American American Beasts
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American BeastBeastssss The Cinematic Revision of Beauty and the Beast in The Elephant Man and Edward Scissorhands Doctoraalscriptie Universiteit Utrecht Engelse Taal en Cultuur 1e begeleider: Roselinde Supheert 2e begeleider: Jaap Verheul Viola Rondeboom Student nr.: 9801472 Utrecht, augustus 2006 1 Table of Contents 1. Introduction................................................................................................................................4 2. Constructing Otherness: The History and Meanings of “Beauty and the Beast”................8 2.1 Introduction ............................................................................................................................8 2.2 Otherness................................................................................................................................8 2.3 “Beauty and the Beast”: Origins ..........................................................................................10 2.3 Madame LePrince de Beaumont ..........................................................................................12 2.4 “Beauty and the Beast”: The Classic Story and Its Interpretations......................................13 2.5 The Beast: Male Threat and “Otherness” Disempowered ...................................................15 2.6 “Beauty and the Beast”: Into the Twentieth Century...........................................................17 3. The Elephant Man : Otherness as Obstacle ............................................................................19 3.1 Introduction ..........................................................................................................................19 3.2 David Lynch.........................................................................................................................20 3.3 The Elephant Man and the Beast: Racial Otherness and Basic Humanity...........................22 3.4 John Merrick and Women: A Motherless Beast ..................................................................24 3.5 Treves and Merrick: A Male Beauty and the Beast .............................................................26 3.6 The Transformation: From Freak to Human? ......................................................................29 3.7 Suicide..................................................................................................................................30 3.8 Context and Reception .........................................................................................................32 3.9 Conclusion............................................................................................................................33 4. Edward Scissorhands : Handy Otherness................................................................................35 4.1 Introduction ..........................................................................................................................35 4.2 Tim Burton ...........................................................................................................................36 2 4.3 Edward Scissorhands and the Beast: Racial Otherness, Individuality and Cultural Heterogeneity .............................................................................................................................38 4.4 Edward and Women: Beauties and the Beast.......................................................................41 4.5 The Transformation: From Individual to Freak ...................................................................43 4.6 Isolation................................................................................................................................45 4.7 Context and Reception .........................................................................................................47 4.8 Conclusion............................................................................................................................49 5. Comparison and Conclusion ...................................................................................................50 5.1 Introduction ..........................................................................................................................51 5.2 The Directors and Their View of Otherness ........................................................................51 5.3 Merrick and Edward: Freakish Beasts as Racial Others ......................................................52 5.4 Society Beauties and Their “Acceptance” ...........................................................................52 5.5 The Transformations ............................................................................................................53 5.6 Unhappily Ever After?: Suicide and Isolation .....................................................................54 5.7 Conclusion: From Founding Myth of Sexual Difference to Racial Allegory......................55 Bibliography .................................................................................................................................56 3 1. Introduction The cinema has always been closely associated with fantasy, magic and enchantment. As a new form of storytelling, this medium can more specifically be linked to that age-old tradition of storytelling, represented by the fairy tale. Though many film scholars have theorized about “the question of fantasy and its relationship to cinema” (Petrie 1), it is the literary scholar and novelist Marina Warner who identified a close connection between the fairy tale and film. This relationship was the research subject of her publication Cinema and the Realms of Enchantment . In this work, she explains: Following in the footsteps of the literary form, film from the very beginning explored the territory of fear, showing heroes and heroines dealing with the product of their darkest imaginings. In these two respects – the interest in the imagination and the confrontation of private but universal terrors – film as a genre bears a close affinity with the most popular branch of literary romance, [the fairy tale]. (13) An important “private but universal terror” dealt with in both fairy tale and film is the fear of the unknown, which can be represented by a figure that is termed “the Other.” Indeed, in her course description of “Representations of Otherness in Twentieth-Century American Culture,” Renée Hoogland argues that “[a] primary function of cultural production . is to provide the frameworks for individuals to identify and give meanings to themselves as distinct from others.” 1 However, she continues, “[s]uch distinctions are never quite ‘innocent’: categories of identity always carry values and meanings that serve to structure social reality.” Because Others more often than not are perceived as a threat to the dominant sociocultural group or Self, they are usually put in underprivileged positions and are often represented in popular culture in ways that “help to maintain [these] unequal power relations” (Hoogland, par. 3). One of the best known fairy tales in the world dealing with Otherness, and a “dominant myth of our times” (Griswold 18), is the French, eighteenth century tale of “Beauty and the 1 “Representations of Otherness in Twentieth-Century American Culture” is an American Studies master course taught at the Catholic University of Nijmegen. For Hoogland’s course description, see the online studiegids at http://www.studiegids.science.ru.nl/2005/arts/prospectus/engels/course/3581/. 4 Beast.” 2 Interestingly, this classic children’s story ends with acceptance of the – at first beastly and horrifying – Other: Beauty (the Self) learns to love the Beast (the Other) and marries him. What is more, her love transforms him and the ugly Beast becomes beautiful. In his recent study The Meanings of “Beauty & the Beast,” Jerry Griswold explains how this seemingly simple story about looks versus looking has the capacity to remain popular, as he sums up and analyzes many modern interpretations. Functioning as a perfect platform to discuss various forms of Otherness and challenge stereotypical (negative) representations, it has been told and retold numerous times and has managed to adopt multiple meanings. Griswold not only discusses different literary versions, but also cinematic adaptations. However, while touching upon many modern cinematic and televised interpretations, he only provides an in-depth examination of the two most famous and literal cinematic translations of this classic fairy tale, namely Jean Cocteau’s La Belle et la Bête and Disney’s Beauty and the Beast . Thinking of fairy tales in general and the outsider tale of “Beauty and the Beast” in specific, two of my favorite film directors come to mind. Both David Lynch and Tim Burton are known for their inventive power to create dark and unsettling fairy tale-like worlds about deeply disturbed protagonists. Moreover, though admired by critics and public alike, they themselves remain outsiders in the film industry. It is interesting to note, then, that both Lynch and Burton have created a highly successful film dealing with the theme of an animalist or otherwise inhuman male “Other” at odds with society and himself. Lynch directed the Oscar-nominated The Elephant Man (1980) centering on a seriously deformed freak in Victorian England who wants to be a normal human being. Ten years later, Burton directed his acclaimed masterpiece Edward Scissorhands (1990). Burton’s modern-gothic version of “Beauty and the Beast” stars Johnny Depp