The Long-Ass Holiday Review: Episode III
My plan today was to write about Halloween features and ads in media --"It's Starting to Look a Lot Like Halloween," that sort of thing -- but a more natural sign of the season struck first. The first mini-storm of Humboldt's winter-long rainy season hit. As I write, I've lost phone and Internet access. For someone only a few years older than me, the loss of Net access might be only a minor inconvenience, but for me it amounts to a total media blackout. My news, music and (informal) reference material all come from online. I don't watch TV, so even if I want to examine TV programming or watch commercials, I resort to online programming guide and ad archives. Fortunately for you, the reader, my whininess and frustration have reached critical mass and formed an idea. You see, it's easy for someone of my generation, being so Internet dependent, to forget that traditional media are still out there doing what they've always done, except that they're reaching (and thus targeting) an increasingly narrow audience. While the tide of print media is receding in the U.S., many are still hip-deep in it, and they are receiving a custom-tailored holiday blitz that's different from the one that goes out on television or the Net. I've decided to stay focused on Halloween ads and features this week, but I'm going to scour the nearest magazine rack instead of the Net and find out what Halloween is like outside of my demographic.
The only honest place to start is with craft and family magazines. While most magazines are running only a smattering of holiday articles, and most of those don't even make the cover, women's magazines have been costume-filled and pumpkin-plastered since September. Some magazines, having run out of pumpkin space on their covers, have even branched out into special holiday editions. There's only so much you can write about kitschy handicrafts and novelty deserts, so I decided to look at a less focused women's magazine, FamilyFun.
Right out of the gate, there are some interesting observations to be made about this magazine. An egg is a passable (albeit banal) Halloween costume, but are little girls really clamoring to be dressed up as old-fashioned diner waitresses? Sure, costumes are fun regardless of what they are, and kids will dress up as almost any dumb thing you want to foist on them. That girl on the cover is smiling pretty big for someone who was -14 when Alice went off the air, is all I'm saying. Obviously, what we've got here is a magazine designed to appeal to mothers by suggesting cute things to do for (or to) children. Another major concern in this magazine, as you can see from two of the cover stories, is encouraging healthier lifestyles for kids. I propose a link between forcing one's child to dress up as Flo and forcing her to eat a healthy lunch. More on that later.
Inside, the magazine is split between kid-oriented (but mom-motivated) activities and the usual cheapo craft projects. On the left we have an example of the former: a guide to fancy jack-o'-lanterns that will make the neighbor's kids jealous and put a dent in your vast hot glue stockpile. I must note, with the cruel eye of the careful reader, that this page is really just an ad for recycled online content, with a semi-clever chart thrown in to make it seem like a feature in its own right. Other than the sense that an editor somewhere feels he's put one over on me, this doesn't bother me at all. Print and online media are natural partners in that they carry similar content but use very different methods of dissemination. The fact that so much once-ephemeral media content is now archived and easily accessible online is one of the great overlooked benefits of the Internet. The sweet, sweet Internet. Jesus Christ I wish they'd get my connection fixed.
This page is about making toilet paper rolls look like cylindrical pumpkins. "Give your extra toilet tissue a festive look this Halloween," the article suggests. The project is also a great way to use up your extra 18" x 22" pieces of orange fabric, your extra green pipe cleaners and your extra sheets of dark green felt. Why go to so much trouble to make mediocre bathroom decorations? And why print the instructions in a magazine called "FamilyFun" when this is clearly AdultWomanFun in the same vein as scrapbooking? I think it's because "family fun," in most families, is the responsibility and prerogative of mom/grandma/etc. On the one hand, women typically exercise the right to shuffle men and children around like cattle during the holidays, arranging gatherings and activities that shape the way the whole family celebrates. On the other hand, the holidays are also the high tide of the year-round tendency to make mom responsible for the whole family's well-being and happiness (this is the link between healthy recipes and homemade costumes that I alluded to earlier). Magazines like FamilyFun are permeated by the assumption that women can and must take the lead in making life fun for the whole family; thus the emphasis on home decoration and recipes, rather than on the solitary (some would say self-centered) pursuits that men's magazines focus on. Before I leave this page, I just have to point something out. That soybean dip is begging for a Halloween gross-out name like "ground zombie" or "chunky vomit," and it is a disservice to the mothers of young boys not to mention this opportunity to sneak healthy food into them. Okay, maybe those name are a little extreme for a family magazine, but there are other options. The stuff is green and gritty; the copy practically writes itself.
