Tales From the Afterlife: “Beetlejuice” and Post-Modern Death
Abstract
Tim Burton’s Beetlejuice can be classified as one of many films about the other world, ghosts and afterlife. But as the films are both composed and deal with the issue of a dichotomy of life and death in a fairly conventional way (in terms of communication between the two worlds and their spatial position), Beetlejuice breaks the convention and may be defined as a post-modern movie. Zalewski describes how Burton blurs all oppositions and escapes explicit senses, evaluations and functions the conventional and traditional cinema version has always supported.
Keywords:
Tim Burton, postmodernism, afterlifeReferences
Nie dotyczy / Not applicable
Google Scholar
Authors
Andrzej Zalewskikwartalnik.filmowy@ispan.pl
University of Lodz Poland
Profesor w Katedrze Mediów i Kultury Audiowizualnej UŁ. Zajmuje się filozofią, estetyką i teorią filmu oraz nowych przekazów audiowizualnych. Opublikował m.in. Strategiczna dezorientacja. Perypetie rozumu we współczesnym filmie postmodernistycznym (1998), Film i nie tylko. Kognitywizm, emocje, reality show (2003).
Statistics
Abstract views: 0PDF downloads: 0
License
Copyright (c) 2004 Andrzej Zalewski
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
The author grants the publisher a royalty-free non-exclusive licence (CC BY 4.0) to use the article in Kwartalnik Filmowy, retains full copyright, and agrees to identify the work as first having been published in Kwartalnik Filmowy should it be published or used again (download licence agreement). The journal is published under the CC BY 4.0 licence. By submitting an article, the author agrees to make it available under this licence.
In issues from 105-106 (2019) to 119 (2022) all articles were published under the CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence. During this period the authors granted a royalty-free non-exclusive licence (CC BY-ND 4.0) to use their article in „Kwartalnik Filmowy”, retained full copyright, and agreed to identify the work as first having been published in our journal should it be published or used again.
Most read articles by the same author(s)
- Andrzej Zalewski, Heidegger of the Cinema in the Heideggerian Optics , Kwartalnik Filmowy: No. 89-90 (2015): Redefinitions of the Classics
- Andrzej Zalewski, Weimar Cinema and After , Kwartalnik Filmowy: No. 85 (2014): Film and Media – the Past and the Future
- Andrzej Zalewski, Welcome to Pataphysics! Taming of Death, Vacuum of the Proper Name in Tim Burton’s “Beetlejuice” , Kwartalnik Filmowy: No. 96 (2016): Film and Metaphysics
- Andrzej Zalewski, Substance, Which Means Nothing: On the Creation of Impossible Events in Robert Bresson’s “L’argent” , Kwartalnik Filmowy: No. 89-90 (2015): Redefinitions of the Classics
- Andrzej Zalewski, The Spirit of the Machine: Robert Bresson , Kwartalnik Filmowy: No. 74 (2011): Film Objects
