Tim Burton’s Popularization of Perversity: Edward Scissorhands, Batman Returns, Sleepy Hollow, and Corpse Bride

Abstract

Jim Smith and J. Clive Matthews astutely describe Tim Burton’s Batman Returns (1992) as “the only … S&M art film that anybody has ever sold to MacDonald’s as a summer blockbuster for the kids” (144). The observation that the film concerns itself with sadomasochism is both provocative and extremely unusual in critical writings on Burton’s films, as it often seems that film reviewers and critics adhere to a “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy regarding sexuality in Burton’s work. Only Ed Wood (1994) is regularly discussed as containing perverse sexuality, though this interpretation of the film seems ironic, as attributing sexual perversity to Burton’s fictionalized Wood is a stretch. The film’s depiction of Wood’s transvestism closely follows the reassurances usually given by advice columns and in popularized psychology to mainstream Americans about this practice: male transvestites are generally otherwise normal heterosexuals and they dress as women primarily to relieve stress, not to achieve sexual arousal.¹ Yet blatant sexualized depictions of perversity occur not in this film, which is clearly aimed at adult cinephiles, but in the Burton films apparently intended to appeal to children as well as adults, such as his screen version of a Batman comic. While some critics did comment on Catwoman’s (Michelle Pfeiffer) dominatrix garb in Batman Returns, few noted the way S/M practices were referenced in her romance with the film’s similarly leather fetish-suited superhero (Michael Keaton).