Tour guide to Tim Burton: A thin line between genius and geek

 

  Introduction

Tim Burton, as one of the persons who succeed in both fields of film and animation, was described as talented and freak for his Burton style creation. His work was well-known and famous for his quirky style. This article will analyze the Burton style concept from his celebrated work pieces and investigate his past underneath, what made Burton style, or should say “language”, so attractive. Before entering the study of Burton story language, there is a need to understand his background and life changing events and recognize Tim Burton as himself.

 

 The past of Burton's 

Burton was born in 1958 and living in Burbank, a suburbia in California. From Burton young age, the talent of Imagery has been shown from his cantrip to his neighbor (once he threw clothes in pool and convinced a boy that the killer had dissolved). Logic seems always goes behind his first instinct, and most of the time, “It just felt right”.

                                                              

       Figure 1: Tim Burton’s Halloween Costume (1967)  

                  (Retrieved from: https://www.reddit.com/r/OldSchoolCool/comments/9jdvv4/tim_burtons_halloween_costume_1967/)                               

                                                      

 Figure 2: Picture of Tim Burton’s normal hometown

(Retrieved from:https://historydaily.org/tim-burtons-childhood-fascination-with-fantasy-horror)

      From interview with Nathan (2019), Burton revealed that he always felt like a loner, and found difficulty in connecting with people in young age. Most of the time, he would rather spend his time alone in the cemetery near his house, creating stories. His parents were in depression, even bricked and walled up his bedroom windows just for sure he could not escape from home (Burton guess). Therefore, he always immersed in dark and unhappiness atmosphere at home. This can probably explain his destructive impulse (like ripping toy’s head) and why his characters or world view were always in trapped and in status of solitary.

While he was trapped in the suburbia (his home), his childhood heroes as Dr. Seuss and Roald Dahl, monsters and monster movies, horror movies and stop-motion animation has brought huge pleasure and great impact to him. Burton saw himself in Monsters which are hard to fit in the community. He showed not just empathy to monsters, but truly thought that they are being misunderstood and have much more humanity, most importantly, they are far more interesting (than human, I wonder). Therefore, when he showed interest to films and animations, his oldest known juvenile films also used our recognizing Burton style theme, The Island of Doctor Agor when he was 13 years old. Later, Edgar Allan Poe’s theme of buried alive, poems and Poe’s dark romanticism has long inspired Burton’s thinking and works, the reality starts resembling bizarre to Burton. His work after were always full of gothic mist, like the story beginning of Poe.

Same time, the unchanged environment in suburbia made him feel suffocated, only festivals in town which made the house alive, allow him to have gasp for breath. Therefore, festivals became main theme of his feature work in career. Later in California Institute of the Arts, Burton showed his interest to monsters, and throughgoing research on human body through his shorts Stalk of the Celery Monster and King and Octopus. The above work pieces attracted the attention of Walt Disney Productions, and Burton started his animator’s apprenticeship in Disney’s animation division in 1980. Other than being animator, storyboard artist, concept artist for Disney films, he also made his first short, Vincent, which is a six-minute black and white stop motion film and depicting a boy who fantasized himself as his hero Vincent Price, the real role model of Burton.

 

Figure 3: Burton creating Vincent

(Rertrieved from: https://twitter.com/timburtongifts/status/1136578310618701824?lang=zh-Hant)

     

Figure 4: Scene from Vincent

(Retrieved from: https://www.cultureslate.com/editorials/revisiting-tim-burtons-short-film-vincent-40-years-later)

      After that, he made his first live-action production, Hansel and Gretal. More live-action film, such as Frankenweenie, Pee-wee’s Big Adventure, Alfred Hitchcock Presents and Shelley Duvall’s Faerie Tale Theatre, was directed, which not only expanding his professional field, but also lead to a concrete image of Burton style. 

  

The Burton Language / Burtonesque

Not Surprisingly, Burton as the one who step on the edge to mainstream, was questioned, and criticized by audiences and filmmakers. Barkman and Sanna(2017) explained that trends of Dada, Surrealism and Absurd flew out early twentieth century and the first impression after their viewing Ed Wood (one of the movie of Burton) is “absurd”.   

Figure 5: Poster of Ed Wood

(Retrieved from: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0109707/)     

  

Figure 6: Scene from Ed Wood

(Retrieved from: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0109707/)

      Directorial style of Burton was be written as a pataphysical director who ridicule of the established artistic forms and presented pataphysical features in separate but consistent internal logic (Barkman & Sanna, 2017). Yet, films and animation to Burton are not the way to present his ability or aesthetic on screen, but a therapy which helped to comprehend the issues of his youth (Nathan, 2019). Thus, Nathan (2019) named Burton’s distinctive style in Hollywood as Burtonesque because of his autobiographical canon in Hollywood history. It is complicated and same time, deft to explore elements lying underneath.

