Tim Burton’s Unique Imaginary World and a Teenagers’ Phenomenon: Wednesday (2022)

Abstract

The term “film”, in its broader sense, represents a medium that, in its complex process of acquiring its ultimate purpose of evoking emotion and conveying drama, involves various contributions from nearly all the other arts as well as countless technical skills. Emerging at the end of the 19th century, this new art form became one of the most popular and influential media of the 20th century and beyond and its was quickly recognized as perhaps the first truly mass form of entertainment. The art of motion pictures has frequently undergone changes in its long and twisted evolution and either they are inspired from life or they are an inspiration for the real life they have influenced people and their way of perceiving reality which ultimately led to new and surprising creations in terms of film cinematography. The evolution of cinematography has also brought to light throughout its evolution numerous legends that definitely marked the era they have been actively involved in this industry. In this respect, a great personality that consistently influenced both late 20th century and the beginning of the 21th century is Tim Burton, a controversial cinematographic figure that have given voice through his films to his deepest childhood memories and fears that ultimately managed to find the perfect audience who identified with the themes, motifs and symbols evoked by his not fully understood films. Tim Burton’s films have favoured the appearance of an iconic visual aesthetic that brought him fame despite his widespread perception of him as an alienated suburban youth who grew up in a dysfunctional family and as a filmmaker known for his gothic and grotesque way of presenting both the subconscious fears and the realities we face every fay as well as dark, magical, and slightly twisted cinematic fantasies never before imagined in his way. Along time he has demonstrated both by his films and animations that neither his characters nor the settings he employs are accidentally used but they infuse his films with highly symbolical meanings adding to his cinematic style the consistency so much desired by many other directors. Started being displayed, especially in literature, centuries ago, the Gothic tradition might be considered by many critics unable to bring elements of newness in a field where numerous aspects have been discussed, analysed and compared. This thesis highlights the most prolific Tim Burton’s films that stand as a constant proof that Gothic tradition may be evaluated and re-evaluated taking each time the form most suitable for the cultural period it belongs to. By following Tim Burton’s evolution chronologically, this dissertation’s aim is to bring to the foreground the process of producing a series of films paying particular attention in the last chapter to a teenagers’ phenomenon which ultimately managed to reveal how Gothic tropes already used almost ninety years ago manage to fix the matrix of twentieth-one teenagers’ troubled audience. Nevertheless, through Wednesday (2022) Tim Burton masters to give voice to modern teenagers’ fears, hidden dreams, daily insignificant problems by reusing characters already familiar to the audience, this time reinvented, able to metamorphose so as to fit the 21th century teenagers’ target audience, in this way revisiting tradition in a highly personal way never before imagined. Tim Burton’s cinematography stands for complexity, uniqueness, but also for circularity by reusing the same patterns, Gothic tropes in terms of setting, colours, characters and many others. Ultimately, this dissertation will pay special attention to the way the under discussion director employs throughout his films filmic techniques and strategies which manage to give voice of the unconscious with its most fearful and hidden personal experiences and made to greatly merge with a contemporary audience whose ultimate desire is to identity with the reality of the screen in front of them.