The page on the left is the key to holiday enlightenment. Imagine that your mother or grandmother has made this for a Halloween get-together. Imagine the effort it would take to slice all those vegetables up, the hassle over clearing out a space big enough for the cat to sit on, and the obligation that you would then feel to eat some as it sits there untouched next to the chips and dip. Hold this feeling firmly in mind. It is the neurosis at the heart of the holidays.
Although family and craft magazines carried the vast majority of the holiday coverage on the magazine rack, I decided to check out a general audience magazine to see what kind of coverage Halloween is getting there. This issue of Entertainment Weekly pictured above, though far from being holiday-themed, turned out to have more than a few hints of Halloween influence. The first and most obvious is the rather uninspired Reese's ad on the right. As far as I can tell, the purpose of this ad (other than reminding us that Reese's Cups exist and that we should buy some) is to validate the typical Halloween practice of buying candy starting on October 1st and proceeding to eat almost all of it by oneself, using Halloween as a mere excuse to choke down fun-sized Snickers like an unattended 10-year-old. One thing that ties many holiday rituals and activities together is that if they weren't culturally sanctioned, they would make one feel like a glutton and/or crazy person. Advertisements are frequently calculated to reassure us (if only subtextually) that what we're doing is permissible. Ads for fast food and cheap frozen meals are notorious examples; while companies don't want to implicitly insult their own products, the ads are bursting at the seams with subtext that says "Hey, you're busy, don't feel bad about feeding the kids microwaved spaghetti."
The only major Halloween feature in the magazine is this essay, "My Satanic Verses." In it, Christine Spines describes the effect of horror movies on her unprepared psyche during her childhood in the 70's. It's well-written, but it doesn't really go anywhere. The article suggests that horror movies are inappropriate for young kids and can inflict serious trauma; the point is a valid one, but I don't think Halloween's much of a threat to anyone's kids these days. Reflecting on movies like The Exorcist and The Shining actually makes the cutesy trappings of Halloween seem kind of lame. Maybe one day of morbidity and mayhem per year is plenty... but are rubber bats and and Spider-Man costumes the best we can do?
Halloween's biggest influence on this issue is indirect; lots of horror movies and specials are being timed to coincide with Halloween, and ads for them are scattered throughout the magazine. Maybe I've just been spoiled by toilet paper pumpkins, but these ads seem pretty bland to me. The one pictured at top left is a typical example; it's just a line-up of horror DVDs, a blood spatter and some lame copy. Contrast that with the other two non-Halloween ads from FamilyFun. Though they're a bit transparent, both of the FamilyFun ads take an interesting approach to selling the product. The big difference, I think, is that the latter ads are directed towards active people; the idea is that the reader has values and responsibilities, and the ad tries to make a case that its product can help her to achieve what she's after. The DVD ads in EW, conversely, are directed towards passive readers. Their job is simply to present the product and convince the reader that it will entertain her. Where are the Halloween ads directed toward the active reader? Frankly, I haven't found many. It may be that Halloween is simply becoming an non-participant holiday, and that most people celebrate it only by watching holiday programming and buying holiday-themed merchandise.
I really wanted to do a third magazine, one targeted at men, in this article. After an comprehensive search of every magazine rack within walking distance of my house, though, I was unable to turn up a single men's magazine with substantial Halloween features or ads (except for one small, tangentially-related article in Maxim, and I'm not about to suffer the shame of buying Maxim for that). The closest I got was EGM, a magazine directed mostly at young men (though not as gendered as something like FamilyFun, in my opinion). There were a few ads for horror video games in the magazine, presumably because those games had been timed for October release, but not much else. I even thumbed through some children's magazines and comic books, but I didn't find much there, either. Conclusion: For better of worse, Halloween is a Mom Holiday.
