".
Besides ostension, we can discern three subcategories.
To keep things simple, these subcategories distinguish the serious re-enactment
of tales from the ‘prank’, the ‘lie’, and the ‘mistake’. As a (perhaps somewhat
awkward and non-ethnic) example, I shall take the crop circle legend. For over
twenty years, every summer strange formations have appeared in the crops, not
only in Great Britain, but in other countries as well. Every year we have
fifteen to twenty crop circles in the Netherlands. I am neither going to
discuss the actual origins of these formations, nor claim any truth in this
matter. I would merely like to point out that legend has it that crop circles
are mysteriously put into the fields as a message by supernatural or
extraterrestrial beings. The legend was first inspired by the encounter of
simple circles in the crop. Nothing extraordinary here from a narrative point
of view: just facts leading to tales. Now we will reverse our
perspective to tales leading to facts:
Ostension.
Every year the British artist John Lundberg manufactures crop circles, because
he wants to stimulate belief in the legend. In a Dutch documentary he
exclaimed: “As soon as people stop believing, I will stop making crop circles.”
So Lundberg is clearly acting out the existing legend. To him, crop circle
making is ostensive action – it says so on his own website.
Now for the subdivisions:
1. Pseudo-ostension. Dutchman Remko Delfgaauw decided to make some
magnificent crop circles along with his friends in order to fool the expert
cereologists. The pranksters waited for the believers to declare the circle for
real (that is: non-man-made), after which they would reveal that the formation
was a man-made hoax. From a prankster’s perspective, pseudo-ostension is the
deliberate re-enactment of a legend as a hoax or a practical joke.
2. Proto-ostension. A narrator can transform a legend into a personal
experience story. Through a process of appropriation, a folktale can turn into
a personal narrative, into a memorate.
A Dutch boy called Robbert van den Broeke claims to have paranormal abilities.
He witnessed balls of light making crop circles on several occasions. Once he
was even hit by a ball of light, after which he regained consciousness in a
fresh crop circle. Sceptical farmers in the neighbourhood consider these
memorates to be lies or fantasies.
3. Quasi-ostension. Pre-existing legends can lead to false readings of
normal facts. When I visit crop circles myself, I sometimes encounter
accidental crop circle tourists who inform me that there are more crop circles
in the vicinity. When I go and have a look, it often turns out they just saw
grain flattened by a storm. Infected by the legend virus, some people start to
consider all downed crops to be circle formations. So quasi-ostension is a
mistaken interpretation of ordinary events on the basis of narratives in our
heads.
The legend as a mind
virus and the role of the media
Tales are not only spread by ordinary oral
narration and human behaviour, but also by our news media. Television and
newspapers, for instance, provide us with stories on a daily basis. Some
stories have a tremendous impact on human belief and behaviour. The First Gulf
War (1990-1991) was actually triggered by the testimony of a Kuwaiti girl in
tears before an American Congress Committee. The girl told how cruel looting
Iraqi soldiers had taken Kuwaiti babies out of their incubators and had left
them to die on the cold hospital floor. This story is in perfect accordance
with other horror stories from other wars. Moreover, the story is in perfect
accordance with the image the Americans already had of the hostile Iraqi
soldiers. At the end of the First Gulf War, the American
journalist John McArthur conducted an investigation into the story, which
turned out to be fundamentally untrue: no babies had been taken from incubators
and left to die at all. The crying eyewitness turned out to be the daughter
of the Kuwaiti ambassador in the US –
the story had been made up and carefully orchestrated by public relations
bureau Hill & Knowlton and was sponsored by a wealthy lobby group called
Citizens for a Free Kuwait. This re-enactment of a testimony-of-war-story in
order to manipulate public opinion is another fine example of ostension. In an
extreme case like this, and thanks to world-wide media coverage, such a story
can lead to war. Although journalists are supposed to check the facts and
report the truth, such an assignment cannot always be fulfilled. Apart from the
fact that there is no such thing as absolute truth, we have to acknowledge that
events and facts cannot always be checked right away. Like all other human
beings, even the most scrupulous journalists can fall for a catchy story.
Especially when the message of the story (for instance: the Iraqis are evil)
forms a perfect match with pre-existing prejudices and belief tales.
