Costume: Performing Identities Through Dress

COSTUME

COSTUME

PERFORMING IDENTITIES THROUGH DRESS

Photographs by Pravina Shukla

and Henry Glassie

PRAVINA

SHUKLA

This book is a publication of

Indiana University Press

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Herman B Wells Library 350

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iupress.indiana.edu

© 2015 by Pravina Shukla

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No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The Association of American University Presses’ Resolution on Permissions constitutes the only exception to this prohibition.

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1  2  3  4  5  20  19  18  17  16  15

For Henry, with love

CONTENTS

Acknowledgments

INTRODUCTION

Special Clothing for Extraordinary Contexts

1FESTIVE SPIRIT

Carnival Costume in Brazil

2HERITAGE

Folk Costume in Sweden

3PLAY

The Society for Creative Anachronism

4REENACTMENT

Reliving the American Civil War

5LIVING HISTORY

Colonial Williamsburg

6ART

Costume and Collaboration on the Theater Stage

CONCLUSION

Costume as Elective Identity

Notes

Bibliography

Index

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

MY AIM IN WRITING THIS BOOK WAS TO UNDERSTAND HOW COSTUME enables individuals to perform identities that are not expressed through daily dress. As a folklorist, I conducted case studies using ethnographic methods to show how costume functions to express identity in contexts full of intention and meaning. During this project, which began in 2007, I have accumulated debts to many individuals who have taught me about the significance of costume.

My first debt is to the people who furthered my intellectual pursuit by providing me with hours of recorded interviews and allowing me to observe, photograph, and understand costumes in use, both abroad and here in the United States. Two people in particular gave me much support and encouragement at the project’s beginning—Ellen Adair and Kersti Jobs-Björklöf. Both Ellen and Kersti spent many hours talking to me about the nuanced ways in which costume functions: Ellen on how costumes communicate on the professional theater stage and Kersti on how folk costumes express identity and heritage in contemporary Sweden. Ellen and Kersti not only shared their expertise with me; they also led me to other people to interview.

Though I grew up in São Paulo, Brazil, the carnival costumes of Bahia were a new topic for me. I was excited to learn about Salvador’s blocos Afro and afoxés. In Olodum I thank João Jorge Santos Rodrigues, Tita Lopes, and Alberto Pita. In Ilê Aiyê I thank Antônio Carlos dos Santos Vovô. I am especially grateful to my friends in Filhos de Gandhy: Professor Agnaldo Silva, Ildo Sousa, and Francisco Santos. For over fifteen years of friendship in Salvador, I thank Fátima Miranda. I am also grateful to my colleagues Henry Drewal and Eduardo Brondízio, and especially to Steve Selka who read an early draft of the Brazil chapter.

I thank Kersti Jobs-Björklöf and Kerstin Sinha for reading a draft of the Sweden chapter carefully, for suggesting many useful changes, and for translating original texts into English for me. In Sweden I thank Kersti and Sune Björklöf for providing me a place to stay in Dalarna; Sune unfortunately passed away before this book went to press. In Leksand I am also grateful to Britta and Sven Roos; to Ulla Björklöf, her mother Karin Gärdsback, and her two aunts, Britta Matsson and Anna Halvares; to Ingrid Samuelsson at the Leksand Handcraft shop; to Katarina Karlsson Nordqvist at the Sätergläntan College of Handcrafts; to Eva Erkers in Floda. In Stockholm I acknowledge the help of Mats Widbom, Barbro Klein, Lizette Gráden, and Ulrich Lange.

My gratitude extends to many people in the United States who were generous with their time, helping me see the link between costume and history in the three chapters on reenactment. I thank Sarah Lash, P. J. Schultz, Jarett Diamond, Carolyn Jenkinson, and Aimee Formo of the Society for Creativity Anachronism. Among Civil War reenactors I thank the following living historians: Wayne Brunson, Mark LaPointe, Jay Vogel, Frank Orlando, Mike Sipes, Jim Opdenaker, Niles Clark, and Dwight Hensley. At Colonial Williamsburg I thank the scholars and interpreters who shared information with me: Brenda Rosseau, Linda Baumgarten, Janea Whitacre, Sarah Woodyard, Mark Schneider, James Ingram, and Terry Thon. I am especially indebted to Mark Hutter, talented tailor, scholar, colleague, and friend.

