Burton and Expressionism

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I decided to write a companion piece to my Nosferatu post to further unpack the connections and differences I see among German Expression, goth, and Tim Burton’s films, as well as well as why I believe they serve similar purposes. As pointed out by Matt, the aesthetic qualities were used more to evoke fear during Expressionist movement, but as they started to appear in more recent works, they seemed to more relay a feeling of empathy. Even though these are two different emotions, one of the purposes of Expressionism’s dark visuals across all works are to portray a sense of isolation. Most of Burton’s notable works are about an outcast in a community in which he feels he does not belong. Jack is the only member of Halloween Town that feels unfulfilled by its year-round devotion to the holiday. Edward Scissorhands is almost a modern-day mixed representation of a vampire and Frankenstein’s monster, as the titular character is part man, part machine, coming out hiding from a gothic castle, and finds that he can never truly fit in because of his mechanical parts. Even Burton’s biopic, Ed Wood, is really just another tale of an outcast who does not belong, in this case in the Hollywood system, because of his different qualities like the fact that he cross-dresses and maintains an inability to make a quality movie. Perhaps the reason that Burton’s films resonate with many people in the goth community is because they identify with both the seclusion and deeply human emotions that his principal characters experience.

Even if the point of the aesthetics in Expressionist films were to invoke fear, being afraid of the monster, as pointed out by Benshoff, does not stop the audience from identifying with it. What is interesting about the visuals of Expressionism is that while it is made the environments appear scary, it is the opposite of what the monster is afraid of. The surrounding darkness is comforting because “both the monster and the homosexual are permanent residents of shadowy spaces: at worst caves, castles, and closets, and at best a marginalized and oppressed position within the cultural hegemony” (Benshoff, 98). Instead of fearing the dark, the monster fears the light. They fear being seen on a clear sunny day and being judged by “normal” people who do not have to think twice about living in the light. Perhaps F. W. Murnau made Nosferatu as a projection of his own fears of transitioning from Germany to the United States. Being a homosexual man, he was likely scared of how both himself and his films would be received in Hollywood, and he possibly conveyed some of his fears through his filmmaking. Count Orlok living in his dark estate could be a stand-in for Murnau, just as Ed Wood expressed his cross-dressing tendencies through his drama Glen or Glenda, although the quality of that film is just about the complete opposite of Nosferatu.

Burton’s films may sometimes come across as overly sentimental. Even if that is true, they still seem to be a celebration of abnormality. Like films in the Expressionist movement, his films use ominous aesthetics to emulate the feeling of isolation. Instead of fearing the isolation, the audience is meant to empathize with it, which is something that has been conveyed, both directly and inavertently, since the release of classic horror films like Nosferatu.