Pop Off - Halloween

Nathan Holbert:
Welcome to Pop and Play, the podcast all about play and pop culture, and how it shapes our lives. I'm Nathan Holbert, and with me as always is Haeny, Trust Me, I'll Figure Out a Costume By Record Day, Yoon.

Haeny Yoon:
Well, actually, I'm wearing a costume. You have to just figure out what it is. It's secret.

Nathan Holbert:
It's like art.

Haeny Yoon:
Yeah, it's like art.

Nathan Holbert:
Your costume is like art.

Haeny Yoon:
Yes, you have to interpret. So welcome to our annual Halloween Popaganza, the time each year we talk candy, costumes, and everything's scary. And if you don't already know, Pop and Play is now on YouTube.

Nathan Holbert:
That's right.

Haeny Yoon:
Woo, which means you can see our amazing costumes.

Nathan Holbert:
We can no longer hide our aging faces because of the YouTube cameras, except for when you wear a Batman cowl, and then it not only hides your face, it scrunches it really small.

Haeny Yoon:
Oh, should I wear a mask? Is it like Korean skincare?

Nathan Holbert:
Here.

Haeny Yoon:
Batman?

Nathan Holbert:
Here, I got one for you.

Haeny Yoon:
No, thanks. No.

Nathan Holbert:
Yeah, so this week we are talking about Halloween. We've done this now a few years, had a little Halloween episode, and chatted about the playful experiences, and activities, and feelings that surround this holiday.

Haeny Yoon:
And for the record, I am not a Halloween poo-pooer. We are recording this a couple of weeks before Halloween, and I cannot be trusted to do anything two weeks early.

Nathan Holbert:
We might just be creating a trend here, which is that I try a little too hard, and don't do a very good job, but I try hard-

Haeny Yoon:
No, you do a great job.

Nathan Holbert:
... and you just don't really even try.

Haeny Yoon:
Tell us about your costume.

Nathan Holbert:
This is depressed Batman. It's been hard being The Dark Knight, I don't know. For other actually research-related reasons, I have a Batman cowl in my lab that has been in there for some time.

Haeny Yoon:
For research-related reasons?

Nathan Holbert:
Yes, yes, yes.

Haeny Yoon:
Oh, is it a secret research project that you had made?

Nathan Holbert:
No, it's the cosplay project that we've been doing and-

Haeny Yoon:
That's very cool.

Nathan Holbert:
Yeah, and so I was like, "You know what? I can use that and then I just can-"

Haeny Yoon:
Repurpose it. I mean, the most depressed Batman is Ben Affleck, because he is just obviously depressed, and the worst one, so that's who you are.

Nathan Holbert:
That could be-

Haeny Yoon:
Batman's [inaudible 00:02:19]-

Nathan Holbert:
... if I just had a Dunkin'-

Haeny Yoon:
Yeah, that's all you needed. Sorry, Ben.

Nathan Holbert:
Yeah, sorry. I mean, no shade to Ben, but-

Haeny Yoon:
Yeah, just keep doing Dunkin' commercials.

Nathan Holbert:
I am going to have to take this off, because I can't hear anything and it's making me feel miserable, so...

Haeny Yoon:
Well, sorry.

Nathan Holbert:
Not to spoil my secret identity-

Haeny Yoon:
Yeah.

Nathan Holbert:
But that's [inaudible 00:02:36]-

Haeny Yoon:
Well, there you are.

Nathan Holbert:
... that's what [inaudible 00:02:38] underneath the Batman mask. So what are we talking about in this, other than my amazing costume?

Haeny Yoon:
Yeah. Why are we talking about Halloween? Why do we insist on talking about it every year?

Nathan Holbert:
Well, I will say that's a really... I know that wasn't the intended question, but it's a good question, but I think I have an answer, which is that there's about not just Halloween, but also the kind of mid and late October season that emerges where you're like, "Okay, now we're in it. We're in the holiday stretch, we're playing. I got to find the right movies and TV shows to watch for this. I got to go do the things," because there's all sorts of play experiences that I always associate with these different holidays, and it all kicks off I feel like with Halloween. So even though I'm not much of a Halloween person, I feel like Halloween is where I know we're in it.

Haeny Yoon:
Yeah. I mean, same, I think as you're talking, it's making me think about how Halloween is almost like an excuse to do the playful things that you don't normally get to do in your real life, right? Like, you eat a bunch of candy and people are like-

Nathan Holbert:
"I don't normally do that."

