Thursday, October 3, 2013

Burtons' increasing mental instability-Nick Arceneaux


(note, this picture looks like Alice Cooper but I assure you it is Tim Burton)
In further inspection of every story that Burton has ever written, we can find several reoccurring themes such as abandonment, loss, or isolationism. The way Burton interweaves these themes into is short poems reflects the amount of time Burton has spent analyzing himself as well as others. Many of the stories include characters that are hailed as worthless and are unimportant. There are quite a few stories that include this theme so it is quite possible that Burton often felt this way often as a child. He also writes about a mermaid who fell in love with a musician and how they have a child but it drags the mermaid down and eventually kills her. I think that Burton wrote this story to reflect on the way he thought his parents thought of him. As if he was the anchor but before being drowned they sent him away. I do not feel as though Burton included many of Jung's archetypes. In his films, yes, in his poetry, no. Burton indeed feels like he was abandoned as a child, and coincidentally most of the characters in his book are children. I think that each child in every story reflects the way Burton felt at a particular time in his childhood. Jung’s archetypes, on the other hand, are used in many different forms not unlike Burton’s stories. Burton uses the “neglected child” in his poetry most often and it is apparent that Burton holds some grudge towards those that abandoned him as a child. A topic he never really touches lightly is the idea of the parent. Whenever he writes of parents in his stories they are almost always malicious or evil in some way and I think that says a lot about the kinds of feelings he has had. That isn’t to say that all of his work is depressing. While Burton’s work may be dark and slightly macabre, he brings to the surface the harsh reality of the world that we live in. His view of reality is so harsh that he can seamlessly transition to fairytales about monsters and then back to a normal world. But to Burton it isn’t normal. It isn’t normal that the world is so harsh, it isn’t normal that there are abandoned children. In his head he believes he was abandoned for a reason. Tim Burton believes that he will never be loved and so to compensate he surrounds himself with people who are deeply passionate about their work. Through passion he can relate to those who have ever felt the same way and that is how he shows his love. Through his movies and stories, rather than through his physical being. 

1 comment:

  1. You say that Tim Burton doesn't use archetypes in his poems, but I think they are actually littered with them. When Jung says "archetypes" he means that the characters act out in a specific way that allows them to be individuals. These specific actions are deemed by Jung as "archetypes." The monster archetype is all over in the way that Burton's characters act out and try to express themselves. For example, in "Mummy Boy" and "Roy, the Toxic Boy," the characters either act out in attempted violence (Mummy Boy) or seek forms of pleasure that differ from the norm (Toxic Boy). In these ways, they are ostracized by people who don't understand what they are doing and that they are trying to express themselves.

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