There is a long tradition of storytelling in folksong. Before methods for transcribing and later for recording definitive versions existed, the oral tradition was used to pass on tales and deeds. And, as anyone familiar with ‘Chinese whispers’ will know, this process is not always accurate. Even when transcription methods had become available, the accuracy of the record can be questioned, as is the case in Sabine Bearing-Gould (1834-1924), an 18th century Anglican reverend, perhaps most famous for his earnest documentation of werewolves (Baring-Gould 1973), as well as many collections of English folk song, which were often unsurprisingly edited from the pious perspective of a religious man of the time, likely due to the collectors profession. Often, such songs are cautionary or moral tales, and thus the process of collecting and editing can change an oral history dramatically. This essay will consider how one such instance, the song Stagger Lee, reflects changing attitudes of the audience and the narrator towards violence and masculinity in its portrayal of an initially real-world, and later supernatural, violent protagonist. How, and why this paean to violence, with its fetishistic vision of extreme masculinity, has become something of a standard in the American folk canon. It considers both the retelling of Stagger Lee’s tale in song, and subsequent appropriation by cinema in depictions of race, sex, and violence as admirable or heroic qualities. In particular, a kind of sexual violence which is perhaps at odds with stereotypical views on homosexuality amongst the African-American community, which spawned, and in some cases continues to celebrate, Stagger Lee as a mythoform, archetype, and antihero
CORE (COnnecting REpositories)
CORE (COnnecting REpositories)