The War On Halloween Rages On…

Apparently there are schools that are banning Halloween, but not for religious reasons. At least not directly. At some schools, kids are participating in Halloween-related activities, safe for the select few who can’t/wouldn’t participate for religious reasons. Because these select few feel left out, these schools have decided to just ban Halloween.

You know, I heard a story from a Jewish guy, who grew up at a school where most kids celebrated christmas, and he felt left out because he couldn’t participate. Has anyone ever banned christmas? I know I’m a bit of a Scrooge when it comes to christmas, but that’s irrelevant here. I’m merely pointing out how ridiculous this reasoning is, seeing as you might as well ban other things.

Speaking of christmas, this brings up another point: around christmas time, people would often hear “merry christmas.” But not everyone celebrates christmas. Some celebrate something called Kwanzaa, Hanukkah, and many other holidays (if they celebrate anything at all), but not christmas. For them to be told to have a merry “christmas”, they felt offended. So people decided to start saying “happy holidays” instead. This way, they wish everyone a happy holiday, which ever one that might be.

This may sound unrelated, but in essence we’re talking about minorities feeling bad because of a holiday. The only real difference is that with christmas they find some kind of compromise, whereas with Halloween they decide to just ban the whole thing. Why are these people ready to ban Halloween, yet so reluctant to do the same with christmas? Why do they go through great lengths to compromise for christmas, and yet don’t even think of doing the same thing for Halloween?

If you want to be consistent, you either find a similar compromise for Halloween, or you ban christmas. Don’t ban the one and compromise for the other, you either compromise for both, or you ban both.

The War On Halloween

An acquaintance of mine who lives in Washington (the state, not D.C.) shared a story. What was it about? Well apparently, there are these kids, mostly in small town areas, who are forbidden by their parents to celebrate Halloween? The reason for this is usually some version of “it’s the devil’s birthday”. Anyone who knows the history of Halloween will realize how nonsensical this is.

People once believed that around Halloween, all the spirits would descend upon the Earth. Some are good, and some are evil. In order to ward off the evil ones, people would decorate their houses with all sorts of scary things, like a jack-o’-lantern, and/or dress up as scary monsters. With that in mind, even if there was some truth to the notion that Halloween is the devil’s birthday, then particularly the people who believe this SHOULD decorate their houses in the same way, and primarily these people SHOULD dress up in scary costumes. If anything, I would expect these people not to forbid their kids to celebrate Halloween, but forcing them to celebrate it.

But what really gets to me is not just this story, but other people I’ve personally heard talking about Halloween. There are many people, usually christian conservatives (ideologically, not necessarily political), who think that Halloween should not be celebrated because it’s a pagan holiday. These exact same people believe there is some kind of war on christmas, that people are somehow trying to make christmas disappear from our society, and these people would do anything to prevent it. What these people fail to realize, however, is that christmas also has pagan roots. If they want to ban Halloween for that reason, then they should do the same with christmas. But then they’ll retort by saying that christmas is a christian holiday. Well, so is Halloween. The name alone is derived from All Hallows Eve, and All Hallows is a christian holiday. If a holiday should be respected just because it’s christian, then they shouldn’t bash on Halloween as much as they do.

Notice a pattern? The only people who have a problem with Halloween are those who know little to nothing about it. And even the few who do, seem to know very little about their own history, making themselves seem like even bigger hypocrites. Why won’t these people simply admit that the only reason they dislike Halloween is because they themselves are scared of it. They don’t like all the scary decorations, they don’t like it when their kids dress up as scary monsters, they simply don’t like being scared themselves. Which I can respect. I’m a horror fan myself, but I haven’t always been into the genre, so I’d understand if people don’t want to celebrate it. But to ban it? Have it become forbidden by law? What’s next? Are you going to forbid people to talk about the fact that our planet is melting, just because the very notion scares you?

Dinosaurs And High Heels

Some of you might remember this article I posted months ago, in which I talked about the movie “Jurassic World”. I pointed out what I liked, what I didn’t like, what made no sense to me, and many more. After posting this, I looked at what other people wrote and/or made videos about, when they talked about “Jurassic World”. Some of them seemed to agree with some of the points I made. Like how the Mosasaurus shouldn’t even be cloned in that movie, how the “twist” was predictable, etcetera. But the one that thing that almost everyone complained about, or simply made fun of, is the fact that the character Claire (played by Bryce Dallas Howard) wears high heels throughout the movie. It doesn’t matter whether she’s walking on rocky or muddy terrains, or even trying to outrun the Tyrannosaurus, she was always wearing high heels.

