buy the night

Real costumes for Halloween are better. I should clarify that by real I mean home-made or crafted costumes, made by yourself or with a group of amateur friends. Definitely not lame store-bought things that have some image printed on cheap foam fabric. That’s lower than fast fashion. Custom, work-for-hire built costumes, there I have to say “it depends”. It depends on the originality, the cleverness, and the participation of the wearer in the vision. It’s the same standard as for the amateur variety. Does the costume wearer really own this look? Or are they just putting something on without feeling any connection to the idea.

The authenticity requirement for a good costume is drawn from two different Halloween themes, one old and the other new. The old idea is that Halloween is for scaring off the scary spirits of darkness by becoming dark and scary ourselves. The root of the holiday is in the onset of shorter days and longer, earlier, winter nights. We wish to take on the power of the night by being a bit of the night ourselves. But one cannot buy the night. The night must be earned by putting your own energy into the totem.

The new idea is maybe not so new but has been lately expanded: originality. No longer is the genre of costume limited to only the scary things, or only physically scary things. When we were kids my sister went as a 7UP can; we made it by painting an old barrel. It was very convincing and is still cherished. The abstractly conceptual, bizarre, or just weird are now all fair game, if you are clever enough to think of it. I think some of this is simply culture expanding the window of what is acceptable, and some of this is due to the Japanese, and also the internet. It’s nice to see a great costume, whether it’s a crafty piece of the night, some home-made pop culture derivative, or an original and clever take on modern living.

jg

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