Title: The Preservation of an Event: Ken Thigpen's Halloween '85
n October 31, 1991, I stood before a bathroom mirror applying yellow and black makeup to my face while glancing at a postcard of a jaguar. This had been my traditional costume since three years before, and I had chosen it for its exotic, frightening effect. I prepared to go out into the dark rows of buildings that made up the American part of Frankfurt, Germany, where children walked about it all sorts of costumes. We were four thousand miles from the United States, and yet the excessive decorations, haunted-house basements, parties and trick-or-treaters exuded an air of American curiosity to Germans who happened into the area on that night.On October 31, 1996, I viewed a short film by Ken Thigpen, Halloween '85. The film depicted the celebration of Halloween in a small college town in State College, Pennsylvania. The simple viewing of Halloween '85 may only be a mirroring of an event through a technological medium, but it has a greater impact than simple display for me, because I consider myself somewhat separate from American culture in that I lived eighteen of my twenty-two years outside of the United States. The viewing of "folkloristic" films such as Thigpen's in combination with my own personal experiences of the event portrayed will be the subject of this discourse of American Halloween celebrations as historical artifact, diffusable phenomenon and its possibility as a defining element of folklore as culture.
Folklore as historical artifact inherently includes an established history of an event, so I will concentrate on this area first. Thigpen's only appearance in Halloween '85 is directly addressed to the historical background of Halloween, and the cross-cutting to his scenes is amusing to the viewers who do not recognize him, and strangely ambiguous to those who do. The scenes seem like a comical contrast to the rest of the film, claiming that people don't really know why they celebrate Halloween, when the camera has already allowed us insights into the motivations of other Halloween participants. He and Bob Lima appear "cerebral, academic, analytical," in Thigpen's own words, "almost like a parody of what they [college students] see happen on campus in the lecture situation."1 The fact that the two folklorists are being interviewed on public television as experts within the film we are watching has an intriguing, self-reflexive affect on us (folklore students) as well...we are studying to be "experts" ourselves and yet we are compelled to laugh at the past, the history of the folklore event, because it is outdated. The role of the controllers of information, the media, is contradictory, for it encourages the folklorist to offer his expert explanation for our modern traditions, yet we are bombarded with myriad commercials, full page ads and messages from television shows that we can readily identify with. The professors of Halloween '85 come across as pedantic, trivia buffs in a generation of Americans who are becoming increasingly ignorant of their country's past. The origins of the more common Halloween practices were explored by a columnist for the Collegiate Times, Sonja Weisel; "the Celts wore frightening costumes" to appease Samhain, "in medieval times, beggars would go from door to door for spiced soul cakes," required to sing for their treats, "Irish settlers brought bobbing for apples," and the English and Scottish "brought their custom of carving out beets, potatoes and turnips to light as lanterns," and the name jack o' lantern derives from Irish legend.2 Halloween celebration is clearly folklore as historical artifact, but it has changed with time and location, which defines it as a transmissible, diffusable phenomenon.
Ken Thigpen filmed Halloween '85 in State College, a location with a large student population. I can identify with this place in two ways - I live next to UCLA, where students make up the majority of the area, and I used to trick-or-treat in the American military housing areas in Germany. All three environments are very transitory, where people move in and out within about three to four years, most families are young and open-minded, and everyone participating considers themselves American.
A sizable portion of Halloween '85 recorded the process of costume selection and creation. Groups of children were asked "What are you going to be for Halloween?" As former participants in the traditional event of Halloween, we fully expected some of the answers, "a witch," "a vampire," but there were a surprising number of youths who decided on "a punk rocker." The costumes are all items of folklore, but the types vary widely according to the influence of peers, parents, and personal taste. Perhaps the director's daughter represents the archetype of the punk rocker; she is attempting to be Madonna, and two of her friends participate in the transformation of applying lipstick and nail polish. This is mirrored in my own experience by the plenitude of "GI Joe's" in the military housing areas, where there was a ready supply of old BDU's (battle dress uniforms) in the closet. The two types of favored costumes reflect folklore as transmissible entity, in which the choice of type is taken from a local model. Often, the model is an image of respect or quiet fascination, such as the punk rockers Thigpen interviewed. They claimed to be perturbed by the costumes imitating them, and yet it is probable that they experienced a certain amount of flattery that their image was so popular with their non-punk peers.
There are two basic types of costumes typical to the celebration of Halloween. These are human representations and monsters. I interviewed five people who have worn Halloween costumes, and of these people, three of the five prefer to dress as something other than human. Their reasoning is that the monsters are more frightening, and that they resemble nothing of reality, allowing them to act as they like. This outlet from reality may be caused by the masking of the self, or by the atmosphere of the occasion, but in either case, this is an example of folklore as behavior. The "Robin Hood" of Thigpen's film plays his role to the hilt, exhibiting a behavior of escapism. As for myself, I feel that the three-hour long makeup process for my leopard costume is a once-a-year behavior I can indulge in to display my skill as an artist, through which I can express my imagination physically, and in a way which my peers approve and admire. Some creators of costumes may approach the behavioral aspect of Halloween costume-making as an escape from themselves; they concentrate on designing the costume as if they were creating an ideal form of themselves.
Thigpen's unobtrusive interviewing technique allows us to merge with the interviewer, as if we were asking the questions, and being answered directly by the participants. The ease with which a viewer may engage himself with the film results in a surprising desire to be part of the action. One classmate observed after watching Halloween '85 that, "I feel bad that I'm not dressing up!" The behavioral need to be part of a group, combined with the meaningful date of the film screening (October 31), evoked a meaningful response to the State College celebration of Halloween, which is the defining factor of folklore. In this way, the film succeeds in generating and maintaining interest in a traditional event.
Over the progress of this course, we have discussed the merits of uninterrupted filming versus cross-cutting and selective shots. Uninterrupted filming would seem to be the most natural way to observe an item of folklore, in which not a moment is omitted for its potential importance. Thigpen does not use this method of presenting his film, and again, the class observation was that this film was "more natural to watch" than the one preceding it, Sharon Sherman's Tales of the Supernatural. The reason for this interpretation of "natural" fits with the nature of the human mind, to remember that which is unusual, discarding the mundane. There is little normal, everyday activity in Halloween '85, and that which we do view is captured in a first-person perspective.
Ken Thigpen not only succeeds in his attempt to capture an event of folklore on film, but by inspiring viewers with his unobtrusive filming technique alongside thorough investigation into motivational factors, he manages to keep the event alive through secondary experience. For the target American audience, this film will most certainly allow for personal identification to the participants within the film, based on reminiscent experiences from past Halloweens. Halloween '85 is an excellent example of the preservation film can provide for any item of folklore, and it can only become more useful by continuation...let us hope that Thigpen will follow through with his wish to make his Halloween '05 sequel.