Sarah Hepola: Halloween, Now More Than Ever.
Sarah Hepola
Halloween, now more than ever
By Sarah Hepola • Special to The Washington Post • October 30, 2008
In the run-up to the 2004 election, couples wanting a hot Halloween costume dressed like Britney Spears and her then-hubby Kevin Federline; rarely have Kangol hats and fishnets sold so well in October. This election year's pair is the pregnant Bristol Palin and her fiancé, Levi Johnston, the proud self-described redneck. The pop culture parade that has long marked Halloween -- the movie superheroes, the Hollywood icons, the pirates and the sexy nurses -- has been supplanted by a raft of characters ripped from CNN headlines. It's not just Sarah Palin and Barack Obama but such figures as the polygamist wives of Texas, the fallen New York governor Eliot Spitzer and the bankrupt playboys of Wall Street.
In a sense, this stems from the entertainment industry's failure to introduce stirring characters. (Yet another Batman? Yet another Paris Hilton reality show? That's what we have to choose from?) But it would be near-impossible for anyone to compete with the most fascinating election cycle of our lifetimes. (Or, at least, the most fascinating election cycle of the lifetime of anyone contemplating a Bristol Palin get-up.) Who really cares whether Lindsay Lohan is a lesbian when the future of our country is at stake? This Halloween season, politics has replaced television and sports and (thank you) fallen starlets as water-cooler conversation. Not bad for a country that traditionally has had one of the lowest voter turnouts in the industrialized world.
It's not as though we won't see Madonna and Alex Rodriguez out there this Friday, or Iron Men or deranged Jokers with makeup smeared into their hairline. But the creative types who angle to win costume contests will be trying to translate the absurdities, metaphors and talking points of the 24-hour news shows into an outfit that is not just understandable but singular. (A hockey mom is not going to cut it, folks.)
Four years ago, such high-achievers hit the Washington party circuit outfitted as swing states. But no one needs to carry around a red-and-blue shaded map of Ohio when the possibilities for metaphor lie before us like a slop trough for, perhaps ... a pig wearing lipstick? It's a tribute to the rich rhetoric of this campaign that you can cherry-pick from all the catchphrases floating in the ether -- "spread the wealth around," "That One," "The fundamentals of our economy are strong," "I can see Russia" -- for costume inspiration. And we haven't even mentioned the supporting cast yet: Bill Ayers, Rev. Wright, Bill and Hillary Clinton, Tina Fey, Joe Lieberman, Katie Couric and the wildlife of Alaska, among many others. How many Joe the Plumber outfits are we going to see? It's not just the most important election in decades; it's also the greatest dramatis personae since Shakespeare.
Of course, with the opportunity for brilliance comes an equal opportunity for offensiveness. It's depressing to think of the nastiness that could be on parade -- the dead animals, the racial and socioeconomic slurs from both political camps meant to be funny. (Let's hope that anyone in blackface is paying tribute to Robert Downey Jr. in "Tropic Thunder.")
But Halloween is, after all, a gloomy holiday in a country that rarely acknowledges such shadows -- not in any official way, at least. In its original pagan incarnation, after all, Halloween was a festival intended to ward off evil spirits. If it does still have that power, I can't imagine a time when we'd need it more. That's something that "real America" and ironic-costume-wearing America -- and all the candy-laden doorways where the two overlap -- can agree on.
Sarah Hepola is an editor at Salon.
Halloween, now more than ever
By Sarah Hepola • Special to The Washington Post • October 30, 2008
In the run-up to the 2004 election, couples wanting a hot Halloween costume dressed like Britney Spears and her then-hubby Kevin Federline; rarely have Kangol hats and fishnets sold so well in October. This election year's pair is the pregnant Bristol Palin and her fiancé, Levi Johnston, the proud self-described redneck. The pop culture parade that has long marked Halloween -- the movie superheroes, the Hollywood icons, the pirates and the sexy nurses -- has been supplanted by a raft of characters ripped from CNN headlines. It's not just Sarah Palin and Barack Obama but such figures as the polygamist wives of Texas, the fallen New York governor Eliot Spitzer and the bankrupt playboys of Wall Street.
In a sense, this stems from the entertainment industry's failure to introduce stirring characters. (Yet another Batman? Yet another Paris Hilton reality show? That's what we have to choose from?) But it would be near-impossible for anyone to compete with the most fascinating election cycle of our lifetimes. (Or, at least, the most fascinating election cycle of the lifetime of anyone contemplating a Bristol Palin get-up.) Who really cares whether Lindsay Lohan is a lesbian when the future of our country is at stake? This Halloween season, politics has replaced television and sports and (thank you) fallen starlets as water-cooler conversation. Not bad for a country that traditionally has had one of the lowest voter turnouts in the industrialized world.
It's not as though we won't see Madonna and Alex Rodriguez out there this Friday, or Iron Men or deranged Jokers with makeup smeared into their hairline. But the creative types who angle to win costume contests will be trying to translate the absurdities, metaphors and talking points of the 24-hour news shows into an outfit that is not just understandable but singular. (A hockey mom is not going to cut it, folks.)
Four years ago, such high-achievers hit the Washington party circuit outfitted as swing states. But no one needs to carry around a red-and-blue shaded map of Ohio when the possibilities for metaphor lie before us like a slop trough for, perhaps ... a pig wearing lipstick? It's a tribute to the rich rhetoric of this campaign that you can cherry-pick from all the catchphrases floating in the ether -- "spread the wealth around," "That One," "The fundamentals of our economy are strong," "I can see Russia" -- for costume inspiration. And we haven't even mentioned the supporting cast yet: Bill Ayers, Rev. Wright, Bill and Hillary Clinton, Tina Fey, Joe Lieberman, Katie Couric and the wildlife of Alaska, among many others. How many Joe the Plumber outfits are we going to see? It's not just the most important election in decades; it's also the greatest dramatis personae since Shakespeare.
Of course, with the opportunity for brilliance comes an equal opportunity for offensiveness. It's depressing to think of the nastiness that could be on parade -- the dead animals, the racial and socioeconomic slurs from both political camps meant to be funny. (Let's hope that anyone in blackface is paying tribute to Robert Downey Jr. in "Tropic Thunder.")
But Halloween is, after all, a gloomy holiday in a country that rarely acknowledges such shadows -- not in any official way, at least. In its original pagan incarnation, after all, Halloween was a festival intended to ward off evil spirits. If it does still have that power, I can't imagine a time when we'd need it more. That's something that "real America" and ironic-costume-wearing America -- and all the candy-laden doorways where the two overlap -- can agree on.
Sarah Hepola is an editor at Salon.
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