In this blog post, we will look at how the movie ‘Edward Scissorhands’ harmoniously incorporates folklore, heroic mythology, fantasy melodrama, and horror parody.
Introduction
“Edward Scissorhands” is a very rich film. It contains quite a lot of elements. Unlike what we usually remember, ‘Edward Scissorhands’ is not just a fairy tale-like love story. Just by looking at the genre, there are more than three elements mixed together. And if you look at the theme, you can find even more. However, the film is not divided into separate parts. ‘Edward Scissorhands’ contains several genres and a number of themes as a complete work.
In the process of analyzing the film, I do not want to break this harmony of ‘Edward Scissorhands’. It may be an excessive desire, but I want to discover as much as possible from ‘Edward Scissorhands’ and at the same time maintain the harmony between them.
First of all, I would like to position Edward Scissorhands as a type of “origin myth,” a narrative genre that has existed since the beginning of human history. This will clarify the narrative context of the entire film, which we easily overlook. Next, I will reexamine Edward Scissorhands as a modified form of “hero.” Examining this character, who is more unusual than any other movie protagonist, will be a key task in analyzing Edward Scissorhands. I will borrow the structure of the “hero myth” as discerned by Joseph Campbell to clarify the character of Edward Scissorhands.
And I will cover the entire film as a fantasy melodrama. We remember this film as a love story, a sad love story, and that is a very accurate genre understanding of Edward Scissorhands. Nevertheless, I put this work last because the above two analyses must be preceded in order to see this film more clearly as a fantasy melodrama.
In between the three processes above, I will discover and mix in the subtle elements of the film. Perhaps the things that are inserted in between will more effectively reveal the true nature of Edward Scissorhands.
Edward Scissorhands as a mythological tale
The origin of a folk tale is not difficult to imagine. Even today, countless origin tales are told in homes with young children. Of course, this is more common in ancient times or in so-called primitive villages. However, if you have a special child, you can find origin tales in modern cities.
Most origin tales occur in the following situations. A child asks his father, “Why do frogs croak when it rains?” The father does not give a scientific explanation about moisture, but tells a story. “Once upon a time, there was a green frog who lived with a single mother.” The story that began in this way is passed from mouth to mouth, becoming the ‘Green Frog Story’ that we know today.
In this way, origin myths answer questions about the origin of things in the form of a story. The question is not about scientific causality, but about some “meaning.” And as an answer, origin myths also produce “meaning” rather than knowledge about the object.
Now, let’s think about how ‘Edward Scissorhands’ begins and ends. An extremely old woman tries to put her granddaughter to bed. It is snowing outside the window. The granddaughter keeps asking her grandmother why she doesn’t want to sleep. She asks, “Grandma, why are your eyes down?” And the grandmother starts to tell a story to answer her granddaughter’s question. That is the story of Edward Scissorhands.
We can easily overlook this situation. It is easy to dismiss it as a setup to draw out the story of Edward Scissorhands. However, it is no exaggeration to say that the key point of the movie Edward Scissorhands is the conversation between the grandmother and her granddaughter. Without this conversation between the grandmother and her granddaughter, Edward Scissorhands would not have been such a beautiful story. If you don’t believe me, imagine a movie that is full of Edward Scissorhands stories without the grandmother’s story. It would be nothing.
Since the modern era, people have been busy stripping away all the mysteries around them. And now, modern society is in a state of “being rid of all faith.” Modern people understand everything, without exception, whether it be the emotion of love or objects that can be grasped in the hand, such as rocks and rain. We understand the world as an objective object that exists regardless of us. This may be the root of the loneliness that modern people experience, and the origin story fills it.
When the granddaughter asks about the origin of snow, the grandmother tells a sad love story, connecting the snow that falls from the sky to the lives of people on the ground. And through such meaning, it teaches that things and people do not exist separately. It awakens emotions in the granddaughter that cannot be felt when one is reasoning with strict logic. It presents a richer world. The movie Edward Scissorhands ultimately comes down to the story that the snow falling from the sky is not just ice crystals.
The transformed “hero,” Edward Scissorhands
Joseph Campbell, with his deep interest in mythology, devoted himself to finding commonalities among the myths scattered around the world through his extraordinary reading skills. Among the outstanding masterpieces that emerged from this work is “The Hero with a Thousand Faces.” In this book, he reveals the common structure of the heroic tale, a theme often addressed in mythology.
The hero myth, from which many modern growth stories have learned their structure, consists of three major stages: separation, initiation, and return. Separation is when the protagonist, lacking something, inevitably leaves the world they used to live in by chance. Initiation is the stage where the protagonist learns important things while going through various difficulties in the adventure or experience that began in the previous stage. Finally, the return is the return to the world you used to live in, based on what you learned so hard.
I viewed Edward Scissorhands in the context of such stories of heroes, but the form was quite different. In a broad sense, Edward Scissorhands goes through the process of separation → initiation → return, one by one. In that respect, it can be said to be exactly the same as existing heroes. However, while Edward Scissorhands and other heroes share the same form of adventure, their content is quite different.
