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3.36 AVERAGE
3.36 AVERAGE
Slows down a bit here and there, and interestingly also spends a fair bit of time looking at Halloween 2001 in the wake of the World Trade Center attacks -- Rogers I think does a much better job of reflecting on the changes in celebration that year than did Skal in [b:Death Makes a Holiday: A Cultural History of Halloween|393157|Death Makes a Holiday A Cultural History of Halloween|David J. Skal|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1297779117l/393157.jpg|382719], where the same type of chapter felt niche and obsolete, relevant to the early 2000s but not today. (And why is that the early 2000s was apparently time for peak Halloween historical discourse? There's 20 years of booming Halloween industry going neglected right now!)
Favorite parts came in the middle, describing the celebrations and rowdyism of yesteryear. Interesting observation: death and monsters wasn't really the thing with Halloween -- silver screen horror was slow to associate with the holiday (and vice versa).
Favorite parts came in the middle, describing the celebrations and rowdyism of yesteryear. Interesting observation: death and monsters wasn't really the thing with Halloween -- silver screen horror was slow to associate with the holiday (and vice versa).
An interesting, engagingly-written overview of Halloween (I'm not sure why people found it dry and dull--I've read MUCH drier works on the topic). I particularly liked how even-handed it was in describing exactly how little we know about the pagan roots of the holiday. I wish it were longer, because it seems that right as Rogers starts gathering steam on a particular topic, he jumps to the next chapter (172 pages really aren't enough to get into a topic this meaty). I'm also knocking off a star because, for some inscrutable reason, Rogers devotes *ten pages* of a 172-page book to the Halloween series of movies--not just slasher flicks in general, but specifically the Halloween movies. If I'm reading a very short, general overview of Halloween, I want more about haunted houses and trick-or-treating and less of this:
"Yet Loomis consistently repudiates his own professional discourse by describing Myers as the very embodiment of evil, implacably impervious to therapeutic treated. This interpretation trades on the popular fascination with the personification of evil touted by the evangelical Right and deepened by a skepticism of rehabilitative treatment in corrective or psychiatric institutions. Indeed, more often than not, Myers is depicted as a mythic, elusive bogeyman, one of superhuman strength who cannot be killed by bullets, stab wounds, or fire . . ."
For ten pages. I think Rogers was trying to link Michael Myers to general cultural attitudes to Halloween and horror here, but it wasn't an explicit enough link and it didn't work. I know I've let it eat up even more of my review than Rogers did his book, but it annoyed me that a book that was already too short for its subject matter would waste all this space.
Still, the first four chapters about the history of Halloween are terrific, and the chapter about Halloween's gay scene ties it very interestingly to Halloween's history as a topsy-turvy carnival. It's worth a read if you just want a general overview.
"Yet Loomis consistently repudiates his own professional discourse by describing Myers as the very embodiment of evil, implacably impervious to therapeutic treated. This interpretation trades on the popular fascination with the personification of evil touted by the evangelical Right and deepened by a skepticism of rehabilitative treatment in corrective or psychiatric institutions. Indeed, more often than not, Myers is depicted as a mythic, elusive bogeyman, one of superhuman strength who cannot be killed by bullets, stab wounds, or fire . . ."
For ten pages. I think Rogers was trying to link Michael Myers to general cultural attitudes to Halloween and horror here, but it wasn't an explicit enough link and it didn't work. I know I've let it eat up even more of my review than Rogers did his book, but it annoyed me that a book that was already too short for its subject matter would waste all this space.
Still, the first four chapters about the history of Halloween are terrific, and the chapter about Halloween's gay scene ties it very interestingly to Halloween's history as a topsy-turvy carnival. It's worth a read if you just want a general overview.