 I'm Fred and Norman. I'd like to begin by explaining, what's this? Can I catch up please? Excuse me. Could I have a catch up? The burger here, I'm sorry I didn't mean to. I can't hear. Nothing. Oh, I'm sorry I didn't know. I don't have any. What's the deal? That's an old deaf joke. But it's more than that. A people's humor can reveal a lot about their culture. Through the telling and retelling of jokes and stories, people develop a sense of belonging and form strong cultural bonds. This is one of the functions of folklore. It is folklore through which one generation passes on to the next its wisdom, values, morals, and ultimately a sense of pride in the culture. Folklore also entertains. These are some of the functions of folklore. But to find out a little more, let's turn to two experts in the field of folklore. Ben Bahan is an American Sign Language researcher, instructor, and renowned storyteller. And Susan Rutherford is an instructor in deaf culture at the University of California in Berkeley. She is one of the first in the country to teach a course about the culture of deaf people. Her field of study is folklore. Ben! Susan! Well, hello. I haven't seen you in a long time. What are you doing here? Research. Preparing for a lecture I have to give on folklore. Oh, well, I have some video tapes at my office that might help. Oh, yeah? Want to come see them? Oh, sure. How about this afternoon? Fine. This afternoon's fine. Great. I'll stop by. Good. See you then. How did a hearing person get interested in the study of deaf folklore? Well, while I studied at the University of California in Berkeley, my major was folklore. Is that the sign for folklore? It's the sign we use locally, uh-huh. Anyway, while at the University, I had a lot of deaf friends. There's a strong deaf community here, and it's very rich in folklore, which fascinated me. I began to collect jokes, stories, games, and analyze them, and pretty soon I was hooked. I've been working on a video tape. I'd like to get your opinion on it. Would you like to take a look? Sure, sure. Great. My field of study is folklore, which is signed this way. Much of my recent work has concentrated on the folklore of deaf people. The study of folklore involves three steps. Collection, classification, analysis. First is the collection of the items themselves, finding information about them, and recording them. Second is the classification of the items into different categories or genres. Third is the analysis of the items. This is done by taking the collections as a whole and making connections to see what can be learned from them. This tape will show how these three elements apply to deaf folklore. We will show a number of examples and further explain this three-step process. Let's watch. There are two reasons why people might collect folklore. To study or to preserve it. No matter which reason is yours, it's important also to collect some background information from your informants, such as their name, their age, where they're from, what residential school they attended, what languages they know, English, Spanish, ASL. Finally, it's important to record where and when you collect each item. For example, Marlon Coontz will be telling us a story. What's his background? He grew up in Northern California. His family is deaf. He attended the California School for the Deaf in Berkeley. He knows both ASL and English. Our first example is an anecdote. Marlon Coontz from the California School for the Deaf tells us a speeding deaf driver. Here's a story about a hearing hitchhiker and a deaf driver. This deaf guy is driving along and picks up a hitchhiker on the highway and begins cruising at his usual 80 miles per hour. Before you know it, they get pulled over. The hitchhiker is thinking, oh no, we're in for it now. The cop comes up to the car. The deaf guy signs, I'm deaf. And the cop with chagrin says, okay, but take it easy, not so fast. Sure, sure, the driver says and he's sent on his way. And as soon as the cop is out of sight, the guy floors it again and a second time they get pulled over. The hitchhiker thinks, boy, what's going on here? Another cop approaches. The driver says, I'm deaf. The cop only reprimands him. Slow down, et cetera, et cetera, and sends him on his way. The hitchhiker thinks, boy, the deaf sure have got it made. And after a while, the driver gets tired and asks her to take over. Oh boy, gladly. So she's traveling the speed of light when the sirens blare, but she's ready with her story. She just looks at the cop and signs, I'm deaf. In fluent sign language, the cop replies, so are my parents and writes out the ticket. Folklore is classified into different categories called genres. To give you an idea of what deaf folklore is like, we've chosen examples for each of the genres. We just saw an example of this first genre, anecdote, told by Marlon Coons. Now we'll show you examples of each of these categories. Dr. Byron Benton Burns describes one of the early alarm clocks used by deaf people. There was one boy at the school where I taught who made clocks for all the deaf people in the area. Not just any clock, alarm clocks. These clocks work like this. On the shelf over your bed would be a wind-up clock. Under the shelf would be two slats of wood hinged together, sort of like a drawbridge. The outer board had a hook that latched onto the key of the clock. And on that board would be a piece of lead to make it heavy. When the alarm went off, that board would come on hook and hit the bed. And let me tell you, it hit with such a bang that it shook us right out of bed. That's how I woke up for many years, until I got my radio clock. Continuing on the same theme, Dr. Byron tells a tall tale, the deaf miner. There was a deaf man in Montana who worked in the mines. He used to use an old flat iron to wake up every morning. That was his alarm clock. Now I don't know how