“Ha ha! Ha ha haaa! Do it again! Do it again!”
I have been dragged from the high street into the local novelty and party supplies shop by my two children, aged six and four, their attention snagged by its Halloween window display. Once inside, they delight in the various harrowing masks and severed limbs on offer near the entrance, but then hit real pay dirt in aisle two, in the form of a spectacularly macabre mannequin.
A blood-spattered nightie hangs over a life-sized, skeletal frame, out of which protrude two cadaverous arms, opened in hideous parody of embrace. Its gurning skull is festooned with meaty gore (plastic-realistic), two beady little eyeballs deep-set and glowing red, while the floppy blue sunhat and fake flower garland combo with which the shop-dresser has adorned it underscore the disquieting effect.
But that’s not all. The kids quickly establish that the gruesome installation has a final flourish to offer. At the sound of a hand-clap, or any other loud noise (my children are unsparing with noise), a rent in the bloody night-dress gapes open, through which a faithful version of the creature from Ridley Scott’s original 'Alien' thrusts its snarling, mucoid head, just as it did so memorably through John Hurt’s sternum in the movie. It gives a metallic roar, swivels around a bit, and then retreats back into its abdominal lair.
Good grief, this thing is horrible.
“Ha ha! Ha ha haaa! Do it again!” shrieks my four year-old son, at which his grinning big sister duly claps her hands.
What’s going on here? Why aren’t these little children of mine cowering behind Daddy’s legs? And what is this monstrosity doing out on open display in a suburban high street store selling fairy wings, party balloons and Disney princess dress-ups, anyway?
Maybe it’s a sign of the creeping grislification of popular culture, a desensitisation to what once passed for horror, that began with 'Buffy', went ballistic through 'Twilight' and is now manifested in dozens of other drama franchises populated by the heroic and pin-up glamorous undead.
Or maybe I’m just getting old.
Don’t get me wrong, I like Halloween. Since migrating to these shores from Britain I’ve been a frequent apologist for its rituals, patiently pointing out to nay-sayers that, far from being some kind of commercially-motivated American invention, this thing goes back to pre-Christian, pagan society.
Even trick-or-treating has its roots in the distant past. From at least the 16th Century “mummers and guisers”, in Ireland, Scotland and Wales (the English always having been the party-poopers of the British Isles, I guess) would dress up as dead souls and go from door to door, laying down a few poems or songs in exchange for food. The lollies angle is a more recent development, but, still, the general scene’s traditional, is my point.
I grew up in the grim suburbia of 70s and 80s greater London, when trick-or-treating was already a thing, though the necessity of having a stash of candy prepared for offloading not so universally understood that you couldn’t catch out the unprepared. My friends and I, aged 12 and upwards, would roam the neighbourhood, knocking on doors with open palms outstretched, and punish those who didn’t reward us by egging their front doors. We didn’t wear costumes, but it may have been dark enough that we looked a bit scary, the general standard in British dentistry at the time, in particular, being what it was.
In retrospect, Halloween offered an excellent excuse for a spot of random vandalism, an important rite of passage in any free society.
And, as I grew older, it became an excellent excuse for a party. Dressing up is a basic human urge that we suppress from late childhood onwards - Halloween gave us a rare chance to indulge it. Many of my formative sexual and otherwise hedonic experiences took place while I was wearing a witch’s hat or werewolf mask.
Just because I balk at the raised gore stakes these days, doesn’t mean I have a problem with the occasion per se.
In fact, instead of just paying lip-service to the old traditions, maybe it’s time I reclaimed them. This Halloween, rather than just going with the current flow, and getting my kids to dress up as zombies (realistic-looking edible brains now a readily available accessory) and gather candies from the parents of their peers, I should go back to basics, head on out with them and knock on the doors of our neighbours.
In my experience, trick-or-treating in its purest form doesn’t happen much around here. After dark, on Saturday night, I’ll stick old bedsheets with eye-holes cut out of them over their little bodies, maybe don one myself (making sure we look like ghosts and not Klan) and then wander up the road, knocking on every door. It will give me a chance to meet the people who live around here. We’ve been here five years, but, apart from fellow parents, we don’t know too many. It could be the chance to make a few friends.
Or even settle one or two scores. Hopefully the guy three doors away who likes to practise playing drums in the middle of the night won’t have anything for us.
Back in the novelty store, I yank my still guffawing children towards the exit, to the relief of the proprietors.
“Come on kids,” I tell them. “Let’s go and buy some eggs.”
Ian Rose is a Melbourne-based writer.
