ABSTRACT
The heavy use of supernatural and violent imagery is probably the most noticeable characteristic of the teenage narrative. From the very outset it is plainly evident that the adolescent repertoire is simply littered with headless corpses, gruesome amputations and dismemberings, vengeful ghosts and killer dolls. Folklorists refer quite openly to the ‘adolescent horror legend’ (cf. Ellis, 1994) or ‘teenage horrors’ (Brunvand, 1981, p.47), and adults will often show distaste for teenagers’ stories precisely because of the high level of unsavoury imagery; they will occasionally cite such imagery as an argument against teenage narratives, in order to devalue it. Teenage narratives, I have heard argued, are not worthy of study, because they simply incorporate a seemingly never-ending sequence of violent and/or supernatural images. It is, in effect, shallow, lowest-common-denominator folklore. I have even heard tell that the content of teenage narrative is symptomatic of a general decline in moral standards.
