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TechnographHalloween is a nightmare
By Lee Feder
Posted: 10/30/07 Section: Opinion Columns
Happy Halloween, Ms. Slutty Cop and Mr. Pimp. Welcome to the least enjoyable day of the year for me. With ghouls, ghosts and ghastly, slutty nurses, Halloween on campus is ... uhm ... an experience. Every year, though, students tend to recycle many of the same costumes (hey look! There goes a slutty firefighter!) and pay the same exorbitant cover charge at campus bars. Halloween is the perfect college holiday.
Today allows students normally consumed with the routine of homework and exams to indulge their fantasies, both the horrific and the exciting. People escape the scary world of class, work and responsibility to be superheroes, athletes, movie characters and, yes, even promiscuous public servants. Heaven forbid people dress as something plausibly gruesome, like Dick Cheney in hunting gear or a tax increase (if anyone does, in fact, dress as a tax increase tonight, I will be more scared than Jamie Lee Curtis in "Halloween").
My abhorrence of Halloween stems from many areas; high bar cover, crowded parties and ugly costumes all make their contributions. Yes, I am the Grinch of Halloween. However, the real reason Halloween continually tops my list of most despised days is that its form of escapism is entirely vapid and false. People dress up and party to hide from their real lives for a night, but never actually leave. Apparently being a Fighting Illini is not the most exciting lifestyle, so people trade in the Orange and Blue for (insert random costume here), but never permanently change.
To be fair, everyone escapes the monotony of life in his own way. Some people drink and do drugs, some read, some play music or create other art, while others window shop for items they will never be able to afford. Halloween, though, appeals to the basest form of escapism. Physical change is shallow and relatively not fulfilling in the larger scope of life. After all, how many women would love to look like Jessica Alba? Yet, many of the people with a nearly perfect appearance have highly imperfect lives a la Lindsay Lohan, Paris Hilton, Nicole Richie, Britney Spears and Jessica Simpson. Those people's external appearances indicate nothing about their lives, yet average people pretend that dressing up as a rock star will somehow invigorate their mundane existences. This is logically both obvious and false.
Today allows students normally consumed with the routine of homework and exams to indulge their fantasies, both the horrific and the exciting. People escape the scary world of class, work and responsibility to be superheroes, athletes, movie characters and, yes, even promiscuous public servants. Heaven forbid people dress as something plausibly gruesome, like Dick Cheney in hunting gear or a tax increase (if anyone does, in fact, dress as a tax increase tonight, I will be more scared than Jamie Lee Curtis in "Halloween").
My abhorrence of Halloween stems from many areas; high bar cover, crowded parties and ugly costumes all make their contributions. Yes, I am the Grinch of Halloween. However, the real reason Halloween continually tops my list of most despised days is that its form of escapism is entirely vapid and false. People dress up and party to hide from their real lives for a night, but never actually leave. Apparently being a Fighting Illini is not the most exciting lifestyle, so people trade in the Orange and Blue for (insert random costume here), but never permanently change.
To be fair, everyone escapes the monotony of life in his own way. Some people drink and do drugs, some read, some play music or create other art, while others window shop for items they will never be able to afford. Halloween, though, appeals to the basest form of escapism. Physical change is shallow and relatively not fulfilling in the larger scope of life. After all, how many women would love to look like Jessica Alba? Yet, many of the people with a nearly perfect appearance have highly imperfect lives a la Lindsay Lohan, Paris Hilton, Nicole Richie, Britney Spears and Jessica Simpson. Those people's external appearances indicate nothing about their lives, yet average people pretend that dressing up as a rock star will somehow invigorate their mundane existences. This is logically both obvious and false.
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