"Text, Lies and Videotape": Can Oral Tales Survive?

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Elizabeth Tucker

Abstract

Within the past ten years, the home video machine has become a major vehicle for children's storytelling. In relatively affluent households it is common for children to watch tapes such as "Cinderella," "Peter Pan," "Sleeping Beauty," and "The Little Mermaid" over and over again. Is it true that, as some studies have suggested, substantial TV-watching inhibits creativity? (Waters). And is it possible that some of our treasured traditional tale texts will die out, to be replaced in the minds of children by video versions? I want to explore these ideas, which may be at best half-truths, in light of children's folklore scholarship and my own recent fieldwork. Stories collected from children indicate that there is a great deal of creativity to be found, including creative elaborations of the story videos that are becoming so well known by young viewers.

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