Haeny Yoon:
... "You're supposed to. You're supposed to eat like 12 Twixes in one day," right? Or you get to dress up in a costume and everybody knows it's Halloween. Even if you do it like two weeks early, like yourself, people are like, "Oh, it's almost Halloween. You're supposed to dress up."

Nathan Holbert:
Right, it's normal.

Haeny Yoon:
Yeah, like Comic Con just happened and it's between Halloween, so now you could dress up for the next three weeks, right?

Nathan Holbert:
Yeah, yeah.

Haeny Yoon:
So I feel like there's something about that and the idea of the gathering together, having parties, there's something very magical about that idea and the play that it constitutes and allows you to have.

Nathan Holbert:
Yeah, just kind of creating the conditions for various types of play.

Haeny Yoon:
Yes, yes, yes.

Nathan Holbert:
One of the things that people do during Halloween is watch scary movies, right? And I personally don't love most scary movies. I'm too easily scared, and so I'll watch them occasionally, but I'm not crazy about them. But one thing that we were talking about that we want to get into in this episode is the ways in which kids experience or try to experience, sometimes maybe a little before they might be ready, those kind of scary movies and things.

Haeny Yoon:
Yeah, yeah. I am also not a scary movie person. I like suspenseful thrillers, because I don't know, something about real life horror is so... I don't know, something about that compels me, which is also not a great thing to admit or say.

Nathan Holbert:
Yeah.

Haeny Yoon:
But we were talking about that with my wonderful students, shout out to my students this semester. We were talking about like, "When do we allow kids to explore ideas and make sense of these ideas for themselves? When do we step in and facilitate that conversation?" Because there is a role for adults to be playing in that. And then when do we kind of check ourselves and hold ourselves accountable to the over-surveillance of some of the things that children experience or go through, right, and so-

Nathan Holbert:
By that, you mean when do we like, "Well, you're not allowed to watch that yet"?

Haeny Yoon:
Yeah. Is our response always going to be like, "Don't do that, stop doing that. You're not allowed to do this," right?

Nathan Holbert:
Yeah, yeah.

Haeny Yoon:
I feel like there is space to do that. Like obviously, you have to draw boundaries because you're the adult in that space. But I also feel like that default answer to do that without any kind of real explanation, or understanding, or working these things out together or apart, you lose an opportunity.

Nathan Holbert:
Yeah. Well, I mean, speaking as a parent, there's consequences for your kid seeing something that they're not yet capable of processing. There's consequences in that. They will be very sad, they'll be upset. There might be some sleepless nights, which has now consequences for my sleep schedule, but seeing your child-

Haeny Yoon:
Has that happened to you?

Nathan Holbert:
Oh, of course. But seeing your child scared and sad makes you feel bad, and so there's these kind of reasons why. I think also just in kind of more... I don't know if it's some sort of a natural instinct, like-

Haeny Yoon:
So what do you do in those scenarios?

Nathan Holbert:
... protective. Well, I don't know that I have an answer. I definitely feel like there was some things that we just didn't ever watch in our house when the kids were very young. And then, I also feel though that that has a consequence of as they've gotten older, they don't have an interest in it. Like, I'm trying to remember which scary movie it was that I suggested we watch the other night and they were all like, "No, I don't want to watch that. Why would we want to watch that?"
But then on the flip side of this, and this is maybe getting a little ahead of ourselves, but a few years ago, so my youngest was pretty young still, and my oldest was maybe in middle school or something, they started watching with their older cousin the Stranger Things TV show, the Netflix series. And I was like, "Really? That's a little scary." And they were like, "It's fine," and they didn't care at all. They enjoyed it, they love it, and they're into that stuff now. So the ways in which we try to do certain protection, the ways in which we kind build interests and kind of enthusiasm for these types of things, and then also the way in which they just do it naturally, I think there's not a plan. It just kind of happens.

Haeny Yoon:
Yeah. It's also making me think about taste and the things that you actually end up liking or not liking, because I think I might think something is very scary, but then someone might be like, "That's so stupid." And I think about that not just with horror as a genre. I feel like we also like to think about horror as a genre as evil or whatever, there's always a myth around it.
But even if you think of comedy, there's some things that people think are funny and sometimes people are like, "That's not funny at all," right? And I think it's a matter of your taste. And I think it's useful for children even, because they're human beings, you guys. They actually have real-

Nathan Holbert:
What?

