Shifting the Trust to Corporations

November 01, 2006 ↓ Comments (0)

On our cold Halloween night, only one of the ten people who had emailed to confirm their attendance at my Sugar Addict Adult Trick-or-Treat had showed. Gwenn, Zan, and I waited until a little after six and then entered Portland’s Ladd’s Addition neighborhood to carry out our mission.

3 Trick-or-Treaters

Zan hung with us for about an hour before she left to attend another event leaving just Gwenn and I. We’re both artists with something to say and we debated about whether Trick-or-Treating was the best way to get the world to Stop Being Sweet.

I imagine people think it’s ridiculous that as grown adults we went Trick-or-Treating. I think so too but love how it points out ridiculous double standards in our society.

While Halloween supposedly fosters a sense of community, it also promotes a sense of fear and false trust. The prescribed activities bind us with our friends and family in unusually memorable ways as we eat self-indulgent sweets and have outrageous fun! Until we turn 13 and someone tells us we’re too old for that sort of fun.

Shift gears. Head out to parties at clubs and bars. Stop being cute and start being sexy. I used to work in a Halloween store and not one person (women especially) wanted a costume that didn’t make them cool and/or sexy. By adulthood we know that candy is for kids and we instead opt for adult candy—booze, smokes, and drugs.

Candy!

It only took a few carefully placed urban folktales to instill fear on us in a lasting and effective manor. Every town had a story about a friend of a friend who bit into a healthy apple collected on Halloween night only to find a hidden razor blade inside (they didn’t notice the large slit in the apple skin).

Similar stories had children dying of poison laden hand-made cookies and tripping out on acid laced Dots candy. The stories seemed to happen every year in every town and efficiently killed healthy and hand-made snack giving.

I recall an official announcement coming from my grade-school to parents saying that children should eat only company manufactured individually packaged candies.

From that point on we were taught not to trust our neighbors and instead to trust large corporations, who don’t know us, don’t care about us, and sell us individually wrapped and flavored chemicals marked with labels that describe the contents as tasty and fun food.

“The National Retail Federation said consumers will spend $4.96 billion this Halloween, up from $3.29 billion a year ago, as more consumers celebrate the holiday, according to a survey by BIGresearch. The survey said the average consumer will spend $18.72 on candy.” (source)