“Halloween is the one night a year when a girl can dress like a total slut and no other girls can say anything about it.” – Cady, Mean Girls.

French maids, sultry secretaries and no doubt a few virginal Anastasia Steele’s will all be making appearances this Halloween Night. But for many  men and women putting together a Halloween costume is less about the scare factor and more about the sex factor.

After the unprecedented success of 50 Shades of Gray, this year women in particular are likely to be as confident as ever to display their sexuality. One of the most remarkable aspects of the phenomenon was it was women bringing sex into everyday life as they read the book on trains, cafe and lunch break. Just a quick dose of arousal before it’s back to the grind stone. And that is what Halloween is all about.

This year it started when Kim Kardashian tweeted pictures of herself shopping for a Halloween Costumes in L.A., all of which were chosen to extenuate her ample assets “Rawarrrrrr!” she teases, “Shopping for Halloween Costumes.” Seizing the opportunity the tabloids ran with photo galleries of top 10 sexy celebrity Halloween costumes. And right on cue, feminist blogs began the annual demonization of the women to don the Risqué outfits and those who promote them. They talk of the hyper-commercialisation of Halloween and how sex is used to ‘sell’ it in the same way it’s used to sell just about everything else. 

But this is just another calendar date in the sexualisation is slavery versus sexual empowerment debate which has been raging among women since they first realised that showing a bit more leg can sometimes get them ahead in life.  A worthy, but heavy debate, and its Halloween- surly time to let loose and have some fun?

Yes, Halloween, like everything else in western society and been sexualised for commercial gain, but unlike Mrs Clause costumes that would make a French maid blush or Easter’s Playboy bunnies, Halloween remains rooted to its ribald history and at least in this respect – nothing has changed. Old customs find new ways of expression and it would appear especially at Halloween. Even the elaborately carved pumpkin began as a humble turnip, scooped out to create a simple lantern.

Initially as autumn harvests were brought in, people took stock of what they had prepared for the winter and then they celebrated by praising gods of harvest, fruits and seeds, the gods of reproduction- and it was sexy then too. Halloween has a long and fractured history with origins in the world’s pagan Harvest Festivals and is generally celebrated in some format wherever autumn descends.

Even when early Christians rolled all these festivals into one 'All Saints Day' it was regularly celebrated with costume parades that descended into wild parties and licentiousness. Up to the mid-18th century it was celebrated in rural areas with ritual fertility rites and cities erupted in carnival-style parties.

With the emergence of Victorian morals, Halloween became less public and more a private, family holiday. Costumes became more demure, homemade, and it became an event that was largely focused on children. But, it wasn’t long before opportunities to shed the daily obligations of manners, humility and chastity were seized upon by adults too and Halloween could scarcely escape its rather virile origins.

By the turn of the century children celebrated the ghouls and ghosts that emphasised the pagan and the Gothic. Meanwhile adults were inspired by the emerging pop culture and started to use Halloween to emulate the sirens of the silver screen and an excuse to show a little more flesh than was usually acceptable. Then when Hollywood started making heroes for kids, they adopted their guises at Halloween too.

By now the deconstruction of this strict moral code is almost complete with a particularly rapid decent in recent times and we regularly see displays of and everyday outfits designed to titillate and excite. Raucous parties fuelled by alcohol and lust are a standard weekend for many. But at Halloween it has an added Oomph! as the feast-day continues to invite modern revellers to draw on its origins to inspire costumes and capers.

So perhaps what we are seeing at Halloween is simply all the layers of traditions past piled on top of one another, from trick or treat to the humble origin of the carved pumpkin as a turnip. Bonfires harking back to pagan times are still lit to ward off evil spirits with effigies of Guy Fawkes thrown on top.

And so it would seem that the costume parades of the All Hallows were bound to find a place in modern society where we still celebrate bounty and are partial to a carnival; where the call to emulate screen sirens is in the daily papers and we still need an escape from the daily rules and routines.

The classic benefits of the Classics

30/01/2013

By Niamh Kirk

Waves of modern publishing phenomenon like 50 Shades of Grey are adding more books to reading lists, but the growing virtues of Classic Literature could be set to topple the pile.

At first they may appear irrelevant and dull compared to some contemporary classics and modern bestsellers. They may bring back memories of school years spent grappling with antiquated language and Victorian etiquette which can be alien to a teenage mind.  But reading the pioneering novels of western literature is proving to be more beneficial to contemporary readers than their original audiences.

Classic literature helps boost brain-activity researchers from the Science and English Departments in Liverpool University have found.  The challenging prose of Shakespeare and Wordsworth triggers more electrical activity in the brain than the same texts written in modern language.

