Monday, October 11, 2010

Are those halloween decorations or lynch victims?

There is a house on San Felipe that I've passed for two nights in a row now. The family in said house have gotten in the halloween spirit by hanging decorations from their very stately oaks that stand closest to the curb. And by halloween, I mean 'the south will rise again'/rebel yell spirit.

There are two figures that I can only imagine are supposed to be ghosts. There are several problems with this assumption though, and I will list them here:

1) the 'ghosts' are not white nor do they have the instantly recognizable black eye holes and black howling mouths that everyone has come to associate with halloween ghosts. Instead, they are a dark khaki to light brown color and uneven in their shading...say, like rags a chattel type slave might have worn.

2) they are life-sized and have head-like globes instead of amorphous contours as ghosts might usually have. Their being life-sized removes a certain element of fantasy. Ghosts are usually depicted a slightly to moderately larger or smaller than the average 5'8 human being. These seem to be almost exactly that long. Also taking away the fantastical element, their heads. Halloween ghosts, just to be specific, usually do not have spherical heads. These do.

3) and probably the most damning of all: the 'ghosts' are hung from their necks. THEIR NECKS. Not heads. Their NECKS.


dear inhabitants of generically wealthy/crypto-racist San Felipe House: Take down your 'ghosts.' You might have consciously chosen those specifically because they looked classier to you than your run-of-the-mill white and black ghost but they ended up looking like the subject of Billie Holiday's Strange Fruit.


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