Many busy theater professionals took time to meet with me, providing me with great insight into their artistic endeavors. I thank the following playwrights, directors, costume designers, and actors for their thoughtful knowledge about theatrical costume: Rafael Jaen, Lewis Wheeler, Eric Gilde, Molly Trainer, Spiro Veloudos, Vincent Woods, and Charles Morey. I single out, once again, Ellen Adair, for her tremendous help and for reading a draft of the theater and concluding chapters.

My gratitude extends to my teachers and mentors at Berkeley and UCLA. I remember the late Alan Dundes and continue to be grateful to Michael Owen Jones, Doran Ross, David Mayo, Fran Krystock, Owen Moore, Donald Cosentino, and Robert Georges. I am sustained in intellectual camaraderie by fellow folklorists John Burrison, Ray Cashman, Lorraine Walsh Cashman, Michael Foster, Diane Goldstein, Jason Jackson, Tim Lloyd, John McDowell, Tom Mould, Jerry Pocius, and Terry Zug. For help with this book, I also thank John Cash, Harry Glassie, Gregory Hansen, and Rich Walter. My interest in the serious study of dress has been fueled by my colleagues in the Costume Society of America, especially Cristina Bates, Anne Bissonnette, Robin Campbell, Cynthia Cooper, Sally Helvenston Gray, Mark Hutter, Susan Neill, and Sarah Woodyard. I am grateful to Linda Welters for reading a draft of this book, and for providing me with many useful comments and suggestions. The idea for this book arose during an early conversation with Joanne Eicher, and I thank Joanne for all she has done to champion the study of dress.

For financial support of my fieldwork in Brazil and across the United States, I acknowledge the following sources: UCLA Fowler Museum of Cultural History Robert C. Altman Memorial Award, UCLA Fowler Museum of Cultural History Arnold Rubin Memorial Award, Los Angeles Bead Society, Indiana University College Arts and Humanities Institute, and Indiana University Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies.

I am, of course, indebted to the able staff at the Indiana University Press for their help throughout the long process of publication, especially to Janet Rabinowitch, Rebecca Tolen, Bernadette Zoss, Dan Pyle, and to Jill R. Hughes for her copyediting. I especially thank Darja Malcolm-Clarke for her help, and Jennifer L. Witzke for her beautiful design.

I end my list of debt by acknowledging my family, the people I have loved the longest; I owe them my complete devotion. My mother, Neeru Shukla, to whom I dedicated my first book, continues to be a source of strength for me. My sisters, Divya and Bobby, have supported every endeavor I have embarked on, and being with them in California continues to be a highlight in my life. With happiness I celebrate the growth of our small family unit, welcoming its new members: Paul, Arjun, Layla, Chris, and little Mina, the newest member of our family.

My greatest debt is to my husband, Henry Glassie, to whom I dedicate this book. A fellow folklorist, Henry inspires me in our shared effort to understand the world through its artistic excellence. Henry accompanied me on every one of this book’s fieldtrips, taking many of the photographs published here, and he read the manuscript carefully. Henry’s book The Potter’s Art—an examination of cultural phenomena through distinct ethnographic case studies—provided a model for my book. For his unconditional support and affection—and for filling my days with joy—I dedicate this book to Henry with all of my love.

