Wednesday, October 26, 2011
The Face of the Festivities
Looks like we’re on the verge again of another celebration of glucose and remissive space. All Hallows Eve used to be genuinely scary, I’m told - back when light at night meant fire, and winter meant that food was going to be scarce and people were going to be cold, October 31 was around the time you had to stop relying on long warm days and start facing up to the short chilly ones. On November 1 all the sainted souls were supposed to bestow their blessings on what was left of the year, an angelic embrace for all us poor mortal yutzes. But before their benediction came the cold kiss of corruption, the corpses kickoff to their season of death. Skeletal trees, frozen turf, rotten apples and long black nights - All Hallows Eve was the night on which the unredeemed took their vengeance on an earth that rejected them in death as they had rejected it in life. Back when spirit was actually the force that energized the planet, as opposed to petrochemicals and reality television, it was important - vital, if you will - to keep those spirits on your side. On AHE the bad ones came out, gunning for you with supernatural powers and nothing to lose. Rational folk were righteously nervous.
That kind of anxiety makes people crazy. If they think that the next thing that will happen might be awful and evil, many might feel compelled to bend a few rules before hell breaks loose - to trade places with someone else, or indulge a carnal craving, or just to laugh as hard as humanly possible. Danger makes us cherish life, and if our lives are hidebound and stultifying, that might mean giving in to a fantasy of personal transmogrification. So, over some centuries of cultural evolution, the night before the day that departed saintly spirits gave us succor and ease, we would party our fool asses off.
Eventually, as light bulbs and central heating and hothouse tomatoes and streaming video took the threat out of winter and diminished our appreciation of All Souls Day, AHE continued to generate increasing interest and enthusiasm - ultimately eclipsing the holy day itself in its craven black penumbra. And thus was born a cultural phenomenon.
But even so, Halloween didn’t get any real traction for quite a long time. Here in the puritanical States, our need for a truly remissive holiday to ungird ourselves from blue-nosed self-righteousness gave Halloween a strong boost early on, but in other nations, typically less burdened by the lingering legacy of unapologetic puritanism, Halloween - at least in its early guises - was somewhat superfluous. Those other guys knew from way back how to dress up and party. We didn’t have much to teach the old country on that score, nor the old peoples of the new world.
So, when I visited England in 1970 as a mere whelpling, we had to build our Halloween out of whole cloth. Candy was plentiful but hardly thematic - just the same old chocos and allsorts as ever and no wax fangs or ghostly goodies to be found anywhere. Trick or treating was not yet part of the social landscape, so we hid candy around the house in some devilish analogue of Easter-basketing that was themed more on zombification than resurrection. For a jack-o-lantern, no pumpkins were available so the growups laboriously all-hollowed out a massive turnip. Of course, there was no such thing as a commercial costume - we made do with what we could find in closets and attics and ragbags. We improvised a damn fine Halloween, but I couldn’t help but wonder what manufactured jollifications I was missing back home.
All this came back to me again as we recently hunted up some costumes for the munchkins to wear this coming 10/31. Last year, they went out as Mario and Super-Why; this year, they’ll hit the streets as a themed pairing of Ash Ketchum and Picachu. Without a doubt they’ll be staggeringly cute, but I have realized that - though H’ween has taken on a commercial presence even greater than that in which I’d reveled as a kid, and is now sufficiently widely celebrated abroad as to be considered spiritually threatening in some traditional haunts - even though all that, there’s one thing that really meant Halloween to me in my small years, that is now gone from my observances: The full face plastic Halloween mask. Let us remember it now.
It must have been a terrible safety hazard - sending a small child out into dusk-dark streets with severely compromised peripheral vision. But every costume worth whining for included one of those hard plastic face-plates that hung over your ears from an elastic thread. Small holes at eyes, nose and mouth permitted some minimal respiration and visual input, but to eat any of one’s evening’s take one would have to flip the whole thing up like a welder’s mask - an opaque, character-themed welder’s mask. They smelled funny and were fairly uncomfortable. It was hard to keep them properly oriented on my head and my hair would get caught up in the elastic. My breath would condense on the glossy unpainted inner surface; I’d have to turn my whole head to see anything out of those tiny eyeholes unless it was right in front of me. But to me, it wasn’t Halloween till my face disappeared behind one of those masks.
