That may be it right there. Perhaps the fear itself
isn’t what offers release. Maybe it’s that the
fear, consumed in bite-sized doses, comes to a
distinct and measurable end. And when it does,
no matter what the rest of the world is dishing
out, turns out you’re still fine after all. You’ve
made it. Or, at least, you can pretend you have.
“I understand that people want to escape. But I
think it’s really important to separate what’s real
and what’s not real,” says Yu-Ling Cheng Behr,
co-producer of an education initiative called
Remake Learning Days Across America and the
mother of two young daughters.
“If that’s how you want to escape — what you call
fake adrenaline, the scare — that’s fine,” she says.
“But just know that’s not how real life works.”
Real life. This year has certainly offered a
sufficiency of that. As little ghosts and vampires
navigate Halloween 2020, maybe Americans
are living out the equivalent of a national horror
film — navigating terrifying challenges, some
loud and some more quiet, and trying to make it
through. Collectively, at least.
“The notion of survival — that we come out on
the other side of this — has perhaps changed,
but perhaps come out stronger,” Jones says. But
“if there’s no end in sight for it, how do we exist
with this threat?”
Back in 1968, that original “Night of the Living
Dead” ended with the hero — a Black man —
surviving the flesh eaters only to be shot by a
police posse. Then came “Dawn of the Dead” and
“Day of the Dead.” Halloween will come and go,
but those other horrors — they don’t end when
the sun comes up the next morning.