Exemplary stories

Exemplary stories1 Véronique Campion-Vincent Abstract The article analyses phenomenon of the “exemplary stories”— apocryphal anecdotes often told at parties as realistic stories which supposedly really happened, but which are in fact variants of socially quite widespread, sometimes even international folkloric narratives. Also labelled as urban/contemporary legends, this type of narratives is discussed in wide theoretical and disciplinary context, including their itinerations in the modern mass media (especially newspapers) and popular literature. Finally, social and cultural functions and meanings of these apocryphal stories are presented. Keywords exemplary stories, urban legends, contemporary legends, rumors, anecdotes, fait divers, contemporary folklore, oral culture There is agame that helps to pass time at parties, too often monotonous: one must be on the look-out and note, amongst the anecdotes narrated, the “exemplary stories”. One becomes rapidly aspecialist of the subject; one is then alerted by the teller’s assurance, by the fact that the story is presented as having happened to afriend of afriend or yet to people the narrator cannot name through discretion, by the too perfect characteristics of the anecdote, and especially by its punchline, so elegant that— as the wedding cakes of the professional cooks— “it looks too good to be true”. Without being directly linked to precise events rumors, that generally concern ambiguous or problem-ridden sectors of social life, run around town. They are generally anecdotes, told as true, attributed to the narrator or to people close to him. They are listened to in variable ways: at one extreme like jokes— anecdotes of which everyone knows that they are not true but that are being told because they sum up and schematize in two replicas complex and jumbled situations— at the other extreme as legends, stories of which all listeners (in the days when legends were told) forget that they are probably not true. Ishall call this type of tales exemplary stories since they point to an implicit moral. Exemplary stories are parables, more or less transparent. Like the Mythologies (1970) described by Roland Barthes in his analyses of the media they tell more than it seems at first. One enters auniverse of intermingled episodes in which true meaning appears through evasions. Often concerning problem sectors, exemplary stories symbolize and sum up ambiguous situations, of which they implicitly propose an interpretation, from which they “naturally” draw amoral. Afew examples? 1 Author’s translation (1987, revised in 2018) of “Les histoires exemplaires”, published in Contrepoint 22–23, 1976: 217–232. OPEN ACCESS 16 STUDIA ETHNOLOGICA PRAGENSIA 2/2018 Exemplary stories, the anecdotes telling how poor people (Algerians or coal miners from Northern France) arriving from their huts or shacks into the new lodgings they have been conceded by anaive administration (unwary of their real needs and desirous to change them in spite of themselves, says the implicit moral) do not know what to do with the bathtubs they see for the first time and fill them with couscous or coal. Ihave heard those anecdotes, told by bourgeois of Northern France in the early 1950s, then by Frenchmen living in Algeria “pieds noirs” in 1954. Exemplary stories, those cock-and-bull stories exposing secret networks of white slave-trade. Powerful traffickers are everywhere, acontinuous distrust is imperative, just judge for yourself: Apoor old lady who acharitable young girl visits regularly asks her to carry aletter to acertain address (and not to send it by post to save the stamp’s money). On the way, the young over-trustful Samaritan meets her father to whom she shows the envelope. This clairvoyant man realizes that the envelope is empty and the story fishy; he therefore accompanies his daughter to the said address. As soon as the bell has been rung agrabbing hand comes out, ready to grab the innocent. (Heard in Northern France in the 1950s) An evening at the theater: arespectable mature couple offers to ayoung girl queuing for cheap top galleries aseat in their box: the friend who should have joined them cannot come and the seat is offered free. Devoid of mistrust she accepts… And does not decline the drugged sweets that are offered to her at the beginning of the play. Asleep, the innocent victim is carried away in the deserted corridors by the diabolic couple when afriend arrives miraculously and saves her in extremis. (Heard in Northern France in the 1950s) In aclothing shop (shoes, gloves, lingerie or simply women’s clothing) patrons