Modern narrative research does not
only deal with human behaviour involving contemporary storytelling, but with
the behaviour of these stories as well. A legend can be called
a meme, which is an elementary
cultural entity. What the gene is for
human biology, the meme is for human
culture. The meme is an independent
building block of cultural information. As far as legends are concerned, the
word meme is often translated as 'mind
virus'. A legend is a virus, transmitted by storytelling from one human mind to
the other. If the virus is contagious enough to remain in the mind as a
parasite, it can successfully infect other minds by means of narration. As soon
as the narrative parasite loses its power, it may die out completely, but in
most cases it will remain quiet and resident for some time or mutate to regain
its power again. The legend can wait until the time is ripe for its message
again. Through mutation a legend remains fit to survive: it can – for example –
adjust itself to new situations, it can appoint new scape goats or it can
become more violent or horrific. Just like real viruses, people can carry the
mind viruses from one place to another, creating new seats of infection.
Although not in all cases, mind viruses can cause illness. That is: legends can
sometimes lead to mass hysteria.
Mind viruses need not be orally
transmitted: they can be spread by means of printed text, e-mail and pictures
too (advertising agencies insert commercial mind viruses into our heads every
day). The better subliminal messages of legends fit in with the world view of
the public, the easier they cling to the memory. If the legend confirms what
people want to believe, the narrative piece will fit into the puzzle of the
people’s sense of reality perfectly. Anti-legends (making fun of the mind
viruses) may serve as an antidote. Of course, the whole idea of a mind virus is
kind of a metaphor: there is no such thing as a cultural organism with a will
of its own and an inner urge to survive. Viruses are living cells, while mind
viruses are just man-made ideas - they cannot be seen under a microscope. Even
if a mind virus proves to be very contagious, there will always be people who
remain immune. Still, if we combine the concepts of ostension and memetics, we
could establish the following: contemporary tales are mind viruses that
influence human behaviour.
Firstly now, I would like to look
into a funny case of ostension, in which belief and behaviour were guided by
legend. Secondly, there is a serious case, in which reality provided for a
narrative scenario, leading to ostensive action.
Legend can become ‘reality’
In 1994, international news media
covered the Dutch story of the false teeth that had been found in a cod. That
year, Mr. Cor Stoop became seasick on a fishing trip and as a result his upper
dental plate went overboard. Three months later, on the same boat, Mr. Hugo
Slamat caught a cod, and while gutting the fish he found a dental plate. Along
with a journalist, Mr. Stoop paid Mr. Slamat a visit, put the false teeth into
his mouth and... they fitted perfectly! Of course, the story is very similar to
international folktales about lost rings and other objects that return in the
stomach of a fish. Actually, these folktales seem to be the most important
source of inspiration for the interpretation
of the events.
In fact, the false teeth had never
been inside the fish for three months. The first fisherman's dentures that went
overboard are still lying on the bottom of the sea. Three months later, the
second fisherman became the victim of a practical
joke by two taxi drivers, who were on board as well. They took along a
spare dental plate from home and put it in the fish when Mr. Slamat was not
looking. It was pure coincidence that these dentures fitted Mr. Stoop, because
they were not his at all! A humorous Dutch urban legend inspired the two taxi
drivers to use the dentures in a practical joke. This legend is about a
fisherman who loses his false teeth while vomiting into the sea as well. A
second fisherman wants to fool his unfortunate friend. He hooks his own
dentures to his fishing rod, pretends to pull them up out of the sea and
exclaims: "What do you know? I am pulling up your teeth!" The unfortunate
fisherman puts the dentures in his mouth, pulls them out again and immediately
swings them overboard, shouting: "Those aren't mine at all; they don't
fit!"
Putting the dentures in the cod was
an act of ostension by the taxi
drivers: they more or less wanted to re-enact an existing funny legend. At
first, Mr. Stoop and Mr. Slamat believed the events to be proto-ostension: a ring-in-fish-like folktale turning into a
memorate - a real personal experience story. On second thoughts, it was a case
of pseudo-ostension, because the taxi
drivers intended to pull a joke and fool the others. The fact that people
thought the dentures miraculously returned in the stomach of a fish, can be
characterized as quasi-ostension: a
misinterpretation of facts, based on existing stories.
Most news media that brought the
initial story never bothered to make rectifications later on, and journalists
ignored the connection with existing folktales completely.
Reality can become 'legend' (and false memorate)
We will start with the grim reality.