My brush with the world of magazines hasn't converted me; I'm eager to get back to the Net, where neither the facts nor loss of ad revenue can get in the way of a good story. I am intrigued by the glimpse that magazines offer into the assumptions of their readership, though. FamilyFun, for example, is full of talk about the standards that moms are held to -- standard that I certainly don't judge mothers by, and that I wasn't aware of until reading the magazine. The best parts of these magazines are the full-page ads, which are so unsophisticated and obviously manipulative that they're great fun to analyze. It's like skeet shooting. Here, you try one... PULL!
Obviously, this ad __________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
The only honest place to start is with craft and family magazines. While most magazines are running only a smattering of holiday articles, and most of those don't even make the cover, women's magazines have been costume-filled and pumpkin-plastered since September. Some magazines, having run out of pumpkin space on their covers, have even branched out into special holiday editions. There's only so much you can write about kitschy handicrafts and novelty deserts, so I decided to look at a less focused women's magazine, FamilyFun.
Right out of the gate, there are some interesting observations to be made about this magazine. An egg is a passable (albeit banal) Halloween costume, but are little girls really clamoring to be dressed up as old-fashioned diner waitresses? Sure, costumes are fun regardless of what they are, and kids will dress up as almost any dumb thing you want to foist on them. That girl on the cover is smiling pretty big for someone who was -14 when Alice went off the air, is all I'm saying. Obviously, what we've got here is a magazine designed to appeal to mothers by suggesting cute things to do for (or to) children. Another major concern in this magazine, as you can see from two of the cover stories, is encouraging healthier lifestyles for kids. I propose a link between forcing one's child to dress up as Flo and forcing her to eat a healthy lunch. More on that later.
Inside, the magazine is split between kid-oriented (but mom-motivated) activities and the usual cheapo craft projects. On the left we have an example of the former: a guide to fancy jack-o'-lanterns that will make the neighbor's kids jealous and put a dent in your vast hot glue stockpile. I must note, with the cruel eye of the careful reader, that this page is really just an ad for recycled online content, with a semi-clever chart thrown in to make it seem like a feature in its own right. Other than the sense that an editor somewhere feels he's put one over on me, this doesn't bother me at all. Print and online media are natural partners in that they carry similar content but use very different methods of dissemination. The fact that so much once-ephemeral media content is now archived and easily accessible online is one of the great overlooked benefits of the Internet. The sweet, sweet Internet. Jesus Christ I wish they'd get my connection fixed.
This page is about making toilet paper rolls look like cylindrical pumpkins. "Give your extra toilet tissue a festive look this Halloween," the article suggests. The project is also a great way to use up your extra 18" x 22" pieces of orange fabric, your extra green pipe cleaners and your extra sheets of dark green felt. Why go to so much trouble to make mediocre bathroom decorations? And why print the instructions in a magazine called "FamilyFun" when this is clearly AdultWomanFun in the same vein as scrapbooking? I think it's because "family fun," in most families, is the responsibility and prerogative of mom/grandma/etc. On the one hand, women typically exercise the right to shuffle men and children around like cattle during the holidays, arranging gatherings and activities that shape the way the whole family celebrates. On the other hand, the holidays are also the high tide of the year-round tendency to make mom responsible for the whole family's well-being and happiness (this is the link between healthy recipes and homemade costumes that I alluded to earlier). Magazines like FamilyFun are permeated by the assumption that women can and must take the lead in making life fun for the whole family; thus the emphasis on home decoration and recipes, rather than on the solitary (some would say self-centered) pursuits that men's magazines focus on. Before I leave this page, I just have to point something out. That soybean dip is begging for a Halloween gross-out name like "ground zombie" or "chunky vomit," and it is a disservice to the mothers of young boys not to mention this opportunity to sneak healthy food into them. Okay, maybe those name are a little extreme for a family magazine, but there are other options. The stuff is green and gritty; the copy practically writes itself.
The page on the left is the key to holiday enlightenment. Imagine that your mother or grandmother has made this for a Halloween get-together. Imagine the effort it would take to slice all those vegetables up, the hassle over clearing out a space big enough for the cat to sit on, and the obligation that you would then feel to eat some as it sits there untouched next to the chips and dip. Hold this feeling firmly in mind. It is the neurosis at the heart of the holidays.
