Betrayed by Winona Horowitz aka Kiss of the Ryder Woman

He always enjoyed watching Tim Burton's films -- they were eye candy, for one thing -- but they left him feeling vaguely pissed off. They all seemed to have an agenda of relentless normalcy hiding behind a thin veil of weirdness. He'd loved Beetlejuice until the last scene, which sent him storming from the theater and left him kicking things all day. The sight of Winona Ryder's character, formerly strange and beautiful in her ratted hairdo and smudged eyeliner, now combed out and squeaky clean, clad in a preppy skirt and knee socks and a big shit-eating sickeningly normal grin... it was entirely too much to bear.
--Poppy Z. Brite, Drawing Blood

I have always been fascinated by the above quote because it seems so different from my view of the movie. After all, the end of the movie had the Winona Ryder character floating in mid-air while dancing to an old calypso tune. Hardly a normal activity for a young girl of that period. Moreover, the end also had her relate more warmly to two ghosts than she ever did to her own living parents. Once again, hardly an endorsement of normality.

Granted, the character responsible for the above quote did not come from the same type of family background as myself and understandably had different issues to deal with than I had when I was growing up. Besides, normality is a deceptive phrase. I grew up in an environment where Spanish was frequently spoken and almost every other week saw a visit from a Spanish-speaking relative who may or may not have been dark-skinned. It took me the longest time to understand that I could lay out in the sun all day and never become as brown as my favorite female cousin. It took me even longer to realize how many of my relatives spoke with Mexican accents. (After all, when I was growing up, such accents were normal. It was the non-Hispanics I met at school who usually talked with what I considered to be accents.)

As a result, I grew up with a different idea of normality than most of my classmates. Thus it always seemed silly to me to rebel with tattoos and unconventional hair styles to “prove” I was an outsider when it seemed obvious to me every time I showed up in school that I was already an outsider. I just was not a fashionable outsider. This did not mean that I had anything against those who chose to rebel with dyed hair, mohawks or tattoos. I just found it a bit hard to understand.

Anyway, I always liked the 1988 fantasy Beetlejuice even though it was obvious to my young eyes the first time I saw it that parts of the script could have used some improvement. The contrast between the Maitlands (the ghostly couple played by Geena Davis and Alec Baldwin) and the Deetzes (the living couple played by Jeffrey Jones and Catherine O’Hara) was funny but hardly original and the emphasis on the admittedly funny title character (played by Michael Keaton) often led to scenes that had no real business being in the movie save to showcase Keaton’s character.

Then again, it did have a truly memorable Danny Elfman score plus good performances by a cast that was at the top of its game. Adam Maitland (Baldwin’s character) seemed to actually love his wife Barbara and though the two of them often acted like overgrown kids, there was a maturity about their later actions that seems refreshing compared to the childish adult characters who have appeared in more recent movies.

One could truly believe Barbara Maitland would make a good “stepmother” for Lydia Deetz (played by Winona Ryder née Horowitz) and Ryder seemed convincing as a teen-age Goth wannabe who nevertheless yearned for the same affection from her parents as a conventional teenager -- an affection she eventually got from the Maitlands.

The first time I saw this movie with my youngest brother, he could not help observing that the Maitlands were better parents to Lydia than her real parents. They cared about her. They made time for her. They helped her with her homework and generally made it quite clear that they gave a damn about her. The Deetzes, on the other hand, did not really know how to deal with Lydia. The father looked as if he had always been more interested in making money than anything else and while he was never unfriendly to Lydia, he never seemed overly eager to have her around. The stepmother was far more interested in her art than Lydia, going so far as to spend more of her time pandering to her metrosexual friend Otho (played by the late Glenn Shadix) than tending to her stepdaughter.

In the end, the conflict between the Maitlands -- the couple who used to own the house into which the Deetzs had moved -- and the Deetzs -- the couple who currently owned the house -- seemed less important than the conflict between the Maitlands and the character they originally hired to scare the Deetzs out of their house -- Beetlejuice. Beetlejuice was easily the most memorable character in the movie and yet because his actions were so much more cartoonish than those of his co-stars, he seemed like a bit of a distraction.

Granted, the movie was named after him and not one of the other characters and he was rather funny the first few times he showed up on screen. Michael Keaton always had a way with a throwaway line and the screenwriters gave him quite a few.

But director Tim Burton had no real idea what to do with him. Was he a good ghost? Not necessarily. But he did not really come as being evil so much as amoral. If he wished to save you from falling, he would do so but only if he was in the mood. If he was not in the mood, he saw nothing wrong with dropping you down a flight of stairs. In short, he was not a very nice person -- and yet there are times when he seemed like the closest thing this movie has to a hero. For example, there is one point when he actually saved the Maitlands from a gruesome fate -- yet he accomplished this by distracting two other characters with a stunt which eventually led to either their injury or their death. (The movie never specified which.)

I suppose if I was more of a Poppy Z. Brite fan, I would turn against this movie and seek something better.

But naah!

Any movie which could have a sympathetic character say something like, “I myself am... strange and unusual” and have said character say such a line with the same type of pride most people normally devote to the earning of sports trophies and straight-A report cards has the right attitude toward normality as far as I am concerned, no matter how many makeovers said character eventually went in for.

If you still think Ms. Brite’s character is right and that Lydia Deetz becomes little more than a mealy-mouthed sell-out by the end of the movie, ask yourself this question: if a female friend were to walk up to you and confess to having done the same activities that Lydia Deetz performs in the last few minutes of this movie, what type of reaction would you have? Would you say, “Oh, how cool!”? Or would you say “Oh, how lame!”? Or would you just give her a long, steady look and then head for the nearest exit when you realized she was being totally serious?