are put to sleep, either by the contact with shoes or gloves or by asweet and carried away through secret exits hidden in the fitting-rooms towards subterranean networks leading to Buenos Aires (until the 1940s) or to Arab palaces of oil emirs (still popular). (This last type of anecdotes has proliferated in Orléans in 1969, the shopkeepers accused being then Jewish. However, Ihave heard it several times in the 1950s in Northern France, about shopkeepers from Lille or Roubaix who were not then presented as Jewish) The aim of this paper is to present some thoughts on exemplary stories, to emphasize their diverseness and to try to explain the survival, at first sight stupefying, of those tales who seem to be nothing but absurdity, silliness, spitefulness. EXEMPLARY STORIES AND NEWSPAPERS Were they only transmitted orally, exemplary stories would know amore modest development. However, they are frequently relayed and enlarged in mass literature and OPEN ACCESS VéRONIqUE CAmPION-VINCENT 17 the press, popular press mostly. The newspaper is amirror. It accounts for facts and events, but reflects also our thoughts, dreams, desires, beliefs, myths. Exemplary stories are often diffused in good faith by journalists who honestly think they really happened. The experienced reader recognizes thus anecdotes— funny or tragic— that he sees to reappear at regular intervals, sometimes in slightly variant forms. Thus the funny anecdote (published in the popular daily France-Soir in March 1973) telling how aTel-Aviv housewife, coming home in the afternoon, sees apair of naked masculine legs sticking from under the bathtub in her bathroom. Convinced those legs belong to her husband, she dares an audacious caress. Surprised, the plumber (for it was him, called by the husband, wife unsuspecting) starts, bangs his head into the bathtub and passes away. Panicked, the housewife calls an ambulance. The stretcher bearers laugh so hard, when they hear the story, that they let fall the poor unconscious man… whose leg is then broken. Who doesn’t feel he knows this story already, especially its conclusion too perfect to be true? I’ve heard it orally, in 1976, told by ajournalist specializing in human interest stories, with a kitten which the husband was trying to catch under the bathtub and who (the husband being undressed as the night was hot) had unvoluntarily effected the bold caress. The stretcher bearers and their leg-breaking hilarity remained unchanged. Everybody knows the story of “the stolen grandmother” that, as achild, Iheard attributed to arich family of Northern France, city of Roubaix. It was during the German occupation and the separation of France between an occupied and afree zone. Having driven for aholiday in the free zone, the family suddenly sees the grandmother pass away with aheart attack. Panicking at the idea of red tape, they decide to bring her back surreptitiously and hide the body in the trunk. Those emotions have made them hungry: they stop for apicnic in the woods, get away from the car and on their return find it stolen. No more grandmother, no more body, no more inheritance. This story was in the fifties the theme of aFrench movie L’armoire volante (The Flying Cupboard, director Carlo Rim) and pursues abrillant career, In France-Soir, in five years, two versions of the anecdote have been published as true. One shall note the absence of names, the Swiss source of the first version, the embarassed introductive first lines of the second version: Thieves have taken away the body of the campers’ grandmother How shall we bring grandmother home? The answer given to this question by acouple of young Swiss campers was to bring about the dismaying adventure told by the German language daily Emmenthaler Blatt, printed in Lagnau, Bern canton. Grandmother was dead. She had joined her granddaughter and her husband on the Mediterranean Spanish coast. Everyone was sleeping under the tent. One day, though, the old lady had not awakened. She had succumbed to aheart attack. What was to be done? To declare the death to Spanish authorities? But from here to Switzerland, with two borders to cross, innumerable formalities and big expenses were to be anticipated. The young Swiss chose the simplest solution to wrap the grandmother’s body in the tent and secure the “wrap” on the car’s roof. The crossing of the first border offered no difficulty but, night coming, ahotel had to be found, the tent being unusable on account of grandmother. The car stayed on aparkOPEN ACCESS 18 STUDIA ETHNOLOGICA PRAGENSIA 2/2018 ing lot. In the morning, frightening discovery: all the camping