Patricia Pan and the Lost Girls

Every year there is an ultimate frisbee tournament called Harvest Moon in Fayetteville, Arkansas. It is a Halloween tournament, and every team has to have a theme and play in corresponding costumes. This year my team went as Patricia Pan and the Lost Girls and dressed as characters from Peter Pan. By dressing up in costumes, it made me realize how much Halloween involved visual culture. In class, we have talked about how clothing is a main component of identity, and I feel like Halloween demonstrates a similar concept. For Halloween, you take on another identity for a day, and you do so by dressing as such. In this tournament, every team had their theme, or team identity, and they represented it by dressing up in certain costumes.Whether it be of a cartoon character of a type of identity seen in the real world (like a certain occupation or style), simply acting like our character is not usually enough to be recognized by others; it is the physical appearance that solidifies that identity. Without the physical component, Halloween would not be possible. Halloween itself is kind of a play on “visual culture”, because it is a holiday specific to our culture that is celebrated almost entirely visually.

Senna Nilsson