COSTUME

INTRODUCTION

Special Clothing for Extraordinary Contexts

IT IS THE THIRD OF JULY, AND TENS OF THOUSANDS OF PEOPLE ARE gathered on a farm just outside of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. A young couple walks by, wearing matching T-shirts: his says Civil War Nut’s Husband; hers reads Civil War Nut’s Wife. A man in baggy khaki shorts has a T-shirt that reads Fort Bragg FIRE Emergency Services; his companion sports a baseball cap that says U.S. Army. A little boy is dressed as a Union soldier, in blue pants and shirt, a kepi on his head, with a yellow cavalry sash tied at his waist, proudly carrying a toy infantryman’s rifle. On Sutler’s Row, at the photography studio, a young man poses in a wool Union uniform, indistinguishable from a real one except that it is open in back and fastened with long ties. At the Activities Tent a camera crew awaits, every man clad in shorts, sunglasses, bandanas on their heads, with large laminated Press badges dangling from their vests. Outside the tent stands an elegant bearded man in an impeccably tailored, pale gray uniform. He has come from upstate New York to address the crowd in the role of General Robert E. Lee. All of these people express their identities by what they wear.¹

DRESS AS MATERIAL CULTURE

We all dress to accommodate social and environmental factors and to reflect our personal aesthetics and identities. Sending meaningful messages through dress is one way people engage in a daily artful endeavor, participating in what folklorists call creativity in everyday life or artistic communication in small groups.² Clothing is a palpable, immediate, and intimate form of material culture, which is defined by folklorist Henry Glassie as culture made material. The study of material culture, he writes, is the study of creativity in context.³

This book is a study of individuals and society, of creativity and social communication. I study dress in its immediate context of the human actors who construct, inhabit, behold, and judge garments and their accessories. I join my colleagues—dress scholars, historians, and curators—by contributing to our common intellectual endeavor a folkloristic approach to the study of dress, treating costume as artistic communication, as a marker of identity, as an outlet for personality, and as a vehicle for social and cultural expression.

Posing for a portrait at the reenactment of the Battle of Gettysburg. Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, 2010.

My orientation has been shaped by folkloristic studies of material culture that have developed in exchange with performance theory, a paradigm that emphasizes the individual in the social moment of creativity.⁴ We understand the act of creation by attending at once to individuals and their circumstances, paying attention to standards, to acts of desire, and to the forces of consumption and social response. Scholars of material culture, working in diverse media—architecture, ceramics and textiles, metal, and wood—have provided models that enable consideration of form and function, creation and consumption, and the historical and social forces that bring beauty, meaning, and the power of communication to the things people make.⁵ Key to communication is the expression of personal identity through the material objects we make, shape, and use.

That daily dress reflects personal identity is an obvious point; what we wear is affected by our body, age, gender, socioeconomic class, personality, our taste and style. Dress is who we are. Costume, on the other hand, is often described as the clothing of who we are not. The dictionary defines costume as the clothing of another place or another time, or as clothing fit for performance: the garments worn by people in faraway China, the clothing of the Victorian era in the United States, or the flamboyant dress of participants in the Mardi Gras parade of New Orleans. Generally, costume is thought to be the clothing of others, the people we are pretending to be. In this book I show that costume—like dress—is the clothing of who we are but that it signals a different self, one other than that expressed through daily dress.

DRESS AND COSTUME

There are discernible differences between what we call dress and what we mean by costume, differences in form, materials, and construction, as well as in intended meanings and contexts of wear. Mary Ellen Roach-Higgins and Joanne B. Eicher have famously defined dress as modifications of the body and/or supplements to the body.⁶ Costume, according to these two authors, delineates the modifications and supplementations that indicate the ‘out-of-everyday’ social role or activity.⁷ Writing in Valerie Steele’s The Berg Companion to Fashion, Eicher argues that costume is used by individuals to express a performance identity while dress is used to establish identity in everyday life.⁸ Scholars of dress agree that, ultimately, the chief difference between costume and dress lies in the ability of garments to differently project identity.⁹ Costume is usually set apart from dress in its rarity, cost, and elaborate materials, trims, and embellishments, and in its pronounced silhouette or exaggerated proportions. It is not meant to be ordinary, but, rather, evocative, urging the daily further along an artistic trajectory that leads to heightened communication and often culminates in a spectacle for public consumption. Costume designer Pamela Keech, when asked to describe the difference between costume and clothing, answered, "I think it’s the motivation. A person who gets up in the morning and gets dressed without giving it much thought is putting on clothing. But a person who gets dressed for the effect it will create is putting on costume."¹⁰

