The enduring allure of Tim Burton’s macabre world

By Tacita Quinn, CNN

(CNN) — Gothic fantasy? Whimsical horror? Macabre comedy? Despite making films for over 40 years, Tim Burton’s visual style — a signature blend of light and dark — continues to defy neat description. Nevertheless, his otherworldly drawings, paintings, animations and feature films have wriggled into our lives to the point where we can name ‘Burtonesque’ as a style in its own right.

But what is Burtonesque — or as some on TikTok seem to be calling it, Burtoncore? Well, it starts with the strange and unusual.

“I read somewhere, that if you were going to describe his style through references that are in the cultural vernacular, it would be Van Gogh’s Starry Night and Frankenstein,” said Maria McLintock, curator of the newly opened World of Tim Burton exhibition at London’s Design Museum. The exhibition will feature over 600 items, including the first ever public display of the viral Rave’N dress worn by Jenna Ortega in Netflix series “Wednesday” (2022).

“Tim, more than anything, is an artist. He is not drawn to expressing reality, in fact, he probably would say what even is reality?” McLintock told CNN.

From suburbia, springs the surreal

Burton grew up in Burbank, California, a land of eternal sunshine. Nonetheless, his childhood beneath the Hollywood sign in the 1960s was characterised by suburban boredom and isolation, finding solace in the world of film and television. Burton devoured everything from horror films to Ray Harryhausen animations, science fiction B movies and Japanese Kaiju monster films. An avid artist from an early age, Burton’s uncanny style of drawing is inspired by these films — along with gothic novels, expressionist paintings, holiday rituals and even the illustrations of Dr Seuss.

Burton studied character animation at the California Institute of Arts before he was offered an apprenticeship at Disney. Although the relationship didn’t last (Burton has joked that his Disney drawings “looked like roadkill”), while there, he completed “Vincent” (1982), a black and white stop motion animation. The short was narrated by the infamous horror actor Vincent Price, who would later play the inventor in Burton’s 1990 film “Edward Scissorhands.” While the character Vincent laments his “ordinary” life, elongated jagged lines, twisted spirals, pinstripes and chequerboards dance across the screen — motifs that crop up repeatedly in Burton’s work and are the basis of the striking world of the Burtonesque.

A signature style: Staples, skeletons and stripes

These visual motifs are evident in Beetlejuice’s suit, Jack Skellington’s physique, Edward Scissorhands’s gothic mansion and Wednesday Addams’ uniform. Stitches, too, have repeatedly occurred in Burton’s visual aesthetic, such as when Sparky the dog returns from the dead in the “Frankenweenie” films (1984 and 2012), in Catwoman’s black latex number in “Batman Returns” (1992), the singular hand ‘Thing’ in horror TV series “Wednesday” (2022), and Monica Bellucci’s undead ‘staple’ look in this year’s “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice”. (Both “Beetlejuice” movies were released by Warner Bros., which is owned by CNN’s parent company, Warner Bros. Discovery.)

While the Burtonesque certainly calls on the frightful and gory, it also embraces humor and charm. Jenny He, co-curator of the first ever major exhibition of Burton’s work at MoMA 15 years ago, told CNN that: “Stitches seems very macabre, but for Tim, actually, it’s a very positive, optimistic motif, because stitching means that you can put yourself back together — no matter how many times you fall apart.”

Dichotomy has always been a key element of the Burtonesque, contrasting vivid color with greyscale, experimenting with humor and horror, exploring the clash of the beautiful and grotesque. Hidden behind these very recognisable visual stylings, however, is Burton’s fastidious world building.

“To me, the Burtonesque is a process, a deep commitment to handmade, slower processes, not feeling that obligation to go for the quickest, slickest route. That’s what lingers beyond the credits rolling, everything feels like this entire world has been so considered,” McLintock told CNN.

Remarking on the sheer volume of work created for each film, Jenny He added: “Even though films are a collaborative effort, inherently, it very much starts from Tim… Everything is in his head, and then it flows out onto paper, or a napkin, or canvas, and then he hands it off to his collaborators, and then they go out into the world of his fans.”

Brand Burton

Though it may be Burton’s world, his chosen collaborators play a large part in bringing it to life. Designer Colleen Atwood’s costumes have been instrumental in expressing Burton’s vision. Atwood breathed life into the iconic Edward Scissorhands outfit, a beautiful DIY mess of blades and belts, and the dramatic sculptural Victorian costumes in the 2007 movie “Sweeney Todd”. Perhaps most remarkably, Atwood hand-painted Christina Ricci’s black and white striped dress in “Sleepy Hollow” (1999) so that the garment would fall precisely as Burton had envisioned in his original sketch.

The final piece of the Burtonesque puzzle is the coterie of actors that regularly appear in his projects. The likes of Johnny Depp, Winona Ryder, Jenna Ortega and Eva Green all incapsulate a certain Burtonesque ‘Je ne sais quoi,’ extending it into ‘reality,’ spilling his signature style out of the silver screen and onto the red carpet.

Beyond Hollywood, Burton’s work has been inspiring the world of fashion for decades. The late Alexander McQueen’s Fall-Winter 2002 show, ‘Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious,’ featured a now-iconic Batman-esque parachute cape inspired by Burton’s work. You can see Burton’s influence on the darkly fantastical fashion photographer Tim Walker, whose work is filled with striking silhouettes and wonderous themes — the pair even collaborated on a shoot for Harper’s Bazaar, ‘Tricks and Treats,’ in 2009. Then there’s shoe designer Sophia Webster’s 2016 collection which essentially revolved around Lydia Deetz, one of the principal characters in the original Beetlejuice, with the models all sporting her archetypal spiky updo.

2024: A new era of goth

It’s a style that’s not going away anytime soon. As beauty editor and author of “How to Be a Goth: Notes on Undead Style,” Tish Weinstock, wrote in British Vogue recently, the outfits on the “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” press tour are heralding a new era of goth. Citing this year’s reboot of “The Crow” and the gory Sapphic murder flick video for Sabrina Carpenter’s hit song “Taste,” also from this year, Weinstock outlines the influences driving the darkening cultural mood.

But why does the Burtonesque feel even more pervasive in 2024? It could be pinned on the success of Wednesday, or the recent buzz around the Beetlejuice reboot.

Perhaps though, the Burtonesque is not just about a resurgence of all things dark and ghoulish but a statement of self-expression. At a time when authenticity is becoming increasingly valued, Burton’s singular style — so rooted in a painstaking artistic practice — serves as an inspiration for us to value our own creativity, even if others might label it “strange.”

As Jenny He told CNN: “Tim is very committed to not changing just because society tells you to. That is also why his work has been so powerful, because he’s not asking you to create in his style — he’s asking you to follow your own.”

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