 Content

As mentioned, Burton’s childhood was full of bored and feeling trap, which lead to his passion toward suspenseful movies and monsters. Animation and films seem become a way to achieve his childhood fantasy in his early years, for instance, Batman (1989, 1992), Edward Scissorhands (1990), Ed Wood (1994), Mars Attacks (1996), and Planet of the Apes (2001). His suppressing childhood and heroes also causing Festivals and novel become his favorite themes, and making The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993), Charlie and the Chocolate factory (2005), Alice in Wonderland (2010), Big Eyes (2014), Peregrine’s Home For Peculiars (2016), also horror movie like Beetlejuice (1988), Sleepy Hollow (1999), Sweeney Todd (2007), Dark Shadows (2012). Other than achieving own dreams and desire, Burton also taking film and TV series like Big Fish (2003), Corpse Bride (2005), and Wednesday (2022).

Still, for me, Burton wrapping content and themes with horror, heroes, holidays, and fantasy, just to explore multiple issues, such as family, art, death, political issues, even express rage to authority, class distinctions, and American small-mindedness. We can find that all issues come from the conflicts between protagonist and supporting roles, which symbolic meaning were hidden inside. Take few as examples, Edward Scissorhands was discriminated by town people, Corpse Bride killed by greedy man, Sweeney Todd family were separated by upper class, and all “ugly” characters’ good sides disclosed at the end of the film. Burtonesque seems to create formula for content and theme, gothic but with twist, horrify but with pure, characters unified but with different needs.

                                                                                                                   Figure 7: Scene from Corpse Bride

(Retrieved from: https://www.hollywood.com/movies/tim-burton-s-corpse-bride-review-57241419)

                                        

                                                                        Figure 8: Scene from Sweeney Todd

(Retrieved form: https://www.altfg.com/film/sweeney-todd-box-office/)

 Imagery

Black almost become the signature of Burton, because of his gothic setting and drawings. Darkness heavily posited on his work and water-colors, black used as line, contrast, and exposed the punctiliousness, confidence, and clear aim of the painting (Weinstock, 2013). As Weinstock (2013) called it “Burton Black”, it definitely agree with his explanation on Burton’s preference and personality revealing from using of black, but it would be fascinating if we trace back to the origin.

Cemetery and suppressing living environment, preference to monsters, horror, Poe’s stories, and poems has already build his preference and emotions to black since childhood. Burton is accustomed to darkness, maybe seeing black as the most comfortable color he has ever met. Thence, there is no surprise that Burton chooses black as his symbolic color.

While he observed and exploring an imagined character, Burton constructing distinct world through sets of colors and own palette, using the dialed-up color contrasts to highlight the center of black, exaggerated the landscapes and create visual tension.

Figure 9: Scene from Wednesday

(Retrieved from: https://waynesan.com/wednesday/)

Surprisingly, sometimes Burton got fretful with problems of colors matching, “Whether the color of door of haunted house is black matching with white?” “Lighter matching with white?” Thence for me, Burton uses black not only because of the aesthetic, but somehow black gives Burton inspiration and sense of belonging.

Despite colors, Burton did not unify his Burton style at first. The feeling of torture emerged and slump by the neurotic bliss when he worked for Disney (which featured in happiness and happy ever after), and his concepts of films being rejected by Disney causing the lowest point of his life. However, during working in Disney, Burton was solidified the unique art style and eventually stopping self-doubt, rejected to fake the Disney style and accept who he is (Burton, 2008). His work became full of Expressionism, which applying visual distortion, high contrast of colors, transcending architectural forms to create the world view and heightened its sense of reality (Romano, 2019). Also, as Burton impressed by the Day of the Dead in Latin America, his highly use of skeletons and skulls helped extending Burton’s inner world expression, and become more “gothic”.

                                             

                                                              Figure 10: Skeleton’s scene from Corpse Bride

                                                                 (Retrieved from: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0121164/)

                                         

                                                Figure 11: Skeleton’s scene from Sleepy Hollow

(Retrieved from: https://www.horrorhomeroom.com/the-legends-of-sleepy-hollow/)

 Characters

From the elements of content and imagery, we know the importance of characters. Characters are the inspiration and core of Burtonesque. Burton enjoys sketching on readily available materials, such as sketchbook, napkin in restaurant (or bar) and often inspired by various culture or location during travelling. His sketches at first seems clumsy, but what made them become real is the personality which Burton put on them.

