The Philosophy of Tim Burton

The Consol ations and Dangersof Fantasy

47 the Consolations and dangers of fantasy Burton, Poe, and Vincent Daniel Sullivan While other kids read books like Go Jane Go, Vincent’s favorite author is Edgar Allan Poe. —Tim Burton, Vincent (1982) The horror film genre is part of the foundation of Tim Burton’s personality and body of work. His philosophy of life and film is partly shaped by the possibilities he has long seen in the realm of dark cinematic fantasy. As a child, Burton saw in horror films and writing an inventive escape from drudgery and an outlet for aggressive or antisocial tendencies. In particular, he was captivated by the work of Vincent Price and Roger Corman, who brought the stories and poems of Edgar Allan Poe to big-screen life in the 1960s. The creative potentialities Burton saw in horror films as a child have blossomed during his adult career into a long list of unforgettable films, stories, and characters marked by the macabre: Beetlejuice(1988), the Joker, Edward Scissorhands (1990), the Inventor, the Penguin, The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993), Jack Skellington, Mars Attacks! (1996), Sleepy Hollow (1999), Corpse Bride (2005), The Boy with Nails in His Eyes, Sweeney Todd (2007), and many more. Although it is far from the director’s sole area of concentration, the horror film is certainly beloved (and has been enriched) by Tim Burton. The horrific element in Burton’s filmography is perhaps most remarkable in light of how appealing his works are to children. Preadolescents around the world have enjoyed films like Beetlejuice and The Nightmare Before Christmas for decades.1 It is certainly Burton’s intention that his works 48 Daniel Sullivan should appeal to the imaginations of children. The films continue to reflect the anxieties and wonders he often experienced as a lonely child, some of which he seems to have never outgrown. Many of the films feature child (or childlike) protagonists.2 The young Burton was enthralled by Corman’s Poe films, and in turn generations of children have grown up enchanted by Burtonian imagery. What is it about the horror genre—especially in the way that Burton channels its dark magic—that appeals to children and seems to express something fundamental about the experience of childhood? I propose that certain aspects of the psychological experience of childhood (particularly in the cultural “modern West”) explain much of the appeal of Burton’s horrific fantasy to contemporary child audiences, as well as the appeal and influence of Poe and Corman on Burton’s work. Specifically , childhood is often characterized by what philosophical psychiatrist R. D. Laing, in his major work The Divided Self, referred to as ontological insecurity: a state of felt alienation, loneliness, or anxiety. Obviously, the extent to which this is true of each child’s experience varies. Nevertheless, many psychologists have triangulated on the notion that childhood is often marked by at least the potential for extreme experiences of ontological insecurity .3 As the discussion below will make clear, the lives of both Burton and Poe have been associated with a tendency toward this unstable emotional condition, and as a consequence many of their characters evidence similar instability.4 Following Laing and others, I will argue that fantasy—including the fantasy of horror—often represents a form of retreat from precarious existence and a striving for surrogate control among ontologically insecure individuals. Thus, Burton and Poe channeled their insecurities into dark fantasies, and similarly insecure children resonate with these “therapeutic” works. Burton’s breakthrough short film Vincent (1982) will be examined as an important case study in this regard. Not only does the film explicitly acknowledge Burton’s creative debt to Poe, Corman, and Vincent Price, it also reflexively examines Burton’s own use of art as an escape from insecurity. Given that both Burton and Poe are self-aware enough to understand their use of fantasy as a medium for escaping insecurity, it will also be necessary to consider how they problematize this process in their works. I will interpret this aspect of their corpora in light of Laing and Søren Kierkegaard . These thinkers see ontologically insecure persons as being in a double bind. They are most likely to rely on fantasy to escape reality, but they are also most likely to be harmed by this form of escape, as they retreat further from reality and isolate themselves even further from those around them. The Consolations and Dangers of...