Cover of the Dead Kennedys single Halloween
(Alternative Tentacles, 1982)
Another Halloween approaches ...
And the groaning you can hear is nothing ghostly or ghoulish, but the sound of weariness from people like me who dislike the manner in which the supermarkets and other forces of corporate-media spectacle have co-opted the Day of the Dead and transformed it into a vapid and vacuous celebration of fake blood, phony horror, and false festivity.
For what is Halloween today other than an opportunity for happy shoppers and law-abiding citizens to dress-up and behave like pretend monsters? Their costumes, no matter how elaborate, fail to cover up their conventionality and conformity; their masks and make-up don't disguise the fact that they have the same white faces smiling sheepishly underneath that they pride themselves on for the rest of the year.
As Jello Biafra once sang: "I can see your eyes / I can see your brain / baby nothing's changed!"
And on the morrow, when the plastic pumpkins are put away and their all too human mold goes back on, then the real horror begins again; the recurrent nightmare of their daily lives full of fear of otherness, self-loathing, social-regulation, and the judgement of God.
One almost wishes for a real zombie apocalypse ...
