Part I: Blame it on the Socials
September 29, 2024 — So, I think Jack Skellington, ruiner of holidays, might be ruining Halloween this time.
Hear me out, because I’m having the same reaction to writing
that sentence as you are to reading it.
The dude is everywhere. On almost every piece of merchandise
this time of year. There’s a house not too far from me that has decorated for
Halloween completely with Nightmare Before Christmas characters (which I guess
means that they’re also ready for Christmas). These days, I almost see Jack
and the residents of Halloween Town more times than I see regular old jack-o-lanterns
and sheet ghosts.
And if it’s not Jack or Oogie or Sally, it’s the Sanderson
Sisters. Or Michael Myers. Sam. Jason Voorhies. Pennywise. Depending on the
angle, Spirit Halloween sometimes looks more like a 90s-era Spencer’s Gifts
than a Halloween shop.
Now, I love The Nightmare Before Christmas. Both Halloween
and Christmas are far better for it existing. I have original storyboards from
the movie hanging on my library wall. I marvel at the existence of this movie. I
have to watch it multiple times a season (both seasons). And I way dig Hocus
Pocus. And 80s slasher movies. And all the modern monsters. These creatures and
villains and killers are all welcome faces to me.
But sometimes I can’t get to the Halloween for all the movie
merchandise. Like they are an invading army of corporate interests taking over
my Halloween not to celebrate it, but to set up shop in the middle of it.
And they are corporate interests. These characters and
stories are owned by a business. They are intellectual property. IP. And as a
guy who also has IP he wants to sell you (Cult Following out now!), I get it. Jack’s
round white head is a golden goose for Disney (or one of its eggs?). And I’m
also fully aware that the abundant supply comes from the ravenous demand.
But remember that every Halloween night, the demand for candy
from your kids is at peak, and if met, makes the kids sick.
Granted, I do like seeing corporations participate in the
holiday. We live in a materialist, capitalist society. And if that is our
backdrop, I want that backdrop painted black and orange during this time of
year. Doesn’t mean it needs to be officially licensed black and orange, but
that’s often fine, too. I like seeing Beetlejuice on Fanta cans, for instance. But
to me, that’s different. Beetlejuice is a part of this unique 2024 season. He
added to it with a new movie. For Poor Old Jack, they've found new ways to
merchandise him every year since 1993. I imagine him trapped on Oogie Boogie’s
slab, pieces of him hacked away by the swords of mechanical playing cards and transformed
into purses and statuettes and sweaters (some of which, I must admit, I own). Or
maybe it’s on Dr. Finkelstein’s medical table, huge chunks of his skinny body
bitten out by bony reindeer and shat out into merch. Or, most probably, it’s on the conveyer belt from the
Making Christmas scene, as they figure out the best presents to make of him before
boxing him up.
Geezus there are a lot of metaphors for this idea in the movie.
Christmas has less of a problem with this issue. Nobody owns
Santa Claus (although some brands have done great jobs of linking their products
to him, like Coca-Cola), but a corporation owns Jack. Then again, a corporation
also owns Rudolph. And the Bumble. So I’m not sure where I’m drawing the line
here, except maybe that the same corporation that owns Jack owns most of our modern
stories and actually impacts the orbit of our planet with the sheer mass of the
output of its merchandising machine (astrophysicists often have to do what they
call “adjusting for Walt” in their calculations).
Most likely, it’s probably the fact that we don’t have an
overarching Halloween character like Santa (as hard as we’ve tried with
Samhain) to keep other characters in check, and so that void elevates IP to the
role. You know what they say, capitalism abhors a vacuum…unless they can sell
it to you. Just kidding they don’t say that.
I do love horror movie characters in my Halloween. Of
course, I do. But there is sometimes a bit of feeling preyed upon by corporations
when it comes to the merchandise. Not me being preyed on, necessarily, but
Halloween itself. Or, even for independent creators who bravely usurp the copyrighted
imagery like tattooists or Etsy shops, it still feels a bit like the IP is limiting
their imaginations or that, in the end, they’re just contributing to NASA
scientists having to adjust for Walt.
Again, as I said in the previous part of this “Annoying” series
(play on words purposeful), if the goal is a sincere pumpkin patch, we might
need to beware if Jack is its scarecrow.