I’ve racked my brains to remember which ones I wore, but i can only dredge up one and it isn’t one I’m actually very happy to remember. I recall the displays in the stores of cardboard boxes with cellophane windows from which peered Supermen and Batmen and kings and clowns, but I don’t think I ever wore any of those. The one I know I donned, the false self I truly recall adopting once in my youth, was none other than Li’l Abner. For verily, in those ancient days Li’l Abner still appeared in the Sunday comics, and I regularly read of his exploits and, apparently, coveted his brawn and rustic charm. So when I saw his likeness on one of those hard plastic masks, that was the costume I demanded.
As I recall, the rest of it consisted of flimsy coveralls that actually said “Li’l Abner” across the front so folk would know who I was supposed to be. In fact, it looked pretty much just like this. Even though he ostensibly merited a whole costume, Abner the Lesser was apparently already fading into obscurity quickly enough to require nominal particularization. The mask featured a massive dimply chin, boulder-like cheeks, and a plastic pompadour that seemed capable of crushing concrete. I think I was proud of it right up to the moment I wore it outside, where I had to start explaining it to people. I saw derision in the eyes of my peers behind their own tiny plastic eyeholes, and bemusement mixed with pity in the eyes of grown-ups doling out treats. I think thereafter I went out as a succession of monsters, but after the Abner debacle I just don’t particularly recall.
My preferences shifted from prefab costumes to ones assembled out of individually purchased bits of rag and gore, and instead of a welder-type mask I embraced a full-head cowl that was more like a thick plastic bag embossed and painted with gruesome features and perforated with those familiar little stomata. They smelled awful and the flow of air into them was severely restricted and heavily perfumed by the mask’s petrochemical stench. But they provided total concealment, allowing me to subordinate my quotidian self utterly in a seasonal latex revision that superseded all the faults and foibles I typically embodied. Those masks were not easy to wear but they were worth it. From inside of one, I could really express my inner monster.
As years passed I started to favor outfits instead of costumes, inventing semi-referential looks for H’ween that less and less often involved masks. By the time I was in high school I was a baritone with a full beard, and trick-r-treating had lost its thrill. I had a driver’s license, a masculine physique, and a part in the school play. I bought my own candy and made my own plans. Walking my neighborhood in a Mork from Ork outfit felt less liberating than humiliating. Just when I really started needing a remissive festival more than ever, I left Halloween behind me like a dried apricot in the candy bucket. Those plastic masks I’d so cherished ten years earlier had lost their allure altogether.
Now I’m back in the costume aisles again - virtual, this time, not physical. I’m a dad, donchuno. Those Halloween superstores that spring up everywhere once school starts are too distracting and noisy for my tender spawn. So now we scroll, rather than stroll, down countless cyber-aisles of costumery, a world of bright-eyed child models devoid of any true taint of the blasted grave or anguished evil. There’s nothing there to evoke All Hallow’s Eve; even the cartoon ghosts that decorate the websites grin in a benign party mood. And I can’t help noticing that the costumes my boys like consist of complicated outfits - gloves, hats, gaiters - but not masks. They take one look at enmaskulated options and dismiss them out of hand. Masks just don’t seem to be part of the masque for them.
When I go out on 10/31 to see the kids cavorting and gorging and generally having a great time scamming candy door to door, sometimes the residents of the houses they visit play a little trick on them and dress up in full regalia with real face-covering masks. This frightens my children - they’re not used to it. Masks are just too much for them, and something seems to have been lost. For a festival as spirituous as Halloween it is curious to see it deprived of so much of its spirit. The masquerade seems now simply to be a “rade.” Well, if the kids like it, who am I to complain. We’ve always got All Hallows Day to enjoy disembodied spirits, right?
