RIP Tim Burton, You Just Got Cancelled.

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Okay, this will probably shock a lot of you: I’ve never cared for Tim Burton’s movies.

I still haven’t actually seen The Nightmare Before Christmas. Shocked yet? While I enjoyed Edward Scissorhands at first pass when I saw it years ago, a recent rewatch left me feeling icky. That weird rapey scene with the neighbor lady? Shudder, no thanks. Put it into the vault with Revenge of the Nerds and never let it escape. I was underwhelmed in quick succession by Coraline, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, and Sweeney Todd, after which I stopped seeing his movies in theatres. It was always the same thing over and over again:

So I’m not really all that heartbroken now that I’ve heard he’s come under fire for being a racist. Oh, guys, wait for it! In an interview with Rachel Simon at Bustle, when asked why his casts feature predominantly white people, he had this bewildering reply:

“[T]hings either call for things, or they don’t. I remember back when I was a child watching The Brady Bunch and they started to get all politically correct. Like, OK, let’s have an Asian child and a black. I used to get more offended by that than just…”

WAIT. You just said you got offended by a child actor who you just casually referred to as “a black”? To be clear, you just spoke of a human being, a human child, and referred to that living human actual person as “a black.” And you’re the one offended in this scenario. What? What? No, really, WAHT? Have you lost your mind?

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Okay guys, it’s been like four days since the perplexing syntax of Donald Trump scrambled my brain like those eggs in the “This Is Your Brain On Drugs” commercials of my childhood. So maybe rich, powerful white men just can’t form sentences in the English language anymore? And I’m not surprised that he’s functionally incapable of explaining himself in a coherent manner, I mean, his last decade of films stands to indicate that he has the creative capacity of whoever it was that renamed Hostess cupcakes “Scary Cakes” for Halloween, but COME ON. 

I mean, if you can imagine a clay-mation world comprised of all of the Western Holidays, acted out by goblins and skeletons and ghost dogs, but you can’t stretch your imagination to include “an Asian child and a black,” maybe you never had the creative capabilities that generations of wannabe-goth preteens swooned over. Adios, Tim Burton. You’ve been cancelled. You’re as done for as The Corpse Bride (hey! I forgot I was also disappointed by that movie!).


Comments

3 responses to “RIP Tim Burton, You Just Got Cancelled.”

  1. His was quite amusing to read! Coralline AND Corpse Bride are 2 movies I genuinely didn’t like. I refuse to see Willy Wonka on principle. Gene Wilder (RIP!) and ONLY Gene Wilder can be Willy Wonka.

    I’m not a rich white man and I still can’t form a complete sentence to respond to “an Asian child and a black”. I mean what the actual fuck? Who says shit like that? “A black”?? Apparently people are adjectives now? I can’t even comprehend it. He does only cast he same people though. I get he works well with Depp and Bonham-Carter, but still.

    1. Tim Burton divorced HBC last September, and now that Johnny Depp has faced spousal abuse charges, I think the happy trio of has been busted up a little bit. I’m a bit sad for the people who really like his movies but like, at this point, you gotta hold Hollywood accountable or admit that you just don’t care about representation at all.

    2. Coraline wasn’t a Tim Burton movie??‍♀️

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