Falconer-Beetlejuice

It is common for young children to be afraid of the dark; but why does that room they are so familiar with become such a scary place when the sun goes down and the lights turn off? One theory is that naturally humans fear what they don’t know. In the light what you see is what you get but in the dark there is a chance you could miss something. So when it comes to the unknown death is the biggest mystery to us all. Do you go to heaven/hell? Will your soul be reincarnated to live another life? Maybe death is truly the end of everything and there is no such thing as an afterlife. Whatever death may mean no one can be positive. Because Americans are so afraid of this fate we begin to deny it. Tim Burton’s Beetlejuice denies death by portraying the afterlife as very similar to life hear on earth. The characters Adam and Barbara’s lives stay so similar after their accident it isn’t until Adams attempts to leave the house that they notice anything is wrong. They get to keep their same human form, live in the same house and be together. They even receive a “Handbook for the Recently Deceased” outlining afterlife for them. Now if Americans knew they would receive a handbook after death do you think they would fear it so much?

To most Americans death is an anathema because we are so unsure of what it means but to some it is an idea of peace. Jim Morrison of “The Doors” says, “People fear death even more than pain. It’s strange they fear death. Life hurts a lot more than death. At the point of death, the pain is over.” In Beetlejuice this alternative cultural outlook on death is shown by Lydia. At one point she feels so overwhelmed by her differences from those around her she considers that by taking her own life she can fix this. Adam and Barbara are horrified she thinks this and explain to her that life is much better than the afterlife. 

Beetlejuice, much like heaven/hell or reincarnation creates another theory of what happens after death. These theories help people to cope with their fears. The films comical twist on the afterlife helps to make it not so scary. But in the end that is denying death. All these theories are temporary distractions to keep us from facing the idea of no longer living. In the end all we have are entertaining movies or religious beliefs to explain death because who ever has encountered death can’t come back to tell the tale.

Johnston - Beetlejuice

Americans love control. One of the reasons we as a culture fear death because it is something that we cannot control. Americans tend to forget, whether purposefully or not, that death is inevitable. In the film, Beetlejuice, Burton turns the thought of death from something that people dread to something that they laugh at. For instance, in the scene with the waiting room. The waiting room in Beetlejuice is eerily similar to the ones that we wait countless hours in every year, but instead of being filled with sick people, this waiting room is filled with people who are dead. From a shark attack victim, to a magician's assistant who's trick obviously went wrong, to a man who seems to have choked on a bone. Burton does not accept the reality of death, instead he turns it into something that people can relate to.

Another way Burton rejects the idea of death is with the Maitlands. Typically in movies, death is seen as the end, but for the Maitlands, it is just the beginning. Throughout the film they continue to interact with Lydia as if they were alive. In the end of the story, Lydia comes home after school and Adam and Barbara ask her questions about her day and about her grades like any parent would. From this scene you get the feeling that the Maitlands are living somewhat of a "normal" life even though a girl discussing her daily events with dead people is anything but normal.

Death is seen as an anathema by our culture because we do not want to believe that everything that we do in life is for nothing. Take for instance someone who is a surgeon. Their parents spent thousands of dollars every year for them to attend college and eventually medical school. They will spend anywhere between 8 to 15 years in school in order to work in this profession. Then once they have a job as a surgeon they will spend 50-60 hours working in a hospital leaving minimal time for family. If they choose to have kids, they will spend thousands of dollars on their children's education just like their own parents did. The reason the American culture vehemently dislikes the thought of death is because we don't want to believe that we spend the majority of our lives either going to school or working just to have none of it matter once we die.

Frederick-Death as a Taboo

American's fear death. To America it is seen as the ultimate defeat, and in a culture that values success as one of the most important achievements, it is the ultimate fear.

I think there could be many reasons individuals would choose to ignore the inevitable reality of death, but as a culture, I believe American’s chose to ignore it because of it’s finite end. Death means that everything you have built in your life, all of your success is null. When a culture, such as America’s, views success as wealth and career progress, that culture cannot also value and accept death, because death ruins success. This would make the culture a very negative one. America, being a relatively optimist culture, refuses to believe that all of the work they do in their life ceases to matter once they are dead. Beyond that, American’s have a somewhat narcissistic belief that it is not possible for they themselves to not exist or matter after death.

Another reason American culture could deny the idea true death, or absolute death, would be the religious/Christian basis on which we were founded. The Christian belief in an afterlife mutes the effect of death by saying that we don’t really die. Only our physical body does not our soul, as seen in Beetlejuice.

In the scene directly after they die, the Maitlands walk back into their house as if nothing horrible had even happened. They were dripping from the creek, but other than that, unharmed. This scene shows denial of death in that nothing in their life was immediately changed. Their home was still theirs (for the moment), and they still cleaned and maintained it. The slept in their same bed, and at first hadn’t even realized they were dead! This scene directly denies that death changes your life. It treats death more like a different stage of your life. It could be comparable to going from a youth to an adult. Different stage, different problems, but still life.

At the very end of the movie, the last scene in which Lydia come home from school and the Maitlands greet her further denies the significance of death. They greet her as if she were their daughter, the daughter they never could have. Earlier in the film, it mentioned how the Maitlands wanted children, but were having trouble. It’s ironic that after they die is when that goal is symbolically achieved through Lydia. This scene represents how death does not stop them from achieving goals which they had while they were alive.