Some people who carefully compose their daily ensembles become icons; in effect, they wear a costume every day. Frida Kahlo, Iris Apfel, and Daphne Guinness are examples of individuals who consistently construct a self-conscious presentation of self through dress.¹¹ Some celebrities have developed such an emblematic style that one can impersonate them by wearing similar clothing. In Harmony Korine’s movie Mr. Lonely, characters live their lives as Marilyn Monroe, Michael Jackson, Madonna, Abraham Lincoln, Queen Elizabeth II, and Charlie Chaplin. None of the people look like the celebrities they enact, but they dress like them, and that’s enough to effect personification. Characters in the film assert that they impersonate the famous to become who we want to be. One character says, We have become who we wish we were.¹² The act of dressing up in costume—whether for the fictional characters in a film or for ordinary people everywhere—can become a means of achieving a self-conscious definition of the self.

The intended meaning, or effect, of garments depends on the specific context of wear. Similar garments can project different messages in different contexts. A sari worn by a woman in India is daily dress; the same garment worn by flight attendants on Air India is a uniform; worn for Halloween in the United States it becomes a costume. Sometimes the different demands on the garment affect their construction: they might look the same, though they are not. A policeman’s uniform made by a regional theater company will have reinforced seams for the script’s rough fight scenes, and it may have hidden Velcro fasteners that allow for quick costume changes between acts. A common garment can become a costume through the behavior of its wearer: the actor who wears a policeman’s uniform onstage might not act like an officer reporting to work in uniform. A nurse’s uniform worn at the hospital allows the wearer access to patients and presumes specialized medical knowledge. A nurse’s costume worn during a college party will be quite different; it will probably be shorter and sexier: the pastel scrub top and pants of the hospital nurse will be replaced with a skimpy, tight white dress worn with fishnet stockings and high heels. The costumed nurse might be drunk, but the hospital’s nurse must remain sober and alert. If a medical emergency arises at the costume party, no one would presume that the young woman with the nurse’s cap and stethoscope would be of any use.

Costume—as opposed to uniform—is defined by the wearer’s intentions and behaviors, and it is evaluated by the audience on the basis of garment construction, fabrics, ensemble, and accessories, as well as by its fitness for the occasion. Wearing a cute little French maid uniform to the office on October 31 is acceptable, perhaps even creative, daring, or sexy. Wearing the same outfit to work on a random day—say, April 9 or July 7—would be considered outlandish and abnormal, possibly even a sign of mental instability.¹³

There is an implicit alternative persona that the costume permits its wearer to assume. In addressing the dichotomy of dress and costume, both Valerie Steele and Joanne B. Eicher, leading dress scholars, raise the issue of the wearer’s identity as a defining feature of costume. In her foreword to Dress for Thrills, a catalog of antique Halloween costumes, Steele says that to dress up is to escape from the constraints of ordinary life and adopt a new identity.¹⁴ Eicher, writing in The Berg Companion to Fashion, Steele’s encyclopedia of dress, defines costume as hiding or temporarily cancelling an individual’s everyday identity, and goes on to say that in contrast to costume, dress establishes individual identity within a cultural context.¹⁵

In this book I explore the connections between identity and costume, showing how costume functions to help individuals elect, embrace, and display special identities that are not expressed through daily dress. We all have multiple identities, and some of these are expressed only by means of a costume. Through particular case studies and deep ethnographic data, I show how costume always functions to express identity. Many of the examples of costume discussed in this book are described by their wearers as transformative, changing both the wearers and the beholders somehow, capable of taking them to mythical places, emotional depths, and on magical journeys. In costume, people are engaged in some sort of performance, inhabiting one of the stages or dreams of their lives. They choose their clothing to fit the aim of their performance, its audience, and their own intention of meaningful communication. Messages are sent and received between individuals within a mutually understood cultural context, and for this communication to occur it is necessary to have a social unit comprised of collaborators, beholders, and enablers. Identity is both ascribed and elected within this group. The individual is always viewed in relation to a community or society, so we must approach costume by acknowledging the people surrounding the garment, those who make the transmission of elected identity possible.

