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Beetlejuice

An undead entity that looks grotesque and is dressed in an old fashioned style tuxedo stands next to a girl in a red wedding dress.
Posted on August 22, 2024

A Living Death?: Talking Beetlejuice (1988)

Elizabeth Erwin

In today’s episode, it’s Tim Burton’s fever dream masterpiece Beetlejuice—a horror-comedy classic with shades of surrealism that’s as colorfully bizarre as its namesake character! The film follows Barbara and Adam Maitland, a recently deceased couple, intent on scaring off the new living occupants of their home, the Deetz family. When their best ghostly efforts prove futile, they decide to enlist the services of Betelgeuse, a freelance bio-exorcist more interested in causing havoc than in helping. With its long awaited sequel set to hit theaters September 6, we’re taking a look back at Burton’s first commercial success so stay tuned.

 

 

Recommended Reading:

Fowkes, Katherine A. “Tim Burton and the creative trickster: A case study of three films.” The Works of Tim Burton: Margins to Mainstream. Ed. Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock. Palgrave Macmillan, 2013, pp. 231-244.

Middlemost, R. “”My whole life is a dark room”: Nostalgia and domesticity in Beetlejuice and Edward Scissorhands.” A Critical Companion to Tim Burton. Ed. A. Barkman & A. Sanna. Lexington Books, 2017, pp.207-220.

van Elferen, Isabella. “Dannv Elfman’s Musical Fantasyland. Or, Listening to a Snowglobe.” The Works of Tim Burton: Margins to Mainstream. Ed. Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock. Palgrave Macmillan, 2013, pp. 231-244.

Posted on January 1, 2016

Beetlejuice and the Invisibility of Childfree Couples

Gwen

I’m going to be honest with you; I really just wanted to watch Beetlejuice (1988). What emerged was completely unintended. As horror reviewers and academics we tend to read into things for postmodern interpretations of the world around us. As horror fans, sometimes we just want to sit back and indulge in some of our favorite films. Unfortunately our brain doesn’t always get the message to just sit down and shut up. That is exactly what happened on the way to Winter River, Connecticut, when I tried to join the Maitlands for a lazy Sunday afternoon. For those of you nay-sayers, yes I know that Beetlejuice is characterized as Comedy Fantasy—but, it’s my party and I’ll review it if I want to.

While my brain was supposed to be turned off, I realized something about this movie: it is all about Lydia. The film reads like a foreign adoption story about a childfree couple wandering the earth until they are made into a real family via the addition of a child. What I found most interesting about Beetlejuice was the way that Adam (Alec Baldwin) and Barbara (Geena Davis) Maitland are devalued and almost irrelevant to the outside world until they find Lydia. This is by no means a commentary on their relationship, as Tim Burton masterfully paints them as an ideal couple before and after their introduction to Lydia. It instead reflects on the way that the world around them emphasizes and validates couples with children.

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