Nick Arceneaux-The World of Tim Burton

The World of Time Burton was a course that taught me many things about Tim Burton the man, Tim Burton the poet, and Tim Burton the storyteller. In life any good quality comes from experience. The fact that Tim Burton does what he does so well only adheres to the fact that he has been through what most people would call an interesting life. I find inspiration in reading Gothic Fantasy because I know that Burton had a dream and he chased it and it became reality. What have I really learned through this course though? I view this course less of a rigorous class and more of a reflective class because Burton shares the same feelings and emotions on screen that we feel inside ourselves. The true magic of watching one of his movies is being able to relate to the character on screen even though it may be in a fairytale. I like to think of human emotions being subconsciously ingrained into the human psyche for millennia. We share the same fears, beliefs, and morals that our ancestors had. How clever is it to pick up on that knowledge and to use it to your advantage. But I don't ever think that it was Burton's plan to get famous or rich. I think Burton just wanted to live a happy life while pursuing a career in animation. Of course genius will never go unnoticed though. For a man with such a childhood as his I would have expected less to come of his life but I think that is the beauty of it all. That is what makes him so inspirational is that he came from relatively nothing except his talent and imagination and he made something out of a bland and boring life. I think in that sense Burton really lives out the saying "there is beauty in the dark." His life can also show what a killer suburban life is to the malleable minds of children. It's like being put in a gray corner, neither here nor there. In between the city and the country, in between both extremes, the black and the white. Suburbia is limbo for creativity. One can go as far as to say suburbia kills creativity, and it does. Burton beat the odds though, he made it out of suburbia alive and still has some (albeit some) of his sanity left. He is the hero of a generation of emotionally charged teenagers and abandoned rejects alike. He is the Jesus of suburbia (stole that line from Green Day.) Seriously though, he is a little bit of a savior for the kids who have horrible lives. Burton can make you laugh, he can make you wince, he can even make you cry. But why does anything make you feel a certain way? It is because you can relate to that creature on the screen. If you can relate your audience to a character on a screen then you are giving the viewer a peephole into your mind. And if Burton's films are any indication of what his mind is like, then he must be living in beautiful insanity. 

Arceneaux-A Close Shave

In Sweeney Todd Tim Burton encourages the viewer to sympathize with Mr. Todd and Mrs. Lovett because of the way Victorian Era London is. In the film we see the murder of many people, which is often very bloody and gory, who are then used to make Mrs. Lovett's famous meat pies. The viewer is detached from the emotional response to feel sad about the death of the victims because they are under the influence that this is how the world works. The dramatic shift in the movie takes place when Mrs. Lovett and Mr. Todd sing the song about man eating man just after killing Signor Perelli. It is then that Todd realizes that in time his revenge on the judge will come but taking revenge on the more affluent members of society is just as sweet. Todd and Lovett represent the lower or middle class of society and of course the affluent people represent the upper class. In that time period the lower class was getting trampled on by the affluent. It would seem as if Todd killing the affluent would be the lower class's revenge on the society they live in and the meat pies would be an iteration of "man eating man". As people, it is easy to sympathize with Todd in the first five minutes of the film but after that all sympathy is gone when he begins to slice open necks. See, what is difficult about trusting Todd is that we know his backstory already so the rest of the movie is pretty much about vengeance, which is understandable in its own right but Todd begins to focus less on the judge and more on society as a whole. Even if the most sympathetic of viewers can see through the veil, all that is left is the wretched soul of a man who has been beaten, kicked, and jailed all for the sins of the flesh. Mrs. Lovett, on the other hand, is more wicked because she has no tear-jerking backstory. Other than the fact that she lusted for Todd, she has no reason to kill except for making her meat pies tastier. For a brief moment we can sympathize for her when she takes in young Toby but we can soon see that rather than want to she is chasing after a lost dream where she has Todd as a husband and Toby as a son. When she soon realizes that he can foil their plan for vengeance, she quickly ditches the caring mother act and damns Toby into the meat room, where she then plans to kill him. I think that the movie is more of a homage to revolution than it is anything else. It shows the entrepreneurship of two individuals who work hand in hand to get what they want. In this way the movie further reiterates its point that rather than vengeance, the movie also focuses on how people have to make a living in Victorian Era London and how anything goes.

Arceneaux-The bigger the pond, the smaller the fish.