At the end of 1999 and the beginning of 2000, the 13-year-old, retarded girl
Tessa is the victim of a group rape more than once. Threatened with a knife and
a fake gun, the girl from Amsterdam is molested and raped by fourteen boys
between the age of nine and sixteen. The offenders threaten to kill her foster
parents and to blow up her house if she should ever talk. Most of the offenders
have a migrant background: the majority is Moroccan. After several months, the
police is informed anyway. The delinquents are arrested, and the ones older
than twelve are convicted. Officials of the Westerpark-district decide to keep
the whole affair quiet, in order to prevent stigmatization and ethnic riots.
More than a year later, in November 2001, a leak to the national press leads to
general indignation, not only because of the shocking character of the sexual
abuse, but also because of the decision made by the authorities to hush up the
matter.
So far for reality. Now for the
stories that imitate the actual facts. March 2002, a 14-year-old girl from
Nijmegen reports to be the victim of a group rape. After investigation and
interrogation by the police, it turns out that the girl made up the whole
event. November 2002, the girl is convicted for reporting a fictitious crime.
This case in Nijmegen did not cause
as much public disturbance as a case of group rape in Assen. On September 18,
2002, Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf reports
about the systematic group rape of a 13-year-old girl called Miranda. She
claims that it all began with a group rape by predominantly juvenile Moroccans.
For the next sixteen months the girl was kidnapped no less than twenty times by
the group. She was offered to adult men as a sex slave. When her parents were
from home, the boys came to her house and kidnapped Miranda, threatening her
with a knife or a gun. Blindfolded and transported in a Mercedes with shaded
car windows, she was taken to a bar-dancing. Threatened with knives and
firearms, she had to lay down on a bed there, after which she was abused by
several paedophiles. The kidnappers received money and hard drugs from the
violators. One day, the terrified girl tries to escape the Moroccan gang and
flees to Amsterdam. After five days, she returns home to tell her parents the
whole story. The parents believe Miranda and in May 2002 they report the crime
to the police in vain. Now Miranda writes an elaborate report about the events,
and the crime is reported to the police a second and a third time. Still,
police investigations remain slow and no arrests are made. Meanwhile, the
perpetrators openly pass the house where Miranda and her parents live, and they
intimidate them. Only after De Telegraaf
publishes the whole story in September, the police seems to be willing to form
a research team. In the same newspaper Miranda’s therapist states that “at
least two other girls” are victims of the Moroccan group rape gang. Local
politicians are indignant about the whole affair. Late October, after thorough
and extensive police investigation, the Prosecution decides that the reported
crime should be considered “not credible”. Social assistance was offered to
both Miranda and her parents.
Apparently, the narrative scenario
was in the air and contagious, because at the beginning of October 2002 another
ethnic group rape was reported in Hoogezand. A 13-year-old Antillean girl
called Tathnoeska Edwards claims to be raped by eight Turkish boys, after which
they set fire to her home. On October 4, 2002, photos of the burned-down house
are published in national newspapers like Algemeen
Dagblad and NRC-Handelsblad. An
interview with the victim’s mother is broadcasted by the local television
station RTV-Noord. The next day, De Telegraaf publishes the
story at large, including an interview with and photos of the girl and her
parents.
According to Tathnoeska,
on Tuesday, October 1, she was riding her bike from school to home. Suddenly,
she was surrounded by a group of immigrant boys - perhaps Turks. They
threatened her and claimed to speak on behalf of her Moroccan neighbour: they
told her to stay out of his affairs and stay away from her former Moroccan
boyfriend Saïd. After this, Tathnoeska received a blow and was allowed to cycle
on. At home, she told that she was afraid to go to school the next day, and her
mother reported her sick.
According to the girl, the next
morning she was home alone, lying asleep on the couch. All of a sudden, there
are eight masked boys in the room. They are wearing gloves and expensive
designer clothes. They hit the girl because she refuses to have sex with them.
While they are threatening her, Tathnoeska learns from their language that the
boys must be immigrants. On second thought, she is no longer sure if they were
Turks. She says: “Actually, I don’t know. They spoke a foreign language. They
could have been Moroccans just as well. I can’t tell these languages apart.”
