Face Your Fears

When I was a little girl growing up, my mother collected records. One of her favorite artists was Todd Rundgren, and for many many years, his album "Acappella" was framed and hanging on the wall of our apartment living room. A lot of other children might have seen this and felt perturbed by it, but I was a strange little girl who collected dead animals and couldn't do math to save her life. I was drawn to this imagery, for reasons that, now, make absolute perfect sense. In many ways, this was the first mask I ever really was capable of appreciating as a piece of art. Lots of countries use masks. Whether they're decorative or they're used in actual ceremonies, they're a big part of certain cultures. Thanks to the website History Of Masks , I was able to ascertain that masks in West Africa are used in ceremonies in which the purpose is to communicate with ancestral spirits. In fact, Africa likely utilizes masks to the upmost extent out of everyone in the world. ...

There's, on the surface (and, I suppose, underneath too) not really much to say about this mask in terms of it's design and it's spooky factor. It's not really bad, it's not really amazing, it's not really much of anything, but there is one thing I want to discuss and that's something I sort of touched on in my Grandpa Jones post, which is the concept of aging. For some reason, for as long as I can remember, there's been one particular type of Halloween mask that has been around, and that is the old person mask. Sometimes it's more grotesque, other times it's not really all that interesting, and sometimes, like here, it's sort of disheveled but still rather tame. And this doesn't stop at just masks, this goes all the way to the film industry where they age people using makeup to make them look older. This just...it sort of rubs me the wrong way. We live in a culture of youth. Everything always has to be new, or else it isn't ne...

I've been holding back, but it's finally time for you to experience something traumatic. I didn't want to start this blog on a negative note, because I already do that with two others, so instead I started off with two relatively cool masks, but now...now the time has come. The day of reckoning is upon us, and you will be judged accordingly to your sins. Hopefully they are not as severe as the very evident sins this ungodly thing has put upon the world. There is a very strong unsettling vibe that comes with this photo. Take away the mask and let's just look at the surroundings instead, shall we? It appears to be sat upon a small metal device that I believe was made specifically for presenting this mask, which is weird enough, but then it's sitting on a table with the most bland tablecloth in existence, yet the background of this photo itself is almost grandparent like. The wallpaper, the giant cabinet full of old fine china, the willowy curtain in the side ro...