gear, grandmother included, had disappeared. The young couple did not dare to alert the police. They waited to be back in Switzerland to tell their misfortune. Researches were started right away but there is little hope to find the old lady’s body. (France-Soir, 10th September 1970) Nan’s body was on the car both are stolen. From informations supplied by the inhabitants of the Mourillon neighborhood, city of Toulon, the district attorney, M.Routain has asked the national police to investigate avery strange case: agrandmother’s body would have been stolen with the car on which it had been tied up, wrapped in amattress, to bring her back home. But the police has not yet succeeded to identify the protagonists of this strange story. Grandmother has been stolen, or rather grandmother’s body. On Xmas morning. On Dec 24th, therefore, grandmother’s children vacationing in the mountains and grandmother (aged 90) being in trust of her granddaughter, the granddaughter’s fiancé came at home: — We’ll celebrate at my parents’. I’ll drop by to pick you up on this evening. — You don’t think of it! Who will look after grandma? — Bring her along! The idea was judged excellent. The grandmother came in the young man’s car and the evening was great fun. Grandmother took part in the general gaiety, drinking and feasting within the limits (or about) allowed by her great age. However, after midnight, she was tired. — She can’ t be driven back now, said the granddaughter. — Doesn’t matter, you’ll both sleep here. Everybody went to bed. In the morning, grandmother did not wake up. Grandmother was dead. — What will dad and mom say? cried the young girl. The fiancé, acool-headed man offered: — We’ll drive her back, put her to bed and you’ll only have to phone to your parents: “Grandmother is dead, come back.” Alas, rigor mortis is no vain expression. Grandmother could no longer enter the car. The resourceful fiancé decided: — Let’ swrap her into amattress and tie her on the roof-rack. No sooner said than done; afew minutes later the strange convoy reached Le Mourillon. — Quick, let’s unload grandmother, begged the young girl. — Let’s be careful and first make sure no one is in the way, objected her companion, the shrewd young man indeed. No one was. But when they came downstairs the car, and the mattress, and grandmother had disappeared. Since then, no news. (France-Soir, 14th January 1965) The tale Ishall now tell is amore recent example of an exemplary story still in full evolution. It has been published in 1972, by awell-known columnist who seems to OPEN ACCESS VéRONIqUE CAmPION-VINCENT 19 have been fooled. In his weekly column “Au fil de la semaine” (Events of the week), the editorialist from Le Monde, the reference daily of intellectual France, Pierre Viansson-Ponté commented the facts of the week and moralized about them. The main facts of that week were the trial of the Clairvaux killers2 and the Bruay case.3 After commenting on those two criminal events, the columnist tells us an anecdote: An elegant dinner in Neuilly, posh suburb of Paris. One of the invited couples has left for the evening its two children alone at home: the boy, who is ten, will watch over his little sister who is four. Let him open to no one, go to bed at nine he has promised— and (in case anything happens) the phone number of daddy’s and mummy’s friends is written by the phone. At ten the phone rings: it’s the little boy. Half laughing, half crying, very excited: “Daddy, aburglar came. I’ve killed him”. The father thinks of atale, is amazed, tries to calm down, but alarming details come up: “Yes, it’s true. With your gun, in your desk drawer. Abig man, with amask on his face. He is here, in the drawing-room, on the carpet”. At last, the father worries: “I’m coming right away”. The thief is indeed there, on the drawing-room carpet, in astream of blood, dead as adoor-nail. When he had rung insistently, the little boy had come behind the door, hesitated, awaited for awhile. Curiosity had been stronger. As soon as entered, the intruder had shaken him: “Where does mummy put her money? And daddy?” Trembling, but resolute the little boy had shown him the drawing-room’s secretary: “Mummy, it’s here. Daddy, in his office. Iwill take it for you”. While the burglar rummaged about the secretary’s drawers, he had taken out of the office the 6.35 that his father had been careless enough to show him and, as in agame, as on TV, had loaded it, come back on tiptoe and shot at the figure leaning over the secretary. The man had fallen. Then the little boy had telephoned. It is not all. The police arrives. The body is turned up, its face discovered. Acry: it was the son ( 22 years old) of the friends at whose house the parents were dining. This happened afew weeks ago. There was no complaint, the action of justice was stopped, the case 2 The Clairvaux killers were two convicts, sentenced to long-term, who had tried to escape from the jail, slitting open the prison nurse’s throat with a knife after having kept her as hostage for several hours. Both were condemned to death and executed, though only one had committed the murder. 