Here’s a question: why? I heard so many complaints. How she would have tripped too many times, particularly in the scene with the Tyrannosaurus, how she should have taken them off at many points in the movie, how her heels should have broken,… some of these criticisms range from perfectly legit to certifiably insane.

Personally, I didn’t care much about what this woman was wearing. If you can accept that Batman can fight crime while wearing a ridiculously large cape, I should think you can give high heels in “Jurassic World” a free pass. That’s why I didn’t mention it in my own article.

But everyone seems to disagree with me on this subject, which I personally find weird. In “Iron Man 3”, there’s a moment when Tony Stark has to put his Iron Man suit on Pepper Potts, to protect her from debris falling on her. Guess what, she wore high heels in this scene. I would think that the Iron Man suits are built for a man who wears flat-soled shoes, and aren’t made to fit someone wearing high heels, so this should have caused some trouble as the suit was put on her. Even in the Iron Man animated series, when some woman put on the Iron Man suit, she had to take off her shoes first. In other words, the animated series was more realistic than the live-action movie, and yet nobody complained about this.

Or how about the following: in the last Harry Potter movie, Hermione walks around, disguised as Bellatrix Lestrange. But in this disguise, she has to wear high heels, and she couldn’t balance on them. I understand why that happened. She doesn’t want to be caught, so if she can’t balance, she’ll draw too much attention to herself, raising the odds of being caught. So I understand from a narrative point of view… except that we have seen her wear higher heels in the previous movie, so this still makes no sense.

There are many more examples that I can think of, but my overall point is that high heels have often caused many problems in many movies, but nobody ever complained about those, not even people like that “Cinema Sins” guy, whose job basically is to nitpick on little details like these. So why are so many people complaining about the heels in “Jurassic World”?

Honestly, I think the reason everyone even noticed Claire wore heels in this movie, is because the director drew our attention to them. The first time we see Claire, we see her feet first (so we know what shoes she’s wearing before we know what her face looks like). Somewhere in the middle of the movie, Chris Pratt’s character mentions “those ridiculous shoes”, and toward the end, during the Tyrannosaurus scene, they actually zoom in on Claire’s feet again. It’s like the director wanted us to see those shoes. Which I find to be weird. That is to say, as I watched the movie, I actually expected Claire to start using those shoes as weapons. And why not? I have read an article about a girl who had an argument with her boyfriend, which escalated into her hitting him with her shoe, and she ended up stabbing her heel in his eye. So believe it or not, if done right, high heels can be dangerous weapons. But Claire didn’t use her heels as weapons, making this constant focus on her shoes pointless.

(and for the empaths among you, that boyfriend I mention who got a heel in his eye… he’s alive)

Or was there another reason why the director put so much focus on Claire’s shoes? Did he perhaps have a fetish for heels? It is the only reason I can think of as to why he puts so much emphasis on her shoes. Being someone with unusual fetishes myself, I respect that this director wanted to express his fetish through this art form. However, as I said before, this constant focus served no purpose to the narrative of the movie. So what was the point?

I think I have figured out what the point was. With earlier “Jurassic Park” movies, the audience had legit complaints. Like how the dinosaurs could not have been cloned through mosquitoes. Or even if they could, the mosquito they used was a male, which doesn’t drink blood. There were people who complained about how the Spinosaurus could not have just shrugged off a bite from the Tyrannosaurus, among many things people complained about. But in “Jurassic World”, the fact that Claire wore high heels throughout the movie seems to be their main focus. Not the fact that they could not have used the mosquitoes’ blood to clone a Mosasaurus, or even the fact that the movie was predictable. No, it’s all about the shoes. It’s like the director knew that the movie was going to stink, so he had to do something to divert the audience’s attention. And it worked. So rather than try to make the movie better, the director made this a fetish movie, disguised as a blockbuster. I’ve heard of laziness, but this takes the cake.