By Lars Trodson
In recent years, the internet has provided us an opportunity to
see pictures that showed us how Halloween was celebrated years ago. We have
these treasures, black and white photos of kids in homemade costumes, and they
have proved to be genuinely unsettling. The costumes were borne out of the
fears and crude materials of nightmares. I think of Scout and Jem running home
after the Halloween party through the woods.
I am old enough to remember that kind of Halloween — especially
some of the ones we spent in Vermont when we were kids and we walked those dark
country streets on our way to pick up some candy. When we were young there were
always rumors that someone had slipped a razor blade into a candied apple.
There was nothing creepier then seeing a big kid, some kind of punk, in a
bloodied tee shirt carrying a pillowcase sagging under the weight of the candy
he had collected. It looked more like extortion than anything else. It was a
nightmare and not much fun. I’m told that on one of my first Halloweens I went
walking with my friend Linda who was wearing a mask and I kept turning toward
her and asking, “Linda? Linda? Linda?” and it’s true to this day that I don’t
like masks. I can’t stand them.
But Halloween seemed to have been the one day when you could whistle past the graveyard, when the world (or at least your neighborhood) collectively embraced its fears. It was something that we would get through together. Despite the fact that candy involved, it was really odd to see a collection of disfigured people staggering down the street all at the same time.
Now Halloween looks like a movie premier. Today’s Halloween has
been co-opted by movie studios and graphic novels. Costumes aren't hand made,
they are walking branded advertisements. They’re expensive. What does this
mean? Maybe kids don’t have nightmares any more because they’re on too much
medication. Or perhaps the real world is so frightening that Halloween has
become an opportunity to escape from it, rather than to walk into its bowels.
Perhaps that’s why we see young and old alike dressed up as Spider-Man or one
of the Avengers. Today’s costume perhaps offers the wearer an opportunity to
believe they can keep the effects of the Fukushima nuclear power plant at bay.
Maybe they’ll be the one that saves their girlfriend from the green meanie.
Could be, but that seems a far cry from what Halloween was — and
should be. Any dimestore psychologist, including the ones that long ago created
this misbegotten celebration, would tell you that our fears should be embraced.
That is, in the end, the theme of our little radio play, “The
Palmstone.” It’s tense, it’s psychologically unnerving and it’s riveting. It’s
also old school. “The Palmstone” is the analog version of what has become a
digital event.
Listen with your ears and your heart. You won’t forget this
family, the Block family, as real fear enters their home.
Start with Part 1 here:
