It’s October, and there’s something in the air. Literally. Maybe it’s dead leaves; I’m not sure. All I know is I go outside and things are just, well, electric. Here in New England the leaves are changing something awful, and everything is crisp and orange and fall. Heck, even Halloween’s coming - the greatest holiday ever. What could be more sexy?
Personally, I have the major hots for Halloween. It makes me go all crazy-like just being in a store with orange and black decorations. It messes with something in my blood. And, honestly, I want to know why.
A few days back, IGDA’s Sex SIG blog put up a post about sexuality and Halloween, how it inspires socially acceptable role playing and therefore open sexual exploration. That element is certainly present, but it’s also more complicated than the just the right to play dress up.
In part, it has to do with the fact that Halloween, like all of our scary “ritual times” (like midnight, for example) occurs on the cusp of explainable time - in this case, the cusp between one month and the next. Because of this, we experience an inversion: things that are normally taboo or illogical in our society become norms on Halloween, because we have fallen through the cracks - or, more precisely, because the chaos that is always lurking beneath the surface of reason is allowed to seep in through the spaces where our logic isn’t quite water-tight.
It’s this feeling, this boundless possibility, that makes Halloween so energizing. Both sexually and socially, it is a time of freedom, of taking off the mask of the self by putting on the mask of another.
Of course, that’s an over-simplication too. There are lots of other issues involved here, not the least of which is the extent to which the holiday is steeped in death. And you don’t have to be Sigmund Freud to know where that connection is going.
Just some thoughts. Feel free to share your own. Or just let us in on some sexy Halloween stories…
October 17th, 2005 at 4:29 pm
Personally, I’ve never figured out why Halloween is so popular, except the obvious connection to the growth of the hispanic population (who are used to celebrating Dia De Las Muertos… sorry if I spelled that wrong, I’m as white as white gets.)
October 18th, 2005 at 9:42 am
Oh, I don’t think it has much to do with that. Sure, there’s a hispanic tradition, but it parallels, not creates, the American one. In France, for example, they also celebrate Halloween (though in slightly different ways than we do). I’m not sure we’re you’re from, but perhaps on the West Coast there is more of a Day of the Dead presence. Here in the East, it’s pretty much as American as it gets :-).
October 18th, 2005 at 12:40 pm
Well, since I’m all about relating EVERYTHING to second life lately, I obviously can’t let this one pass.
As a recovering long-time goth, it’s interesting to watch the way people act on Halloween and in virtual worlds. On Halloween, they dress up because they can, but a lot of people REALLY look forward to it, REALLY get into it, etc… When people find Virtual Worlds, the social climate changes to where they can do that all the time, and so they do, which accounts for the huge dark/goth/vampire population and item count around the world. Now, the “why” of that is kinda hard to pin down. You could probably get away with pinning it to the inherent marketed sex of it all, but I always wonder if there’s something deeper.
Now then, straying horribly offtopic… Saw your “I wanna go!” thing on the News column about the Austin Games Conference… I’m going (wheee!), and I totally didn’t realize the Frag Dolls were gonna be there. I may actually show up to that, as the only thing it conflicts with is the Secondary Markets talk, which I’m not to married to showing up to anyways. Seeing I think we’ve both got the same seering hatred for them, I’ll be happy to blog it for ya. ;)
October 18th, 2005 at 5:06 pm
“Personally, I've never figured out why Halloween is so popular”
Personally, holidays in general lost all meaning for me long ago. Of course, as far as Halloween is concerned that might have something to do with my mom being an extreme cheapskate about costumes the few years that I did express interest in trick or treating.
You know how it goes, many of the other kids at school come wearing costumes, you hadn’t even given it much thought before that but now you want a costume too so you can get candy later that night… and my mom pulls some playing card costume out of the back of the closet, I can barely move my arms in the thing but I wear it anyway… and the process repeats itself word for word the next two or three years after that.
I kind of stopped caring after that. It was amusing to see people still coming to school in costumes in high school (some people REALLY go all out and those can be pretty neat to see) but I had no more interest in doing any of it myself.
Oh wait, I just remembered that there were some years that instead of the stupid playing card outfit I had a Bart Simpson mask that I could barely see out of (no orange shirt to match it, just a mask). I don’t think I ever had any other costumes though.
As for my attitude towards other holidays (if anyone cares)… Well I guess it’s just because all they ever meant to me was “family get-together”. Sure, Easter also meant Cadbury Cream Eggs and Peeps, and Christmas also meant presents, but there isn’t much more to the holidays than that, not for me at least (religious context doesn’t apply to me). (The four month buildup before each holiday can also get kind of annoying by the time the holiday finally approaches.)
October 18th, 2005 at 7:00 pm
qDot, I wish there was a way to say this that didn’t make me sound like a 13 year-old cheerleader, but “Oh my God, I’m so jealous!” Seriously though, I am. I’m also really interested in the Game Writers Conference that’s going on at the same time, but money and my obligation to, you know, pass college are holding me back. I would love it though if you could get the inside dirt from the Frag Dolls talk. I can’t say I despise them - I mean, if I met them in a bar, I wouldn’t start throwing punches - but they do get my big ole thumbs down. Let’s hope someone rips into them good…
Muljo, while I think you’re story and sentiments are probably pretty common, they’re also interesting (to me, at least) for what they reveal about our culture and the waning interest and “magic” that surrounds ritual time. Holidays have been commercialized - and in the process everything else has been taken out of them. As I’ve mentioned, I’ve got a Halloween fetish (I know it’s weird; I’m trying to figure it out.), but I feel the same way you do about a lot of other holidays. Lots of people probably do. But why?