"It's showtime."
It's been 30 years since Beetlejuice came out,
and in that time,
Tim Burton’s strange and unusual brainchild
has left an indelible mark on pop culture.
"What's the blond's name?
Bitter, butter, Beetlejuice?"
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As was only Burton's second feature,
and it established the director’s talent
for mixing childlike innocence and the bizarre.
"Live people ignore the strange and unusual.
I myself am strange and unusual."
It mainstreamed the goth subculture,
and shaped the persona of it-girl Winona Ryder --
who followed up Lydia with a series of
other depressed or dark but charming characters.
The movie’s DIY special effects showed filmmakers
that you could be visually inventive
without making having to make everything glossy,
slick and computerized.
And the film popularized a genre that we still
don’t really have a word for --
a family movie about ghosts, that’s dark
in a feel-good way.
"There’s something very sort of pure about it
in a weird way."
"I think that's the case, yeah."
Burton has said that the film
“has elements of horror but it’s not really scary
and it’s funny but not really a comedy.
Beetlejuice is one of those movies
that just does not fit any place.”
So let’s take a look at how Beetlejuice endures
as a beloved classic that teaches us
to allow weirdness into our lives
while staying pure at heart.
"Beetle...juice?"
"Yes, that’s it!"
"Your name's Beetlejuice?"
"AH!
You said it twice.
Just say it once more, come on!"
Beetlejuice showed that a ghost story could be
a wholesome family film.
It paved the way for Coco to talk to kids
about death in a positive way,
and use family as a lens
to make death less scary.
“Where are all the other dead people in the world?
Why is it just you and me?”
“Maybe this is Heaven.”
Beetlejuice takes the fear factor out of dying
and out of the idea of ghosts.
“What’s the good of being a ghost
if you can’t frighten people away?”
Adam and Barbara try hard to be intimidating.
But they’re the sweetest, most innocent ghosts
you could imagine.
“You tell them that we are horrible ghoulish creatures
who will stop at nothing to get our house back.”
Their attempts to scare only provoke delight.
"They want you to come downstairs.
Delia says you can wear any sheets you want."
“I didn’t even know I could do the calypso.”
Originally Beetlejuice was meant to be much darker --
Adam and Barbara’s deaths were more graphic,
and Betelgeuse was trying to murder the Deetzes
and rape Lydia,
whereas in the final film he’s just trying to
scare the family and make Lydia his child bride --
which is obviously still very creepy.
But the final movie deals with death
in a silly, charming way that ends up
making us less afraid of it.
"You know what they say about people
who commit suicide?
In the afterlife they become civil servants."
“They were trying to scare you away,
and you didn't get scared.”
“Please, they're dead.
It's a little late
to be neurotic.”
Beetlejuice also took the fearsomeness
out of the goth subculture --
it revealed that being drawn to the gothic
isn’t about being a cynical misanthrope.
“So you were miserable in New York City,
and now you're going to be miserable
out here in the sticks.
At least someone's life hasn't been upheaved.”
It stems from a sensitive, open, human worldview.
Lydia embodies the type of the angsty goth rebel.
“As soon as we get settled, we'll build you
a darkroom in the basement.”
“My whole life is a dark room.”
But just as Adam and Barbara make us
rethink our idea of ghosts,
Lydia undoes our idea of who a goth is.
She’s only drawn to death
because she feels isolated.
"I am utterly alone."
Thus her attraction to death is really
a longing for meaningful relationships.
"God!
You guys really are dead!
This is amazing!"
We never find out what happened to
Lydia’s biological mother,
“Why were you guys creeping around
in Delia's bedroom?”
“We were trying to scare your mother.”
“Stepmother.”
but it seems likely that she passed away.
And Lydia’s only friends are dead as well.
So she wants to join them.
“I want to be dead, too.”
“No!
Lydia, being dead really doesn't make things
any easier.”
Once Lydia starts getting that care and attention
she's craving from a parent figure,
"I got an A!"
she has a new appreciation for life.
So Beetlejuice shows the sweet, heartwarming side
of the goth point of view,
within this sweet heartwarming version
of a ghost story.
Beetlejuice’s visuals turn a “horror aesthetic”
into something inviting and playful.
The film's look takes after German Expressionism --
the German cinema style that inspired
the look of the horror genre.
The scene where the characters defeat Betelgeuse
looks straight out of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari.
Production designer Bo Welch has confirmed
that the netherworld waiting room scene
was channeling Caligari.
“It’s Caligari, but also it’s Frank Lloyd Wright’s
Johnson Wax building meets the DMV.”
Welch said that Burton was influenced
by old horror movies,
but he viewed them with a sense of humor.
“I've seen The Exorcist about 167 times,
and it keeps getting funnier
every single time I see it!”
So like he does with ghosts and goths,
Burton makes us see what’s warm and lovely
about horror visuals --
and since then he’s gone on to do this
in film after film.
Burton wanted Beetlejuice’s visual effects
to look fake and not super sophisticated.
His background in animation informed
the film’s use of stop motion.
And the film has a kind of sweetly DIY feel
that’s oddly comforting in today’s age
of CGI and expensive effects.
“All that in-camera stuff,
all the stop motion, all the real masks.
There’s no digital cleanup or digital stuff
in this movie at all.
Zero.
And really it comes across as
charming and warming and fuzzy and cheesy.”
