Slenderman, Folklore, and the lack of heroes

[Steel Accord 6,660]

So I don't think it's shocking to call Slenderman a folkloric figure. He's a character that has been created, propagated, and expanded upon not by a single creative will but the unintentional collusion of many storytellers and subsequent recountings of him. He's a monster, the boogeyman for the age of youtube and blogs.

 

Here's my problem though, he doesn't have a counterpart on the side of good. I mean the closest I could think of was Courage Wolf, but there's no stories of him saving the day and inspiring others to heroic action. Folklore is filled with as many heroes as monsters. Where the monsters exist on the outside of civilization and beyond the borders of safety for the stories they exist in, folk heroes are usually the correctors of civilization; those that exist to strike at what's wrong in a society and/or epitomize what's good about it. (Some were or may have been real people who's legends eclipsed the real man.)

 

Examples:

 

-Robin Hood

-William Tell

-Joe Magarac

-Paul Bunyan

-Miyamoto Musashi

-Ned Kelly

 

So I ask, why is this? Not that the modern age lacks heroes but our heroes have been inherited from ages past. The recent resurgence of comic book movies all modern re-tellings of decades old, possibly older, icons or the general fascination of reboots of older material meant to resurrect ideas from a perceived glorious past or make them fit into a new world and society. 

 

The thing is though, all of those are done by individuals or dedicated groups, recreating something that had a similar setup. Their creations, nor modern re-tellings can't really be called "folklore" in the pure sense that Slenderman is so obviously derived of.

 

So again, I ask, why, when pooled in the purest sunconcious of the Vox Populi, do we create a monster rather than a paragon?

 

(If you have examples OF a modern folk hero I've missed, by all means tell me.)

[crispy fries 432]

I feel like Star Wars is an example of modern folklore. If you ask anyone, they know the struggle between Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader. Star Wars will probably be remembered for hundreds of years, and will have a place in history similar to Romeo and Juliet. I think that the heroes of Star Wars could be thought of as modern folklore heroes.

[Steel Accord 6,660]

I feel like Star Wars is an example of modern folklore. If you ask anyone, they know the struggle between Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader. Star Wars will probably be remembered for hundreds of years, and will have a place in history similar to Romeo and Juliet. I think that the heroes of Star Wars could be thought of as modern folklore heroes.

 

Well as I said, 

 

The thing is though, all of those are done by individuals or dedicated groups, recreating something that had a similar setup. Their creations, nor modern re-tellings can't really be called "folklore" in the pure sense that Slenderman is so obviously derived of.

 

Not that I disagree with you on its immortality but it does not qualify as modern folklore. For one thing Star Wars is a franchise owned and controlled by a company, it was not created spontaneously by society. Not that such is bad, just that it's not what I'm talking about. In contrast, nobody owns Slenderman, but he's a clearly defined character with his own surrounding mythos.

Edited February 22, 2016 by Steel Accord