Comparing Fantasy And Imagination In Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas

Tim Burton is an American film director, artist, writer, producer and animator. He is well known for his visually striking films, which combine themes of fantasy and horror, including Batman, Beetlejuice, Edward Scissorhands, and The Nightmare Before Christmas. Tim Burton’s 1982 short film, Vincent, is a tale of seven-year-old Vincent Malloy, who aspires to be nothing more than his idol, Vincent Price. Burton switches between reality and the boy's corrupt imagination, where he believes himself to be Vincent Price. Vincent’s overactive imagination has him reminded of the tales of Price's films. For example, Vincent is a polite young man, but while he is courteous to his aunt’s face, he secretly imagines dipping her in hot wax and putting her in a

Vincent is so alone and secluded that he has actually allowed himself to believe he is in fact, Vincent Price. Vincent disregards his mother’s wishes and carries on as a tortured, hopeless and widowed victim. Vincent is afflicted by lively fantasies straight out of Edgar Allen Poe’s tales. Burton’s poem is in the form of rhyming stanzas, much like Poe’s The Raven, in which Vincent quotes at the film’s close. Poe’s recurring theme of untimely burial shoves Vincent over the edge. He begins to fantasize that he has a lovely young wife who has been buried alive and screams to him from beneath the ground. Vincent digs up his mother’s flowerbed to release his phantom “wife”, which gets him locked inside of his room, where his trance will progress into full blown-terror. Once alone, Vincent starts to hallucinate all sorts of terrors, much like the unfortunate killer of The Tell-Tale Heart or Lenore’s grieving lover in The Raven. He considers his bedroom a tomb, an abominable place that will not allow him to leave, just like the House of Usher. Burton captures loneliness and isolation perfectly in this short