The Stereotypes in Tim Burton's Edward Scissorhands: Part One
- Scott Barnard
- Oct 13, 2017
- 5 min read
Updated: Apr 1
The purpose of this article is to briefly examine how-and-why Tim Burton utilises representations of stereotypes in his 1990 film, Edward Scissorhands.
Possible Tropes in Edward Scissorhands:
The Jerk Jock
The Bumbling Dad
The Blood Splattered Dress
The Twisted Christmas
The Desperate House Wife
Beauty and the Beast
Love Triangle
Frankenstein
Pitchforks and Torches
The Outsider
All Girls Want Bad Boys
Guy Protects Girl
Robo Love
Woman As Housewife
Gossipy Women
Tim Burton’s own Codes and Conventions
Love At First Sight
Hysterical Women
The Isolated Castle
Cock Fight
Snow Means Love
Girls Are Nice Like Sugar And Spice
Goths
Trope: Twisted Christmas (A Tim Burton Convention)
Why does Tim Burton use stereotypes in Edward Scissorhands and to what effect?
The obvious answer to that is the majority of directors and writers use stereotypes because it’s part of our language – it’s a tool of communication. But the question specifically mentions Tim Burton. So why has he used them? The evident answer for me is because the movie is a satire on suburban life; if one is to satire, one has to use stereotypes. How else could a director/writer/artist make a satirical comment? The entire point of satirical comedy is to hold up the subject matter and ridicule it for comedic effect. Tim Burton creates a stereotypical representation of suburbia to communicate to his audience its bizarre customs, attitudes, values and beliefs.
Burton is also heavily influenced and inspired by other movies, and Edward Scissorhands is no exception to this; Burton is using the same tropes seen in his favourite films. The most obvious examples of Burton’s appropriation is in his re-imagining series of films: Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Planet of the Apes, Alice in Wonderland, and Sleepy Hollow. This line of analysis can make a convincing argument that Tim Burton is not the auteur we imagine him to be and that he is just re-hashing old films, so I will add he also subverts stereotypes in Edward Scissorhands. In fact, the majority of the stereotypes present in Edward Scissorhands have been subverted by Burton.
Trope: All Girls Are Nice Like Sugar And Spice. All Girls Want Bad Boys
Take the stereotype; All Girls Are Nice Like Sugar And Spice; at first, Kim is represented as the stereotypical sweet teenage girl; wearing pastel coloured clothes and carrying her school books to her chest; but through analysis, we see Kim is not a nice person at all. Tim Burton has manipulated this stereotype. Why? What point is he making here? It may not seem important to the story but the representation of Kim becomes an embodiment of suburbia. A place where people present themselves to be honest and nice people, but may in fact be the opposite; dishonest and hurtful. Through Kim, Burton is communicating to us just one of his views of suburbanites.
Trope: Snow Means Love
The importance of Kim can not be more obvious; Burton has her bookending the film and she is narrating it - it is her story of Edward Scissorhands. The bookend includes the stereotype; Snow Means Love; which has also been subverted by Burton because in Edward Scissorhands he uses falling ice, not snow, to symbolise Edward’s love for Kim (and the beauty of human nature). I will argue Edward is blanketing the town in ice to symbolise the coldness of their hearts, in contrast to his warm cookie heart. And that juxtaposition makes perfect sense when you take into consideration one of Burton’s widely used conventions is to juxtapose, and he uses it throughout Edward Scissorhands to visually communicate to the audience the stereotype of The Outsider. What I love most about the ice blanketing the town is that it is the shavings of the beautiful ice sculptures Edward is creating. He is sculpting warmth out of ice and the plain, boring, creatively absent suburb below him has his icy slithered scraps snowing down on them. Brilliant! Returning to the original question on why Tim Burton has utilised the stereotype, Snow Means Love; my answer is that he has not just used the same old stereotype, he has put his creative twist on it to change Snow Means Love into a visually communicative tool that is far richer and thematically deeper than it was before. It now symbolises tragedy and loss. Whichever way you look at it, Burton has created his own version of the stereotype, Snow Means Love.
Tropes: Happily Never After. The Blood Splattered Dress
A cliche subversion involving Kim is the end of the story; Happily Never After. Edward and Kim don’t live happily ever after. This point could be argued either way as historical versions of fairytales had unhappy endings and it was Disney’s version of fairytales that were altered for a different audience who wanted the stars to live happily ever after. Maybe Tim Burton, after working at Disney, wanted his new film to not have the Happily Ever After cliche because he desired to distance himself from Disney? Whatever the reason, Edward Scissorhands does not play into the stereotype where the love-at-first-sight of two young and good-looking people live happily ever after.
Tropes: Pitchforks & Torches. Twisted Christmas. Gossip. Hysterical Women. The Desperate Housewife.
Kim is involved in other tropes: The Love Triangle, Beauty and the Beast, Love At First Sight, The Blood Splattered Dress, All Girls Want Bad Boys, and Guy Protects Girl; all of which provide further evidence that the movie is her story on Edward - not his story; and I will eagerly argue Tim Burton has subverted all of those tropes but I will not delve into those now as there are more important ones to analyse; ones that contribute to Edward's story.
Tim Burton may have a stereotypical representation of The Outsider, but Edward is not like any we've seen before. Yes, he is represented like all the others: different looks and behaviours, isolated, lives out-of-town... but Edward is unique. One only has to Google search, 'The Best Robot Films of All Time' or 'Great A.I Films' to see that Edward Scissorhands does not even register on any of those lists and that is because Tim Burton has subverted the stereotype to the extent many people do not even realise or question what Edward is. In their mind, Edward is just... Edward. He can not be a robot because he does not look or act like the other robots they have seen in other movies. For me, that is one of Tim Burton's greatest successes as a director. He has taken a stereotype and altered it to the extent it is barely recognisable.
Why has Tim Burton made this story of an outsider in suburbia? It has been well documented that Edward Scissorhands is a personal film for Burton; that it is almost autobiographical. He has explained that he felt like an outsider when growing up in suburbia; he felt different and was different than everyone else. The scissor hands became a metaphor for how he felt unable to effectively communicate to others.
Tropes: Robot Love
Tim Burton appropriates the films he was inspired by, which is what artists do. No one is original. The wheel has already been invented and all artists must have an informed practice for their work to inspire and engage an audience.
Written by Scott Barnard