For the majority of Americans the most familiar experience of costuming occurs during Halloween. For children it is an annual excuse to dress up and go door to door for candy. For adults Halloween is a socially acceptable occasion for costuming, a time to dress up for work and parties. A brief look at Halloween foreshadows the concepts and themes I raise throughout the book, helping us recognize the nuanced ways in which multiple identities can be communicated simultaneously through costume use.

SPIRITED INDIVIDUALITY: HALLOWEEN

Halloween as celebrated in the United States has been greatly influenced by the Celtic festival of Samhain. There are echoes of the Irish folk traditions of mumming, wrenboys, and strawboys in the customs of house visitation and rhyming in disguise, playing pranks on neighbors, and demanding treats.¹⁶ What was for many years a children’s costumed activity of begging for candy—trick-or-treat—has now become a significant adult costumed social event. In 2010, of the 65 percent of Americans who celebrated Halloween, 33 percent dressed up in costume. In 2009 it was estimated that $1.75 billion was spent on costumes, with 47 million adults and 58 million children dressing up for Halloween.¹⁷ Almost as many adults as children now dress up on October 31, and this trend is reflected in the number of costumes designed for adults. Many businesses encourage their employees to dress in costume for work on Halloween.¹⁸ In 2007 the Ticketmaster corporate headquarters in Los Angeles set up a photo wall with fake spiderwebs and a Morgue sign, against which the staff posed for pictures, displaying a wide variety of costumes, including the traditional (witch, mummy); popular culture (Velma from Scooby Doo, Napoleon from Napoleon Dynamite); celebrities (Amy Winehouse); cute (Minnie Mouse, fairy); ethnic (kimono); and literary (Hester Prynne from The Scarlet Letter). These costumes reflect the general patterns, yet being worn for work there was an understandable lack of provocative attire. A popular costume website, buycostumes.com, has almost four thousand different adult choices in such thematic categories as Classic, Historical, Horror/Gothic, Humorous, Food and Beverage, and also by body type, Plus Size Costumes. The two largest subcategories of adult costumes are Sexy (1,085 options) and TV and Movie Character (1,084 options).

I documented and photographed Halloween costumes in Bloomington, Indiana, in 2007 and again in 2009–2012, observing the children’s costumes worn for an afternoon of trick-or-treating in suburban neighborhoods and in the shopping mall, and adult costumes at evening college parties.¹⁹ Clear patterns emerged: most costumes are readymade, with a few put together or handcrafted. Little boys were often dressed as superheroes (Spiderman, Superman, Iron Man) and little girls as Disney princesses (Belle, Snow White, Cinderella). These are licensed costumes, all alike, and sanctioned by the Disney or Marvel Comics corporations.²⁰ In 2007 I photographed a girl dressed as Princess Fiona from the cartoon movie Shrek. She wore a homemade version of the costume—flowing purple and green dress, necklaces, tiara. Since she was not wearing the officially licensed ensemble, she grumpily explained to me, in exasperation, who she was supposed to be. While her costume impressionistically resembled the cartoon princess in palette and tone, it was not the version that others around her recognized. For many years creativity and artistry were expressed through the making of costumes, usually by a mother or grandmother, though sometimes by the wearers themselves. Commercial costumes became widely available starting in the 1930s,²¹ and today the creativity of the wearer is mainly expressed by the choice of a readymade, commercial ensemble that suggests a character or signals a theme.

Tom Daddono as Oompa Loompa from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Halloween, Bloomington, Indiana, 2012.

Shannon Larson as Pris Stratton from Blade Runner. Halloween, Bloomington, Indiana, 2012.

