Steph Spams: A Brief Look at Tim Burton's Auteur

Tim Burton has a bizarre style of imagination, his auteur, that makes his films recognizable among audiences. Burton is known well for his creepy character design, and similar types can be found in both his animated and live action movies. Edward, for example, is very thin, pale, and has long fingers, or, rather, scissors for fingers.

This design captures the audience in the same way another character of his, Jack Skellington, does. Jack, while animated, shares Edward’s pale complexion, think and lanky build, and long, skinny fingers.

While Jack does not have scissors for hands, they are instead bone, giving a similar sharp and exaggerated appearance. Both characters wear elaborate black outfits and have bulging eyes, or, rather, in Jack’s case, eye sockets.

Both of these characters are also misunderstood by society around them, a common trait of the protagonist in all of his movies.

Tim developed much of these characters, namely Jack and Edward, in school, and perhaps his social life was reflected in his work. Edward contrasts the pastel world around him much like how in his movie The Nightmare Before Christmas Jack contrasts Christmas Land when he travels to Santa’s world. In Corpse Bride, Burton’s character Emily contrasts the human world because she is a rotting skeleton, and the other lead contrasts the land of the dead because he is living. Again, Burton plays with color scheme much like how he does in Edward Scissorhands when we see Victor and the land of the living colored in grey-scale and the land of the dead in more colorful hues, Emily herself having a lot of pastel blues. The dead contrast the societal norm the same way Edward does, just with the color scheme flipped. They do not belong with the living, much like how Edward doesn’t feel like he belongs in the neighborhood. These aspects of Burton’s found in both Edward Scissorhands and his other films illustrate his auteur.