什么是urban legend

“都市传奇”urban legend
都市传说就是一个当代流行的民间传说，大家都声称它是真的，并且通常是用来引起听众的感情响应的。在因特网上，都市传说广泛流传，并且通过电子邮件的重复发送和网站的张贴而经久不衰。与传统的传说一样，都市传输也很少可以追踪到某个作者。都市传说经常涉及到当代大家都感兴趣的强有力的中心人物和社会问题。社会学家建议说因特网已经称为都市传说的丰富环境，因为网络允许人们比历史上的任何一种方法都能更快地共享彼此的故事。有时候都市传输也会被证明确实是真的，但是大多数的只是因特网上的误传，有时候是令人愉快的，但是更多时候是令人恼火的，当它是以一种愚弄人的病毒的形式出现的时候。

Q. What is an urban legend?

FYI：
Urban legend: A story, which may at one time have been true, that has grown from constant retelling into a mythical yarn.(给出简要定义，便于您理解这种文化现象）

A.
Many people have heard the tale, occasionally alluded to in popular culture but more often imparted as a thing that "really happened to a friend of a friend," of the dotty grandmother who tried to dry off her damp poodle by placing it in the microwave oven. The dog exploded, sad to say, and Grandma has never been quite the same since.
That story isnt true, of course; its an urban legend, circulating by word of mouth since the 1970s. It conveys a familiar moral message: new technologies can be a hazard, as well as a boon, to humankind (not to mention dogkind). Such an incident could have happened, but we have no real evidence that it did.

Urban legends, then, are apocryphal stories, told as true and plausible enough to be believed, about horrific, embarrassing, exasperating or ironic things that have supposedly happened to real people (see links to more examples below). They often deal with particularly vexing aspects of modern life.

In lieu of evidence, the teller of an urban legend is apt to rely upon good storytelling and the naming of allegedly trustworthy sources (e.g., "a friend of a friend who swears its true") to bolster its credibility. As a type of folklore — defined as the beliefs, stories and traditions of ordinary people ("folks") — one way of differentiating between an urban legend and other kinds of narratives (popular fiction, for example) is by comparing where they come from and how they are disseminated. Legends tend to arise spontaneously and are rarely traceable to a single author or point of origin. They spread primarily from inpidual to inpidual through interpersonal communication, and only in atypical cases through mass media or other institutional means. Because they end up being repeated by many different people in many different places, the stories tend to change over time. Hence, no two versions of an urban legend are ever exactly alike; there can be as many variants as there are tellers of the tale.

The phrase "urban legend" entered the popular vocabulary in the early 1980s with the publication of folklorist Jan Harold Brunvands earliest books on the subject, beginning with "The Vanishing Hitchhiker" (W.W. Norton: 1981). Although it has become all but synonymous in common parlance with "false belief," the term actually denotes a more complex and subtle social phenomenon having to do with the production and transmission of folk narratives — narratives which are indeed usually false, but which can also, on rare occasions, prove to be true.

In brief, an urban legend will typically exhibit most or all of the following characteristics:

It is a narrative.
Its veracity is questionable.
It is alleged to be true.
It is plausible enough to be believed.
It is of spontaneous (or, at any rate, indeterminate) origin.
It varies in the telling.
It is attributed to a putatively trustworthy secondhand source (e.g., "a friend of a friend," "my sisters hairdressers husband," etc.).
It is passed from inpidual to inpidual orally or in written form (e.g., via fax, photocopy or email).
It may take the form of a cautionary tale.

抄袭度吧度吧 - 助理 二级的....嘿一部系列校园恐怖电影的名称。
阿尔卑斯大学一年一度的希区克柯实验电影大赛开始了，赢得大奖就意味着拿到了好莱坞的入场券。电影系学生艾米（珍尼弗·莫里森饰）、特拉维斯（马修·戴维斯饰）和格伦汉（约瑟夫·劳伦斯饰）纷纷招募了自己的剧组，开始制作参赛影片。在派德顿大学的警卫瑞斯（《都市传奇I》中的人物）的启发下，艾米决定拍摄一部讲述都市传奇杀人事件的电影。孰料，影片刚一开镜，剧本中的死亡事件就一一变成现实，艾米意识到自己就是下一个都市传奇……

幕后：

承继《夺命狂呼》模式的青春恐怖片《都市传奇I》是索尼影业（哥伦比亚）公司98年五大卖座影片之一，推出续集自然在意料之中，不过这对于制作公司凤凰影业来说倒是个难题，因为都市传奇的创意在第一集中已被用尽，而在第二集中简单地进行重复显然是不明智的。这时，凤凰影业的老板麦克想出了一个高招：我们为什么不来个戏中戏，在片中安排一帮电影系的学生来上演都市传奇。而影片的两位编剧正好在南加州大学主修过影视，有过亲身经历，于是大家一拍即合，写出了这个终极版的本子。

《都市传奇：终极版》是约翰·奥特曼的首部执导作品，而在此之前约翰一直是作为作曲、剪辑（《非常嫌疑犯》、《白雪公主》、《万圣节H20》）在影坛发展的，制片人迈克尔·麦克唐纳德（《非常嫌疑犯》）特别延聘约翰出任《都市传奇：终极版》的导演，是希望借助其编辑、作曲的功力提升影片的感官效果。

影片的几位主演基本上都是影坛新人，其中主演珍尼弗·莫里森曾经在99年由凯文·贝肯主演的热门惊悚片《厄夜亡魂》中扮演过鬼魂的角色，戏份不多，但是留给观众的印象很深。这次弃鬼从人，珍尼弗自然要好好表现一番啰。

影片于99年10月开拍，外景地选在加拿大安大略省的权特大学，这是一所60年代早期建造的大学，影片拍摄进展顺利，99年12月完成后期制作。由于哥伦比亚公司已经宣布不会再拍摄《去年夏天谁搞鬼》的续集，实际上这部《都市传奇：终极版》就是哥伦比亚影业今年青春恐怖片的重头戏了。

导演：约翰·奥特曼

编剧：保罗·哈里斯·博德曼斯考特·德里克森

制片：迈克尔·麦克唐纳德

演员：珍尼弗·莫里森

马修·戴维斯

约瑟夫·劳伦斯

出品：哥伦比亚影业公司

http://imedia.eastday.com/epublish/gb/paper26/1/class002600010/hwz13898.htm