Among the costumes for the college-aged, I observed that young women often wore commercial sexy ensembles with a low-cut top, a miniskirt with a puffy crinoline, striped socks, and high-heeled Mary Jane buckle shoes. Male students were dressed as goofy and funny characters, as women, as babies, or as skit characters from Saturday Night Live. The women’s aim was to be alluring, while the men wanted to be humorous—in the same way that when they pose for photos at other times, females generally try to look sexy, males funny. On Halloween sexy women and funny men prominently featured their faces; they were not masked, not anonymous, not exactly in disguise. The aim was to reveal a facet of their identity through their choice of costume and associated behavior. Sometimes creativity and wit are the driving forces. In 2010, for example, I photographed three friends—each wearing a pair of mouse ears, sunglasses, and holding a walking stick. As the Three Blind Mice, they were clever, original, and their costumes linked them to one another.

Spidermen. Halloween, Bloomington, Indiana, 2007.

In 2008 I photographed the thirty-fifth annual Greenwich Village Halloween Parade in New York City. This much-documented pageant features visual and performance artists and their professional, expensive, and elaborate costumes, which have been illustrated by anthropologist Jack Kugelmass in his book Masked Culture: The Greenwich Village Halloween Parade. The commercial costumes bought by college students from websites were rare among the revelers. In this celebrated event, which includes more than two million participants and spectators, a few interesting tendencies for the public communication of identity were apparent, and these foreshadow some of the findings in this book. Sociability was an obvious goal, and there were many groups of friends dressed in coordinated ensemble costumes, thus reinforcing their bonds to one another. (Many commercial costumes are marketed as pairs or ensembles, targeting couples, trick-or-treating friends, or siblings to wear matching or complementary attire.) One group of a dozen friends, both male and female, all dressed alike as the fitness fanatic Richard Simmons: each wore a big curly wig, pink-and-white-striped running shorts, and a baggy pink tank top, carrying different messages: Candy Kills, Don’t Do Doritos, and Dance Your Pants Off. Four Japanese friends went as Teletubbies, and two older men performed a drag song-and-dance show, each in a blue satin dress, satin gloves, feathers, corsage, wig, costume jewelry, and makeup.

Sewage W. Bush. Greenwich Village Halloween Parade, New York, 2008.

Costumes grant their wearers a chance to be social and an opportunity to make public statements. Many of the costumed participants in Greenwich Village seized this moment to communicate to the world, knowing that the national and international media would be present,²² and the time was ripe during the Halloween of 2008, since the presidential election was only a week away. A man in a George W. Bush face mask wore a toilet seat around his neck and held a sign: Sewage W. Bush / ready-to-flush . . . / eight years of liarrhea. An attractive young woman mocked Sarah Palin by wearing her dark hair pulled back, red lipstick and glasses, and a sexy sequined dress with a sash that read Miss Vice President.²³ A man wearing a suit and tie with the initials CEO pinned on his lapel had a gold lamé parachute over his head, from which dangled paper currency. These people, like many we will meet in this book, used costume to carry political and social messages. One man, Christopher Puzzele, wore a giant condom over his head with the sign "I do not want kids.com," while handing out flyers advertising his online dating service for those who do not wish to procreate. As a person who rejects the prospect of parenthood, Puzzele feels he is discriminated against in popular dating sites and wanted to call attention to his position by his outrageous costume (he told me in a follow-up email that hundreds of people took his picture and his flyer that night).

For some people, dressing up for Halloween is a way to get a bagful of candy. For others it is a chance to look desirable and alluring or funny and wacky at a college party. Or it can be an opportunity for artistry and communication, fulfilling creative desires while constructing a platform for social and political critique. And for others, perhaps for most, it is a chance for psychological release, a way to bring personality to the fore in projections of identity beyond what is possible through daily dress. These many functions are not separated categorically in action; in fact, they often fuse in the simultaneity of costumed performance.

With a seemingly endless number of costumes to choose from, the one a person selects will inevitably reflect several aspects of his or her identity. On Halloween of 2007, for instance, I photographed and interviewed an undergraduate student, Joseph Howard Burnette II, who was dressed as Chad Gray, the lead singer of the heavy metal band Mudvayne.²⁴ Joseph wore denim overalls, a white wife beater tank top, chains around his neck, and a spray of fake blood all over his face and body. He attached braided strings to his beard to make it look like the lead singer’s long goatee, and he dyed his hair light blue on the sides to simulate a shaved head, and colored it red on top to look like Gray’s red Mohawk.

