I would be remiss if I didn't acknowledge that the Halloween season is also graced this year with a Friday the 13th.
First, let me address the undead elephant in the room: the Friday the 13th movie franchise has almost subsumed, or been absorbed Blob-like by, the cultural baggage of this odd floating ersatz holiday. It's tough to mention the date without at least thinking of ridiculously-durable Jason Voorhees and the seemingly endless and forever-reviving movie series that revolves around him. Certainly the relentless nature of the villain fits in well with the Halloween season...but the season already has its own unkillable slasher in Shatner-bemasked Michael Myers. So we have a push, Poisoned Ghouls. Our cinematic fiends cancel out one another.
Second, the tangled and sometimes vague lore at the foundation of the superstition about the day and date is interesting. Biblical tales darken both thirteen and Friday, but the melding of the two into one particularly evil-aspected day seems a much more recent construct.
Toss it into the middle of the march towards Halloween, when the lands of the living and the dead begin to bleed into each other, and there is a reinforcement of both the unlucky day and the time when spirits come forth to trouble us.
No comments:
Post a Comment