The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com b-side Thursday, October 31, 2019 — 3B We all have that pair of friends who, almost- siblings in forbidden love or not, decide to dress up as Margot and Richie Tenenbaum of Wes Anderson’s “The Royal Tenenbaums” for Halloween. She wears a pinstripe Lacoste tennis dress. He wears a shaggy-wig- headband combo that falls over shoulders in a Fila tee. Their costumes are a hit, though nobody at the party knows who they’re supposed to be. After they spill the beans, the party-goer nods and smiles like they’ve “maybe seen the end of that one on HBO,” and the one guy they’re mutual friends with who never stops talking about Wes Anderson grins at all the poor uninitiated souls. When the Richie-and- Margot-for-a-night pair get home, they post a picture of their ‘fits on Etsy and get added to a government database somewhere of all the people to call if our alien invaders’ one weakness is the inability to see humans dressed as quirky characters from early-aughts indie movies. These two outfits, along with Chas Tenenbaum’s iconic red Adidas jumpsuit, make “The Royal Tenenbaums” one of the most thematically costumed films in Anderson’s catalogue. Not only do the three individual outfits feed into the characterizations of the siblings who wear them, the presence of the outfits, and how they exist as tokens of the characters’ traumas, plays into the film’s atmosphere of a childhood disaster that will never end. Going one by one, the outfits Richie, Margot and Chas wear are all tied to the grief each of them are trying to beat. Richie wears the remnants of his tennis ‘fit, but he hides it under a camel-hair coat and trousers. He even hides his face, covering it with a beard and long hair, searching for a way to free himself of the embarrassment of his past — both athletically with tennis and romantically with the adopted Margot. Chas’s red jumpsuit (and the identical jumpsuits he makes his two boys Ari and Uzi wear) signal a father on high alert. Terrified of the dangers he and his kids face at every moment after their plane crashes, killing his wife, Chas forces the whole family to pack light, to wear clothes that make them ready to run or fight at a moment’s notice. Though Margot is never seen participating in any athletic activities, she too wears a sporty ‘fit, usually a Lacoste dress covered by a lush fur outercoat. Her outfit’s incongruous link to the passion she’s never hinted at can be explained by her lost, repressed, forbidden love for her stepbrother, resident tennis star, Richie. And whew, man, Wes could have done better on this last one. Not great, giving your one female lead an outfit that characterizes her as being all-encompassingly hung up on a guy while Richie and Chas’s costumes are so individually and vocationally driven. Too bad. In a film about “getting over it,” everything links back to trauma. The house on Archer Ave. is as much a character as any of the Tenenbaums in the film, and the way it’s decorated (the house’s “costume”) plays a big part in illustrating how the incidences of the Tenenbaum’s childhood has forever come back to haunt them. The walls in the Tenenbaum house are covered with moments of success from the children’s childhood. Karate medals and trophies hang next to colorful watercolor paintings of family and friends. In Richie’s room, joyous little pictographs of his father and his family fill the space between a pulsing green and blue. Everything in the house is a reminder of what should have been, of how things should have turned out, of the successes of old that never translated into the future. These moments exist frozen in time in the Tenenbaum house, and as the movie progresses, we see it takes all three characters returning (“That night, Etheline found all of her children living together under the same roof for the first time in seventeen years”) to the scene of the crime before they’re able to exorcise those demons, to be able to finally beat what’s been holding them back for their entire adult lives. What I love most about a meticulous director like Wes Anderson is that, with everything in his movies so hyper-specific — every lamp, rug, Sharpie mark on a polka- dotted rat seemingly chosen by him — there are these opportunities for totally tangential meaning-making (the whole reading into the costumes of the characters and the house above) that might not have anything to do with what Anderson was thinking when he made the choice. I find this misalignment to be incredibly exciting. To make an artistic decision off of pure instinct and to have it still wrap around into some theme or characterization you’re not aware you’ve been building along the way has to stand as a great testament to the artist’s gut. In the director’s commentary for “The Royal Tenenbaums,” while talking about why each of the characters dresses how they do, Anderson pauses when he gets to Chas. “The red jumpsuit, I’m not sure,” he says, “I guess I just thought it was funny.” Enough with Richie: Let’s all dress as Chas this year STEPHEN SATARINO Daily Film Editor YOUTUBE / TOUCHSTONE PICTURES WIKIMEDIA COMMONS / LOMA VISTA RECORDINGS FACEBOOK / LOMA VISTA RECORDINGS In theory, performance should be based on ability and ability alone. In practice, however, there are many other factors at play. For example, appearance often has just as large an impact on performance as ability does. As the great Deion Sanders once said, “Look good, feel good. Feel good, play good. Play good, (they) pay good. Pay good, live good. Live good, eat good. Die good.” He’s right: If you look the part, you’re most likely going to perform better, which will lead to improvements in all areas of life. That is, in everything but metal. In metal, you have to look the part to play the part, but that does not mean you end up rich in the end. In fact, it often means that you have to work a real job in addition to performing in a metal band. But do these acts really care? Of course they don’t. They’re in the business of metal music to make art, not make millions, and the best way for them to make their art is to get