Americans are always focused on something new. There are so many issues going on in
the world and new things being invented that it is hard for anyone to take
their minds off what is going on in that exact moment. Our society is built based on living in
the present and when we focus on our future we are talking about getting a
degree in education, receiving a promotion in our job, and making a family. Everyone has a different future planned
out that they have created. Death
is definitely a theme in our culture, but it is not something that people are
facing everyday. Death is seen as
something dark in our culture and it is hard to make light of such a serious
situation.
In beetlejuice, once the main characters have died they
receive a book that is called “Handbook for the Recently Deceased,” and right
from the start the main character, Adam Maitland reads the book as Handbook for
the Recently Diseased. No one
thinks in the way of “oh I died here is my handbook,” everyone is afraid of
death, but does not focus on it in their everyday lives. The whole movie describes death in a
teasing tone, which I think is similar to the way that Americans view death in
today’s world. People joke about
how humans are going to die to make the reality of it seem less scary than it
actually may be.
Beetlejuice, as well as, the main two characters Adam and
Barbara all deny death throughout the movie. Beetlejuice, has ads about helping people who are dead and
never seems to accept the fact that he is deceased. Beetlejuice seems to do whatever he can to be able to stay
alive, especially in the scene where he almost marries Lydia. It is ironic that he is going to try
and marry someone, although he is dead.
Beetlejuice is selfish in the way that he wanted to save himself, while
Barbara and Adam were fading into nothing. No one wants to accept the dark of being dead. I think that the way that Tim Burton
created this movie was clever because even though it was dark and the theme was
about death he made it into a lighter situation. I think that Tim Burton really emphasized that people do
struggle with death denial and refuse to accept it.
I like what you said about "oh I died, here is my handbook" because that makes it sound like there is a plan or instructions after death when most of the time people think of death as a dark and unsure concept.
ReplyDelete-Natasha Martinez
I totally agree with you when you state that death is seen as something dark in our culture. That is true. Death is something that Americans seem to forget to mention in order to avoid it. It's like we're running away from our fate. But deep inside we know it is inevitable so we try to make light of the situation and joke about people who are already dead , how we might die or in this case a death that has already happened to us.
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