3 In April 1972, a young miner’s daughter had been found dead and raped on a vacant lot close to her parents’ poor tenement home, close also to the garden of Monique Mayeur, rich shop owner, mistress of a celibate and shy fortyish notary (this typically French provincial character is a leading citizen, member of the social elite) who frequented prostitutes and lied about his comings and goings that day. There were no definite charges, but a small leftist judge, le Juge Pascal, sensed the good story, kept talking to the press about horrid bourgeois morals, accused and jailed the notary. In this poor mining town, it was little poor victim vs big bad rich killer and the story became big news all accross France. The case was later taken out of the leftish judge’s hands, the notary freed after six weeks in jail (and he later won lawsuits against the newspapers and magazines who had presented him as the killer), a young friend of the victim’s family confessed the murder to the police, and then retracted. The case has never been tried and the vicitim’s family, convinced of the notary’s guilt regularly and unsuccesfully filed petitions for its revision for several years. OPEN ACCESS 20 STUDIA ETHNOLOGICA PRAGENSIA 2/2018 has been closed. The family spoke of an accident and, to close friends, of asuicide. The little boy is spending splendid holidays with his sister. This news item has figured prominently in the press. It is news of today, cynical and cool as this era (…) This sinister and true story, where childhood is not innocent and the adults are all guilty, cannot make us proud of this society that is ours. (Le Monde, 2nd–3rd July 1972) At first glance the anecdote seemed imaginary, but its appearance in respected columns raised problems. From the appearance of this imaginary anecdote have sprung the investigation and reflections presented in this paper. The investigation Ihave conducted with “authorized sources” that could be found: the press and the police. First I’ve asked questions to journalists. However, shyness prevented me from approaching the item’s author, Pierre Viansson-Ponté, mainly political chronicler, author of several books on the Fifth Republic’s policy. Ijust couldn’t figure how to tell to this important figure: “Well, Ithink you’ve been fooled”. No one took the anecdote seriously: its source was pure hearsay and no other newspaper picked up the story.4 One year later, awell-known Parisian press correspondent of Australian origin, Sam White, published in the column “My Paris” that he was writing for an ephemeral magazine apaper denouncing the anecdote: Iwould have been happy to be able to believe this story told by Le Monde but for asmall fact that shook my faith: to tell the truth, that story, Ihad already heard it in my youth, in Australia. At that time, in that country, it had an anti-Catholic turn and denounced the formidable power of the Catholic Church in Melbourne, amainly protestant city. ln the Australian version, the unfortunate father was apromising member of the Labour party and it was Dr Mannix, formidable archbishop of Melbourne, who had used his influence in his favour, to hush up the scandal. (Paris-Paris, June 1973) The investigation in newspapers and magazines was negative. Another authorized source is the police: criminal news are announced or corroborated by the police. In Paris then, to aspecial body of journalists accredited with the police préfecture and called the “préfecturiers”. From personal oral interviews with préfecturiers, Igathered that this “murder” was never announced by the police. Ihad aphone interview with the public relations attaché of the Paris police, Mr Lespinasse. He was certain the anecdote was untrue: the police had never been called on the scene. After the article, numerous cross-checks— with doctors, clinics, hospitals had been made by the police, anxious to exonerate itself from the article’s implicit accusation of having hushed up ascandal out of consideration for arich and powerful family. All those cross-checks had proved negative: “and abody simply doesn’t disappear like that”. The police source was negative too. One can’t prove nothing happened, but it’s highly probable. 