The Good Guys Always Triumph
Remember the days when ghosts and ghouls where just a spooky story? When the horseshoe above the front door protected you from local witches? When Frankenstein and Dracula were just films?
But films were only a tiny part of it. When you’re smaller, Halloween is just as exciting as Christmas. The idea of another party, dressing up, and endless sweets was an absolute dream. Still is to me if I’m completely honest.
I’ve always loved Halloween. If you know anything my comedy, you’ll know the majority of my sketches involve dressing up as daft characters and putting on a show. When I was younger, I was in my element at Halloween. Don’t get me wrong, I often dressed up no matter what time, day or season, but at Halloween no one could call me a weirdo for doing it. They just had to put up with it.
I was never involved in trick or treating, though. My mother always said it was ‘the legal equivalent to begging’. But the sheer number of sweets we would power through on Halloween would make any dentist quiver and shake. Bobbing for apples was another perfect opportunity for me and my brothers to torture each other. Smashing out the Monster Mash on the school disco dance floor like your life depended on it, cheap face paint running down your face, and smacking people with your witch’s broom for getting in the way of your performance… No? Just me? Okay.
My personal favourite was back in 2005 when my best friend and I decided to dress up as the legendary Kim and Aggie, famous ladies of the cleaning world. At the time, I didn’t realise who on earth we were impersonating but with our mini lab coats and fake glasses I must’ve thought we were mad scientists. The feather duster and cleaning spray did confuse me a little, I must admit. But didn’t we look fabulous?
Recently, however, the world we are in seems to be turning into a horror film of its own.
I know that having to listen to adult things like politics and war and stock markets and mortgages is all part of adulthood, but I don’t think anyone really understands it all. In fact, I don’t think I’ll ever fully understand it. Once again, we are watching the big guys get bigger, whilst everything else is going down: the pound, the parliament, the proposal of just being a decent person.
Oh God, I’m getting depressing again. Hang on, back to comedy writing.
Let me make my list of ‘Why Human Existence Is, In Basic Terms, Depressing’ a little more seasonal for you all.
Halloween Nightmares of 2022:
- Nightmare on Downing Street
- The Heating
- COVID Returns
- Scooby Doo & The Cost of Living
- The Nuclear War Project
- The Trussbusters
All the classics.
I feel like a broken record constantly going on about how awful our reality is. It’s so frustrating being a young adult and feeling useless in your own future. Watching the elderly freeze in the home they’ve had for 40 years. Families who always had a modest but happy living hiding in their coats to go to food banks. And I’m not over exaggerating when I say multiple people have told my partner and I that they won’t be able to afford their own mortgage until someone in their family dies and leaves them ‘a nice sum’.
I’d rather not wait until then.
And then you have the other side of it all. Now, I completely agree with the protests. Go on, shout your cause, stand for your rights, you ARE right. Women should have rights to their body, oil isn’t exactly doing great for the planet, and leave the damn trees alone!
I get where you’re coming from, I really do. But what has Van Gogh got to do with it? I’m sure he’s only half listening anyway.
Throwing soup on a painting is only going to do more harm than good. Yes, it gives you press. Yes, it makes people stop and pay attention. But you only annoy them. I can’t imagine these fine arts enthusiasts are suddenly going to walk out as full-blown climate activists just because you’ve taken an Andy Warhol piece so literally.
Just googled it. Never mind. It was Heinz.
I guess that’s the whole point though, isn’t it? The big dogs at the top haven’t listened for years, just loomed over and laughed at the rest of the world for washing out their food containers and tins before they recycle them while they destroy rainforests and profit from slavery.
That’s a scary story. And we’ll be talking to the next generations about tigers and elephants like they’re fictional animals, telling them about diesel cars and mass clothing productions, trying to convince them that free medical care really did exist. Explaining that these villains at the top were the ones to blame all along, that we tried to fix things, but they wouldn’t listen. They lived their lives and gained their power from greed.
Greed is a dangerous thing.
But we have opportunity to change this, and it’s happening in front of us. Yes, we see the soup being thrown on paintings and students gluing themselves in the middle of the road, but there are bigger things too. Thousands of women and men protesting for rights to women’s bodies, to choose how to wear their religion, to stop oil. The news doesn’t want us to see how big this is, because it’ll become too big, and the villains eventually will lose.
In almost every scary story, the villain never wins. The good guys always triumph.
Eventually, I think this scary story will end the same way.