In Big Fish Tim Burton likes to blend fantasy with reality and one of the ways he does this is by having the character Ed Bloom interact with more gothic like creatures. I think that Burton viewed himself as a gothic creature that was misunderstood because that is what these characters are. They aren't evil or sinister they are just misunderstood and Ed Bloom is a genuinely good man that comes along and treats them with equal respect. We find out they these characters are nothing more than misunderstood, good people. I think that is why they like Edward, because he gives them respect and makes them feel important when no one else has and I think Ed likes them because they aren't evil, they don't try to get over on him, and they help him when they can. Two scenes that really illustrate this are the Siamese twin scene and the giant scene. I think that in turn Edward, while not appearing different, was just as zany and interesting as any one of the grotesque looking creatures and so he felt like he fit in with them. This movie is a true homage to the role of the father in the family because it presents a view of the father that is beloved and cherished and not stern or mean. It really says something that Burton chose to direct this movie at this time in his life because it is reflective of the movie itself where the father dies and the son is left to assume the role of the new father. I think that is great how Burton can bring that to a film but it is also a little frightening to me how someone could put a little bit of their life into a movie for millions of people to see but I somehow doubt many people knew enough about Burton to connect his personal life and the movie's events.

God Bless Amer...er...I mean Mars.

 Burton lovingly pays tribute to his idol, Ed Wood, in Mars Attacks! He reuses many ideas and models that Wood used for his movie, Plan 9 From Outer Space. One thing that he did not reuse, however, was the ironic and satirical nature of Mars Attacks! towards humanity as a whole. One of the last scenes in the movie (see fig. 1) portrays a mariachi band proudly performing the national anthem in front of the, well, congress building. I really find this scene especially interesting because when one thinks of the American National Anthem one usually thinks of big marching military bands, not a standard Mexican mariachi band.

Something else I found interesting is the fact that Burton chooses Jack Nicholson to play the part of both the greedy, casino entrepreneur and the president of the United States. One would ask why he does this but the answer is in Burtonesque fashion. Burton chooses for Nicholson to play both characters to show the similarities between the two. Apparently, Burton cannot let go of his Batman mentality as he even uses a "Two Face" like character in Mars Attacks!.

Another scene that shows how Burton mocks the military is the scene where the general goes up against the martian king (fig. 2). He is shown to be wearing typical military garb, with aviators (military style sunglasses), and two pistols. Burton goes beyond this stereotypical image and literally miniaturizes the general to the size of a cockroach and is promptly squished. Perhaps what Burton is saying here is that the military likes to put on a tough front but if something like this ever happened the military would be crushed like insignificant ants.

I also enjoy how the film portrays the deadly martian menace. Well, they do like Playboy Magazine and sound an awful lot like that guy from the Aflac commercials. Thinking back on it these don't really seem like your typical bloodthirsty aliens at all. They look like skeletons and human beings have skeletons...oh wait. They are basically just like us aren't they? Well if you think about it, they are. They represent the human mantra to kill, Kill, KILL! They even have scenes where they show the martians and human doing the exact same thing, dissecting corpses.

But, I do have a question, why did the bodies either turn green or red? Was it because Burton couldn't stand to make another movie without something that reminded him of christmas? Granted, there was no mistletoe but why else would there be the exact same color patterns of Christmas in a Burton movie?

Oh, in the beginning of the movie there is a particular farmer that is not normally a person you think of when you think about midwest farmers. Well, he was asian, and i'm not being racist at all but the stereotypical farmer is not an asian guy. Just another thing that Burton pokes fun at in the movie.

Fig. 1

Fig. 2

Woody

In Tim Burton' s homage to Ed Wood the filmmaker sheds light upon the hidden side of one of Mr. Burton's idols, Ed Wood. Ed Wood was a strange man but the reason why Burton chose to make a biopic of his life is because Burton and Wood are much the same individual. Edward Wood was a cross-dresser and although it has not been confirmed if Mr. Burton is as well, we can only assume that Burton finds this a honorable trait. The passion and perseverance that Ed Wood showed in his making his films inspired Burton to never give up especially when he was told by Disney that he wasn't what they were looking for. Burton is a misfit and so is Wood so in turn to not be considered as loners and misfits they create a "band of misfits" that help create the magic of each movie. There is also a certain magic in creating films as we can see in Plan 9 From Outer Space. In creating a movie about creating a movie Burton lets the viewer take a peep into the way he thinks of the bold pursuit of movie magic. The backdrops and back-lots of the movie studios also show that the reality of movie-making is less glamorous than people think it to be. In the same way Burton shows love for Ed Wood, Ed Wood shows his love for Bela Lugosi. Burton, in showing his admiration of Wood's pursuits, then does not only show love for just Ed Wood but for a great deal of loners and weirdos out there because Burton is one himself. He sends out a message to all the wacky people out there that they are not alone and are welcomed in his movies and stories. The craziest people are often the most creative.
Burton also addresses the quirks of Wood when some filmmakers would have ignored them completely. Ed Wood being a cross-dresser, as seen by Burton, creates a dark side to humanly pleasures. Burton likes to find characters that have a life hidden away from society, into the inner self. Wood finds comfort in dressing like a woman and feels that he can take charge when wearing women's clothing. Burton does this with many of his characters like Batman, Bruce Wayne feels like he can take charge when he wear a cape and hides his face. It is almost as if Burton presents a transformation from the inside to the outside, much like an inversion of self where what was on the inside is now on the outside. For a person to truly understand the whys and hows one must show them true selves to the people that are the closest to them. Like Ed Wood has done, Wood showed his inner self to the people closest to him and most accepted that. Many people would argue that Wood was a nutcase and a freak but I think that Burton understands Wood better than most people because he can relate to him. That is why Burton chose to portray him in such a positive light, from Burton's point of view.  

