Australia shares a lot of things with the United States. We happily take their movies, their television shows, their music, their food, their drone strikes, and their enthusiasm for starting wars. In return, we have given them the Hemsworth brothers, Sam Worthington’s attempt at their accent, and all of the false stereotypes that exist within each Outback Steakhouse.
But there are still a couple of things that Australia has so far refused to give in to. Firstly, we refuse to take on their inferior imperial system in favour of the superior metric system. Good on us, Australia. The second holdout is that we have not yet fully embraced the idea of Halloween (although it is growing bigger each and every year).
Now, I am not someone who says we shouldn’t partake in the great fun of Halloween because “it’s American”, only to turn around and drink a Coke and watch the latest Hollywood blockbuster. I am someone who thinks Halloween looks like a lot of fun, and who absolutely loves Halloween-themed episodes of American television shows, such as The Simpsons ‘‘Treehouse of Horror’ episodes, and every time Roseanne had a Halloween episode.
But television shows and movies about Halloween tend to sidestep exploration of the biggest reason I am glad Australia has not quite fully embraced Halloween. It is not because it is an American holiday. It is not because I am scared of strange children coming to my door (although I absolutely am), or that I’m scared of teenagers pranking me (also yes), and it is not just because I don’t want to share my chocolate with said children or teenagers (although that is true as well).
It is because each year it seems that people are competing in a competition to see who can come up with the most insensitive and offensive costume of all time. This year, days before Halloween, we’ve already seen several candidates (thanks to social media) that could very well take out the number one spot of shame.
A lot of us were horrified when video was released showing NFL player Ray Rice punching and knocking his now-wife unconscious in an elevator. And yet, apparently some of us saw that video and thought, “…well, I know what I’m going as for Halloween… thanks Ray Rice!”
That’s right – there are already instances of couples dressing up as Ray and Janay Rice. There are instances of men dressing as Ray Rice play-acting with blow-up dolls signifying this domestic violence situation. And if that wasn’t enough to make you despair for humanity, there was this photo of someone dressing their child as Ray Rice, and giving him a Janay Rice doll to carry.
These photos are objectively wrong on many levels. These people (and the many defending them) see domestic violence as a joke. They think it’s amusing to dress up as a man who we saw punching a woman into unconsciousness. They not only dress up as him, but also make sure we know they are mocking the exact horrific domestic violence situation that occurred.
They think it’s hilarious to carry around a blow-up doll signifying a woman who was beaten to unconsciousness on camera. To literally dehumanise her. They think it’s clever and cute to dress their child in a costume making fun of a woman who is a victim of domestic violence. To make things even worse, the photos contain something else that is completely offensive in its own right, separate from the blatant misogyny shown.
In most of the examples we are seeing, these ‘people’ have also decided to double down on their senselessness and wear blackface. This now seems to happen every single Halloween, and it is very hard to believe that there are people left in America (or anywhere) who don’t realise that it is offensive. As teacher and activist Zellie Imani tweeted:
I have to agree with him. Ignorance is not an excuse. For someone to embrace blackface now, after years of education, uproar and examples being made of perpetrators, all that is left is to think that anyone who partakes is not only insensitive and racist, but unashamedly so.
This is unfortunately what leads us to the idea of Australia embracing Halloween. With Australia’s history of racism, with a television show broadcasting a blackface routine in 2009, with the current state of this government and its lack of empathy, with how we treat and talk about refugees, with how we treat Indigenous people, with men dressing as the Ku Klux Klan to protest the burqua, with a major grocery chain selling what could be viewed as racist propaganda, with how we talk about race in general, I currently do not have enough faith in Australia to take something fun like Halloween and not turn it into a festival of racist and offensive outfits.
I would rather be safe than sorry.
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