Haeny Yoon:
... feelings and real thoughts that we don't give them opportunities sometimes to develop a taste, to develop an identity around something that they really are passionate about or can get around. And that's partly why we do this podcast, right, is these acts of play kind of help you to develop a passion, or a taste, or an inkling, or an inquiry over something.

Nathan Holbert:
And many kids are intrigued by these things, whereas maybe my kids or some kids are not sure. There is this kind of kid culture to get into things that are a little beyond them. So I know you had some examples and experiences with this.

Haeny Yoon:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So my example is I feel like these journeys into some of these inappropriate topics are so much more complicated than they might seem. And so I think our initial reaction is to be like, as soon as you start talking about Michael Myers, or Freddy Krueger, or death or something, we're going to stop you right away, but it's like, "No, no, no, no, don't do that," right?

Nathan Holbert:
Are they still talking about Michael Myers and Freddy Krueger? Is that still in the air?

Haeny Yoon:
Well, I feel like I don't know. I don't really know, actually, because I haven't been in a classroom in a little while, so who knows? Who knows. But anyway, so in my research, I get to spend a lot of time with young children, young people between the ages of five to seven, which is actually very delightful, what they have to say. And I have definitely been in classrooms around the Halloween-ish season, which has brought about a lot of conversations about Halloween.
And so I do recall that there was a group of kids talking about Halloween and what costumes they're going to wear. And that conversation quickly led to scary movies. They're talking about Michael Myers, they're talking about Freddy Krueger, and they're like having a whole debate about who is real. And they kept saying, "Michael Myers is real."

Nathan Holbert:
"Is real."

Haeny Yoon:
"And I saw him at the high school." They talked about how they saw him at the high school down the street. So then, they freaked out some of the kids, because they're like, "My sister goes to that high school," right?

Nathan Holbert:
"Oh, my God."

Haeny Yoon:
And so they're all scared and they're talking about, "Well, you know what? I went to a Halloween party and I stabbed him in the heart and he's dead." And then one kid's like, "He don't got no heart, you can't stab him in the heart."

Nathan Holbert:
You can't stab him, you can try.

Haeny Yoon:
And so they're talking about how he doesn't have a heart, they're talking about chainsaws, and then all of a sudden it led to raccoons in the attic, bloody raccoons. So I just feel like it's this-

Nathan Holbert:
Just this journey of-

Haeny Yoon:
... just jumping from one conversation to the other conversation. What I found out in the process is I feel like they're having these conversations to work out some of their fears. And so they're like, "Okay, this is going to happen now," or, "We're going to stab this person in the heart, because then that person is not going to attack your sister who goes to the high school."

Nathan Holbert:
Well, also, the fact that it's at the high school also tips their hand a little bit. Like, "That's a little scary at the high school, those older kids."

Haeny Yoon:
Yeah, right. And so I just feel like there's a lot of working through that is happening, and they are using scary tropes, but these scary tropes are not necessarily doing the same things that scary movies are actually doing. And so I feel like it's not to say that five-year-olds should be watching Halloween or anything like that, but I think I'm saying that the things they talk about isn't necessarily always what we in our imagination or adult mindset always go towards, right?

Nathan Holbert:
Right, right.

Haeny Yoon:
And so I think there is something really valuable about letting children work it out at some points, because I felt like I really saw them just working it out without my-

Nathan Holbert:
They didn't need you.

Haeny Yoon:
... feedback.

Nathan Holbert:
They were on it, yeah.

Haeny Yoon:
And I think there's several times where I actually saw a different thing happening, where I felt like they were discussing a really scary thing, and felt like I really needed to intervene. I think-

Nathan Holbert:
Oh, interesting.

Haeny Yoon:
... at the same time, I also feel like our tendency sometimes to say, "Horrible murder things are really scary, you should stop talking about it," but I'm also like, "What about the scary things that are actually happening in reality?" The ways that people are getting oppressed, the ways that violence is happening in front of them, the ways that work-

Nathan Holbert:
Masked violence, for that matter. Yeah, yeah,

Haeny Yoon:
Right, right, and the ways that words are kind of used to weaponize ideas or people. I feel like there's actual violence happening out there that is a lot harder to address, but the thing that we want to police is the like, "Don't talk about bloody murders that are fake," right, and so-

Nathan Holbert:
Yeah, putting a kind of fantasy, or horror, or some kind of a façade on top of it makes it perhaps a little bit easier for young people, but also adults for that matter, to process and reason is kind of what I hear you saying.

