The attempted privatisation of Boggo Road Gaol has raised a number of important issues relating to the practice and presentation of History. On one hand, when you visit the gaol you can only hear this one limited version of Boggo Road's history, written by a person who never set foot it when it was open, the same person who has silenced the voices of those who actually worked or lived there by denying them fair and equitable access to share their stories. This is what happens when personal profit motives are put ahead of community good. The Boggo Road Gaol Historical Society understands a dynamic and vibrant historical interpretation of the old prison needs many different voices. A private business looks after #1 every time and if that means stopping more-deserving people from telling their stories and depriving the public of a decent choice, then so be it. All this was covered in this recent essay. There is, however, another aspect of this privatisation approach that has just raised its head - what happens when you attempt to privatise folklore? I ask this because the other day somebody sent me a link to a Facebook post written by a person claiming to have been on a ghost tour of Boggo Road. I won't link it here because I'm not even sure it's an authentic account of events. It did, however, give an insight into the attempted privatisation of folklore, or the appropriation of memories. At one point this person writes:
So you pay $40 to hear a few camp-fire tales on a tour and come away thinking that if you repeat those stories in any way then the tour guide will actually sue you? Charming."I won't go into detail of the stories and experiences told to us by Jack Sim, as I don't want to be sued or have any sort of legal case thrown at me for using his material."
Here's the drum on this one: You can't get sued for talking about a story you heard on a guided tour. Sure, if you use that specific sequence of words when doing your own tours or books then there might be a problem, but when it comes to the source material, NOBODY OWNS THESE STORIES. There's nothing you can hear on a tour that other people don't already know. God knows I've heard them all from other sources anyway. Now if somebody tells me a story, that doesn't mean that I suddenly own it. I don't own their stories and I don't own their memories. And they've probably told loads of other people anyway.
So just like you can put a plot outline of Star Wars on Wikipedia without being sued by George Lucas, you can recap something you heard on a tour. Or write a review. For example, this review of a 'South Brisbane Cemetery Ghost Tour' appeared in QWeekend in September 2011 and critically recalls a number of story elements:
So just like you can put a plot outline of Star Wars on Wikipedia without being sued by George Lucas, you can recap something you heard on a tour. Or write a review. For example, this review of a 'South Brisbane Cemetery Ghost Tour' appeared in QWeekend in September 2011 and critically recalls a number of story elements:
We've heardthese claims of private ownership folklore before, and from the same person. When Tracey Olivieri was writing her book The Ghosts of South Brisbane Cemetery she was threatened with these words:
So Tracey was told that she wasn't allowed to tell the stories that she had heard as a kid growing up near the cemetery because they nowbelonged to a businessman. The legal threat was ignored and Tracey pressed ahead with her book as anybody with a functioning brain could see that the claim of 'legal property' was complete and utter codswallop. I won't explain the bleeding obvious reasons why here as it's all covered in Tracey's book anyway.‘The ghost stories and tales used our tours are from specific sources which can be identified. They are not common knowledge or in the public realm. They are our legal property.’
So there is no legal impediment to talking about - in your own words - something you heard on a tour. You can do it with our Moonlight Tour stuff, and you can do it with any other tour too. This nonsensical notion of folklore as private propertyneeds to be stamped out.