Halloween in America: From the Eighties to the Present
By: Julia Aidan
Submitted: 2009-06-05 12:54:46 | Word Count: 544
Halloween celebrations in America probably took off in the eighties, after a slew of "splatter films" and the general acknowledgement that there's nothing intrinsically or ideologically wrong with the celebration.
Scary thrills
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Modern Halloween is no longer a time of divination and rituals. Rather, it was a time for the adults to make use of their creative juices to please and entertain the kids. Kids, who were often the focus of the religious Right and other concerned groups and individuals, were viewed as the primary consumers of Halloween.
Haunted houses were the first line of defense of adults who couldn't think of anything more interesting. Charity organizations in places like Detroit were the first ones that organized and promoted such places. In haunted houses, children could simply wander and find whatever thrills they may be seeking in this season of the year.
Child psychology
Is it healthy for children to subject themselves to "scary thrills" such as those that are offered by Ripley's tours, etc.? It seems so. According to child psychology, at a particular age, children are already capable of seeing and understanding what's real and what's not real.
This is where the enjoyment of Halloween comes in. If a child can already tell that the things around him or her are merely makeup, masks and cobwebs made of cotton and strings, then he can already enjoy being scared. Understanding plays a key role in safeguarding the mind of a child.
A twelve-year-old boy's appreciation of what's scary is different from a five-year old boy's appreciation. A thirty-year-old man will have a different perspective of vampires and potentially dangerous aliens than a fifteen-year-old boy's.
Types of thrills
In North America, the following were often the sources of the "scary thrills" that people sought during Halloween:
- (Temporary) haunted houses
- City parks
- Haunted barns
- Ghostly gambols
- Movie theaters
As mentioned earlier, charitable institutions began the process of introducing younger children and teenagers to the prospect of wandering through horror-filled houses. However, by the 1990's, companies began moving in for a different kind of thrill: profit.
How many haunted houses were there in Northern America before the decade of the nineties was up? Over two thousand haunted houses were already operational. Usually, these haunted houses were open to the thrilled public for 3/4 of a month.
The witching season soon became a time for bustling entrepreneurs to think of new ways to entertain an increasingly 'immune' consumer base. How do you scare teenagers who have seen the atrocities in Schindler's List and the maniac in Saw and Saw 2?
The answer of course, was to bring the scares and thrills closer to home. Kids were no longer scared by conventional goblins and vampires. Nevertheless, they were still scared by the fact that a plain looking man could end up being a crazed psychopath out for blood.
Rats, eyeballs, blood and the prospect of decapitation and evisceration were the motifs that were made dynamic and usable for the purpose of scaring the kids. Sometimes, even adults let loose and allowed themselves to be scared, in this special time of the year.