4 Except for the Canard Enchainé, satirical political weekly that told the story briefly on the 5th July 1972, two days after publication, in its echo column. OPEN ACCESS VéRONIqUE CAmPION-VINCENT 21 After “authorized sources”, there were “other sources”. Ihave behaved somewhat obsessionally, telling the anecdote to everyone Imet. Iintroduced my story by relating first exemplary stories whose falsity is well-known, such as miners’ bathtubs full of coal, or white slave-trade anecdotes. An investigation on an exemplary story while it is spreading is very unsettling; at practically every encounter, Ireceived the answer “but that story is true. I’ve been told it by …” Checks made at my insistence have always shown the tale’s source to be “afriend of afriend”. The exemplary story has many variants: the age of the young killer could be 12, 14, 8 (10 in the source article). Sometimes the burglar was only wounded, sometimes he was dead, the anecdote is always very precise in the spreader’s memory but not, however, dated or localized (always “good” locations, though: Neuilly, Passy, Boulogne). All social sets participate in the diffusion and people who would never have dined together knew participants of this dinner. In my unsystematic investigation Ihave met more than twenty friends of participants in that banquet. All ages too: the story is mostly told by 40–50 years-old, but one of the tellers heard it from adolescents who had told him they knew the murderer. Nobody seemed to remember the article. After some changes, this tale became ascript. ATV movie inspired by it was shown in February 1974. Iinterviewed the script-writer; novelist Andrée Chedid, who told me she’d heard the story “at adinner-party” (of course). In the TV adaptation the young burglar was only wounded, and the story centered on the relationship that was created, during later common holidays, between burglar and shooter. This anecdote lends itself so “naturally” to moralistic developments— morals get worse and worse nowadays, crime lurks and may spring up in the best families— than one wonders if it has not been built on purpose, creators and diffusers being equally unconscious of this fact. Born from the press, or at least wrought large by it, the anecdote of the elegant dinner and young delinquent has become aliterary theme, after acareer in word of mouth. Newspapers also relate exemplary stories without being their dupe, but to denounce them. They mostly denounce anecdotes of aracist character. Thus, in 1969, the press has denounced the explosion of white slave-trade rumors that took place in Orléans. Its intervention was provoked by the racist aspect of those rumors and started by the complaints filed by the Jewish shopkeepers victims of those tales. Likewise, the exemplary story of “the rat bone”, aimed at exotic restaurants, circulated in 1972 in France, in 1973 in Germany. It was analyzed and denounced by Pierre Viansson-Pontê in his Le Monde column “Au fil de la semaine” (Events of the week): Last year, in the spring time, the rumor went accross France in afew weeks, from North to South, from Strasbourg to Brest. Oh, it was by no means an “important” story. The anecdote was always the same and, of course, the teller affirmed, in good faith, to have heard it from someone who knew personally the victim of the misadventure. Apatient, suffering on the morning following adinner in arestaurant, goes to his dentist who pulls out of his jaw astrange little bit of bone. So strange that the conscientious dentist has it examined immediately alaboratory, who concludes that it is definitely afragment… of rat bone. The dentist telephones his patient immediately. Acomplaint is filed. The police search the incriminated restaurant and finds in the kitchen arefrigeraOPEN ACCESS 22 STUDIA ETHNOLOGICA PRAGENSIA 2/2018 tor full of dismembered rats. South of the Loire, where stories are easily embroidered, the unfortunate diner had nearly choked on the whole bone, stuck accross his throat, he had been carried to hospital and the police had found arat-farm in the restaurant’s cave. In France, last year, the restaurants thus denounced were always Vietnamese and/ or Chinese. Then the same campaign appeared in Switzerland. (…) Now, in Western Germany, foreign restaurants, mostly Mediterranean or exotic flourishing in the last years, have suddenly been deserted by their clientele. (…) Commendable efforts have been made to fight what appears to be collective hysteria. (…) But there is nothing to be done. Vox populi answers