Tim Burton: The Monster and the Crowd - A Post-Jungian Perspective

Introduction 13
The inherited traits include, in McMahan's view, dependence on `excessive'
special effects (which bring with them `a change in narration and a ¯attening
of the emotional aspects of the characters'), non-realistic narrative, and
tongue-in-cheek attitude (McMahan, 2005: 15). She also insists that these
®lms are not meaningless; rather, they `have come to mean differently, to
mean in new ways' (2005: 3). Unfortunately, the author does not explain
what these news ways of meaning are, or what exactly constitutes `the
alternative narrative logic' which the `pataphysical ®lms' appear to follow.
Films like Hulk, Van Helsing, Brothers Grimm and The Matrix are
blatantly lowbrow, populist and allusive to the point of non-stop recycling.
Being fast-paced and powerfully visual, they are openly aimed at the
spectator with a short attention span. Their creators deliberately macerate,
mix and match other ®lms and cinematic traditions in order to make the
product more digestible and super®cially attractive. People who make them
know that they are producing a nakedly commercial product.
McMahan's belief that Burton's oeuvre belongs to the bulk of the `pataphysical
style' is understandable. His ®lms contain some formal attributes
of the aforementioned group, such as schematic plots and characters,
inter®lmic references and allusions, as well as `in your face' special effects
(of which the freakish, DIY effects from Beetlejuice are a good example).
Burton, a self-confessed fan of classic horror movies, is especially reliant on
allusions: `Because I never read, my fairy tales were probably those monster
movies. [. . .] I mean, fairy tales are extremely violent and extremely symbolic
and disturbing, probably even more so than Frankenstein and stuff
like that, which are kind of mythic and perceived as fairy-tale like'
(Salisbury, 2000: 3). True, Frankenstein, in James Whale's realisation, was
an important source of inspiration for Burton. Frankenweenie (1984) is
bursting with direct references to both Frankenstein (1931) and The Bride of
Frankenstein (1935), almost to the point of direct translation of Whale's
vision into the children's pet story, in which Boris Karloff is replaced with a
little monster dog, who dies but gets `resurrected' by a boy genius. Some
®lmic allusions that Burton inserts into his ®lms are smaller and less
obvious. For instance, the slowly melting dolls' heads in Charlie and the
Chocolate Factory (2005) is a tribute to Andre de Toth's The House of Wax
(1953) with Vincent Price.
The misunderstood introverted punk Edward Scissorhands is an original
creation ± unlike many of his other powerful motifs and characters. In fact,
it appears that only the characters who directly re¯ect Burton's own
psychology ± like Vincent and Edward ± are entirely original. The rest are
borrowed from a variety of literary and cinematic sources and can be traced
to their roots in popular culture and literature. The popular borrowings
include, for instance, the superhero Batman, the brainy green Martians
from Mars Attacks!, the demon barber Sweeney Todd, who made his debut
in 1846 in the penny dreadful series entitled The String of Pearls: A
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