Haeny Yoon:
Yeah. I mean, I've talked about, I think I've said this before on the pod, but you know how Jordan Peele has that quote where he talks about why he makes these horror movies, and partly it's to deal with the issues that are all around him, and he doesn't know how to really process that? And so he uses horror as a medium to do that.

Nathan Holbert:
Right, the real world horrors. Yeah, yeah, and I think that's a really good point. I mean, one question I maybe would have for you is you said you sometimes notice when you were needed and then other times you noticed when it was okay to... What are the things that you see when you say, "Ah, maybe this is a time where I should step in and help navigate this conversation"? Is it just one of the kids seeming to be a little more real anxious than others, or what are the clues?

Haeny Yoon:
Oh, yeah, that's a really good... I mean, that's so hard. I think that's why being a teacher is hard work.

Nathan Holbert:
Yeah.

Haeny Yoon:
Yeah, it's such a hard balance to think about that. I feel like my default has always been there are real-life horrors that I feel like I should address. So if there's gender violence happening, if kids are teasing each other about their racial, ethnic, gendered identities, those are the times that I think we should step in. But I think a lot of times, we might... I've stepped in less when it's like, "Oh, Michael Myers is coming in the dark times." It's like, "Okay, that just seems like fair play."

Nathan Holbert:
"You got this."

Haeny Yoon:
Yeah, and so I think there is a fine line between it, but I also feel like there has to be some kind of consistency happening, where we are also willing to address the things that are really uncomfortable and hard to address and not the things that seem a little bit more surface and frivolous.

Nathan Holbert:
Yeah, that sounds right. I mean, there's always opportunities to kind of include yourself in those conversations as an adult too, to be like, "Oh, man, I was really scared of Freddie whenever I was a kid. And you're really brave to stab him in the heart at the high school," or whatever. And I think kids generally kind of respond well to that too, whenever you play with them-

Haeny Yoon:
Right, yeah.

Nathan Holbert:
... around these tropes and these stories.

Haeny Yoon:
I think the play with them is really important, because I think as adults or as educators in a classroom, we almost think that our default is to intervene.

Nathan Holbert:
Yeah.

Haeny Yoon:
Right? Like, that's always our knee-jerk reaction is, "Anything happens, we have to intervene." And it actually takes a little bit uncertainty and active courage to step back and be like, "Okay, maybe I'm going to have to think through what my next steps are."

Nathan Holbert:
Yeah, and we've said this a lot, and this maybe takes it to a slightly bigger topic than we need to, but this is part of kid culture is playing with these tropes, playing with these forms, and this assumption by us, by adults, by parents, to sort of think that you need to assert yourself as part of a controlling mechanism, right? It's part of saying, "No, no, your play doesn't look like the play I want it to look like." And that's problematic in lots of different ways, right?

Haeny Yoon:
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Nathan Holbert:
So I want to end with a question for you, just because now we've been talking about kids being scared all the time, and I'm curious, and I'm happy to answer as well if we need to, but what is the first scary thing you can recall? Maybe it was a movie, maybe it was a haunted house, maybe it was a costume that one of those darn high school kids had.

Haeny Yoon:
Yeah.

Nathan Holbert:
What's one of the first really scary things you recall?

Haeny Yoon:
Okay, I actually do have a memory of this, because this kind of scared me for a little while, and this goes back to your first point about what happens when kids watch something that you didn't necessarily think that they were going to watch-

Nathan Holbert:
They're ready for.

Haeny Yoon:
... and they accidentally watch it.

Nathan Holbert:
Yeah.

Haeny Yoon:
So my brother and I spent a lot of time with without our parents, because they were working and they would come later. And so we watched TV, and I remember I saw this Japanese ghost movie thing. It's like a genre. I don't know what the genre is, so I'm really sorry for horror movie buffs who might know this-

Nathan Holbert:
Like, The Ring was like a Japanese ghost movie.