to everything. (…) At one year’s interval, in France and then in Germany, the same absurd story has spread like fire, bringing immediate, concrete, measurable consequences, provoking abrutal change in the habits and behavior of hundreds of thousands of people, clients desert the denounced restaurants. It is there that the anecdote takes its size than it can scare, that it gives cause for thought. (…) One can wonder if, in the case of the rat bone, amongst all the nauseating bubbles it brings to the surface of the swamp, there is not— beyond naivety, silliness, greed, malevolence— the old xenophobic feeling, applied in France to awell-defined category of foreigners judged intrusive and presumed mysterious, in Germany to all those Mediterranean and Asiatic sub-men, dedicated to the service of the Aryan who, yesterday… Let’s not go too far. If the fable seems exemplary it is first because of the dark poetry than the happy cities of the twentieth century beget secretly. It is also because the strength of this rumor, at the time of TV, radio, popular press, should be asubject of meditation, not only for sociologists but also for mass-media specialists and render them more modest. It is at last by the unsuspected or forgotten pitfalls, the archaic trenches that undermine collective consciousness under the crust of our comfort and self-assurance and suddenly reveal themselves to our stupor, under our steps, within ourselves. (Le Monde 10–11th June 1973) INTERPRETATIONS OF RUMORS BY SOCIAL SCIENCES How can we interpret those stories? They are evidently acategory of rumors and rumors have been the object of many studies. Very different specialists have been concerned with them: “Historians and jurists, concerned with the reliability of the testimony; psychologists concerned with perception and recall; psychiatrists concerned with the expression of repressed impulses in communicative acts; and sociologists and psychosociologists concerned with group problem-solving, public opinion and reactions to disasters” (International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, 1968, 13, RUMOR: 576–80). Ishall not try, in this paper, to account for all the theories exposed by those specialists. However, Ishall note briefly the points of view of the main disciplines upon the central problem of rumor content formation. The social psychologists’ point of view is quite rigid. They have wanted to fight the alarmist rumors than circulated during the war in the USA and have therefore polarized upon their inaccuracies. In series of experimental studies, they conceive OPEN ACCESS VéRONIqUE CAmPION-VINCENT 23 of rumor as amessage given at the start and study the deformations brought about by the chain of oral transmission. Model of this kind of studies, Allport & Postman’s book The Psychology of Rumor (1947) points three types of deformations: the tales are refined (and some features are kept and enlarged), are levelled (shortened, impoverished) are assimilated (drawing nearer to the cognitive habits, stereotypes, expectations of the tellers). Those formal, common sense findings appear alittle short these days. Another social psychologist, Festinger, has given up all consideration of inaccuracy to study in his Theory of Cognitive Dissonance (1957), the mechanisms that bring aperson to accept an uncheckable information (this is Festinger’s definition of information carried by rumors). Will be accepted, or made-up, the news that reinforce the opinions and beliefs of the individual and correspond to his state of mind. However, the links that unite opinions and beliefs to the stories carried by the rumors remain difficult to precise. Furthermore, one does not see what brings one to want to communicate, transmit, spread the reassuring information. Putting the accent on active elaboration processes rather than on passive diffusion processes, psychoanalytic studies (it is nearly always the same text that is cited, astudy of Jung (1922) upon the diffusion of arumor in aschoolgirls’ group) have underlined the importance of phantasms, desires, anxieties and hostilities that find an indirect expression in the transmission of rumors. For sociologists, the rumors should not be considered as amessage deformed by afaulty transmission but as the results of social interaction processes. Finding themselves in ambiguous situations, or in situations upon which they do not have enough information to be able to interpret them, men and women pool their resources to make reasonable estimations, unite their information, interpret them according to their presuppositions and... build up rumors. Shibutani’s