Mroski Edward Scissorhands

Edward Scissorhands

In Edward Scissorhands takes fairy tale elements and turns them inside out.  This one reminds me mostly of the Beauty and the Beast.  Obviously, Kim is alluded to Belle, and Edward is the beast, who lives in a castle.    The story is undermined, though, because it is the beast who comes down from the castle.  Belle's selfish sisters are very similar to Kim's friends, who keep trying to get things out of her and Edward, like when they rob the house to get money for a van.  In the Beauty and the Beast, there really isn't any violence at all.  Edward's violence arises out of misunderstanding, and seems to be there mostly for plot development rather than the establishment of a moral.

I have a sort of negative view about how people work.  I don't think we have very much true morality at all, because if society had a full sense of morality, we wouldn't need laws in the first place.  In America, it is generally believed that morality comes from the self.  I believe that it comes from outside of us. If truth is really inside us all, then why do we keep fighting over what's right? Right is right and wrong is wrong.  

That said, the people of the suburbia that Edward lives in try to look like they have it together, but they don't. The blog prompt describes the town as looking “squeaky clean” but to me, it looks suspicious.  Nothing that well-kept has a clear conscience.   I think that their biggest downfall is the gossip that the women take part in.  Small lies in the movie quickly turn into huge stories, like when Edward refused to have sex with Joyce only to have the grapevine turn him into a rapist overnight.  The people of the town accept what they hear about other people as fact before they can find out if it is valid, and then judge the person accordingly. The gossip creates a sort of loop, because in order to look good in such a messed up society, you have to have someone that looks worse than you.  The suburb is lost in itself, playing the blame-game in order to stay on top of everyone else.

Mroski "Robot Boy"

Robot Boy

“Robot Boy” has an interesting archetype.  Jungian archetypes can be situations as well as people, and one in this poem  is parental alienation.  Since so many of us feel that gap between us and our parents, we are all able to relate to this event in the same collectively unconscious way as the character archetypes that we learned about in class. 

                Tim Burton’s life is a life of alienation and outsiderness that is highlighted in his movies, as well as the poems in the Meloncholy Death.  In his personal life, he experienced this alienation most notably with his parents, a reoccurring theme that is seen in almost all of his works.   One reason he wasn’t close to his parents was probably that he wasn’t the way his parents expected him to be.  Sound familiar?

Robot Boy is certainly an alienated little cyborg.  His parents don’t love him because isn’t a cute little human baby.  If that isn’t bad enough, they find out that their Robot was born outside of their marriage.  Knowing a person’s  child is not actually theirs can make an even bigger gap. Even though the story is mostly about the parents, we can tell that he is shunned for his whole life by the strange since of irrelevance in the last stanza of the poem (and robot boy grew to be a young man. . .). 

                The parental alienation archetype, like all other archetypes that we have studied, is based on this collective unconsciousness that we all share.  These archetypes help us to make since of the world because they give us all something that we can equally understand.  So, Tim Burton uses Robot Boy in this common situation, used in so many of his works, as a way to express and at the same time cope with these childhood experiences. 

                Another theme (which isn’t so much of a generic situation) that Burton uses in these poems is this flip of what people expect when they have a child.  When someone has a child, they are usually at least very happy about it.  In the book, every time someone has a kid, this situation is flipped.  Children destroy their parents’ lives in this book, when the expectation in the beginning is a grounded and enhanced life. I wonder if Burton has this feeling that he messed up his parents’ life.

Mroski Batman/Catwoman

 Batman and Catwoman

               

  Batman and Catwoman’s  relationship, since they have dual identities, is a dual relationship.  As Bruce Wayne and Selina Kyle, they are reasonably tame.  This calm relationship is opposed with Batman and Catwoman’s more hostile if not animalistic relationship.  Their love interest, however, is destined to fail.

                Selina Kyle and Bruce Wayne display relatively normal courtship, unlike Batman and Catwoman.  Bruce and Selina meet, think each other are cute, go on dates, and carry a very average romantic interest.  Their relationship seems to have a bit of repression.  In most movies, the man and the woman’s sexual interest is very overt, but it doesn’t seem like that here.  They don’t even kiss throughout the entire movie.  Their conversations are very surface level, except for when they are at his house, talking about his “conflicting truths”

                Batman and Catwoman have a more sexual and violent side.  Catwoman is deceptive,  playing tricks on Batman by using the fact that she is a woman to seduce then destroy him.  In their first fight scene, there is a slight confusion as to whether she is trying to hit on him or kill him.  When he punches her in the face she falls over, yelling “How could you, I’m a woman,” before she takes control of the fight, completing her sentence “a woman who shouldn’t be taken advantage of.”

                Catwoman and Batman’s relationship are set to fail for two main reasons: their differing morality and their reclusiveness.  Catwoman, like a cat, does whatever she wants, whenever she wants, from attacking random criminals in the streets, to completely blowing up a building. Her actions are what benefit her the most at the time, regardless of its effect on others.  She doesn't even have a side to take when it comes to taking down Max Shreck. She works with Penguin for a while, but in the end deserts him.

Batman, on the other hand, is a Dark Knight.  Even though we discussed in class that his motives are ultimately for himself, in order to really feel right about it, he still has to be the good guy.  He fights against evil.  Even if the fact that he is a hero is up to debate, he still thinks of himself as a hero, and heroes don’t work well with chaotic characters like Catowman.  Catwoman wanted to kill Shreck, and Batman wanted to jail him.  In the end, their conflicting tendencies and ideas of justice contradict their relationship.

As we discussed in class, they also shun the opposite sex.  Batman, with the death of his parents, is naturally a very reclusive character who unconsciously wants to be alone.  To have a steady woman forever in his life is against batman’s character.  As for Catwoman, she just doesn't like men.  She was killed by a man.  She was almost raped by a man. Their similar subconscious, reclusive dislike for company of the opposite sex also inhibits their relationship.