Traditionally, one of the best parts of Halloween is putting on a costume, which means adopting another identity—splitting your personality, if you will.
Some, however, are lucky enough to not have to dress up to discover their doppelganger. Whether it’s because their egos are so large that one normal identity can’t contain them, or a demon has been unleashed inside of them or they’re just bored. Everyone from the most famous celebrities to mere students have fallen under the curse of multiple personality disorder.
Jekyll and Hyde were the trendsetters, the Madonnas of schizophrenia. Theirs is a rare case of physical transformation, unless you include early and late Barry Bonds. Today’s popular music is rife with the phenomenon: there’s Beyonce, turned by a post-“Crazy in Love” explosion into the demonic and less talented Sasha Fierce. There’s regular, everyday sweetheart Miley Cyrus (she’s just this girl that’s rocking kicks!) and superstar blonde Hannah Montana, famous for a kids’ TV show and not posing for Annie Leibovitz. If you didn’t get the reference the first time, T.I. became T.I.P., pitting self against self. Wonder what kind of envy Freud would call that.
Bowie’s a good one. He was David Bowie, Ziggy Stardust—homosexual space alien—and the Thin White Duke, a period in which he supposedly doesn’t remember because of all the coke (doubt anyone here could relate to that). Some bridge their personalities within genre, but Joaquin Phoenix made the unprecedented move from actor to rapper/full-time beard. Think showers in those sunglasses? Does he shower?
What mysteries do these personalities procure? Who else has an evil twin that goes bump in the night? And might they even be other Duke students, even your own roommate? We here at recess know of at least one: our editor, Andrew Hibbard, who moonlights as radio personality Ira Glass. Some people don’t need Halloween costumes.