Uncle Remus: Undercurrents of the Stockholm Syndrome, and inverting unequal power

The culture of Uncle Remus, in which those who survived deferred, can well be seen as genius - the development and implementation of linguistic and behavioral codes by which to stay alive.

A slave culture had to do that. Uncle Remus' tradition can be seen as an example of the Stockholm syndrome. Get past the silly URL here and read about Stockholm Syndrome at //www.sniggle.net/stock.php.

The syndrome involves captives trying to please their captors, and very soon upon realizing they cannot escape, are isolated, threatened with death, yet the captors show some acts of kindness. That concept, the universal human one where the relationship is powerless vs. powerful, takes the relationship of Remus with Aunt Sally and others from the plantation into a different realm.

This purpose, using deference to defuse, is suggested on the blurb on the back cover, the 1982 Penguin Classics edition of "Uncle Remus, His Tales and Sayings" ties Uncle Remus' characters with history and human need:

1. Uncle Remus is described as "the docile and grandfatherly ex-slave storyteller," the "literary creation" of Joel Chandler Harris that "reassured white readers during the tense and tentative reconstruction."

2. Brer Rabbit is seen as a "mainstay of black folklore long before Joel Chandler Harris heard of him," "whose cunning and revolutionary antics symbolically inverted the master-slave relationship and satisfied the deep human needs of a captive people." Robert Hemenway wrote a fine introduction to that edition, see ://books.google.com/books

How people act in when one must defer, or possibly die, is discussed in "Unequal Power Relationships." See //serendip.brynmawr.edu/bb/neuro/neuro04/web1/kkrasnec.html. It has been connected to slavery, abusive spousal or other interpersonal relationships, prisoners of war. Many captives soon seek to please the captor when the captor offers little kindnesses, and that syndrome recognized as a universal survival technique for the captive.

In Stockholm, people were held for 5 days in a Swedish bank heist - interesting study. The syndrome presented after only a few days of the captivity. Imagine the effect when it goes on for centuries. Schools, teach Remus with dignity and history in mind. The submissive behavior seen in Uncle Remus is not inferiority but brilliant modes of survival.

Here is an additional site on it, from a counseling perspective this time - at //counsellingresource.com/quizzes/stockholm/index.html. Other sites: //www.nurturingpotential.net/Issue13/Stockholm.htm; narrative race-relations personal blog-type article at //hometown.aol.com/jemiltd/myhomepage/index.html.