viz. - Halloween

A Very Viz-y Halloween: The Horror of the Female Body

clsloan — Tue, 29 Oct 2013 13:04:28 +0000

At least once a year, my fevered, candy-addle, jumped-up-on-Halloween brain grapples with the compelling notion that the horror genre somehow contains the key to unlock some delightful secrets about our cultural, if not our human, condition. The genre fascinates because its appeal rests on its ability to draw forth all of the emotional and physiological reaction we, as a species, have been conditioned to be very, very wary of. I can understand why romantic comedies command so much cultural popularity, but horror movies? Revulsion, repulsion, terror, horror, disgust...the viewer is bombarded with stimuli that are designed to make you feel as though you should flee as quickly as you possibly can, and yet, riveted we sit, consuming horror with more fervor and delight than we consume popcorn. So how does this genre relate to gender?

In my travels through the windy realms of random conversation, I have stumbled upon the opinion that horror movies take advantage of cultural anxieties (dangerous strangers, home invasion, loss of self) in order to shock and titillate. Many horror movies mobilize these anxieties in a Christian-Old-Testament manner, using powers beyond human comprehension to dole out a form of moral judgment on any reprehensible flouters of social law. Consider the trope of the massacred drunken, sexually-active teens coupled with (pun intended) the survival of the abstaining, typically female, virgin. Halloween (1978) seems to be the big-name film that cemented this motif in the modern horror genre, though the trope itself goes back much, much farther. I'm particularly interested in this cliché because it idealizes the adrenaline-flushed, active female body while implicitly condemning sexually-oriented energies. Is it sublimation? Is it a way of giving the (supposedly heteronormative male) viewer a pseudo-pornographic thrill without the taint of actual sex? Speaking of a supposedly male viewer, what does the constant stream of female protagonists in horror movies indicate? The skeptic in me berates the genre for a) deriving so much affect from strictly female suffering and for b) parading a female body in front of the viewer to generate erotic responses while refusing to let the heroine herself enjoy her sex life without being chased about by ghosts, serial killers or zombies. Double standard, horror genre.

However! The optimist in me wonders whether or not the female protagonist might serve as a point of identification rather than an object of stimulation. Do we not feel her fear? Her despair? Does the emotional connection we make with her transcend the threat of her reification? In addition, some horror movies tackle sexual anxieties from a female, not a puritanical, perspective. Alien (1979) not-so-subtly preys on fears of pregnancy, “monstrous” or overbearing maternity, and parental responsibility. The Ring (2002), the American remake of the Japanese Ringu, examines a single mother's struggle to raise her precocious child. Coincidentally, the supernatural threat in the story happens to be a little girl whose adoptive parents “failed” to control or understand her. If horror movies do rely on secret social terrors to illicit fear in their viewers, the genre's politics, and maybe monsters, rely on the community those anxieties are being drawn from. A hyper-conservative moral community might generate a noncommunicative, hand-of-god executioner. A perceived viewing group of men and women worried about raising children in a modern landscape yields ghost children. Of course, the formula for monster creation isn't so simple, but it's a promising thought experiment.

Halloween, People Watching, and Fashion

Calliope — Thu, 25 Oct 2012 15:49:04 +0000

Image Credit: Halloweenorwilliamsburg.com

Halloween season put me in mind of the hipster-bashing tumblr Halloween or Williamsburg that emerged around this time last year. The microblog features crowd-sourced photos of people in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, whose over-the-top fashion choices cause daily confusion about whether or not it is Halloween. The website’s wittily-captioned parade of fools is relentlessly funny, though it inevitably delivers a slightly skewed version of reality. (I've never been to Williamsburg, but I imagine not every resident reaches for the costume box when they get dressed every morning.) But that’s partly why the site offers such a satisfying experience. Scrolling through its photo logs is like going people watching and seeing only the “gems.” It’s like a walk down Telegraph Avenue sans the drab-looking Cal students.

