NAKED CITY: HAPLESS HALLOWEEN
In case you hadn’t noticed, it’s Halloween this coming Thursday and once again Sydneysiders have shown their enthusiasm for this event with countless dress-up parties and kiddies hitting the neighbourhood doorbells in a sugar-induced frenzy of trick and treating.
It’s all good-natured escapist fun, and a fabulous boost for pumpkin farmers across the state, but does anybody stop to think what it’s really all about? Like a lot of cultural appropriations from the US, commercial forces largely drive Halloween and if Coles and Woolies didn’t get on board with their three-dollar pumpkins and plastic fangs, maybe the public would be a lot less interested.
Each year Halloween seems to get bigger and bigger in Australia and surprisingly we are yet to experience the kind of Christian fundamentalist backlash that has plagued the US version, year after year. After all, we are mocking death, dressing up as witches and goblins and partaking in the sort of freaky pseudo satanic rituals that could see us all end up in hell. Has anybody considered trick or treating the Rev Fred Nile or Archbishop Pell this Thursday, dressed as the Devil with the Grim Reaper loitering in the background as immoral support?
Not surprisingly both the State Government and City Of Sydney Council have failed to join the party or see any financial gain in jumping on the ghostly bandwagon. Considering the millions that are blown on fireworks and festivals like the curiously conceived Vivid, Sydney at least deserves a giant pumpkin suspended from the Harbour Bridge or illuminated atop the Sydney Tower. A worthy validation of the popularity of Halloween might even see it declared an official public holiday with either the dreary Queen’s Birthday or the who care’s Labour Day holiday abolished to make way.
If you find the whole Halloween hullabaloo just a little perplexing and lacking in any real meaning or significance, you need to check out the current window display in the always topical Bugden’s Bookshop in William Street Kings Cross. There amidst a collection of appropriately spooky and horror-themed publications, including a book about the legendary Rosalie Norton and splatter director Herschell Gordon Lewis, sit biographies of Rupert Murdoch and Gina Reinhart. Clearly the message is it’s not the horror that we laugh and joke about once a year on Halloween but the awfulness that lives amongst us everyday!
THE HIT LIST: There’s a veritable plethora of Halloween celebrations later this week but you might like to try Texas Chainsaw Trivia Halloween at the Darlo Bar (Royal Sovereign Hotel in Darlinghurst) on Wednesday night from 7.30pm with yours truly Miss Death, Jay Katz and Coffin Ed and Jeff Duff’s Happy Halloween Party at the Basement on Thursday October 31st. Both events are offering special prizes for the most appropriately dressed.
