Johnston - Brie Boy

In the poem "Brie Boy", Brie Boy is a young child with a round of brie cheese for a head. None of the other children allowed Brie Boy to play with them because he is so different. At the same time, in the last line of the poem it says “but at least he went well with a nice chardonnay.” I think through this poem Tim Burton is trying to make the statement that society can either choose to reject something or someone that is seen as strange and unusual or it can choose to accept this difference. I also think that he is trying to make the statement about societies tendencies towards the artist. Many times an artist is rejected because they may create things that are out of the norm, like how Disney rejected Tim Burton’s drawings because they were not the normal happy, cheerful Disney drawings everyone was used to. On the contrary, society also has a tendency to use artists because of how different they seem. The example of this in “Brie Boy” is that at first everyone rejected him because of his differences, but over time they will all want a piece of him because he goes so well with “a nice chardonnay”. These contrasting sides of society can relate to Burton’s own life. When Tim Burton was young he was considered the black sheep of his family and was eventually shipped off to his grandparent’s house. When he was at Disney, his drawings weren’t used because they were too different. Now, Tim Burton is one of the most well known movie directors and thousands of people are vying for a chance to work with him. Think about how many people could have possibly tried to use Tim Burton’s success in order to build up his or her own success. I think the possibility of people using Tim Burton’s talent and status in the film industry in order to further their career is one of the reasons why Burton is very careful and meticulous in the choosing of whom he associates himself with, from his film crew to his actors.  As far as Carl Jung’s archetypes, I think that Brie Boy is the monster archetype, not because he is evil, but because many times in Tim Burton’s work the monster is someone who is different and misunderstood. In Gothic Fantasy, it emphasizes how Burton more closely relates to the monsters or villains in is stories or films because they are the characters in his works that are misunderstood or damaged as a result of isolation and hatred because they are different than others. I also believe that Brie Boy is the manifestation of Tim Burton’s feelings about isolation and about how alone and different he felt for most of his life, but also how he realizes that many times society goes through trends of hating something that is different or strange, to using the unusual qualities of this person or thing for their own personal gain.