Image Credit: Halloweenorwilliamsburg.com

But it’s not just the concentration of outrageous that gets people to visit this and similar shrines to public display. As the blog title suggests, the real ambiguity in the photographs between what is intended for holiday and what passes as everyday, or what is exceptional and what is ordinary, is the main fascination. In fact, the conflation of spectacle with everyday existence (lifestyle) is what makes many counter cultures seem so curious—even laughable—to the mainstream.

It strikes me that there’s an intermediate position between introducing pirate garb into one’s fall wardrobe and keeping costume-y aesthetics safely at bay (in the haunted house, on their designated day). Fashion critics, for instance, celebrate flamboyant sartorial expression within shifting but recognized limits of decorum. To the fashion forward, context is one such limiting factor: the Tudor-inspired ruff that looked chic on the runway probably won’t go over so well at the office happy hour. The design of one's clothing and coherence of one's ensemble are important considerations as well. But even with these strictures, there are plenty of everyday people, including and especially hipsters, who succeed at smuggling a little bit of Halloween into their daily lives through the guise of “style.”

Thanks to a new Internet sensation called Styleblaster, you may spot these folks and approve their outfits in real time. The makers of the site installed a webcam next to a busy Williamsburg subway stop that snaps a picture every time someone walks by. So now we have another blog to ensure that the ordinary denizens of Williamsburg will be subjected to fashion critique along with the neighborhood’s perennial trick-or-treat-ers.

Image Credit: Screenshot from styleblaster.net

The only novel (and potentially controversial) aspect of this study in street style is that the method is automated and non-consensual. Most of the passersbys don’t know they’re on camera, and it’s possible that some of them would object to having photographic evidence of their appearance and whereabouts published in such a public forum.

Image Credit: Screenshot from styleblaster.net

It’s interesting to consider Styleblaster alongside its counterpart, Halloween or Williamsburg, because each site employs candid photography to perpetuate different arguments about an overlapping group of subjects. The continuous flow of photographs on the style-watching site softens the sting of a "bad review" by piling more and more "random" photos on top of it. (The website doesn’t have a commenting function yet, but a lack of top hats—Styleblaster’s version of a thumbs up—can indicate that an outfit is a flop). On the other hand, Halloween or Williamsburg’s contributors’ point their cameras and derision squarely at select group of flagrantly self-advertising weirdos. So, one website deals gently with Williamsburg’s fashion offenders, whereas the other’s sole purpose is to render them ridiculous.

Image Credit: Screenshot from styleblaster.net

The promise of achieving fame or infamy on either site may actually exert pressure on the community to turn up the style dial. For those who want to be noticed on—or at least well received by—the fashion-oriented Styleblaster, this may mean dressing to meet the public’s expectations for Williamsburgian eccentricity. For the exhibitionists on Halloween or Williamburg, it’s like they made it onto the Who’s Who of hipsterdom. I can’t imagine that the attention is anything but encouraging for them. This is all to say that Halloween is nearly here, and in places like Williamsburg it is surely here to stay.

Mashups and Misreadings: “We’re a Culture, Not a Costume” Revisited

Lisa Gulesserian — Thu, 03 Nov 2011 13:00:00 +0000

Image credit: STARS

I know that we just survived another Halloween, so you’re probably already on to thinking about your Thanksgiving plans. Humor me as I ask us to think about Halloween again. While perusing Colorlines, a daily news site about contemporary racial justice issues, I stumbled upon a fantastic visual campaign by Ohio University’s Students Teaching about Racism in Society (STARS) organization. The campaign, “We’re a Culture, Not a Costume,” is smart, scathing, and to the point. It’s everything I ever wanted in a campaign to raise awareness about the everyday racism that is often shrugged off in moments of embarrassment and frustration. As expected, the campaign has garnered national attention, but its message has been mocked by mashups posted all over the Internet. We need to think critically about the messages about racism in both STARS’ campaign and in its Photoshopped reiterations. Something’s askew in the mashup world, if you ask me.

According to Jorge Rivas' post on Colorlines, the Ohio University organization behind the campaign, STARS, created the images after the organization’s president, Sarah Williams, saw a person in black face at a Halloween party last year. To bring attention to the insensitivity of many Halloween costumes, Williams holds an image of a woman completely covered in black body paint, wearing a chain around her neck and a baseball cap on her head.

