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Gothic Genre Explored in Tim Burton's Films Essay

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Gothic Genre Explored in Tim Burton's Films Essay
Gothic Genre explored in Tim Burton's films Essay

Tim Burton is successful in creating horror films such as Edward Scissor Hands (1990), Nightmare before
Christmas (1993) and Sleepy Hollow (1999), through his incorporation of Gothic Elements within the setting, flawed hero and the manifestation of the sense of dread and terror. A horror film can be defined as a motion picture that seek to elicit a negative emotional reaction from the audience by playing on the viewer’s most primal fears. This is often ignited by key scenes that feature macabre, supernatural, fantasy or science fiction. This is evident in the various scenes within each of Tim Burton’s Films.
Tim Burton incorporates the style of Gothic elements such as Gothic style architecture and prominent dark lighting in the film, Edward Scissor Hands (1990). Through these film techniques, Burton thus is able to explore the the dark and damaged world of the suburbia. These techniques include the bright lighting within the suburbia residences, which often emphasizes the contrasting dark lighting from black shades implemented by the hand made metal structures that is prominently used within Edward’s Victorian styled manor/home. Such discrepancies between bright and dark lighting is evident in the scene where Pegg decides to visit Edward’s isolated mansion in hopes to sell her Avon products, despite her failure from her seemingly welcoming suburbia. Pegg’s exclusion implements the idea that the suburbia is the damaged world, which is evident in the scene whereby many residences such as Joyce impolitely ignores Pegg from entering her house while selling her Avon products. This juxtaposes the seemingly warm-hearted suburbia, which in fact is not. However Edward’s home provides more warmth than the suburbia.Tim Burton also contrasts the general suburbia and the Gothic styled architecture of Edward’s Victorian style manor. The conformity of the suburbia is evident in the scene where residences of the suburbia

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