The boys tie her up and they try to
keep her silent by cutting her in the leg with a knife. After that, they give
her a small pill and they tape her mouth. Then they undress her and she is
raped by all eight boys. The victim looses consciousness. She wakes up again
when she hears her girlfriend Renate scream outside. The boys have already fled
and now the house is on fire. With the help of her girlfriend Renate,
Tathnoeska just barely manages to escape the burning house. Strangely enough,
Tathnoeska is wearing her knickers and her top again, while the ropes and the
tape have disappeared. Finally, she seeks refuge with her uncle Mou, who lives
two houses away. The police arrives, the fire brigade extinguishes the fire,
and an ambulance takes Tathnoeska to the hospital for examination. Later on,
Tathnoeska and her parents go into hiding on a secret address. Meanwhile, the
Turkish community in Hoogezand is deeply shocked by the events, and the initial
accusations lead to major unrest.
Somehow, ethnic tensions appear to
be on the basis of this affair, although the resentment seems to shift from one
suspect mediterranean group to the other: Moroccan neighbour, former Moroccan
boyfriend, immigrant boys, Turkish rapists... Who can tell the difference?
Uncle Mou admits that there were problems with the Moroccan neighbour.
Father Jimmy Edwards is outraged
about the fact that mayor Mirjam Salet of Hoogezand preferred to attend a
meeting of the alarmed Turkish community, rather then comfort the Antillean
victims. Mister Edwards exclaimes: “We have simply been dumped. But we are
human beings too, you know. We have the Dutch nationality as well.” Under the
circumstances, such an emotional statement is quite understandable, but it
looks as if ethnic competition is playing a significant role here.
After elaborate technical and
medical examination, after investigations in the neighbourhood and
interrogations, on October 11 the police reveals that the girl made the whole
story up. On November 8, 2002, the public is informed that Tathnoeska set fire
to the couch in the living room herself. After she lost control over the fire,
she decided to tell the group rape tale – primarily to avoid punishment, so it
seems. In February 2003, the Prosecution demanded 50 hours of community service
and five months of conditional youth custody against Tathnoeska. Again, social
assistance is offered.
John Staps, a specialist in sexual
offence cases, claims in an interview that after police investigation about ten
percent of the accusations prove to be false. A story needs careful
examination. The use of blindfolds or an indistinct description of the offender
may be indications for a false statement. A false report of a sexual crime may
cover up other actions or motives, such as revenge, jealousy, adultery or
remorse over a sexual relationship. Adolescents can have other motives as well,
such as unwanted pregnancy, venereal disease, loss of virginity, or just an
alibi why they came home late. John Staps says: “They are inspired by stories
in the media. This explains the extreme crimes, like group rapes. A common rape
doesn’t even make the headlines anymore.” With the accusation of rape, one can
plead innocence and put the blame on somebody else. When a child lies to its
parents about a rape, it is often unaware of the consequences. At a certain
moment, the story reaches a point of no return: it can no longer be withdrawn.
As soon as the invented crime is reported to the police and hits the news, the
consequences are awful.
Copycat behaviour and proto-ostension
We can establish that the reality of
the ethnic group rape in Westerpark led to a story in the media that started
circulating among people. The story is shocking, but for many people it fits in
perfectly with the negative news coverage and general image of delinquent
groups of immigrant boys. The affair in the media provided a horror scenario,
ready to be recycled and enlarged by three adolescent girls within a few
months. Their ostensive conduct very much resembles the so-called copycat
behaviour that leads news stories to provoke similar events (we had an epidemic
of fathers killing their children some years ago). Not only does this copycat
behaviour lead to imitation of action, but to ostensive reproduction and
re-enactment of stories as well. In a sense, it is the normal situation in
which real-life events lead to new stories. Still, in the perception of the
unsuspecting newspaper readers, the friends and relatives and other people
involved, these stories are for real! At least for a while. In July 2004 it
happened again in Paris, as Marie L. claimed she had been attacked in a train
by Arab and African boys, because they thought she was Jewish. They used a
knife on her hair and clothes, painted swastikas on her body and threw her baby
on the floor, while all the other people in the train compartment looked the
other way. After a few days, Marie confessed that she made the whole story up
and that the cuts and swastikas were self-inflicted, but she claimed her story
was based on the testimony of a Jewish friend, who really was brutaly attacked.