Haeny Yoon:
Yeah, yeah, kind of like that. Yeah, like a white dress. I just remember a white dress lady with really long hair who would do flips in the air and scare the living crap out of you. I just remember there was a point where my brother and I were sitting on the couch. I would not get off the couch, because it's like a combination of the floor is lava and this white dress lady with really long hair is flipping in the air, and I need to just stay in one place or else she's going to come get me. But I would have nightmares about that, that was really scary. It's still scary. I still watch movies like that and I'm like, "Oh, scary."

Nathan Holbert:
You're like, "Yeah, nope. Too much."

Haeny Yoon:
But also very good at the artistic effect of that.

Nathan Holbert:
I love the flips. I love that added element of the... It's not just a scary thing, but it's a very fast and nimble scary thing.

Haeny Yoon:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, exactly.

Nathan Holbert:
Two things come to my mind. One is in terms of seeing something a little too early was Poltergeist.

Haeny Yoon:
Oh, yeah.

Nathan Holbert:
I remember seeing that when I was a kid, and I don't know why I saw that when I was a kid, but I was very young.

Haeny Yoon:
There's so much lore around that, too.

Nathan Holbert:
Oh, yeah. Yeah, true. Like, "Oh, she died."

Haeny Yoon:
Yeah, yeah. I don't know, did she?

Nathan Holbert:
No, no. Yeah, yeah, she died. Yeah, or at least that's the lore.

Haeny Yoon:
Yeah, yeah, I did hear that, but yeah.

Nathan Holbert:
Yeah, I remember that movie, and I remember being very frightened of that movie. And then I also remember seeing Poltergeist II and also being frightened. I don't know what the deal was.

Haeny Yoon:
So you went back for more?

Nathan Holbert:
I went back for more, and for sure, this is before first grade, I saw both of those movies.

Haeny Yoon:
Oh, my God.

Nathan Holbert:
I don't know why.

Haeny Yoon:
Okay.

Nathan Holbert:
My parents, they're terrible. Debbie, Stan.

Haeny Yoon:
Debbie and Stan.

Nathan Holbert:
Don't dox them, please. The other thing was, this is a very common fear, but somebody had told me the Bloody Mary story.

Haeny Yoon:
Oh, yeah, yeah.

Nathan Holbert:
And I remember that in my house we had a basement, and we had a freezer thing in the basement. And I remember a kid, and I would be asked to go get something from the freezer at night, and I would be like, "Yeah, sure. No big deal." And I walked down the stairs, I get to the bottom of the stairs, and I would full on sprint because there was a bathroom with a mirror in it. I would full on sprint as fast as I could past that bathroom to the freezer, and full on sprint to the stairs, and then calm down. "Yeah, I got it. No big deal. I got it, easy," but I was really afraid of Bloody Mary apparently coming through the bathroom mirror and getting me while I was picking up a-

Haeny Yoon:
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, because you're supposed to say-

Nathan Holbert:
... some frozen meat.

Haeny Yoon:
You're supposed to say, "Bloody Mary," three times in the mirror or something.

Nathan Holbert:
Yeah, I apparently didn't worry about the procedures. Maybe I would've worried I would accidentally say it as I was running. I don't know.

Haeny Yoon:
That's so funny. I remember being scared of that too, though.

Nathan Holbert:
That's a scary one.

Haeny Yoon:
It's that lore, childhood folklore.

Nathan Holbert:
Yeah, it's good stuff.

Haeny Yoon:
Yeah.

Nathan Holbert:
Well, that's been another Halloween Popaganza, apparently we're going to call it that. And thank you for joining us for another Pop-Off, we always appreciate having you here. We are going to be back, just a quick reminder, we're going to be back in two weeks with our first play date. This is a full-length episode where we play with a guest around this very specific play experience or play topic, and we invite you to play along with us. And what are we doing for this episode?

Haeny Yoon:
We are going to have kind of a listening party of Taylor Swift's new album, Life of a Showgirl. So if you haven't already listened, what are you even doing?

Nathan Holbert:
In the meantime, if you have a chance, leave a review, share the episodes with a friend, and follow us on Instagram and apparently YouTube as well, so you can see my incredible costume. You can see Haeny's incredible costume, and Bluesky or Instagram. Add us as to what you think Haeny's costume is. It can be #HaenyHalloween, and does-

Haeny Yoon:
I love how you just made that up, great.

Nathan Holbert:
Right on the spot.

Haeny Yoon:
Yeah, your reward is a Twix bar, full size.

Nathan Holbert:
I'm into it. All right. Thanks, everybody. Bye.

Haeny Yoon:
Bye.