Improvised News (1966) which presents this theory defines rumor as: “Aform of recurrent communication in which men in an ambiguous situation try to build asignificant interpretation of it by pooling their intellectual resources”. The social interaction theory accounts certainly more exactly than the too static approaches of social psychologists of the majority of rumor processes linked to an unusual event, to acrisis situation. However, it does not apply well to exemplary stories, whose links with events are very loose. What “pooling of intellectual resources” can explain the rat bone, the bathtub full of coal, the elegant dinner and young delinquent? And to what “ambiguous situation” respond these stories who live along subterranean and slow life and of which, when they explode, nobody knows why it’s here rather than there, today sooner than tomorrow? The rumors of the type “exemplary stories” have been studied in the collective book directed by Edgar Morin La Rumeur d’Orléans (1969) which analyzed the explosion of white slave-trade stories denouncing Jewish shopkeepers that took place in Orléans in 1969 and that Ihave mentioned earlier. This book studied in depth the motives of the creation and proliferation of this phantasmatic tale in aFrench provincial town and underlined the importance of archaic dreams and myths in modern imaginary. One found in this book anew approach to the problem of content formation of exemplary stories’ type of rumors, lying beyond the psychoanalytical approach (too centered on the individual) and the social interaction approach (too centered on OPEN ACCESS 30 STUDIA ETHNOLOGICA PRAGENSIA 2/2018 (Versilov) This story... it’s what there is of most ignobly patriotic in tales of this kind. But how could Istop him? You’ve seen, he was swooning with pleasure “and the thing reached the authorities” then his whole soul was singing “reached the authorities”. In those pitiful circles those anecdotes are necessary. They have alot of them, especially because of their intemperance. They have learned nothing, do not know anything exactly. Well, outside card-games and their jobs, the want to talk about something human, poetical. (…) Talking nonsense, he satisfies his love for his fellow-being: he wanted to please us. His patriotic feeling is satisfied too: for example they also have this anecdote telling that Zavialov (well-known Russian industrialist) was offered 1 million by the English if he would agreee not to brand his own products. (The adolescent) God, Iknow this anecdote. (Versilov) And who doesn’t? While telling you his tale, he knows, too, that you have certainly heard it already but he tells it nevertheless, voluntarily fancying that you don’t know it. (…) All those anecdotes are the limit of bad taste. But you must know that this type of bad taste is more widely and more deeply spread than we think. The desire of lying to please one’s fellow being, you will meet even in the best circles for we all suffer of this intemperance of feeling. But in our circles, the stories are different: what is being told about America, for example, and about politicians! Ibelong myself, Imust admit, to that type of men and have suffered from it all my life. My friend, allow men to lie to you alittle: it is innocent. Let them even lie alot. First you will prove your delicacy and, in exchange, one will let you lie too: two huge advantages. One must love one’s fellow being. Controlled mythomania is more frequent than is thought generally. It is often limited to aprecise field. Thus, when conversation concerns the supernatural, rational people make strange disclosures, affirm weird things. Atouching case is that of my charming old aunt who then relates with convincing conviction extraordinary anecdotes of spells, ghosts, charms which she attributes to friends of which she gives the names. However, the amateur of fantastic tales recognizes easily the best short stories of Claude Seminole, Jean Ray, Sheridan Le Fanu, etc… General societal factors explain the rise of controlled mythomania: frustrations grow as societies become more complex, more anonymous, more bureaucratized and as traditional values collapse. MEANING OF EXEMPLARY STORIES Like the myth, the proverb, the fable or the parable, the exemplary story includes two levels of meaning. There is what is being said, the anecdote explicitly told, that can be compared to the statement of the proverb, to the tale of the myth or of the parable, to the story of the fable. And what is not being said but constitutes the real message of the story, such as the hidden meaning of the proverb or of