Monsters and Halloween

Classic Universal Movie Monsters

As October winds down, and Halloween approaches, one can't help but wonder about the significance of the event and the monstrous costumes and themes that often accompany it; what is it about subversive holidays or celebrations that we find so appealing?

In the Western world at least, the month of October and Halloween often indicate a permission to explore and decorate with that which would normally be perceived as strange or even threatening. Houses are adorned with images of death, such as skulls, gravestones, corpses, and coffins, and also with monstrous elements like witches, ghosts, oversized spiders and bats. Pumpkins are carved with leering faces and placed, candle-lit on the porch, and candy- something which is generally perceived to be perhaps not ideal for a child's diet- is handed out in droves to some as young as one or two years old. And while some children (and adults) choose costumes that might be more fantasy than monstrously inclined, such as princesses, Greek gods, or superheroes, the most dark and frightening outfits are not only accepted but also expected, as are those which glorify notorious villains. Dracula, Frankenstein's monster, rotting mummies, Jack the Ripper and the Devil are all fair game on Halloween in a way they would not be at any other time of the year. 

            And in trying to explain this to my young daughters who find some Halloween decorations understandably disturbing, I found myself using the term "safe scary" as a way to designate the difference between harmless thrills and real, dangerous terrors. And this brings to mind Edmund Burke's "A Physical Inquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful" in which he discusses that very human need to feel awe and terror; as Simon Court says in his article, "Edmund Burke and the Sublime": "The sublime, then, is our strongest passion, and it is grounded in terror. Yet it is not exclusively an unpleasant emotion, for danger or pain can, in certain circumstances, give us delight" (1).

And it is this very delight that we seek on Halloween, perhaps to placate the terrible fears we might otherwise have about the very real and often inevitable threats in our lives such as disease (zombies, and in some cases, mummies); old age (rotting masks with white hair, wrinkled, warty witches); death (ghosts, the Grim Reaper, skeletons); violence (Jack the Ripper, Sweeney Todd, Freddie Kruger/Jason/Michael Myers, axe-murderers, etc.); technological advancements (mad scientist, Frankenstein's creature, IPhone costumes, and the like); Seduction and temptation (Dracula, vampires, the Devil, sexually-provocative outfits) and the Unknown, which is represented through obscure, frightening monster masks, haunted houses, and the event itself which takes place generally after dark. We need to play with these frightening ideas and themes, because otherwise they would overwhelm us, and we also need to accept them as potential realities in our lives. 

This is particularly why I consider Halloween to be such an important holiday, and why I insist my children experience it. I believe that our society today has become so removed from death and these other dark realities that they have become much more frightening than they would be if they were more regularly ingrained into our daily lives. A society in which a family is responsible for the caring and cleaning of a body of a relative or loved one, for example, may still fear death but will be less likely to fear a corpse. And this follows that graveyards and gravestones may be less likely to inspire foreboding when they are recognized as resting places and markers for those harmless, peaceful bodies. 

This is exactly the reason that today we often find Victorian post-mortem photography to be so disturbing, and often used as a trope in horror movies ("The Others", "A Haunting in Connecticut") rather than recognizing it as an attempt to remember a precious loved one in a time when photography was fairly rare. If we had more familiarity with bodies and with death, we would see these pictures as desperately sad and powerful mementos from grieving families, and grieve with them. Instead, we become preoccupied and frightened by the image of death, and dismiss their cultural significance.  

Vintage-Halloween-Costumes-Skeleton-Horses

So this Halloween, and every Halloween that I can, I will be decorating my home and sending my daughters out to celebrate the event with robust enthusiasm. It is only by recognizing what is "safe scary" that we can spot what is actually dangerous, and it is through an acceptance of unknown dangers that they become more familiar, and less anxiety-inducing; this is a concept I wish to instill in my children, and one that I hope our wider society continues to acknowledge as well. 

Happy Halloween!

Works Cited

Classic Universal Movie Monsters. Digital Image. Gunaxin, 31 October 2019. https://gunaxin.com/ranking-classic-universal-movie-monsters

Court, Simon. “Edmund Burke and the Sublime.” Dove Cottage and the Wordsworth Museum, n.d. 27 Oct. 2019. 

Vintage-halloween-costumes-skeleton-horses. Digital Image. Meghan Walsh Gerard. 26 October 2015. https://mwgerard.com/31-days-of-halloween-october-26/vintage-halloween-costumes-skeleton-horses/