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. 

Arceneaux-Bats and Penguins

Batman and the Penguin are virtually cut from the same cloth. In the beginning of Batman Returns we see the birth of a monster. The monster represents the essential trickster figure in modern lore. The Penguin is imprisoned in a cage as a baby which is a physical representation of a trickster figure. When compared side by side, Batman and the Penguin are not so different. Both have a psychological need to exact revenge due to the circumstances of their abandonment. The Penguin seeks to damn the first borns of Gotham due to his abandonment as a child. Batman seeks to damn criminals and evildoers due to *his* abandonment as a child. Both characters lurk below ground, in the shadows to hide from the light of day. Perhaps the reason why Batman seeks revenge is because he feels guilty that he is alive after his parents were murdered. The Penguin wants to kill the Batman and the first borns of Gotham because he is jealous of the childhood he missed out on. If only the Penguin would have known what happened to Batman's parents then the Penguin would have understood his need to seek justice. When compared to Bruce Wayne's pursuit of justice it seems almost as if the Penguin is like a child acting out because he didn't get his way. But then this fact would reinforce that now he is living out his life in a sick, child like state. The Penguin, in not having gone through puberty, also acts in a very lusty way. This is also a major indication of the trickster figure. He is lusty, smooth talking, and can influence people to do things they would normally not do. It is also necessary to examine the comparisons between animals. Batman's namesake comes from a bat, where the Penguin's namesake is the penguin. Bats are silent, winged creatures who sulk and wander in the darkness. Penguin's are goofy, dedicated creatures who love the cold and hunt in packs. The fact that the penguin is a pack animal shows how the Penguin is able to possess his "children" to do his bidding for him. However, Batman also does the same in the gadgetry that he uses. The Penguin rises to power and fame as he uses Batman as the scapegoat for his  evildoings. Batman eventually discovers this and uses the Penguin's personality against him as he shows the citizens of Gotham the true nature of the Penguin.

Arceneaux-Beeteljuice

I think that Americans are afraid of death because the English culture is generally afraid of death. If you look at Spanish cultures and Japanese cultures, they revere death way differently than most Western cultures do. I think that Burton likes to poke fun at the universal idea of death as being "the end." He likes to create characters that involve death into their personality. Lidia was strange and unusual, Beeteljuice physically looked like death. He incorporates all of these elements into his directing as well. It's interesting to see the way his characters move and in the manner in which they speak. You can tell Beeteljuice's way of speaking was vastly different when compared to Lidia's or the Maitman's. Burton denies death very obviously: the main characters deny death. The main characters are supposed to represent the basic cast of the movie, the basic story, and so on. Burton is not the only director to make fun of the seriousness of death. In a way, one can view "Beeteljuice" as a satire on death. I particularly like the scene in which Oslo says "You know they say when you die you become a civil servant."...that really is apparently what happens. Also, I noticed the way the flat receptionist jokes about how he died. He says he looks a little...flat.

Burton's particular sense of comedy undoubtedly comes from his lonesome childhood. You can see traces of Suburbia in "Beetlejuice." The main characters are typical suburban yuppies. You can also see traces of gothic lore. Ghosts, possessions, lost spirits, and even some of the architecture in the film reflects this influence. Lidia's step-mother's sculptures gave Burton an excuse to use his stop motion techniques to make the inanimate objects come to life. Which goes to say that in every movie he has ever done there are traces of the mystical or supernatural. He also has an abundance of favoritism that comes into play with his actors and composers. Lately, he has been using Johnny Depp as his actor of choice and Danny Elfman as his composer of choice. Perhaps he feels as if he and Elfman have a similar way of thinking? If that is the case then Tim Burton could be offering an insight into his world through the various arts. if he chooses Danny Elfman then he must have a certain appeal to Burton. Burton thinks Depp acts in a way that reminds him of himself  otherwise he would not cast him in so many roles.