November 21, 2005

• As I lay here in bed trying to get to sleep, there's something that keep rolling around in my mind.

  I'm trying to coin a term. It might already exist, but I don't know what it is. Maybe there's a term in theater for it, or politics. What i'm trying to describe is this: The sense of embodiment that comes from inhabiting a costume. The costume can be literal or figurative; occupying a powerful office, as in the Presidency, can be a form of costume.

  I was thinking about this because I was remembering back in 1978, when I was a wee tot of 12. It was Halloween, and I was Darth Vader. My friend Dee was Luke, and Joe Cheavens was Han Solo, a costume completely appropriate for him. I had worked really hard on my Darth Vader costume. I crafted a mask out of cardboard glued to an old Halloween mask we had in the attic. Same for a play army helmet, transformed into Vader's no-really-it's-not-a-Nazi-helmet helmet. Some black spray paint, a long flowing cape, a chest plate made from Legos... I thought my costume was completely badass.

  Being Luke or Han was easy. Vader, though, required construction.

  The three of us went around the neighborhood, but we ended up at the Halloween fest held every year at the elementary school near where we lived. We went through the 'haunted house,' which was actually two classrooms'-worth of maze with occasional scary scene. The final scene, however, was being chased out of the 'house' by... Darth Vader.

  Darth Vader was portrayed by a really tall, imposing figure, who I learned later was the parent of one of the kids in our class. I wasn't exactly scared of him... I knew he was just as much a fraud as I was, in a very literal sense. But being frightened of Darth Vader was just so much fun. It was the point of the exercise, after all, and that costume he had was so excellent. Having spent a lot of time constructing mine, I could appreciate his. He had even figured out how to make the breathing sound, maybe from a tape recorder.

  I stood there in the hallway for a while just staring at him through my sunglasses-lensed mask. After a few seconds he abandoned his menacing pose and stood up normally, like just a guy in a Darth Vader suit. Then he waved a friendly wave.

  And my reaction is what I'm trying to coin a term to describe: I felt a kind of joy, a kind of creepy joy that came from the disconnect between the literal appearance of Darth Vader at my old elementary school, and the sure knowledge that someone was inside that formal appearance who didn't really have anything to do with it, other than wearing it for a night. The disconnect between complete similarity (two people dressed up like Darth Vader) and utter difference (he actually managed to make it work). If this experience had happened at a later age, I'd have gone over and introduced myself to a fellow hard-core nerd. But because I was 12, I ran to catch up with my friends who were long gone.

  But this experience... The moment when your suspicions about the man behind the mask are revealed as true, but you're still playing along. When the humanity reveals itself despite every effort at concealment... What's that called?

  • 6:42 am
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