into costume. Costumes, whether the artists want to admit it or not, are a crucial aspect of metal. Hair metal relied on it (you really think these guys dressed like this when they weren’t touring?). Black metal relied on it (it really sells the image that these guys might actually be the dead reincarnate). Nu-metal relies on it (if the music is going to suck, they have to make it interesting somehow). Whatever this kind of metal is relies on it (words cannot describe the favors these costumes do for the music). Despite this, few bands lean as heavily into their costumes as Ghost does. For Ghost, anonymity is key. The members want to release as little personal information as possible and focus solely on the music, and to do so, they all adorn costumes to maintain their namelessness. What’s more, Ghost uses their costumes to create their own mythology, a sort of storyline surrounding the band and their music. Their live shows take themes and rituals from the Roman Catholic Church and reinterpret them through a Satanic lens. The typical crosses are inverted, white is converted to black and rather than praise the Holy Trinity, the band worships Satan. Every member of Ghost has their own character. The lead singer and guitarist assumes the role of Papa Emeritus, a mysterious figure shrouded in face paint meant to resemble a skull and dressed in Satanic “Papal” garb. The other four members — the bassist, guitarist, keyboardist and drummer — are part of an ensemble known as “A Group of Nameless Ghouls,” a group of underlings dressed in dark robes and metallic masks subservient to Papa Emeritus. They assume no individual identities, distinguished on stage by an alchemical symbol — when one of them speaks to the media, the quote is attributed to “A Nameless Ghoul.” Nothing more, nothing less. The lead singer, on the other hand, is a whole lot more interesting. He has undergone several transformations as his Papa Emeritus character. In fact, there have been four incarnations of the character: Papa Emeritus I, Papa Emeritus II, Papa Emeritus II’s younger brother Papa Emeritus III and the much older Papa Emeritus 0, each with their own unique and convoluted backstory and specific costume. For example, Papa Emeritus II was replaced by Papa Emeritus III because II was fired for lack of productivity in overthrowing churches and governments. Though the costumes were meant to conceal identities, one of the members was bound to have their identity revealed, and ultimately, it was Papa Emeritus. After being faced by a lawsuit set forth by former members of Ghost who claimed they lacked adequate compensation for their roles in the band, Papa Emeritus decided that it was time to oust himself. In 2017, after seven years of mystery, Tobias Forge, previously of Repugnant and Crashdïet, revealed himself to be the mastermind behind Ghost and all iterations of the mysterious Papa Emeritus character. Once the dust surrounding the lawsuit settled, Forge announced a new character: Cardinal Copia. Cardinal Copia is a figure once thought to be Papa Emeritus IV, yet he shares no relation to any manifestation of the Papa Emeritus lineage. He sports a plain mask with black eye sockets, complete heterochromia and blacked-out vestments, and according to Forge, has not yet earned his face paint yet. In addition to Cardinal Copia, Ghost also added several new members. In 2018, a third guitarist joined the “Group of Nameless Ghouls,” two new keyboardists known only as the “Ghoulettes” appeared, and, surprisingly, the artist formerly known as Papa Emeritus 0 returned and is currently known as the saxophone-wielding Papa Nihil. Forge plans for Cardinal Copia to be around for only five years, and after that, there’s no telling where the band might go next. The elaborate costumes, innumerable characters and Byzantine lore may seem distracting, but they really add a lot of dimensionality to Ghost. It makes the music seem that much more real. Songs like “Stand by Him” and “Rats” are inhuman rockers, and if the songs are performed by blatant humans, a lot of the band’s charm would be lost. Consider lines like this, “Them rats! / Into your sanctum, you let them in / Now, all your loved ones and all you kin / Will suffer punishments beneath the wrath of God / Never to forgive, never to forgive.” These lines wouldn’t pack nearly the same punch if, instead of a Satanic cardinal priest, an ordinary metalhead complete with a black tee, pasty skin and wispy, greasy hair said it. In fact, it would be comical, even farcical. The costumes are what allow the band to make the music that they do. It may all seem like a gimmick, but Ghost’s act is more than a mere schtick. A quote from A Nameless Ghoul (presumed to be Tobias Forge himself) states that “(h)ad not the music been rocking, I don’t think that people would have gone gaga just about our looks. Had we not had the looks, I’m not sure we would have gotten the same attention.” This is to say that, regardless of looks, the music will always be good, but the costumes are what elevate and separate Ghost from the more pedestrian heavy metal acts of today. The costuming and lore allow the band to transcend reality, and, in a way, become even more metal. Appearance doesn’t always dictate performance, but in the case of Ghost, the appearance of each members most certainly enhances their performance. Their appearance makes them that much more convincing, even when the band can’t be seen. The very thought of Ghost in full dress is enough to lure listeners into their Satanic world. When in costume, the band sinks fully into the music, unaware of the human world around them. If Ghost feels Satanic, they’ll play Satanic; If they play Satanic, they will make some of the most notable heavy metal out today. Ghost: Anonymity matters JIM WILSON Daily Arts Writer B-SIDE: MUSIC NOTEBOOK YOUTUBE / TOUCHSTONE PICTURES B-SIDE: FILM NOTEBOOK To make an artistic decision off of pure instinct and to have it still wrap around into some theme or characterization you’re not aware you’ve been building along the way has to stand as a great testament to the artist’s gut.