exactly, but somehow he rigged it up so that the iron was suspended from the ceiling by a string that was attached to a wind-up clock. So that when the alarm went off, it released the string and the iron would hit the floor with such a force that it shook the whole house. All the neighbors for miles around relied on that flat iron droppin' to get them out of bed every morning. Well, one day the man got married. He and his bride went away in their honeymoon and were gone for three days when they came back home. Lo and behold, they found no one had worked the mines for three days. The whole town was still asleep. Just waitin' for that flat iron to drop. Olin Fortney tells the legend of the deaf zen game. One time there are these two deaf guys just stand around shooting a bull. They began to play the deaf zen game, which goes like this. The object is to try to catch your finger with one hand, not two hands, just one. So one guy turns and asks the other, can you catch your finger? Can you? Sure I can. And he becomes maniacally obsessed. Nothing can make him stop. Night and day, that's all he does. Finally, he's taken away. Where to this day, he is still trying to catch his finger. Recounting one of his father's stories, Ken Norton shares a family tale, the building of the Bay Bridge. The construction of the San Francisco Bay Bridge lasted from 1933 until 1937, making convenient travel between San Francisco and the East Bay possible. My father worked in San Francisco not far from where the bridge building was going on. Every day at noontime, he'd take his lunch bag and study the construction workers up on the scaffolds, erecting the bridge. Before I go on, I should explain to you that at that time they didn't use welding. If you recall, that hadn't been invented yet. Instead, smooth, bolt-like rivets were used. They'd fit two beams together, lining up the holes on each, and then stick the bolts through the holes. On each side of the girder stood men whose job it was to drive in the bolts with an air hammer. Well, you get the idea, huh? Every day, my father would go and watch them. The rivets were kept in a huge cauldron, set over an open fire which burned all day. When the rivets became red-hot, a man with a pair of tongs would toss one high in the air to the next worker on the scaffolding. That man would then try to scoop the rivet out of the air with a big funnel, and with a pair of clamps, quickly shove it into a hole, pounding it into place with an air hammer. When all the rivets were in place and cooled down, the beams were locked together. Well, my father enjoyed watching all this activity, especially because the workers had invented their own kind of gesture language like this. They used these gestures to communicate because they couldn't hear each other for the racket going on. My father just loved it because it became quite a show. There was no TV in those days, so my father filled the evenings with his stories of the days, events on the bridge. We could listen to him for hours on end. Ben Bahan uses the manual alphabet in telling the ABC story, The Haunted House. The Haunted House uses the hand shapes of finger spelling A through Z. I'll use this manual alphabet in sequence to tell this story. With pounding heart and careful footsteps, he opens the door. Hearing a scream, he looks and sees a masked man with a bow tie and curled horns. Will he kill me later? Sweat pours off his brow. This isn't funny. What can I do? Ah, the cigar in my pocket. Here, have a smoke, it explodes and I run. Now it's time for escape. I'll go through this story again showing how each letter is used. A, heart pounding. B, footsteps approaching. C, opening the door. D, hearing something. E, a scream. F, I see. G, a masked man. H, with a bow tie. I and J, curled horns. K and L, will he kill me? M, sweat pours off my brow. N and O, not funny. P, pondering. Q, ah, something in my pocket. R, a cigar. S, offers it. T and U, try a smoke. V, taking a drag. W, exploding cigar. X, I run. Y for now. Z, it's time for escape. In another example of sign play, using numbers, how we see go tells the story, the train. The whistle... of a train. The wheels turning. The ties past beneath. Billowing smoke and steam comes to a halt. Bow and arrow. Indians. The chase. Gunfire. Horses approaching. Cavalry. Indians retreat. Allenbar Wheelock uses finger-spelling mime to talk about golf. G-O-L-F-S, golf. Golf, that's a finger-spelling. You got it right. Golf, golf. Good, good. Let's watch. G, the G is the T, and the O is the ball, and the L is the club, and the F is the ball flying off down the green. Wonderful. G-O-L-F... Golf! Yes, yes. You didn't have to apply. You don't need to apply. What is buried illustrates the custom of imitation in The Cooking Teacher. At the school for the deaf in Kansas, some of the other students and I made a pastime of imitating our teachers. I chose my favourite, The Cooking Teacher, who was hearing. Watch this. We will talk about the etiquette of serving. Now we will... I will explain how to hold, yes serve, how to serve the plate, voilà the plate, please do not put your thumb like this. This is very bad. Put your plate, you lay it, you lay it on your fingers like this, et voilà, it's very easy, easy, E-A-S-Y. In the study of folklore, analysis plays an important part. In order to analyze folklore, you must gather as much additional information as possible from your informant, such as, how did he or she learn it? From whom? Under what circumstances? And when? Where is it traditionally performed? And by whom? It's essential to document this information as well. Now do you analyze this information alone? No, it's of equal or sometimes of greater importance to find out what the people themselves think. Therefore, you should ask questions, such as, what is your analysis of the item? What do you think it means? Can you tell me more about