Ella Dalton (Creative Writing, Liverpool Screen School)
For the films chosen to screen to an audience in the frame of the Dis/Ability on Screen project, I selected Tim Burton’s Edward Scissorhands (1990) and set out to analyse the interrelations between film, disability and education based on the question: ‘How does disability affect communities?’.
Edward Scissorhands follows the story of a man who is created by a scientist in an attempt to have a son. While the creation, dubbed Edward, is a kind and naïve soul, his creator passes away before his form can be fully finished, leaving him with frightening scissors in place of hands. One day, a woman selling Avon products happens upon the ruins of Edward’s home, and takes it upon herself to bring an isolated Edward into suburban society. The film, as a project, mattered personally to many of the people who worked on it, such as Caroline Thompson, who worked for Burton as the film’s screenwriter. In a 2015 interview with Variety (Chernov, 2015), she was quoted saying: ‘everyone feels like an outsider. That’s the story we were telling, and that’s the story people still respond to.’ Burton himself has openly admitted the film is heavily based on his feelings of isolation and being unable to communicate to people in the context of his suburban upbringing. On the topic of his childhood, Burton stated that he was often alone and had trouble maintaining relationships; when asked for further clarification, his response was: ‘I get the feeling people just got this urge to want to leave me alone for some reason, I don’t know exactly why’ (Manderfield 2013, n.p.). These emotions led him, in his teenage years, to sketch a character that would evolve into one we now know as Edward: a thin, solemn man with long, sharp blades for fingers (White, 2011).
While the film is generally known as a classic today (Arabian, 2017), Johnny Depp, who plays Edward, said in the aforementioned Variety interview with Matthew Chernov (2015, n.p.) that ‘it took a long time to gain traction’, debuting third in the box office after its limited release, fairing far worse financially than other films out at the time such as ‘Home Alone’ and ‘Bird on a Wire’. In spite of this, the film gained a cult following that eventually earned it nominations for awards by the American Film Institute and even a theatrical ballet adaptation. The film was positively received by critics upon release and is still discussed in reviews to this day. Journalist Alex Arabian (2017, n.p.), writing for Film Inquiry, called the movie’s narrative ‘a story filled with both simplicity and complexity and an intangible element of wizardry that stands the test of time’. For Empire Online, Jo Berry (2015, n.p.) wrote: ‘Tim Burton’s modern-day fable succeeds beautifully as sharp comedy and achingly sad romance’. The film has found a home in its recognition for having a protagonist with a clear physical disability. It made it to number six on Disability Horizons’ list of their top 10 films featuring disability (Blackwell, 2015), and many people with Asperger Syndrome feel that Edward displays traits of the condition, a reoccurring comparison in Burton’s films (Sampson, 2010).
The film has many defenders; however, there have also been opposing arguments brought forward over the years regarding how Edward and disability in general are depicted in the film. Though many critics, such as Owen Gleiberman (1990), Rita Kempley (1990) and Marc Lee (2014) enjoyed and appreciated Edward’s personality and role as a tragic character, others feel that he is portrayed as being creepy, played for comic relief and even depicted as reprehensible. Writing for the blog Sociology 2275, Hannah Jane (2016) argues that the film ‘reinforces the stereotype that intellectually disabled individuals are evil and violent’. While mentioning that the movie presented ‘one of the first times the main character carried a major mainstream film with a handicap [sic]’, disability activist Sha-Myra (2018) believes it nonetheless used harmful stereotypes to make the audience sympathise with its protagonist, pointing to his depiction as a ‘burden or tragedy’ (Sha-Myra, 2018) – a common stereotype in media representations of disabled people, identified in similar fashion by Colin Barnes (1992), Rosemarie Garland-Thomson (1996), David Church (2006), and Katie Ellis and Gerard Goggin (2015), among many others.
With this in mind, I considered Edward Scissorhands an interesting film to discuss with an audience of diverse backgrounds. I asked that they consider how the film depicts disability and its relationship with communities, as well as what the film says about how society should treat people with visible and invisible disabilities. When I asked the audience how the character Edward impacts the community he enters in the film, they unanimously agreed that while, at first, he seems liked and valued, this is only superficial, his disability being used for the entertainment and practical needs of the townspeople. He is then abandoned as soon as he makes a mistake. As an audience member captured succinctly, ‘he firstly is seen as a freak, then as a commodity and finally as a monster.’ This is not a coincidence, as disability has often been depicted as a monstrosity in various media: Dylan Holdsworth (2018, p.192), for instance, in this context has suggested that ‘the freak and the monster occupy a socio-cultural space that both rails against and reiterates what the normative body should be and do’.
Of particular interest to me, particularly in view of the topic of communication between a disabled character and a specific community, was the hypothesis of the character Edward Scissorhands being on the autism spectrum. Most of the audience disagreed with the idea, pointing to Edward’s lack of social interactions to explain his strange behaviour. As said by one person, ‘Edward could be linked with the autism spectrum, but almost all neuro-typical people could. Edward didn’t have a normal childhood and he could be classed as under-developed.’ While most of the audience disagreed with their last point, highlighting Edward’s ability to understand to spot toxicity in relationships and his empathy with animals, they still did not accept the hypothesis. Even when I mentioned the fact that little was known about autism during the production of the film (to the extent that the concept of an ‘autism spectrum’ was not yet recognised as such), the audience was firm on dismissing the hypothesis. Although I see how one could be tempted to support it, I am in agreement with the audience that it was not Burton’s intention for Edward to be perceived as being a character with autism.
