MrRING
Android Futureman
- Joined
- Aug 7, 2002
- Messages
- 6,053
The Ghost Evolution thread has reminded me of a vague idea that I wanted to post about here.
I've been interested in the history of sci-fi fans and fandom and other such geeky stuff, and there have come to light many resources about the costumes that people wear at them and how they have changed over the years, like this:
https://www.cosplaycentral.com/them...world-science-fiction-convention-1966-cosplay
I would have thought that it had begun more recently than even 1966, but it can be traced back to 1939's Worldcon at least:
http://www.fiawol.org.uk/fanstuff/then archive/cosplay/cos01.htm
What struck me about the early costuming was how close they appeared to be an extension of the way the classic "fancy dress" ball outfits would look, a little like a mix of the antiquated and the futuristic all at the same time.
https://www.mimimatthews.com/2016/0...ll-popular-costumes-of-the-late-19th-century/
So how does this related to ghosts and other phenomenon involving manifestations? It's just this minor notion: the evolution of looks in fancy dress ball costuming as it continued to be a relatively common human experience, where there were nods to an idealized past for whatever era (say the folks of 1585 by dressing in a medieval style), and how for people in later eras those pasts were part of what became the fancy dress for them (say in 1685 the clothes of 1585 became their costume, and for the folks of 1785 would see the normal dress of 1685 as a costume, but a swindling few might still dress like 1585 still).... A similar trend seems to follow the visualization of ghosts as being from an earlier era and rarely their own, yet with a sliding timetable where really older ghosts seem to fade away in reports over time and are replaced by more ghosts from more recent times. And taking somebody like Springheel Jack, who seemed both ancient and futuristic at the time, he'd likely be just seen as old-fashioned in terms of his described dress now.
And in the way that in cosplay (and normal modern clothing) there are slighter and slighter differences between what people wear these days, so few fashions of the recent past look so outlandish that you'd look strange. And it seems like more people report ghosts just slightly out of touch with modern outfits, or in more vaugue terms than that (shadowmen etc).
Is this atomic half-life of ghosts and other fiends related to how we see the past and it cloaks whatever the phenomenon is with this human trait of keeping the near past with embellishments of the future (or strangeness), while the much older stuff fades away?
I've been interested in the history of sci-fi fans and fandom and other such geeky stuff, and there have come to light many resources about the costumes that people wear at them and how they have changed over the years, like this:
https://www.cosplaycentral.com/them...world-science-fiction-convention-1966-cosplay
I would have thought that it had begun more recently than even 1966, but it can be traced back to 1939's Worldcon at least:
http://www.fiawol.org.uk/fanstuff/then archive/cosplay/cos01.htm
What struck me about the early costuming was how close they appeared to be an extension of the way the classic "fancy dress" ball outfits would look, a little like a mix of the antiquated and the futuristic all at the same time.
https://www.mimimatthews.com/2016/0...ll-popular-costumes-of-the-late-19th-century/
So how does this related to ghosts and other phenomenon involving manifestations? It's just this minor notion: the evolution of looks in fancy dress ball costuming as it continued to be a relatively common human experience, where there were nods to an idealized past for whatever era (say the folks of 1585 by dressing in a medieval style), and how for people in later eras those pasts were part of what became the fancy dress for them (say in 1685 the clothes of 1585 became their costume, and for the folks of 1785 would see the normal dress of 1685 as a costume, but a swindling few might still dress like 1585 still).... A similar trend seems to follow the visualization of ghosts as being from an earlier era and rarely their own, yet with a sliding timetable where really older ghosts seem to fade away in reports over time and are replaced by more ghosts from more recent times. And taking somebody like Springheel Jack, who seemed both ancient and futuristic at the time, he'd likely be just seen as old-fashioned in terms of his described dress now.
And in the way that in cosplay (and normal modern clothing) there are slighter and slighter differences between what people wear these days, so few fashions of the recent past look so outlandish that you'd look strange. And it seems like more people report ghosts just slightly out of touch with modern outfits, or in more vaugue terms than that (shadowmen etc).
Is this atomic half-life of ghosts and other fiends related to how we see the past and it cloaks whatever the phenomenon is with this human trait of keeping the near past with embellishments of the future (or strangeness), while the much older stuff fades away?