Project Update MRF

Folklore, media, and myth debunking-

I have edited down the animals I would like to focus in on being the red fox, hyena, bats, porcupine, otter, and ostrich. I may choose to do edit down to six, but as I develop more information, this will be easier to choose from.

I primarily have been trying to recall the animals I saw in cartoons from my own childhood, and what I remember of them growing up. Disney films have been an easy target for this reason, as well as animations/cartoons from pop culture. Thus far, I have looked at how hyenas, otters, and the red foxes are shown.

I took screenshots of the hyena from the Lion King, and the otter from Pocahontas. The red fox is from Fantastic Mr. Fox. 

At age 4, watching the Lion King, I remember having a huge disliking towards the hyenas. They were portrayed as lunatics, with a terrible cackle with ravenous behavior.  Although they were of course the "bad guys" they really hyped them up to be seen as terrible creatures. 

 

I think these portray a good representation of the look they were going for: 

With the otters, they are personified in a completely opposite manner. They are seen as lovable, caring, and goofy. However, unlike what we are shown, otters do have an aggressive tendency that we dismiss or are unaware of. 

Fantastic Mr. Fox is a great example of showing how clever foxes are portrayed to be, and how they can be seen as thieves. This image is perfect for this type of animal portrayal: 

I am finding it much more difficult to get good folklore, so this may be edited to just focusing on myths that are false. I would like to find some that I connect with, or that the audience would be able to.

With my folklore research, I found some really odd and interesting ones.

Here is a bizarre tale of the “Resurrection of the Ostrich” : http://www.sacred-texts.com/afr/sbf/sbf19.htm. 

With the hyena, this tale is titled," Why the Hyena is Lame" which claims that hyenas do tend to appear lame in the hind legs. Here is the link:  http://worldoftales.com/African_folktales/African_Folktale_14.html.

While researching about them,  I found that they get confused with being hermaphrodites, so I would like to investigate this further and see if there is a tale linked to this. I also found out that they really do have cannibalistic tendencies. The source I looked at for this was : http://www.outtoafrica.nl/animals/enghyena.html. 

Since I do believe I will have much more imagery  as my source material, I want to emphasize this by using appropriation in the zine format. I do think that this is important because it will be imagery that is more recognizable than I would think tales from ancient folklore would be. However, I do want to merge the old with the newer renditions, so I need to figure out a good method of displaying both.