As the child who not fitting in the community, Burton understands what the feeling of neglect, heartbreaking, and loneliness. Therefore, he created characters as the misunderstood outcast, and showed the knowing to separateness and isolation. He successfully dissects one’s mental world, being psychoanalytical, focus on characters’ character’s duality and speak to us mainly through characters in his book (The Melancholy Death of Oyster Boy and other stories), animation, and films.

 

              

Figure 12: The boy with nails in his eyes from the book ‘The Melancholy Death of Oyster Boy and other stories’

(Retrieved from: https://twitter.com/hourscinema/status/1355468792747470848?lang=zh-Hant)

     

     Figure 13: Scene from The Nightmare before Christmas

 (Retrieved from http://www.scififantasynetwork.com/relive-nightmare-christmas/ )       

                

 Figure 14: Poster of Edward Scissorhands

(Retrieved from https://www.ceneo.pl/129712139)

       Characters of Burton are center of the world views and plot, helping Burton to share his own world view on things. Hence, he elevated things with actors that he was able to assemble in every role, to present the concrete psychological and physical image of one specific character through their dialogue, action, and appearance. For instance, Burton once sent letter to Johnny Depp and gave him advice for the line in Charlie and the Chocolate factory, “Everything in this room is eatable. Even I’m eatable, but that is called cannibalism, my dear children.” which showed naïve and same time the kind and helpfulness of Willy Wonka.

   

    Figure 15: Scene from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

(Retrieved from: https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/charlie-and-the-chocolate-factory-2005)

Figure 16: Scene from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

(Retrieved from: https://eclectic-scriptorium.tumblr.com/post/43486800181/and-one-more-from-charlie-and-the-chocolate)

      Another example from Wednesday, the cast used to describe Burton as “detail-oriented directors”. Burton wanted to construct an entirely different image of Wednesday Addams from her hair, clothing, speaking and gestures, just because of he wanted to separated previous image from her childhood and adolescence. He kept repeat on experiments, try out all possibilities, for instance asking the cast not to blink, changing facial expressions and tones, just to present a holistic form of the character. Cast once said, Burton will never say yes or no when she asked about her performance. In my opinion, it is because when the cast is playing the role, to Burton, she is already THE “Wednesday Addams”, and anything happened is reasonable and possible. Even if Wednesday did something wrong, she is just truly misunderstanding about that.

                                       

Figure 17: Comparison of Wednesday Addams in distinct versions and ages

(Retrieved from: https://www.watson.ch/leben/review/419109140-die-addams-family-ist-zurueck-so-ist-die-neue-netflix-serie-wednesday)

      In addition, all characters have obvious comparison among their appearance and personality, so to highlight the “peculiar” and special of the protagonist. It is believed that they are the exemplification of Burton himself, which showing his queer and disharmony, and the margin between him and outside world.

 Fun

The last element in Burtonesque is fun. Burton got talent on drawings, creating, psychoanalyzing, and most importantly, exploring. It is believed that his solitary childhood which fill with suppressing environment help expanding his imagination and curiosity. He is mature for digging deep with someone’s mind, meanwhile, innocent for feeling fun to explore the world. Just like the cast of Wednesday said “When Burton truly admired something, he will be excited like a kid”

The biggest fun to Burton, is seeing something come to life from his imagination. Therefore, for many years, he always trying to create the world where characters are in heightened reality with different levels, such as schools, parents, and neighbors.

Figure 18: Tim Burton

(Retrieved from: https://www.themarysue.com/tim-burton-slams-disney-talks-batmans-evolution-in-film/)

Conclusion

Rather than gothic, dark, and unifying style, Burton seems care more about, using Nathan (2019) word, “wacko individualists”. The reason Burtonesque is so attractive to me, not because of the strong imagery on scene, but the meticulous psychological analysis to character, which support the entire plot and his world view. To be concluded, he is not a genius nor a geek, but a sensitive, passionate, and kind misunderstood monster.

References

Barkman, A., & Sanna, A. (2017). The Heroic Journey of Ed Wood. A Critical Companion to Tim Burton, 127.

Burton, T. (2008). Burton on Burton. Faber & Faber.

Nathan, I. (2019). Tim Burton (updated edition): The iconic filmmaker and his work. White Lion Publishing.

Romano, A. (2019, April 17). Tim Burton has built his career around an iconic visual aesthetic. Here’s how it evolved. Vox Media. https://www.vox.com/culture/2019/4/17/18285309/tim-burton-films-visual-style-aesthetic-disney-explained

Weinstock, J. A. (Ed.). (2013). The Works of Tim Burton: Margins to Mainstream. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

Author: Huen Uen Lam 褟宛琳