More than we realize, we find ourselves
in a twilight zone as far as these kind of stories are concerned. A story can
be true. The truth can be slightly stretched. The reproduction of facts can be
filtered or coloured. Facts can be manipulated or can turn out to be
propaganda. Stories and events can be re-enacted. A story can be an urban
legend, but an urban legend can turn into a real event as well. A story can be
a rumour, gossip, a lie... Not all facts are verifiable, and many people
particularly believe what they want
to believe.
If a story about a real group rape
is appropriated by girls with the intention to tell that something similar
happened to them, it is called proto-ostension:
a shocking piece of news turns into a personal narrative, a memorate. In the Netherlands, we have
experienced a similar case with the Jewish actor Jules Croiset in 1987. It was
in a time when feelings started running high in a public anti-Semitism debate.
Inspired by existing scenarios for extreme right-wing terror and kidnappings,
Jules Croiset sent threatening letters to people in the name of the “Fascist
Dutch Youth Front” and then staged his own kidnapping. By doing so, he
literally acted out the hard evidence he needed to prove the revival of
anti-Semitism.
Victims can count on our sympathy:
they are fundamentally innocent - not guilty. The number of examples for the
appropriation of violent and abusive scenarios can be extended quite easily.
Not only examples of violence by immigrants, but also of the opposite: stories
of immigrants claiming to be the victims of white racists. The stories need not
be ethnic; they can contain any kind of rivalry. In 1995, 11-year-old Donny
told his parents that a gang of youths in Groningen set fire to him. Actually,
the boy later confessed he had an accident while playing with fire, but he told
the story because he feared a firm beating by his father. The story caused a
lot of unrest, and even though the tale turned out to be untrue, people living
in the neighbourhood considered it to be highly exemplary. During a meeting,
all the frustration about the neighbourhood came out: arson, theft, noise,
battery, extortion, intimidation, aggression...
Exemplary function, the image of the ‘Other’ and demonization
Although the story of Donny was not
true, in the perception of the neighbourhood residents the tale was an exemplum (an exemplary narrative in the
sense of the ancient Catholic saint's life), in this case: a perfect example of
life in a troublesome area. Donny's imaginary misery was a narrative
representation of the neighbourhood's problems. It is almost as if the
offenders in the story wanted to make the social problems as clear as possible.
In many true, semi-true and untrue
stories, the fear of 'The Other' is essential. Distrusting 'The Other' seems to
be a universal human feature, almost an evolutionary strategy for survival. We
come across this basic distrust of 'The Other' in all times and all places.
'The Other' is different on account of categories as culture, politics,
religion, sexual nature and ethnicity. As an adolescent, I heard and believed
urban legends in which dangerous 'Others' like bikers, Negroes and homosexuals
played a part. Later we had punk rockers and skinheads. After September 11th,
the emphasis shifted towards ethnic and religious differences: above all, the
immigrant and the Muslim became the 'Others'.
There is, of course, little
political correctness in the criminalization and demonization of immigrants and
Muslims. Still, stories enable people to speak their mind in a way that is
intolerable in normal debate. The willingness to believe the tales, in which
immigrants are portrayed as criminals and Muslims as terrorists, is an
indication for hidden ethnic and religious bias. Lately, these prejudices are
fostered by world news coverage, especially since September 11th 2001, and
again since March 11th 2004, the terrorist attack in Madrid. At the moment, the
Middle East is the scene of outrageous violence. In the western news media,
Muslims are almost exclusively displayed as terrorists casting stones and
bombs. In the Netherlands, the condemnation of the Islam as a "retarded
culture" by the assassinated right-wing policitian Pim Fortuyn temporarily
fell on fertile ground. Dutch news coverage of recent fatal cases of senseless
violence, in some of which several Moroccans and a Turkish boy were involved,
has only made things worse for the image of ethnic minorities in Dutch society.
The media hardly bring any positive news about Muslims and immigrants: at the
moment, their presence is considered a problem rather than an enrichment by
many.
A survey in June 2004 revealed that
only 14% of the white Dutch population has a positive image of Muslims. No less
than 36% has distinct negative feelings about Muslims and 16% of them feels
intimidated by the presence of Muslims in Dutch society: these people fear
immigrant street gangs, terrorist attacks and future Muslim domination.
Actually, 67% of the Dutch population does not know any Muslims personally:
they just see them on the street or on television. Furthermore, the survey made
clear that most Dutch people do not make a distinction between immigrants and
Muslims anymore – all immigrants are considered to be Muslims nowadays.
