The curse of the endless carnival
The giddiness and abandon of the mask-wearing holidays — Halloween, Mardi Gras, Carnival, etc. — has everything to do with the changing of identities. A man dons a mask and behaves as he normally would not, because after all it’s not really him that had a dalliance in that alley, or rode a large dog down the street, or started a minor revolution. It was his other, the self let loose when his face, his identity, was concealed.
The night becomes that much weirder still when everyone is wearing a mask, and he staggers through the crowd without recognizing a single face. What a strange parade that would be.
Many autistic people move through this strange festival atmosphere every day of their lives, because many autistic people have face-blindness. Prosopagnosia is a curious condition on its own, but when combined with the other communication difficulties experienced by the autistic person (speech problems, social anxiety and so on), can further isolate them from the world.
The confusion of the mask is easy to understand; face-blindness, less so. Simply put, it’s the brain’s inability to recognize the particular orientation of eyes, nose, cheeks and mouth that makes up a unique human face. The autistic person sees the face, but can’t get the brain to assign those qualities to a known person. The best way I’ve seen it described is with stones.
Part of the joy of abandoning the identity during the festival season is that it will be regained in the light of day. How much stranger would it be to wander the streets of the carnival among its endless madmen and not know the way out?
Oct 31th, 2009 7:07pm