Using scanners, researchers observed the brain activity in volunteers reading the works of authors like The Bard and Thomas Hardy. The results showed that their brain lit-up when they encountered difficult phrases or unusual language. Prof. Philip Davis who worked on the research found that the syntax locks into, shifts and modifies established pathways in the brain. It triggers moments of refection and helps with self-understanding.

He says the research is still in process but is looking to the effects of authors like Charles Dickens who he believes have a similar effect.  Another phase of the research will look at their therapeutic benefits.

So, not only can the Classics help make us smarter, they could prove to make us happier too. And, there are also indications that the Classics really do make for a good read, they stimulate the brain and they encourage you to read on.

Despite being bumped further down the all-time bestsellers list by Da Vinci Codes and rampant 20-somethings they continue to top must-read lists the world over.  They retain captive audience whose brains are lighting-up, and reaping other rewards too.

For the past three years the Gutter Bookshop in Templebar hosts a monthly classics bookclub that has not only been full since its inception, but has a waiting list crammed with members eager to join. Getting involved encourages members to read the books they always meant to but never did. “Sometimes people need a little prompt to read the classics,” says owner Bob Johnston.

The group just took advantage of an extended Christmas beak to tackle Alexandre Dumas’s Count of Monte Cristo. For Valentines’ Day they are reading Charlotte Bronte’s, Jane Eyre.   

“The themes are still relevant and capture your imagination. True love, or being hard done by, those themes carry; and mixed with a great story make a great read,” he says.

They earned their place in the cannon due to their accessible and engaging narratives as well as their exposition of universal themes.  And because of this, most avid readers have at least one classic they hold close to their heart. ”Pride and Prejudice is one of my favorites,” says Christine Mullaney a TEFL teacher whose preoccupation is crime thrillers.

“It’s not stuffy; it’s about Female self worth, faith in personal beliefs, and overcoming societal requirements. Family ties, sisterly bonds, fatherly love, and of course the realisation that outward pride and conformity does not always mean inward conceit and unpleasantness.”That’s a lot of life-affirming messages from one novel published in 1813.

In libraries they are still in high demand as new generations joining find their way to the classics section. There are arguments that the Classics are not the best introduction to reading for younger people, but many libraries host additional classic sections specifically for teenagers and find they too are keen to gain the knowledge of the canon and escape to the foreign country that is the past.   

Younger people will take interest in the big literary sensations like Harry Potter and Hunger Games says Mr Murphy, Acquisitions Officer for the six libraries and two mobile libraries in County Louth. But this doesn’t distract from their literary heritage. These phenomena act as a gateway to the Classics. “People who read will come to the classics eventually,” he says.

But it is the older readers that cause the spikes in demand for a classic in libraries and bookshops. Brought on by the entertainment industry’s frequent revision of the past; the classics are mined for good and relevant story ideas for big and small screens and are ever-poised to reenter popular culture. And it is these adaptations, although not always as loyal as they could be, help keep classic literature alive and well.

So, while the Gutter's bookclub were in Marseille, 1815, following young Edmund Dantes and that accursed letter from Napoleon, cinema audiences were being transported to the same year, where only miles away convict Jean Valjean was meeting a Bishop.

The industry around ‘Les Mis’ the musical has sustained interest Victor Hugo’s classic but the release of director Tom Hooper’s Les Miserables spurred a surge in reprints and rising sales.

However, according to the County Louth librarians TV adaptations in particular stimulate a return to the original. The 2012 BBC version of pre-WW1 novel Parade’s End by Ford Maddox Ford being the most recent to lure viewers from screen to page. 

Referring to the Nineties adaptations of Jane Austin’s novels, Mr. Murphy, said that this is why she weathers so well. It helps dispel prejudices that the classics are drab. “When it’s on TV it reaches people who wouldn’t think of picking it up,” he says.

And despite being long deceased, the cultural gravitas of the authors can still send sales figures upward according to publishing industry ratings company, Nielsen Bookscan. “Dickens had a strong year in 2012 helped by all the media attention around the bicentenary of his birth,” says Nielsen BookScan researcher, David Wailte.     

Now new mediums are bringing the heroes and heroines of classic literature back to life. Graphic novelists are turning to the classics, giving them a whole new dimension and fresh perspectives.  Taking advantage of public domain books, authors from Bram Stoker and Mary Shelly to Leo Tolstoy and James Joyce have all been given a graphic makeover and gained legions of fans.

The Classics have even been 'zombiefied.' The parody novel, Pride Prejudice and Zombies, by Seth Grahame-Smith who credits Jane Austen as his co-author is also being made into a film.