the myth, implicit in these two types as well as in the exemplary story, or such as the unveiling of the parable or the moral of the fable, who are explicit.As well as those other forms of double meaning, the exemplary story is aword that carries weight, that imposes strongly its implicit conclusion. OPEN ACCESS VéRONIqUE CAmPION-VINCENT 31 Behind an anecdote’s alibi, exemplary stories allow to express repressions: they will frequently bear upon themes that correspond to problems refused or repressed by collective consciousness. Two levels of repression can be identified. First the feelings, desires, anxieties, fears of which there is no clear consciousness: the fear of modernity for example. Second the feelings one identifies but whose expression is censored by the group: in the old days, the world of sex; today racist feelings, expressed in exemplary stories through anecdotes that justify those feelings in aroundabout way. What are the hidden truths proclaimed by the exemplary stories, what are the morals of those legendary parables? Conservative and chauvinistic themes abound in them: distrust, hostility, hatred towards foreigners and change find themselves “naturally” justified. Anxiety is easy to detect: worry in front of accelerated changes, fear of the new, the unknown; the whole leaves an impression of uneasiness, of anguish. Most often there is not “a” moral, but acomplex set of implicit thoughts. behind exemplary stories. Contradictory feelings are expressed by them. Such is the case for the white slave-trade anecdotes who permit to “say” at the same time one’ srefusal of modern evolution, that of feminine fashion especially, and one’s frightened attraction towards the delightful dangers of the abysses of vice. Exemplary stories celebrate the wonders of chance and destiny: the deceived father killing his “thief-son” or “war-prisoner” mistaken by chance: Coming home without warning after four years as prisoner of the Germans, he finds the house empty and an infant in acraddle. Overcome with fury he throws the baby by the window. Arriving soon after the tragedy, his wife explains she was minding today the baby of aneighbor. (The story, that ran through France in 1944–1945 “told” the anger of those who had been in such asituation for good and “advised” them to be moderate) The success of an exemplary story generally implies that it covers alarge range: expression of repressed feelings, attractive or distressing; revival of themes developed by journalistic mythology and mass-culture; rupture of norms or of taboos with many resonances. The “best” are those who partake more or less of all those dimensions. LITERATURE Auclair, G. 1970. Le Mana quotidien. Structure et fonction de la chronique des faits divers. Paris: Édition Anthropos. Barthes, R. 1970. Mythologies. Paris: Seuil. Du Camp, M. 1893. Paris, ses origines, ses fonctions, sa vie dans la seconde moitié du XIXeme siècle (Vol. 3, 13). Paris: Hachette. Festinger, L. 1957. Atheory of cognitive dissonance. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Festinger, L., Riecken, H.H., Schachter, S.1956. When prophecy fails. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Febvre, L. 1962. “La Terreur” in Pour une histoire à part entière. Paris: Sevpen. Jung, C.J. 1922. “Acontribution to the psychology of rumor” in Collected Papers on Analytical Psychology. London: Bailliére, Tindall and Cox. OPEN ACCESS 32 STUDIA ETHNOLOGICA PRAGENSIA 2/2018 Lienhardt, P.A. 1975. “The Interpretation of Rumour”. Pp.105–131 in J.M.Beattie, R.G.Lienhardt (eds.) Studies in Social Anthropology. Essays in Memory of E.E.EvansPritchard by His Former Colleagues. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Morin, E. 1969. La Rumeur d’Orléans. Paris: Seuil. Paulhan, J. 1954. “Le bonheur dans l’esclavage”. Preface to Histoire d’O. Paris: Tchou. Seguin, J.P.1959. Nouvelles à sensation, canards du XIXeme siècle. Paris: Colin. Shibutani, T. 1966. Improvised news. Asociological study of rumor. New York: Irvington Publishing. Van Gennep, A. 1912. La formation des légendes. Paris: Flammarion. Véronique Campion-Vincent is French anthropologist and folklorist, former researcher at the CNRS and the Maison des sciences de l’Homme, specialized in the sociological approach to rumors and urban legends. She is the author of Organ Theft Legends (2005), La société parano; théorie du complot, menaces et incertitudes (2007), 100% rumeurs ! codes caches, objets pieges, aliments contamines… La verite sur 50 legendes urbaines extravagantes (2014, with Jean Bruno Renard), and many other books and scholarly publications. OPEN ACCESS