These facts constitute a tremendous
breeding ground for rumours and urban legends again. These stories imitate or
exaggerate real life. They can be invented as a projection of one's own fears
and delusions, or as a means to put the blame on others rather than on oneself.
The stories can spread because they verbalize the latent fears perfectly.
Subsequently, other people can experience the stories as actual facts.
Recently, stories have been
circulating in Flanders and the Netherlands about a gang of immigrant boys:
they stop lonely girls in the night and give them the choice between a group rape
or a smile. In Flanders it was called an "angel's smile", in the
Netherlands it was called a "smiley" - the group was even called the
"Smiley Gang". When a naive girl chooses for the smile, the corners
of her mouth are cut out from ear to ear with a sharp knife. After this, the
boys throw salt into the wounds, to worsen the scar. These gruesome mutilation
stories have existed in England since the 1950s: the method has been attributed
to Scottish youth gangs, Chelsea hooligans and IRA terrorists. It is referred
to as the "Chelsea Smile". Apparently, the story crossed the Channel
in the year 2000 and surfaced in Brest, where a girl was supposed to be
attacked likewise by Algerian boys. So in France the story turned ethnic, and
the initial term ‘sourire kabyle’ (Algerian smile, which is actually a cut
throat) soon changed into ‘sourire d’ange’ (angel’s smile). It looks like the
tale travelled from the north of France to the French-speaking part of Belgium.
It turned Dutch in bilingual Brussels and became a hype in the Flemish
university city of Gent by the end of 2002. In 2003 the legend crossed the
Dutch border and caused a scare for weeks. Especially young boys and girls
warned each other for the Smiley Gang, which was supposed to strike in train
stations, underground car parks and abandoned shopping areas at night. E-mails
were sent around as a warning, the story was discussed on internet fora, and
upset parents contacted the police and the press, who started investigations in
many places, always with the same result: no victims were found, and hence no
Morrocan or Antillean offenders. For a moment, there was a rumour that an
adolescent girl in Soest was a victim: she arrived at school with a cut on her
cheek. Her mouth was not cut open though, she told that she was attacked by
four unidentified boys in broad daylight, she was never forced to choose
between a rape and a "smiley" and the scratch soon healed. Still,
because of the buzzing legend, other people immediately declared her a victim
of the Smiley Gang. A clear case of quasi-ostension:
facts erroneously interpreted by means of pre-existing legend. It turned out to
be a case of proto-ostension as well:
in March 2004 a teacher confidentially revealed that the cut on her cheek was
self-inflicted, so the girl may have used elements of the legend for a memorate. Both the school and the media
are concealing the outcome of the investigation, with the result that there are
still children frightened of the Smiley Gang.
In December 2002, a legend with a
negative message about Muslims reached the Netherlands. On December 17,
journalist Peter van der Hoest wrote a column in the Haagsche Courant (The Hague) about the threat of Christmas Fair
terrorism. The journalist is convinced that the story is true, and claims he
knows the women involved personally. At the beginning of December, two ladies
take a bus tour across the border to the German city of Oberhausen to do some
Christmas shopping. In the shopping centre they stumble upon an abandoned bag
which contains at least a 100.000 dollars. Just as they decide to take the bag
to the police, a nervous man with Arab features arrives. He has lost his bag,
and since he is able to give an accurate description, the ladies decide to give
him the bag. The grateful man wants to take the ladies to a jewellery shop for
a present. The women refuse and the man says: "I do want to give you
something! That's why I'll tell you: do not return here before Christmas. You
have to promise me that; do not come back!" Then the man takes off. The
women started to realize, that a terrorist attack must be on hand, so they
notified the German police. Once home, they informed the tour operator about
the incident, who then decided to cancel all trips to Oberhausen. Finally, the
journalist states that the two women are reliable informants, and that they
still have not recovered from the shock.
The Christmas Fair Terrorism Tale
already circulated for some time, not only in Oberhausen and other German
cities in the Ruhr-district, but also in the Dutch province of Limburg,
especially about the Christmas Fairs in Maastricht, Sittard and Heerlen.
Newspaper De Limburger stated that,
due to the persistent rumours, fewer people visited the Christmas Fair on the
Vrijthof in Maastricht. Travel Agency Milot in Rotterdam actually shifted some
shopping trips from Oberhausen to Düsseldorf because of the stories. The German
and the Dutch police received a lot of upset phone calls from civilians, but a
crime was never reported. Investigation by the police led to no result: neither
the ladies, nor the Arab man were ever found.