One last reason as to why death is so anathema in American culture could perhaps be that America, with a young, still developing culture, has not made up its mind entirely about death. They whole issue surrounding death is perplexing, and we will never understand what it really means. Perhaps the best way for American’s to handle that uncertainty is to deny its finiteness and treat it as taboo. Rather than deciding what death is, and developing ways in our culture to deal with death, we deny it as an end, and instead of living to die, we live to live. 

Jump - Beetlejuice

Americans tend to refuse thoughts and talk of death because we are too unfamiliar with death. In the past, generation after generation would live and die in the same home. When a relative died, it was the duty of the family who placed the body in the coffin and buried it. The coffin was kept in the home, and the funeral was thrown in the home as well. The average lifespan was also a lot shorter back then, and so people were much more accustomed to death. Today, seeing a dead body is considered a very dramatic experience, and I am pretty sure most people would be extremely uncomfortable trying to sleep with the knowledge that a dead body is in their home. Death will always be a part of life, but for some reason it has become taboo to discuss in our culture. For example, if we learn someone close to someone we know dies, many people immediately feel uncomfortable and awkward and are unsure of how to handle the situation. Over the years death has become the elephant in the room that I am unsure if we will ever acknowledge.

I believe one of Burton's main goals or hopes when making this movie was to encourage people to laugh at themselves. Every single one the characters takes themselves too seriously, and they are all exaggerated versions of many of the people in our society. Within this goal, I think he was also poking fun at how present day Americans view death. So rather than this film refusing death, Burton replaced the audience's uncomfort with death with something else: laughter. The audience is still denying death but just in a different way. For example, in one scene the character Otho makes a joke that women who commit suicide will become civil servants in the afterlife. This joke is referencing the woman who works in the civil services office for the dead who revealed that she took her own life. In a normal setting, suicide humor would be found extremely insensitive, but in this scene, it brings a few laughs. Another example is Betelgeuse's first scene. He is reading the obituary in the newspaper and it states "Please Welcome the Maitlands". Obviously the obituaries in our newspapers are not quite so cheery which is what makes this so humorous. It is pointless to ignore death, it is inevitable, but nonetheless, Burton knows our society will not stop being afraid of it. So instead Burton forces the audience to laugh at their own ignorance and fear. This way, the audience is still able to ignore any serious thoughts about death, but maybe they will stop taking themselves so seriously.

Peeney- Beetlejuice

American Society cannot come to accept death.  Other cultures such as the Mexicans or the Japanese celebrate death and think of it as a happy passage into the next life. We Americans have the mindset that we are going to live forever and that we are invincible.

In the movie Beetlejuice death is rejected in a way because yes the Maitlands do physically die in when the car falls in the water but through the film they remain in the film unlike in most movies when someone dies they are done.  They still are interacting with others and living in their home unlike your typical corpse.  One instance when this is shown is the part when the people come over to meet the ghosts so the business deal could be made, in this part the ghosts are treated as people. Another way death is rejected in this movie is that there is an entire “network” of dead people working together to get into the next life (by sitting in a waiting room). There is also Beetlejuice a “people exorcist” for removing the living from the deceased’s house.

            Death is an anathema in our culture because we are so focused on our lives. Children are taught to grow up and get a good job and have a big happy family with a bunch of possesions. So that’s what we focus on we spend our entire life trying to become educated so we can get a high paying job. We also spend a lot of time and money trying to find that person with whom you are supposed to have that picturesque “American Dream family” but then we tell that person “til death do us part”. So finally for some people they get these nice things and a happy family but then the next day they could die and all they left behind was unnecessary possessions and a family who at some point will cope with them being lost.

            Death should be looked at as a happy thing where we celebrate the person’s life and all that they did even long after they are gone. If more Americans saw death that way loosing someone would not be nearly as depressing and hard to go through. We should not be boring suburban “yuppies” like the one in the movie and live our life to the fullest because we never know when ours will come to a close.

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.

Feltes- Beetlejuice Blog

Personally, I believe Americans refuse to incorporate the reality of death into their lives because the concept is too much for them to handle. However much religion may talk about life after death, I personally believe that when we die, we simply cease to exist. The horrible nothingness of this concept, the idea that one day you will not exist in any way, is something most Americans are too afraid to come to grips with. We all want to believe that we will exist forever, even after we die, which is why there is so much speculation about life after death. 

This film actually denies the reality of death in that it portrays death as merely a movement from one state of reality to another. As opposed to ceasing to exist, when the two characters died, they merely woke up in their house as if nothing had changed. They maintained the exact same level of consciousness and even performed the same tasks, such as sleeping and walking around and talking, as if they had not died at all. Actually in the movie, they incorporate a natural life task, sleeping, with a supernatural occurrence, when both of the characters are sleeping in the bed, and the wife turns out to be floating above the floor next to her husband while sleeping. 

Death is anathema in American culture because we are a culture that truly celebrates life; all of our lives, we are brought up to believe we should make as much money as we can so that we can live in material comfort, and should go to college so we can get money to provide for families of our own.  However, most kids are not raised to believe that something happens after death. Yes, some religions, such as Christianity, believe that there is a heaven or hell you go to after death, but even in that scenario, death is not a central theme. This is because Americans don't want to think about the inevitability of death, and I think that this is because there is such a hopelessness attached to death that no one wants to think about it. The thing is, if you truly think about it, death really isn't the end. Most people pass on their genetics to their kids and eventually grandkids, and even if not, they pass on part of themselves through the people they interacted with in their life. In my opinion, which is not popular, if you have ever had a conversation with another person, you have changed their life in some way. It may not be important, or noticeable, but you definitely changed his or her life in a way no one else could.