Although family and craft magazines carried the vast majority of the holiday coverage on the magazine rack, I decided to check out a general audience magazine to see what kind of coverage Halloween is getting there. This issue of Entertainment Weekly pictured above, though far from being holiday-themed, turned out to have more than a few hints of Halloween influence. The first and most obvious is the rather uninspired Reese's ad on the right. As far as I can tell, the purpose of this ad (other than reminding us that Reese's Cups exist and that we should buy some) is to validate the typical Halloween practice of buying candy starting on October 1st and proceeding to eat almost all of it by oneself, using Halloween as a mere excuse to choke down fun-sized Snickers like an unattended 10-year-old. One thing that ties many holiday rituals and activities together is that if they weren't culturally sanctioned, they would make one feel like a glutton and/or crazy person. Advertisements are frequently calculated to reassure us (if only subtextually) that what we're doing is permissible. Ads for fast food and cheap frozen meals are notorious examples; while companies don't want to implicitly insult their own products, the ads are bursting at the seams with subtext that says "Hey, you're busy, don't feel bad about feeding the kids microwaved spaghetti."
The only major Halloween feature in the magazine is this essay, "My Satanic Verses." In it, Christine Spines describes the effect of horror movies on her unprepared psyche during her childhood in the 70's. It's well-written, but it doesn't really go anywhere. The article suggests that horror movies are inappropriate for young kids and can inflict serious trauma; the point is a valid one, but I don't think Halloween's much of a threat to anyone's kids these days. Reflecting on movies like The Exorcist and The Shining actually makes the cutesy trappings of Halloween seem kind of lame. Maybe one day of morbidity and mayhem per year is plenty... but are rubber bats and and Spider-Man costumes the best we can do?
Halloween's biggest influence on this issue is indirect; lots of horror movies and specials are being timed to coincide with Halloween, and ads for them are scattered throughout the magazine. Maybe I've just been spoiled by toilet paper pumpkins, but these ads seem pretty bland to me. The one pictured at top left is a typical example; it's just a line-up of horror DVDs, a blood spatter and some lame copy. Contrast that with the other two non-Halloween ads from FamilyFun. Though they're a bit transparent, both of the FamilyFun ads take an interesting approach to selling the product. The big difference, I think, is that the latter ads are directed towards active people; the idea is that the reader has values and responsibilities, and the ad tries to make a case that its product can help her to achieve what she's after. The DVD ads in EW, conversely, are directed towards passive readers. Their job is simply to present the product and convince the reader that it will entertain her. Where are the Halloween ads directed toward the active reader? Frankly, I haven't found many. It may be that Halloween is simply becoming an non-participant holiday, and that most people celebrate it only by watching holiday programming and buying holiday-themed merchandise.
I really wanted to do a third magazine, one targeted at men, in this article. After an comprehensive search of every magazine rack within walking distance of my house, though, I was unable to turn up a single men's magazine with substantial Halloween features or ads (except for one small, tangentially-related article in Maxim, and I'm not about to suffer the shame of buying Maxim for that). The closest I got was EGM, a magazine directed mostly at young men (though not as gendered as something like FamilyFun, in my opinion). There were a few ads for horror video games in the magazine, presumably because those games had been timed for October release, but not much else. I even thumbed through some children's magazines and comic books, but I didn't find much there, either. Conclusion: For better of worse, Halloween is a Mom Holiday.
My brush with the world of magazines hasn't converted me; I'm eager to get back to the Net, where neither the facts nor loss of ad revenue can get in the way of a good story. I am intrigued by the glimpse that magazines offer into the assumptions of their readership, though. FamilyFun, for example, is full of talk about the standards that moms are held to -- standard that I certainly don't judge mothers by, and that I wasn't aware of until reading the magazine. The best parts of these magazines are the full-page ads, which are so unsophisticated and obviously manipulative that they're great fun to analyze. It's like skeet shooting. Here, you try one... PULL!
Obviously, this ad __________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