When expensive copyright goes out, classics are in. As well as giving contemporary creative industries a free reign with the text, the Classics are also the cheapest books on the market, saving big readers small fortunes. There are hundreds of websites hosting freely downloadable copies of out-of-copyright novels.   Project Gutenberg was the first. Set up in 1971, the volunteer-led digital archive’s aim is to encourage distribution of their 44,000 free public domain literary works.

Tens of thousands of people visit the site daily to get a free read, and they are mostly going for the classics. In the past month alone more than 112,000 Charles Dickens, 92,000 Arthur Conan Doyle and 85,000 Mark Twain novels have been downloaded. Hugo’s Les Miserables is currently being downloaded more than 10,000 times daily. The project and its spin-offs get millions of hits daily. It is safe to say that the classics have secured their places on future digital bookshelves.

There is more going on between the covers of the works in the old literary canon than we might have supposed. And it might just be time to ignore the hype surrounding the next big literary release and put one of these free, brain-boosting, and beloved by many novels to the top of the pile. 

The last turn of The Wheel of Time: Book 14 - Review

23/03/2013

Suspense has been building for 23 years, since the first book in Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time series was published in 1990. For this fantasy-epic’s legion of fans, the release of the fourteenth and final instalment, Memory of Light, is bittersweet, the last journey to a magic world, the final spin of the wheel. 

 Jordan personally completed eleven volumes, but died unexpectedly in 2007 with his finale unfinished. His widow, Harriet, later chose emerging fantasy writer, Brandon Sanderson, to complete her late husband’s work.

The story follows Rand al’Thor, a farm-boy-come-sorcerer and his companions as they battle the evil force tearing apart The Pattern of Life. Only Rand can stop it, but he must bind together warring nations while battling The Dark One’s minions – The Chosen. The preceding thirteen hefty installments have all been leading up to this, the final showdown. 

The climax of this elaborate fantasy was always going to be a mammoth undertaking. An entire continent has been galvanised for war and there are a litany of minor plots to conclude. Stringing together the various fronts in a battle on this immense scale, while balancing the central confrontation between Rand and The Dark One, has proved too much for the substitute author.  It is disappointing and is a gaudy capstone to one of the genres most celebrated titles.

It is disjointed from the previous titles which were credited for taking the time to shape the everyday complex motivations and emotions of the main characters. This however is all action; from the very first chapter The Last Battle rages and continues through the entire 907 page behemoth. However there is no narrative in chaos of this carnage. The story relentlessly lurches from one onslaught to another, from catastrophe to peril, and at times is disorientating.

The 189 page central chapter, 'The Last Battle', hints at a change of pace or a focus on the heart of the contest, where Rand finally confronts his advisory. But it is no different to the rest of the book which is arranged in short passages focusing for short spurts on the multiple clashes. While it makes the overall read more digestible, it also means there are no extended action sequences, just snippets of the chaos.

As with any fantasy it all comes down to a face-off between good and evil, here Rand and The Dark One. The fate of the world for eons to come stand at the edge of a knife, a powerful ancient evil must be destroyed; but compared to many of his other fantasy-hero counterparts, Rand doesn’t have that rough a ride. 

And it is quite a let-down; a lot of time has been dedicated to the drumming up of Rand’s horrific fate, but it was oversold, and underwritten and the result unfulfilling. And this not the only example of seeming broken promises: characters, that many readers will have developed expectations around their implied certainty of glory in battle, take important but passive roles. 

In previous books the dedication to the characterisation of the various protagonists has been lengthy, too much in some cases; but has added a great deal to their authenticity. But in Memory of Light the richness and complexity has been diluted. Some fans may like these new glossy versions of the people they know and love as well as a friend, and will delight in seeing their coming of age. But after so much dedication to endowing them with the virtues and vices that made them so real, it seems a shame that the final products of their development are Disney-esque portraits.

The final farewell to The Wheel of Time seems hurried and a little too eager to please. In many ways Sanderson was beholden to the series army of fans, ‘Team Jordan’. They are the major stakeholders in this series; they are not afraid to remind the author and publishers who will make or break it. Not all will be happy with their friends’ fates. 

The epitaph of this grand saga is most keenly anticipated by those who have been bewitched form their first venture into Jordan’s world. But, the series has been optioned by HBO who adapted George RR Martin’s series Song of Ice and Fire in Game of Thrones to much acclaim. A movie of the first book is also reported to be in pre production. The Wheel of Times may turn again, and stands poised to become the next fantasy epic to emerge from the niche to engross new and unsuspecting audiences.


By Niamh Kirk