Critical Companion to Tim Burton

Adam Barkman is associate professor and chair of the Philosophy department at Redeemer University College.Antonio Sanna is a regular contributor to Interactions: Literature and Culture, Kinema and The Quint.

The book offers well-documented contributions and a plurality of critical approaches, which does not affect the coherence of the whole. The chapters. . . give a good idea of the thematic and aesthetic specificity of Burton's cinema. . . . We strongly recommend reading this book, which offers varied insights into the films and is an important and innovative contribution to the knowledge of Tim Burton's work. [Translated from original French]

• IntroductionSection I: Constructing WorldsChapter 1: Burton’s Bowl: Constructions of Space in the Films of Tim Burton by Jeffrey Andrew WeinstockChapter 2: The Abject, Carnivalesque, and Uncanny by Fran Pheasant-KellyChapter 3: The Dark and the Darker: The Meaning and Significance of Dark and Light Colors in Tim Burton Films by Orsolya KaracsonyChapter 4: Traces of Surrealism in the Work of Tim Burton by Sabine Planka Chapter 5: Tim Burton’s Artists of Death by Elsa ColombaniChapter 6: The Interconnectivity of Elfman’s Film Scoring and Burton’s Narrative by Andrew S. PowellSection II: Fairy Worlds and NightmaresChapter 7: Nightmares and the Struggle for Existence in Alice in Wonderland and Planet of the Apes by Antonio SannaChapter 8: Reading Burton’s TheNightmare Before Christmas with Paul Tillich by Christopher M. CuthillChapter 9: Deconstructing (and Reconstructing) the Fairy Tale in Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas and Corpse Bride by Alissa BurgerChapter 10: Mars Attacks! as Fractured Fairy Tale under Tolkien’s Principles of Recovery, Escape, and Consolation by Nicole PramikChapter 11: The Heroic Journey of Ed Wood by Carl SobocinskiChapter 12: The Paranormal Hero as a Boundary-Crosser by Maria Dicieanu Chapter 13: Miss Peregrine’s: New Home for a Peculiar Problem by Trip McCrossinSection III: Identity and the WorldChapter 14: A Colonial Tapestry: Race and Ideology in Pee-wee’s BigAdventure by Florent ChristolChapter 15: Willy Wonka as a Contemporary Dandy by Radoslaw OsinskiChapter 16: Batman, Burton, and the Puzzle of Identity by Kyle Alkema and Adam BarkmanChapter 17: Fools on the Hill: Tim Burton’s Nietzschean Outcasts and Heidegger’s das Man by Siobhan Lyons Chapter 18: “My Whole Life Is a Dark Room”: Nostalgia and Domesticity in Beetlejuice and Edward Scissorhands by Renee MiddlemostChapter 19: Tim Burton and the Determinist Impulse by Brent Peters and Adam BarkmanChapter 20: Doll Doubles: Female Identity in Tim Burton’s Stop-Motion Films by Donna Mitchell