Year of the Snake

An Analysis of the Polish Urban Legend of the Vistula Python

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  • Mateusz Napiórkowski

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.14712/12128112.2349

Abstrakt

Stories about wild and domesticated animals are among the most popular categories of urban legends. In modern folklore, they appear mysteriously, often following strange or scary happenings, like a quite recent tale, created in 2018, when the molted skin of a large snake (later identified as an Indian python) was found near the banks of the Vistula River in the suburbs of Warsaw. Owing to the extensive media coverage, the news spread quickly throughout Poland. For obvious reasons, people wondered where the snake was hiding. Several eyewitnesses, who could see the predator (or something that resembled it), wanted to give an account. Such animals then “disappear” forever but leave their mark on pop culture. The snake myth thus gave rise to numerous stand-up comedy acts, amateur music videos, and a comic book. This study analyses a number of such examples, obtained from the Internet. It also focuses on the mechanisms of the formation of urban legends, and their relation to fake news. One of the main questions of the article is therefore: why do these kinds of stories gain such wide popularity? Furthermore, the aim of the study is to analyse the reactions of Internet users to the news about the python. The topic was commented on by people with different world and political views, so it is worth considering whether the message about the python could play an important role in the integration of Polish society, or as a just another platform for the exchange of thoughts.

Biografie autora

Mateusz Napiórkowski

is a MSc, PhD student at the Department of Cultural Studies at Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń. His specialization is in cultural studies and folkloristics. The main subjects of his scholarly interests are urban legends and related narrative forms – including fake news. Selected publications: “The Fire of the Students Dormitory No. 4 – Toruń’s Urban Legends and Students’ Folklore” (2016) and “Netlore Urban Legends as an Expression of Unrest in the Modern World” (2018). He is particularly interested in legendary narratives that appear in various cultural texts, but often in non-obvious contexts.

Stahování

Publikováno

2020-07-01

Jak citovat

Napiórkowski, M. . (2020). Year of the Snake: An Analysis of the Polish Urban Legend of the Vistula Python. Lidé města, 22(2), 233-266. https://doi.org/10.14712/12128112.2349

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