Your Mothman Plush Is Bad: Critiquing The Commercialization Of Culture

Dov Matthews

Ryan DeMoss

English 102

February 24th, 2023

Why Your Mothman Plush is Bad: Critiquing the Commercialization of Folklore

Throughout history, folklore has been a quintessential part of human culture, providing a window into the beliefs, values, and customs of societies. However, with the rise of global capitalism and the increasing commodification of culture, folklore has become increasingly commercialized and transformed into a marketable commodity. Today, folklore is sold as entertainment and souvenirs, with little regard for the cultural, social, or historical contexts from which it originated. The homogenization and commodification of cultural expression raise a host of ethical, cultural, and economic concerns, including the

For legends like the Windigo, the image we now conjure in our minds has been defined by their appearance in media. In the 2001 film Wendigo, they are shown as a creature with a large deer-like skull for a head and a near-skeletal body, rather than a human-related appearance from the folktales (McCauley). Mothman became a recognizable icon for the weird, becoming less of an actual myth and more of a symbol for all odd creatures from folktales and legends. Mothman has almost risen to the cryptid world, similar to Sasquatch. A far worse fate comes to La Llorona, where her modern image has been corrupted, going from tales with lessons for early childhood to a horror movie villain associated with death and terror. The connecting theme here is that these figures, while famous, have lost their traditional representation and cultural rooting. Picked apart and removed from context, these tales have been altered and perverted into something that merely resembles their constituent

Without a proper understanding of their culture, folk groups, and their respective stories, these figures become caricatures of themselves, further distancing them from the communities that created them in the first place. For example, in the film The Curse of La Llorona, 2019, the film is composed of a Latinx cast yet the main character, and the basis of the story, revolves around a white woman. La Llorona becomes a “malevolent force” who drowns children, not a grief-stricken ghost who cries out in the night for the loss of her children (Winick “La Llorona: Roots…”). A large majority of creators who use these characters irresponsibly use the fact that these oral traditions aren’t under copyright and thus can ignore and not recognize the original myth or people, financially and creatively. It’s important that these figures are respectfully adapted, consulting the groups the legend comes from, rather than pushing them aside for