Jump - Beetlejuice

Americans tend to refuse thoughts and talk of death because we are too unfamiliar with death. In the past, generation after generation would live and die in the same home. When a relative died, it was the duty of the family who placed the body in the coffin and buried it. The coffin was kept in the home, and the funeral was thrown in the home as well. The average lifespan was also a lot shorter back then, and so people were much more accustomed to death. Today, seeing a dead body is considered a very dramatic experience, and I am pretty sure most people would be extremely uncomfortable trying to sleep with the knowledge that a dead body is in their home. Death will always be a part of life, but for some reason it has become taboo to discuss in our culture. For example, if we learn someone close to someone we know dies, many people immediately feel uncomfortable and awkward and are unsure of how to handle the situation. Over the years death has become the elephant in the room that I am unsure if we will ever acknowledge.

I believe one of Burton's main goals or hopes when making this movie was to encourage people to laugh at themselves. Every single one the characters takes themselves too seriously, and they are all exaggerated versions of many of the people in our society. Within this goal, I think he was also poking fun at how present day Americans view death. So rather than this film refusing death, Burton replaced the audience's uncomfort with death with something else: laughter. The audience is still denying death but just in a different way. For example, in one scene the character Otho makes a joke that women who commit suicide will become civil servants in the afterlife. This joke is referencing the woman who works in the civil services office for the dead who revealed that she took her own life. In a normal setting, suicide humor would be found extremely insensitive, but in this scene, it brings a few laughs. Another example is Betelgeuse's first scene. He is reading the obituary in the newspaper and it states "Please Welcome the Maitlands". Obviously the obituaries in our newspapers are not quite so cheery which is what makes this so humorous. It is pointless to ignore death, it is inevitable, but nonetheless, Burton knows our society will not stop being afraid of it. So instead Burton forces the audience to laugh at their own ignorance and fear. This way, the audience is still able to ignore any serious thoughts about death, but maybe they will stop taking themselves so seriously.