At the start of the movie we see a house
that looks like a model,
and then it’s revealed that it is a model.
Adam’s model town is a mirror of Burton the filmmaker
playing with his characters and story.
And inventiveness with puppets and miniatures
leads to memorable imagery like
the Dalí-esque desert scenes.
"Adam!"
"Barbara!"
"Help, I'm getting all yellow!"
So with all this, Beetlejuice shows how there’s soul
in the homemade and the old-fashioned.
Cinematographer Tom Ackerman said
that in the film they were trying to
"create this Norman Rockwell-esque
New England world."
But then when the Deetzes move in,
they transform the Maitlands’ cozy house
into something urban and postmodern.
The Deetzes' taste is inspired by Memphis design,
the 80s furniture trend that was associated
with the abstract, asymmetrical shapes,
and bright colors.
Gizmodo has actually argued that
the true villain of Beetlejuice
is contemporary design itself.
That’s a really interesting statement
because it implies Burton’s love of the gothic aesthetic
is even a moral stance.
It's as if he’s saying that if you only go
for fashionable aesthetics,
you miss out on the beauty that’s already
in front of your eyes.
The Deetzes are taking a great house
and basically destroying it through their renovations --
because they’re so fixated on trendiness
that they’re blind to the value
of what’s already there.
“We wreak havoc on their lives.
Actually it’s the humans haunting the ghosts.”
So one of the things the movie teaches is
that you should open your eyes
to what’s really in front of you,
however strange and unusual it may be.
It’s symbolic that Lydia can see ghosts
while her parents can’t.
“Just today she tried to convince me
this house is haunted.”
Since Lydia is “strange and unusual” herself,
she’s open to observing her surroundings
without assumption or judgement.
That gives her accurate insight.
"Wait, what am I worried about?
You can't even change a tire."
She immediately recognizes the Maitlands
as friendly, worthwhile people,
"Listen, you guys,
these ghosts are really nice people.
I think we scared them away.
Let's just leave them alone, alright?"
and she can tell fairly quickly
that she should have her guard up
with Betelgeuse.
"Say it!"
"No.
I'll wait to talk to Barbara."
But her parents are so preoccupied with
social status and material success
they can’t see anything else.
“No one dining here this evening has not been
in Vanity Fair.
Except you.”
"I told them you're too mean to be afraid."
Once the Deetzes realize their house is indeed haunted,
their first instinct is to capitalize on it.
“People will pay big money for this, right Grace?”
“The Enquirer is offering $50,000 for proof
of life after death.”
"$50,000!"
The séance they perform is the most upsetting scene
in the movie --
"To the living let now the dead come alive."
the Deetzes and their friends conjure
Adam and Barbara
and make the couple rapidly decay
before their eyes.
Up until now, Adam and Barbara have looked exactly
the same dead as they did alive.
"This is what happens when you die."
“This is what happens when you die.
That is what happens when he dies.
And that is what happens when they die.
It's all very personal.”
And the fact that they haven’t physically changed
might represent that their core identities
and humanity haven’t altered, either.
But the images of them deteriorating during the séance
suggest that their essences are at risk of disappearing.
“They’re dying!”
“No, they’re already dead, they can’t feel a thing.”
“That’s not true, look at them!”
"That's enough now."
So Beetlejuice shows that forced, artificial contact
with the dead or supernatural is wrong.
The connection has to come from a heartfelt,
unselfish place.
In some ways Betelguese the character
is an afterlife version
of the Deetzes’ shallow New York scene.
He has the same self-serving instincts,
and his appearance reflects his rotted insides.
"Whoa, hey, what are you doing?
Stop it!
Hey!
You're messing up my hair!
Come on!
Whoa!
Stop it!
Whoa!"
One of the big lessons of the movie is to
accept things that aren’t exactly
what we planned or hoped for.
Finding out you’re dead isn’t what any of us would want.
“We’re very unhappy.”
“What did you expect?
You’re dead!”
But there can be a silver lining
to even the darkest of clouds.
At the beginning of the film,
Adam and Barbara’s real estate agent
alludes to their trouble having kids.
"This house is too big for you --
it really ought to be for a couple
with a family, you know?"
"Oh, pumpkin, I didn't mean anything.
It's just that really this house is too big."
And they seem to be preparing this big house
in hopes of filling it with a family.
“Jane says we should sell the house
to someone with a family.”
“I don't think it's any of Jane's business.
Besides, we could try again on this vacation.”
When they die we assume that their dream
of becoming parents has died with them.
But then Lydia comes into their lives,
and she turns out to be the daughter they always wanted.
In the end scene, it’s obvious
that the Maitlands are Lydia’s real parents now.
And the movie concludes in a tableau
of domestic bliss.
In many stories, ghosts are said to remain on earth
because they have unfinished business.
In Beetlejuice, there’s no such statement.
“We're dead.
I don't think we have much
to worry about anymore.”
But Adam and Barbara do get to fulfill their dreams
after they die.
They just have to stop being so set on
getting the Deetzes out of their house
so they can realize that this is how it’s meant to be.
So the message is we shouldn’t fight what’s calling us
because we think we already know what’s best for us.
If we open up to what could really be out there,
we might be pleasantly surprised by
all that life and the beyond have to offer.
“That’s right, Lydia.”
Hey guys, it's Susannah and Debra here.
Thank you so much for watching.
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