- "As Goes Halloween, So Goes Childhood"
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Well this is it. Tonight is the night – the eve of tricks or treats, costume delights, and Linus van Pelt’s Great Pumpkin. Halloween has been a call for festive celebration for hundreds of years, but many are worried about a different sort of fear – the not-so-helpful kind – that’s co-opted the holiday and turned it into a gutless, no-room-for-frights, coddling, and above all, “safe” event.
Lenore Skenazy writes an implored defense in support of the real Halloween for the Huffington Post – arguing that, “as goes Halloween, so goes Childhood.”
In England last year a man was ordered by his landlord to take down his lawn decorations because the zombies were too “realistic.”
In other words: They looked too much like…real zombies?
Our fears are so overblown they’d be laughable if they didn’t sound so much like the fears that are haunting us the rest of the year. Fears that have lead to parents to wait with their kids at the school bus stop, and keep them inside on sunny afternoons. Fears that make parents forbid their kids from skipping down the street to invite a friend out to play. That’s the everyday version of Halloween fear: The fear that we cannot trust our children amongst our neighbors for one single second because, who knows, they might be pedophiles just waiting to pounce.
If you want to see what childhood is becoming, look how at what Halloween has already become: A parent-planned, climate-controlled, child-coddled, corporate-sponsored “event,” where kids are considered too delicate to even survive the sight of a scary costume. You know. Like if someone came dressed as a slightly torn Snickers.
Oct 31, 2009 :: Tagged under: childhood, culture of fear, free range kids, halloween :: #
- In Support of Scary Movies
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Fittingly in time for Halloween, Reece Shearsmith, writing for the BBC Magazine, asks: “Is it good for us to feel scared?”
Why do we expose ourselves to this fear? In certain situations, people enjoy being frightened. Perhaps it has something to do with the primal nature of fear. As the American author HP Lovecraft wrote, “The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown.”
Horror in all its various genres can achieve many things. It reveals people facing fears and desires; it asks us to observe our social and individual assumptions; it can produce imaginative worlds in which, for a time, we escape from the problems and triviality of our day to day lives; it can make us chuckle at ourselves; and, most significantly, it can entertain and be fun.
We also shouldn’t shirk from exposing our kids to fear:
Horror stories offer a playground in which children, and adults, can play at fear. There is nothing wrong with being scared. It’s a survival response. And having young children as I now do, I am mindful of what goes into their heads.
One of my earliest terrors was the witch in Disney’s Snow White, and the image of her evil face and devil-horned head dress has always stayed with me.
Today children’s films often have the warning “mild peril”.
This indeterminate definition, I think, is fundamental when realising we don’t really know what will stay with and give children nightmares for years. It might be a face we see in the swirl of patterned wallpaper, or a smiling doll, or a painting of Jesus in a children’s bible.
It begs to be answered: How do we ever really know what is “too scary” for kids?
Forget about relying on blanket statements or ratings that label movies too “grown up” or “honest” for kids. (That was one of my huge irks about the critical coverage of Spike Jonze’s “Where the Wild Things Are”. Fear is completely unique to each individual – even Max Records, the actor who played Max, said the movie’s scariness “depends on the kid. There are parts of it that are pretty intense. When I was 7 years old, I could not have seen this movie. It would’ve scared me. But my younger brother, who’s now 7, could’ve seen this a year ago. It depends on the kid.”)
But beyond that, why are we treating fear as a negative thing? We have to come to grips with fear itself, I think – and acknowledge that fear is a normal, even sometimes desirable human emotion. Kids are entitled to a full range of emotions, and we have to give it to them. We can’t stop them from seeking it. Children need to feel an edge of un-control sometimes – they need to feel that wildness.
The great thing about stories and books and movies, though, is that it gives children – and adults – a place to play out these fears and emotions.
Appropriately, the guys at We Love You So have just put up a post about the scary and frightful movies from their own childhoods and beyond – from “Poltergeist” and “The Watcher in the Woods” to “Paperhouse” and “Pan’s Labyrinth.” And they want to know: what are some of the favorites from your own childhood?
Oct 30, 2009 :: Tagged under: childhood, fear, halloween, movies, where the wild things are :: #
- Living Off of Candy
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This is exactly what I wish my life was like:
It is possible, it seems, to live on candy. Paul Rudnick is the living proof. At 51, 5-foot-10 and an enviably lean 150 pounds, Mr. Rudnick does not square with the inevitable mental image of a man who has barely touched a vegetable other than candy corn in nearly a half-century. Apparently, one can not only live on a dessert island, but can also do it happily and long.
I so wish I were Paul Rudnick right now.
As for his thoughts on that oh-so-magical of holidays, that one evening the Great Pumpkin casts his spell, that delectable day just dedicated to candy eating, here’s what the Candy Man had to say:
“What I love about Halloween is its childhood honesty,” Mr. Rudnick said. “It’s about what children want rather than what parents want them to want.”
Recalling trick-or-treating as a child in suburban New Jersey, he’s still in awe of people who gave out full-size candy bars, and is still appalled by those people who dared to put apples in trick-or-treaters’ bags. “No,” he said. “Halloween is about free candy, not diet tips.”
I agree, Paul. I agree.
- The Onion: "How to Find a Masculine Halloween Outfit For Your Effeminate Son"
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Hmm. ‘Nuf said there with the headline, I’d say.
Halloween Countdown: One Lonely Day Left...
By Daniel Bigler :: Friday October 30, 2009
… But in the meantime, here’s more Muppets!
Halloween Countdown: Two Days 'Til The Great Pumpkin!
By Daniel Bigler :: Thursday October 29, 2009
I’ve already found a spot in the Pumpkin Patch alongside Linus, in eager anticipation of the Great Pumpkin’s arrival.
But anyway, in the meantime here’s more Muppets:
Halloween Countdown: P-Minus 3 Days
By Daniel Bigler :: Wednesday October 28, 2009
It’s P (“Pumpkin”) minus three days until tricks-or-treats time! To make the wait a bit more bearable (and awesome), the Muppets are here to help out:
(Via the TannerWorld Junction.)
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