Joseph has been dressing up as Chad Gray for the last three Halloweens, he told me, but varying his impersonation every year. Part of the artistic pleasure for Joseph is to improvise on the general aesthetic of Chad Gray. The lead singer, he said, does something different with how he looks for every concert, so in 2007 Joseph came up with the idea of dried blood on his face, achieved by smearing liquid latex over red lipstick marks. It was not something that Chad Gray had ever done, but it was an opportunity for Joseph to express his originality: Due to the fact that he’s ever changing his image, I thought it would be interesting to change it myself, see what I could come up with, with what he has started.

The costume provides an outlet for personal creativity, and it enables the wearer to connect to a social group, as the New York parade demonstrated. By dressing like the singer, Joseph visually connects himself to other Mudvayne fans who recognize the impersonation and communicates his commitment to the band and their music. He told me that it is uncommon for people to dress up as Chad Gray, though he has seen a few at the concerts, but it takes a big fan to be willing to masquerade to that level. For insiders, Joseph conveys a mutual passion for the band. For outsiders, he introduces them to Mudvayne, since many people don’t know of the band or of the lead singer, and they will ask him about them, as I did when I first met Joseph on Halloween day.

Costumes invite others to join in: they can become vehicles to instruct people about the values, aesthetics, and culture that a particular costume embodies. During the last three Halloweens when Joseph went as Chad Gray, that was one of his aims: You know, every time somebody asked me who I was, it was my opportunity to advertise, more or less. Which is why I wore the costume. You know, I try to be a walking, talking advertisement for Mudvayne.

The Halloween costume carries personal creativity, social identity, and it can afford the wearer a chance to educate the beholder, whether the education is aesthetic or political. The main function of costume, including Halloween costume, is to express the personal identity of the wearer. Folklorist John McDowell’s study of Halloween costumes among undergraduates at Indiana University in 1982 supports this conclusion, as do the analytic papers on Halloween costume from my own students at the same university twenty years later.²⁵ Hundreds of undergraduate Midwestern students confirmed that, far from donning a separate identity, they were communicating a deep sense of themselves. Joseph Burnette identifies so deeply with Mudvayne—their lyrics, their style, their music—that dressing as their leader is a way to externalize a meaningful internal sentiment: They embody everything that I love, more or less. Or a huge portion of what I love. So by masquerading as the lead singer, I’m capturing that this is me. They just kind of embody me. The costume also functions psychologically, for it gives Joseph a moment of flamboyant notice: I like being known. I hate just being that kid in the corner. I like being the center of attention. I would be lying if I said anything else. Joseph, like many people around the world, feels trapped in a single version of himself. He rightly observes that men have fewer aesthetic options when it comes to dress than women, and he gets tired of seeing the same image in the mirror every day. By wearing a Halloween costume once a year, he said, I escape myself.

By temporarily escaping himself through costume, Joseph, along with all the others in this book, arrives at a deeper version of himself, using the band as a marker of personal identity. Joseph is not in disguise when dressed as Chad Gray. At the end of our tape-recorded interview, Joseph admitted, This whole Mudvayne thing, I suppose it’s gotten to the point where—it’s not even so much that I love Mudvayne that much. It’s my signature. Everybody knows me as the kid that wears Mudvayne shirts. In his daily life, as a way to vary his look and add a sense of personal style, Joseph wears Mudvayne T-shirts. He also wears a belt buckle with Mudvayne engraved on it, and his backpack has a Mudvayne patch. For high school graduation, while adhering to the school dress code, he wrote Mudvayne on his shoes to retain his personal identity. His association with the band makes him stand apart from the thousands of other Midwestern young men around him and gives him an edgy, arty signature.

Joseph Burnette as Chad Gray from Mudvayne. Bloomington, Indiana, 2007.

IDENTITY THROUGH COSTUME

All dress is an expression of identity. Daily attire positions us within a social structure, within a frame of time and space. In everyday life