Happy Halloween!

I love Halloween.  It’s just a fun holiday.  Yes I know I know, mostly based on pagan culture (like half our Christmas traditions), the night the veil between this world and the next is the thinnest and all that jazz. 

 But despite all of that, Halloween means people get to dress up in costumes.  The candy was always nice and such but the costumed fun was what made Halloween for me.

That shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone, I’m a member of the 501st Legion after all.  But the truth is, in some ways, Halloween is the day we can be a little bit more honest with our costumes.  Costuming has been taken from the realm of kids play and fetishism into the realm of art over the last decade.  It can serve a variety of purposes.  Some do it to show off the hard work they put into themselves with the way they shape their bodies to fit a role.  For some, it’s a means to an end.  If they want to learn a new skillset but need a project to work on to learn it, enter the costume.  

But as with most art, one of the things that costuming does is communicate a message.  That message can be as simple as “I love Batman” but it’s still a message that’s being broadcast.  However, are we not wearing a costume every day in some fashion or other?  It’s not an unheard of idea, “Dress for the job you want, not the job you have” is a basic concept in the business world.

Perhaps less consciously in our adult lives, but we are in a costume every day.  When we wake up in the morning, and pick an outfit we are presenting an image of ourselves.  This is mitigated to a degree by everything from budgets to dress codes, but the we are still sending a message when we are getting ready to go, even if that message is “I stayed up to late last night and didn’t have time to care what I looked like today (my wrinkled shirts for instance).”

As we’re growing up, this might be a bit more consciously done.  We wear the bands we listen to and try to put forth an image of who we believe ourselves to be.  Always one to tilt with windmills, I was a metal head who would wear the shirts with snakes, chains, and gore to try and show people that a persons musical preference didn’t tell you anything about their intellect (I was always a good little nerd) or personality (I was the nice guy that just wanted to be liked).  

I dressed to try and show the turmoil that exists when we are growing up, but embedded within the image I was presenting were promises of hope for those willing to take a real look at me.  The best example is in one of my favorite t-shirts, and the only one I’ve ever purchased more than once.  The Tourniquet: Stop The Bleeding shirt was designed to look scary.  The snake on it certainly frightened me a bit.  But the chains surrounding the snake were there extending from the cybernetic hands of the Tourniquet logo, an intentional image they crafted to show that Satan is vicious and frightening but is ultimately under God’s control.

Perhaps I was a strange kid, it came from the role models I chose (with parental guidance admittedly steering me) who took great pains in making sure the messages they were creating were conveying the messages they wanted them to.  Bands like Tourniquet who would take the time to talk with you about what they were hoping to say and teach you to look at things that way.  It’s also part of how God wired this brain of mine.  I wasn’t a media major for no reason; that really is a part of how I think. 

In my experience with the 501^st, different costumes tend to resonate more with different people.  Royal Guards tend to have similar core values and personalities for instance.  For me at least, this is one of the things about costuming that is particularly freeing.  We can wear the people we are, or perhaps the people we want to be, for a time.  If you want to be a wise cracking ninja put on the Deadpool gear.  If you want to show an indomitable spirit that doesn’t break even when most people would, put on the bat suit.  If you want to be a pretty princess (like my niece this year) then for this one day it’s totally okay to dress like one in public. 

Why do the costumes and characters that resonate with us resonate with us?  Why do some people prefer Superman to Batman, Marvel to DC, Star Trek to Star Wars?  What is it about the stories and characters, the music and movies that we resonate with and what does that say about us?  What parts of ourselves do we broadcast to others by the costumes we wear everyday, and the ones we wear when we are given permission to let loose? 

True, there is art for the sake of art, and costumes are no exception to this rule.  But I tend to think that we are normally doing more than that most of the time.  Maybe that’s because I’m writing this dressed like Charlie Brown right now.  But what does your costume say about you?  Does it tell us about who you are beneath the skin?  Maybe who you want to be?  Are you the Hulk because you want to be strong, or because you fear the angry monster within?  The way we dress is often the first message we communicate to people, what are you saying?