Fact is, that the urban legend
involved is already almost a century old. During the First World War, in 1915,
the rumour circulated in England. After being treated well by a British nurse,
a grateful German officer warned her that a bomb attack would be carried out on
the London subway. After the terrorist attack on the Twin Towers on September
11th, the urban legend made a tremendous come back. In the US as well as in the
Netherlands, the rumours were buzzing about: the attacks had already been
announced by a grateful Arab, or new attacks were predicted by such a person.
In the Amsterdam subway, an Arab supposedly lost his wallet. As a woman returns
the wallet to him, the man tells her not to go to London on a certain date,
because there is going to be another major attack.
It is clear that the dreaded Other
in the story changes along with social circumstances: in the past the enemy was
the German, today it is the Muslim extremist. The urban legend of the Christmas
Fair Terrorism strongly appeals to hidden feelings of discomfort and paranoia
towards Muslims. From a white Dutch perspective, the subliminal and paranoid
message of the tale is: "They are among
us and they are against us."
What is more, the symbolic value of a story about an upcoming attack on a
Christmas fair is enormous. The story suggests that Muslim terrorists are
aiming to destroy our western prosperity and our Christian roots.
This kind of paranoia was confirmed
once more in the beginning of 2004 when a rumour and an e-mail circulated about
a Muslim bomb attack in Amsterdam during Queen's Day, April 30th. Rumour had
it, that Muslims in the Netherlands informed each other in mosques and through
e-mail, that a major terrorist attack was planned. All Muslims were advised to
either avoid or leave Amsterdam on Queen's Day. So they knew, but they didn’t
want to tell us. Because the e-mail was actually circulating among the Dutch
people, police and press started investigating the story... to no avail.
Presumably, the e-mail and the rumour were started by some right-wing Dutch
youngsters, aiming to incriminate Muslims and scaring people off to visit
crowded Amsterdam on Queen's Day. Needles to say, nothing happened that day.
As far as the research into contemporary
legends is concerned, these pessimistic narratives seem to reveal a growing
demonization of immigrants, Muslims in particular. In the stories, they more
and more get depicted as the dangerous 'Others': the untrustworthy outsiders,
the violent ones, the terrorists, the criminals. It goes without saying that
our immigrant and muslim citizens are not amused at all, and strongly object
these incriminating images.
Conclusion
We can conclude that in daily
storytelling - in which the media play an important and sometimes even decisive
role - fact and fiction often mingle. Modern legends and ostensive action can
have a tremendous impact on the perception of reality and they can form a
barometer for the social climate. For ethnologists, the perception of truth should be more vital than truth itself. The
question is why certain legends are believed to be true. Objective truth does
not exist and is just a matter of conception.
Furthermore, we can establish that
stories do not only imitate real life, but real life imitates stories as well.
We tell, hear, see and read legends, but we believe, experience, re-enact and
live legends too. The notion of ostension
is used to comprehend the mechanism of legends we live. For other kinds of
legends the notion of proto-ostension
is used, namely when people tell legends as if they were personally involved -
because they believe so, because they
want to believe so, or because they
want others to believe so. This goes
for the Kuwaiti girl, for Jules Croiset, for Miranda and for Tathnoeska. Like
in contemporary legends, in their kind of stories there are dangerous 'Others'
who are guilty and not to be trusted: hostile soldiers, right-wing extremists,
and to an increasing extent immigrants and Muslims. For ethnologists this is a
cultural and historical fact, for the media this is a reason for caution and
restraint, and for politics and society this is a cause for concern.
Legends and tales based on ostensive
action are memes - cultural building
blocks - and they spread and behave like viruses. They can infect journalists
as much as ordinary folk. Unfortunately, there is no such thing as a legend
checker for MS Word. If such software existed, it would be nothing like a spelling
checker, but much more like a virus checker. As we all know, a new and creative
computer virus is able to by-pass the anti-virus software, because the software
is always one step behind the facts and is only able to stop old familiar
viruses. This is bad news for the media: in spite of scrupulous checking and
double-checking, every now and again legends and ostensive action will
contaminate the media, nearly as much as it does daily life.
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