5/7/2023 0 Comments Folktale examples in real life![]() ![]() No wonder La haine instantly, and despite Kassovitz’s denials, acquired the reputation of being antipolice. ![]() In the process, the film shows clashes between police and youth, and in one famous scene, two policemen sadistically molest Hubert and Saïd while a trainee officer watches. His death in the hospital propels Vinz (Vincent Cassel), Hubert (Hubert Koundé), and Saïd (Saïd Taghmaoui) on an eventful journey through their suburban estate ( cité) and then central Paris, ending in shocking violence. The narrative spring of La haine is the shooting of a young beur (a second-generation North African) by the police during the riots that open the film. Before M’Bowole, another famous case, that of Malik Oussekine, in 1986, had had particular resonance for him, and it is referred to in the opening montage. For Kassovitz, however, they were no cause for laughter. More than three hundred mortal “slipups” have been recorded since 1981-common enough to have become a topic for comic films. He wondered in an interview “how a guy could get up in the morning and die the same evening in this way.” M’Bowole’s officially accidental death is one of the many bavures that have plagued the French police in recent decades. Kassovitz started writing the script of La haine on April 6, 1993, the day Makome M’Bowole, a young man from Zaire, was shot while in police custody in the eighteenth arrondissement of Paris. This black-and-white chronicle of twenty-four hours in the life of a mixed-race young male trio from a run-down banlieue has resonated ever since. The explosive contents of the film, its unusually young creative team (Kassovitz and the three lead actors were all in their twenties), the fact that it won the prestigious best director prize at Cannes, its huge popular success, and the media circus that followed turned La haine into a phénomène de société that reached beyond its cinematic value. The convergence of Mathieu Kassovitz’s film and social unrest, however, was nothing new: at the time of its release in 1995, La haine was already, and controversially, linked to suburban violence and police bavures (slipups). Thus the book, which coincided with the tenth anniversary of the film, proved timely for unexpected reasons. ![]() Every night, as in the Bob Marley song we hear over the credits, there was burning and looting and clashes with the police-which I could hear, as I was staying with my parents, who live next to one of these “difficult” suburbs. So read on and discover for yourself these delightful tales from around the world.To start on a personal note: I wrote a book about La haine that came out in November 2005, just as the Paris suburbs (banlieues) erupted in an unprecedented wave of violence. Some of these are oral tales that we have collected and retold some have been collected by other folklorists around the world and already exist in written form in the public domain - these we have retold and reproduced. We present here folktales from all over the world. Such folk heroes are many and varied - like the trickster bunny, Br’er Rabbit from the southern United States, the spider Anansi from West Africa, and the wise and clever Birbal, minister to Akbar, emperor of India. Be careful, lest she get the better of you! Another recurring character type is the village fool, or the idiot youngest son, who ultimately turns out to be the wisest. Sometimes a particular character or group of characters grab our imaginations, and dozens of tales may then be told about them. Folktales may also centre around favourite character types – like the old woman who is usually clever, sometimes grumpy, sometimes with a wicked sense of humour. ![]() Often, myth and folklore overlap, and gods and demons rub shoulders happily with ordinary men and women. Sometimes folktales seek to explain the world around us. Sometimes they tell of real people and events, as in the story of Dick Whittington. In the modern world, as the tradition of oral story-telling is giving way to books and television, that such tales are being collected and written down. Folktales are stories passed on from one person to another by word of mouth. ![]()
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