‘I don’t want him in my heart. I want him here with me’: On Tim Burton’s Frankenweenie (2012)

Abstract

Frankenweenie (2012) is amongst the most personal films directed by Tim Burton because it reflects the director’s visual aesthetics and thematic obsessions, while also being a composite of different bodies: monstrous, anomalous, literary and cinematic. In this sense, the film serves as a container for Burton’s art and creative view. Basing our analysis on research developed by Salisbury (2000) and Weinstock (2013), this study looks at ideas of monstrosity (Mittman, 2016) and the monstrous bodies portrayed in the film, which are connected with the other “bodies” the director creates and reanimates. Victor and Sparky, but also the film itself, are constructions deriving from literature and cinema and, consequently, can be viewed as bodies produced from a palimpsest of ideas and concepts. Thus, the purpose of this essay is to look into the different bodies explored in the film, while trying to understand how the director has contributed to the ongoing discussion of what it means to be monstrous and, therefore, what it means to be human.

Keywords

• monster
• frankenstein
• frankenweenie
• tim burton
• bodies