Hasty, Anna- Reflective Blog

            During this Tim Burton Freshman Seminar course I learned much more than I thought I would. I learned how to analyze things that I would have never noticed before into a much deeper meaning. For example, with the very first film we watched, Beetlejuice, I would have never really taken notice to just how much they make fun of death and life. I would have just sat and enjoyed the film without thinking about the true meaning behind it. I also noticed that most things, especially in Tim Burton’s films, will go completely unnoticed by it’s viewers. For instance, the meaning behind the dark colors in the city of Gotham in Batman and/ or Batman Returns or the meaning behind the bright pastels that dominated the suburban neighborhood in Edward Scissorhands. Everything Tim Burton puts into his work has some sort of meaning behind it, it has some sort of message he is sending out to anyone that is willing to look closely enough to find it.

           

            Before I had taken this course I had seen Tim Burton as a director who just makes eccentric movies that are enjoyable to watch, but after this course I have learned that films can show how the director feels about the world and his experiences in life. For example, Burton constantly has conflicts between parent and child in his work. In Burton’s film Big Fish, he displayed strong trials and tribulations between the father Edward Bloom and his son William Bloom. This related to Burton’s own experiences with his father (and parents in general) about how he did not get along with them or see eye to eye about how life worked. Through his films Burton not only tells the story being displayed, but also he alludes to stories in his own life. Burton also does not ignore the strange and unusual like most people in the world, he forces people to look at it and makes it a main prerogative in all of his films. By doing this, Burton has made me question if what society deems normal is what is really best for humankind or if we’ve developed norms that hurt us before help us. A time in which Burton does this is when he brings up the aspect of suburbia in his films Beetlejuice and Edward Scissorhands. Burton shows this suburban life as safe, but extremely boring. It causes his viewers who are truly looking into the meaning behind these films to question if living like this is really living or just merely existing. My time in this Tim Burton Seminar has taught me to look closer at all of these things and to find the meaning behind not only films directed or produced by Tim Burton, but films in general. This course has taught me to be a more analytical person in general of any time of artistic work I encounter.