Finally, the audience reacted strongly to the featuring of religion and its relationship with disability in the film. While most of the audience felt that the depiction of religion was stereotypical and goofy, one person was vocal about her own experiences. She said ‘it’s accurate how they have depicted religion and its relationship with disability because some who are religious think that they (a person with disabilities) ended up like that because the person or their family aren’t good.’ Her cultural upbringing allowed her to experience the film in a different way, an indicator that Edward Scissorhands means a lot to people of various backgrounds.
The audience and I greatly enjoyed watching the film together, and we agreed that its long-lasting positive reputation and impact is well deserved. The audience believed that Edward Scissorhands presents an interesting portrayal of a disabled character entering a suburban environment and noticed the use of a disabled character’s eccentric (and hence potentially frightening) appearance to elicit the kind of complex cultural responses that Holdsworth has framed in terms of negotiations regarding the boundaries between the ‘normative and non-normative’, ‘self/Other’ etc. which are ultimately revealed as ‘precarious’ (Holdsworth, 2018, p. 194). ‘Disability’, then, it may be argued – like the historical performances of ‘freakery’ and ‘monstrosity’ – has the potential to question the boundaries that make up any given ‘imagined’ community (Anderson, 2006), positioning those who belong and those who do not.
References
Anderson, B. (2006) Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, rev. ed. London/New York: Verso.
Arabian, A. (2017) Edward Scissorhands: Tim Burton’s Timeless Masterpiece.[online] Available at: https://www.filminquiry.com/edward-scissorhands-1990-review/ [Accessed 5 June 2019].
Barnes, C. (1992) Disabling Imagery and the Media: An Exploration of the Principles for Media Representations of Disabled People. Halifax: British Council of Organizations of Disabled People.
Berry, J. (2015) Edward Scissorhands. [online] Available at: https://www.empireonline.com/movies/edward-scissorhands/review/ [Accessed 5 June 2019].
Church, D. (2006) Fantastic Films, Fantastic Bodies: Speculations on the Fantastic and Disability Representation – From Freaks to Scissorhands. [online] Available at: https://offscreen.com/view/fantastic_films_fantastic_bodies [Accessed 5 June 2019].
Blackwell, J. (2019) Top 10 Films Featuring Disability. [online] Available at: http://disabilityhorizons.com/2015/10/top-10-films-featuring-disability/ [Accessed 5 June 2019].
Chernov, M. (2019) ‘Edward Scissorhands’: From Box Office Misfire to Cinema Classic. [online] Variety. Available at: https://variety.com/2015/film/news/edward-scissorhands-25th-anniversary-johnny-depp-tim-burton-1201653236/ [Accessed 5 June 2019].
Ellis, K. and Goggin, G. (2015) Disability and the Media. London: Palgrave.
Evans, D. (2019) Honor the Disabilities Act by Enjoying a Showing of Edward Scissorhands. [online] Available at: https://gawker.com/honor-the-disabilities-act-by-enjoying-a-showing-of-edw-1713462877 [Accessed 5 June 2019].
Garland-Thomson, R. (1996) Freakery: Cultural Spectacles of the Extraordinary Body. New York/London: New York University Press.
Gleiberman, O. (1990) ‘Edward Scissorhands’. [online] Available at: https://ew.com/article/1990/12/07/edward-scissorhands-3/ %5BAccessed 5 June 2019].
Holdsworth, D. (2018) Conceal, Don’t Feel: Disability, Monstrosity, and the Freak in Edward Scissorhands and Frozen. In Moruzi, K., Smith, M.J. and Bullen, E. (Eds.), Affect, Emotion, and Children’s Literature, pp.192-206. New York: Routledge.
Jane, H. (2016) Better off Dead (Or in Isolation). [online] Available at: https://sociology2275.wordpress.com/category/edward-scissorhands/ [Accessed 5 June 2019].
Kempley, R. (1990) Edward Scissorhands. [online] Available at: https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/style/longterm/movies/videos/edwardscissorhandspg13kempley_a0a0bf.htm??noredirect=on [Accessed 5 June 2019].
Lee, M. (2014) Edward Scissorhands, Review: ‘A True Fairytale’. [online] Available at: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/film/filmreviews/11298442/Edward-Scissorhands-review-a-true-fairytale.html [Accessed 5 June 2019].
Manderfeld, K. (2013) Creativity in Hollywood: Film Visionaries on Creative Process and Inspiration. [online]Available at: https://www.mpaa.org/2013/08/creativity-in-hollywood-film-visionaries-on-creative-process-and-inspiration/ [Accessed 5 June 2019].
Sampson, C. (2010) Tim Burton’s Edward Scissorhands as a Psychological Allegory. [online] Available at: http://peoplefirsteducation.blogspot.com/2010/05/tim-burtons-edward-scissorhands-as.html [Accessed 5 June 2019].
Sha-Myra (2018) An Essay on Edward Scissorhands and Disability Stereotypes. [online] Available at: https://www.fun4thedisabled.com/an-essay-on-edward-scissorhands-and-disability-stereotypes/ [Accessed 5 June 2019].
White, D. (2011) Johnny Depp: The Unauthorised Biography. London: Michael O’Mara Books.
Dis/Ability on Screen 