it? Why do you think it's part of the deaf cultural tradition? For example, Liz Baer just showed you the cooking teacher. We asked her to tell us more about it. Let's see what she says. You know, imitating the teachers and counselors began in the classroom where we were dying of boredom. We had to watch them all day anyway, so we took that opportunity to really study them, their every move and gesture, and then I'd go home and I'd practice till I had them down to a T. Later in class, or rather the playroom, I'd get the attention of all the kids by flicking the lights on and off. I'd ask, who am I imitating? And then go into my act. They'd all try to guess who it was. I liked that. It was much better than just sitting through a boring class. I loved imitating the teachers. You know, a few of us kids were really good at it. Sometimes you don't have to ask questions of the informant, such as the case in Kenneth Miko's example of the last genre, ritual. His story has much of this information already included. Let's watch. I'll be telling you about Gallaudet College's tradition, the rat funeral. Initially, it was done by Gallaudet's pre-Freshman students during my time by the freshman. Well, now it's returned to the prep students. Anyway, I'll tell you my experience. During the first two weeks of the school year, you'd go through hazing. And just before the last day, we'd choose someone to buy a rat and bring it back to school. All the guys would gather outside and single out the person who was most squeamish. This part of the activity was an all boys thing. Well, first we'd make him play with a rat, and then later make him kill it. And the guys would all stand around egging him on until finally he squished the rat. Well, the next day, we'd prepare for the funeral, make a coffin and paint it, decorate it nicely, and we'd lay the rat in it and close the casket. Now, that same night, all the boys and girls would dress in appropriate funeral attire, black ties and dresses, and we'd smear a vix of April rub under our eyes to make ourselves cry and line up for the funeral procession. It was mandatory to cry and mourn until the lament the end of our prep year. Well, that's where it came from, the R-A-T in the word preporatory. The sign used for freshman is also the sign for rat. The ceremony symbolized our last year as prep students. We'd all now be official Gallaudet college students. So we'd march to the grave site, and when the eulogy was complete, we'd bury the rat. I remember that from Gallaudet. The rat funeral. He did it as a freshman. I think it's back to the prep students now. Anyway, I was wondering, does folklore in other cultures tend to change over time? Oh, yes, as the world changes, people change, and their folklore changes too. I have one story here by a young deaf woman. It's about a deaf astronaut going to an all-deaf world. This story shows her view of the future. Would you like to see part of it? Yeah, sure. Okay. Months have passed since the first deaf astronaut lost contact with Earth. He lands on a planet and finds that the people on it are deaf. The people on the deaf planet explain to the deaf astronaut that they don't need telephones. Instead, they use videophones signing to each other on TV. Their movies are in sign language, and they have deaf newscasters. The astronaut says, sure, it's different on Earth. They're the hearing of the majority and the deaf the minority. How do hearing people get along here? Oh, those poor hearing people, they suffer so much. They're fighting for their civil rights. They have a national association for the hearing, a telephone interpreting relay service, and a hearing counseling advocacy and referral agency, which helps hearing people who are frustrated looking for jobs. Oh, it's rough for them. We deaf teach them, give them legal advice, counsel them and help them find jobs. Oh, well, that's really interesting. Everywhere they go, people are signing. The guide nudges the astronaut and says, take a look at this and points up. The astronaut looks at a marquee flashing the hearing club. Oh, this is really funny. Come on, I've got to show you this. It's hysterical. It's really dark inside, and they can feel the floor vibrate. The astronaut asks, what's going on? This is really strange. Oh, this is what they call music. In a room full of moving mouths, the guide explains, this is how they communicate. And standing on stage is a real bombshell with their mouth wide open, eyelids fluttering. Although the astronaut has enjoyed his stay on the planet of the deaf, he has decided to repair his ship and return to Earth. And the astronaut begins his journey home. Meanwhile, back on Earth, NASA is going crazy. They've just spotted a UFO. Could it be the lost shuttle with our deaf astronaut? Will he be alive? Will his body be intact? Will he be sane? These and more questions would have to go unanswered for the moment. The shuttle lands safely. All Earth anxiously awaits. The hatch opens and out pops the long lost astronaut. Look, he's alive! After all these months, how is it possible? The president of the National Association of the Deaf is there to officially welcome him. The astronaut steps forward and begins recounting his adventures and delivers to all deaf Americans the invitation from the planet of the deaf to join them in their world, because things here on Earth will get worse. Services will be cut and there will be more oppression, but this does not have to be your fate if you join me on the planet of the deaf. A deaf planet? A dream? Maybe. Whatever the future brings, our folkloric traditions will continue to reflect our changing world. Through the study of our folklore, we can appreciate each example separately, and by comparing them, seeing how they're told, and analyzing why they're passed down, we can get a more complete picture of the culture and folklore of deaf people.