THIS IS HALLOWEEN...

     See, I think what ultimately ruined Halloween as a festival of scary was business. It's hard to find genuinely terrifying things or provocations of unease or sources of existential dread throughout the month of October except in very niche environments. People like to say Halloween is "scary" but it's really not. There's talk of monsters like old-school vampires, werewolves, witches, and mummies and more modernly favored zombies, vengeance-fueled spirits, weapon-of-choice spree killers, and vampires but you get sanitized versions of them instead.

     I understand why. It's kinda hard to sell candy, costumes, and television specials to children while also giving them a real sense of mortal terror, challenging their faith in happy endings, and by enhancing our already natural fear of spiders, snakes, and the unknown. Brands can't really turn their mascots into genuinely frightening things. They have to make attractive the darkened Halloween palettes and present a kind of "fun" scary instead.

    I'm not sure in any real sense why Halloween needs to be scary but I suppose it's the age-old that's what we've been told kind of tradition. I just know that such celebrations are impossible in an atmosphere convincing consumers to buy shit.
    We get anthropological M&Ms as a cutesy vampire (watch out! fangs!), Frankenstein's monster (aah! bolts!), and a fashionable witch (help! she's wearing glasses!); Snap, Crackle, and Pop illuminated as if to tell a fun-scary story over a cauldron of Rice Krispies treats; coloring books of smiling friendly witches whose spells provoke delight rather than dread and dancing skeletons to entertain rather than warn of imminent danger; "scary" movies where the kids are always successful at pushing back the evil as though nothing had happened; it goes on...

    It's hard to deliver genuine scares, especially as one gets more sophisticated but I also don't think it unwise to use the holiday for public service. Movies which show how easily one can become enchanted by and to do service in the name of evil (think the masterminds behind the Hitler Youth), how peer pressure can override an overarching sense of what's right, how fear can make one complicit in wrongdoing, and so forth.


   I don't know what the solution is besides just sucking it up and not giving a shit about such trivialities. I think I look at the word "scary" in Halloween season much like the word "beautiful" in today's social media and how it's not only overused, but misused. Surrendering to the ever-changing tides of meaning is necessary lest one desire himself a linguistic Canute...