Image credit: STARS

The young woman points to her obviously false teeth (another key part of the costume) while a man wearing a vampire costume feigns going in for a bite on her neck. It’s all fun and games, right? Not to African Americans, like Williams herself, who are being mocked. Everything about the costume is a stereotype—the chain, the hat, the fake teeth. If we’re now “post-racial,” as some commentators have argued since the election of Barack Obama, this image seems like it’s out of time. In fact, it is. This is blackface no matter how hard we try to shrug it off. We see Williams’ serious face, and we know it’s not just a joke, a harmless costume. Her somber face and dark clothing contextualize the image she’s holding. We can’t help but agree with the words above the image: “This is NOT who I am, and this is NOT okay.”

Despite these visual cues as to how to read the campaign, some viewers seem to have taken Williams’ and STARS’ message lightly. On The Chive, “home to the best funny, viral and interesting photos from around the world,” the campaign is seen as a “FAIL.” In a post called “C’mon guys, let’s take Halloween seriously,” Mac the Intern collected 21 mashups of the campaign, using fictional characters, animals, and movie stars.

Images credit: The Chive

With these Photoshopped images, the tone and power of the original STARS campaign is completely ignored and, I would argue, diffused. Yes, it’s funny that people dress in dog costumes. But, when we see that this humor is pointed out using the exact format of the original campaign—the dark background, the orange “We’re a culture, not a costum” banner, the “This is NOT who I am, and this is NOT okay”—we only see the campaign and its creators suffering a fate similar to the one that they would suffer when seeing someone dressed up in a racist costume. Like the creators of the campaign who, embarrassed and ashamed, were forced to stifle their anger and hurt because they’re in a public setting, these images stifle the strong message of STARS’ campaign. We’re supposed to shrug it all off. Halloween’s a time of jokes and treats. But I can’t help but feel tricked.

So, as you’re thinking about roasting a turkey and falling into a contented slumber, know that we’re not done with Halloween yet. There are still all those Facebook Halloween pictures to look at.

"Trick or Treat, Smell my Feet..."

Andi — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 00:28:36 +0000

H/T: The New York Times

I found that I just couldn't resist finding some possible posting that connects to Halloween and it didn't take me long to stumble across an article in the New York Times that focuses on grade school guidelines for appropriate costumes. Apparently several elementary and secondary schools across the county are urging (or requiring) students to limit their choice of costume to selections that are not scary, not offensive, not violent. While it seems completely understandable to restrict students from wearing costumes that rely on offensive stereotypes, I wonder where these schools draw the line on what exactly is appropriate. Restricting children's costumes raises several provocative questions: is Halloween a tradition that does/should celebrate horror? Are children already exposed to too many violent images (in other words, is a zombie scarier than Grand Theft Auto)? What should be the role of the parent in policing appropriate costumes? the role of the school in policing appropriate dress?

The article includes the details of a memo circulated by Riverside Elementary School in Southern California elaborating on the parameters for costumes including "no costume should depict gangs or horror characters, or be scary" "no weapons, even fake ones" and "no fake fingernails." This memo also suggested that no costume should be demeaning with respect to race, nationality, gender, or ability. Now prohibiting fake fingernails seems less obvious to me, and I can't begin to know how exactly "scary" will be defined, but restricting costumes that are demeaning seems a no-brainer. A quick scan of the collection of children's costumes online yields many ridiculous choices.

Screen capture: HalloweenCostumes4Kids.com

The first website I looked at has an "Indian Running Bull" costume for young boys and Princess Jasmine from Disney's Aladdin for girls. These costumes certainly have the Disney-esque about them but many scholars and critics have slammed Disney for its demeaning depictions of race, ethnicity, gender. These costumes are not "scary" but I wonder whether we would really categorize them as "positive" (a costume characteristic called for by several Texas schools). Are young children remaking themselves in the image of their favorite television character any less "scary" than ghosts, goblins, or ghouls?