bad boomer graveyard: skin and bone

by Art Chantry ( art@artchantry.com)

the beistle company (pronounced ‘bee-sill’) is probably one of the most widely distributed, widely viewed, most famous popular manufactured art in the united states. bet you never heard of them, right? but, i’ll bet you’ve seen their work. they’re the folks who have made the bulk of all that great halloween stuff we’ve lived with all these years.

articulated skeletons, embossed jack o’ lanterns, dangling witches, scary ghosties – all their work. probably the most famous is that classic articulated skeleton (the joints are grometed to allow them to move) that every single person in america hung in their window or door. you now the one. sorta scary and shows up in every amateur haunted house over the last 50-60 years?

the thing about beistle is that they never seemed to protect their copyright. they would use a design for a while (if it sold well), then abandon it to make a new design and try to push that. it had a sort of built-in planned obsolescence to their work. the result was a sort of walking away from their old images, resulting in the wholesale exploitation by the masses. you see their work show up in clip art and designs everywhere. we just assume it grew on a tree and dump it into the ‘vernacular’ column and then “appropriate” it for our brilliant post-modernist glop. i know i have.

over the years, i’ve collected numerous vintage catalogs of their products. (it’s, jadedly, a terrific clip source). no one is ever referenced for the artwork. the ubiquitous and extraordinarily over-familiar images are all credited to “beistle.” there is no other authorship (as per the american capitalist way.)

so, who actually was the hand that drew this stuff? no one knows. there is obvious authorship and stylistic traits involved. you can spot the differing voices creating the images. there is also a transition over time, you can see new hands coming into the picture and the old hands fading away. in effect, these hands created our shared experience of halloween. we can’t think of halloween without drawing upon these images, and yet we have no idea who created these memories for us. it’s rather sad.

this item i’m showing today is from my small collection of beistle crap. this one i remember rather well from my youth because it marked the transition from ‘scary halloween’ images to ‘friendly halloween’ images. there was a moment, about the time of my early adolescence, when somebody out there made the unchallenged “PC” decision to make halloween no longer the province of scary monsters and ravenous ghouls into “casper” ghosts and smiley-face jack o’ lanterns. why? it would scare the kids, i guess. it’s as if we suddenly became a nation of chickens. that chicken-heartedness sort began in earnest around that time and we’ve the nation of ‘terrorized’ rabble we are today. who ever made that choice should be boiled in oil in the darkest corner of a dungeon in a roger corman ‘poe’ movie. but, that’s just one man’s opinion.

the other problem with this piece was that it was the first major seasonal halloween skeleton line that besitle had made in decades that wasn’t “articulated” (i assume to save money). the side problem of this decision was that couldn’t fold it up and use it again next year (which was maybe more ‘planned obsolescence?) it was one big solid piece of cardboard and it got trashed very quickly. they essentially fell apart very quickly from the ‘love’ (aka ‘use.’) almost none of this design seems to survive in la

sizes. this particular copy made it through the years because it is tiny (about 14″ tall.) even then, it’s lost part of a foot.

the result was that it didn’t catch on and was phased out within a year or two for a move back to the old articulated design, but re-worked with a smiling visage. a real step down, as far as i was concerned.

in retrospect, this was actually a pretty terrific image. now that i’m an adult ‘commercial artist’, i recognize the serious skill and experience the correct nostalgic sentimentality when i look at it. it hangs on my wall.

anyway, this silly looking skeleton failed rather quickly in the marketplace. it wasn’t scary. since it was the first of the ‘happy’ skeletons, it was new and different. and finally, it was too fragile. it was anonymous. it was “vernacular.” it became lost.

ADDENDUM:

AC:the other really huge “seasonal decoration” company was dennison’s. they tended to emphasize the milder seasonal decor. but beistle did a lot of other holidaze, too. but, when it came to halloween, beistle was boss!

… i wish i knew, luhrs (have a last name? dunno.) i’ll continue looking.

… but, the fact that beistle “killed off” scary completely when the “happy” came in suggests something a little more profound that is described. i think it was all those old sensitive touchy-feelie late sixties liberals who ruined halloween for us. oh, and that pesky tylenol killer.. and the razor blades in the apples (never a documented case)….hey, i’m a liberal, too. don’t forget that. hell, i’m a fookin’ socialist, too. i wanna take from the rich and give it to ME!! that’s the worst kind of socialist! a corrupt one!

but, keep in mind that the world changed into a liberal joke in the early 70′s. man, there was a reason reagan got elected (and michael deaver, a great ad guy, exploited it to the hilt.)

… most of  you weren’t old enough to feel the power of radical chic annoyingly self-righteous asshole liberalism back then. it’s sort of like how awful the idiot culture in seattle has become, only not quite as bad.

you know what i mean, too….hippies became yuppies. it’s a contimnuation of the baby boomer ethic of the self. gimmee gimmee gimmee. the whiner generation (“but, what about ME?!?”)

i wish they would go away. but, we’ll have to suffer right behind them all the way through the rest of our lives.

think about it. look at the “great presidents’ the boomer generation produced – all TWO of them – clinton and bush. (obama is post boomer). man, talk about a pathetic selfish icky set of presidents….depends on how you chronologically define the bracket. to be honest, the boomer swine will claim obama, no matter what. so, you can expect tom brokaw to shift the time bracket along to snag obama. that would be EVERY boomer of him (them)….

…i know the general time frame. but, i’ve always fit just behind the boomer generation. culturally speaking, i’m part of the group that had to follow in the foot steps of a slightly older bunch who did everything first, took all the good jobs, had all the uninhibited sex, took all the drugs, got all the diseases, fought vietnam, discoed the night away, etc. etc.

by the time i cam along, there weren’t any jobs left, everybody was hooked on cocaine and they even took sex away (with aids). their generation ruined the banking system and took everybody’s retirement (except theirs because they got all the bonus money). man they have a lousy track record. it was the age bracket starting about five years ahead of me who are the classic boomers first in line. they left nothing for the kids behind them.

…anyway, this is a stupid discussion. they (the boomers) don’t care. they’re all too busy telling us how great they were.

…the idea was that it was supposed to perforated and die-cut so you could remove the skull face and actually wear it as a mask at the show. but the printer sort whimped out on the bindery work, so nobody ever figgered it out. i had a vision of an intense sweaty drunken 3B concert crowd all wearing my poster on their face and moshing to the mono men. never happened quite that way….