Usually, heroes live with people. That is the nature of everyday life before the adventure. Then, when the time for the adventure comes, the hero leaves those people. Of course, he meets various people during the adventure, but they are only people passing by, and the hero always struggles with loneliness. When the adventure is over, the hero returns to the people. He returns to the world as it was, but the important thing is that the hero has changed, and he lives in a completely different way in this world to which he has returned.
But what about Edward Scissorhands? Edward Scissorhands lived alone, away from people. He did not have the opportunity to meet people, did not feel lonely, and just lived in the castle on a daily basis. And the world he encounters, separated from the existing world, is a world where many people live. He goes on an adventure among many people. And in the end, he “returns” to his old castle, and his life alone after returning is certainly different from before.
The structure of the heroic tale in the Edward Scissorhands style is certainly very unusual in the “heroic myth” line, but it expresses a part of our lives well. When I was young and thoughtless, I was not lonely even when I was alone, but I learned about loneliness after having my first love.
Let’s take a break from the structure of the hero myth and look at Edward Scissorhands. He has scissors for hands. Having scissors for hands implies more than just his excellence in gardening and beauty. Since his hands are incomplete and left unfinished, Edward Scissorhands’ scissor hands represent the deficiency of incompleteness. And since he cannot touch himself and the people he loves, his scissor hands are a curse. Of course, as seen in his gardening and grooming, scissors are also Edward Scissorhands’ natural talent.
In the movie, the villagers constantly offer to introduce him to a doctor who will fix his hand. And Edward Scissorhands is also enthusiastic about him. His scissors, which represent both his deficiency and his curse, and his talent and his blessing, may have been the core of Edward Scissorhands’ adventure. The question is how to solve this problem that one is born with. As in a road movie, the goal is not achieved in the end. A different ending occurs. That is the creation of an eye with a pair of scissors, and communicating with loved ones and the world through scissors.
Fantasy Melodrama, ‘Edward Scissorhands’
The most important feature of melodrama is that it transforms social issues into personal stories of love. It is also defined as “a film that makes the audience feel pathos for the protagonist, who is surrounded by forces much stronger than himself.” In other words, it makes the audience feel a certain way by showing them a situation in which the power of society, institutions, and traditions that goes beyond the personal is forced on something extremely personal.
Another characteristic is that it is a genre that expresses the desire to express everything, and it also expresses melodrama. It refers to the process of expressing the oppression hidden beneath reality, that is, the excess that inevitably occurs in the process of displacement. And as the name suggests, melodrama is centered on the use of music. It focuses on music more than any other tool in expressing emotions.
The movie Edward Scissorhands can be described as a traditional melodrama that has all of the above characteristics. First, Edward Scissorhands features a special social oppression and brute force. Let’s take a look at the town where the people live. This town, colored in technical colors, looks like a model house and seems to symbolize some real people. There are houses of similar size with small lawns, and there are “desperate housewives” who spend their days in the village, preoccupied with beauty and drinking. And there are men who are knowledgeable about economic issues and who go to and from work at the same time.
The situation in this village, which seems to represent the middle class in the United States, is mixed with the fantasy genre and does not lose its realism. The life they represent is an ordinary life lived day by day without any special love or passion. They spend time trimming their nails, talking on the phone with their neighbors, or chatting together. When men are at home, they eat or watch television. Sometimes they have a barbecue together.
Edward Scissorhands is just a simple gossip in such a village, and true communication is often blocked. His “pure” love for Kim is also inevitably crushed by such middle-class small-town life. Edward Scissorhands and Kim’s love is more likely to fail the more “pure” it is, and the more dramatically it reveals the middle-class typicality of the townspeople.
Another feature of melodrama is the “excess” that is well-expressed in Edward Scissorhands. In order to express social issues as personal problems, such symbols must be incorporated throughout the film. In addition to the lifestyle patterns of the villagers mentioned above, the clothes they wear, the furniture they use, the way they speak, and the conversations they have at the dinner table are all expressed to the point of overflowing. Melodrama tries to reveal such symbols as clearly as possible, which is manifested in an “excess” that makes a lot of things say a lot.
When it comes to the use of music, Edward Scissorhands is a textbook example of melodrama in terms of its use of music. The music effectively reveals the emotions of the characters in accordance with the situation, while maintaining a mysterious atmosphere from start to finish.
A parody of fantasy horror
Although it does not play a major role in the film, the director seems to have wanted to convey another message by parodying fantasy horror. The beginning of the film is a mixture of dark gray and blue, signaling the beginning of a horror movie. The frantically running machines and bizarre shapes directly remind the audience familiar with the film of “Frankenstein.”
When viewed from the perspective of the main character being an android, the nature of the parody becomes even more apparent. “Frankenstein” can be said to depict the human fear of the advancement of science and technology. However, in the same situation, “Edward Scissorhands” does not make androids the object of fear, but instead casts the villain as a very ordinary person. On the contrary, Edward Scissorhands, a machine, shows a truly human side with a warm body temperature.
It is not content to reveal social contradictions through the grammar of melodrama, but uses fantasy to transfer the emotions of fear into a hatred of everyday life. This middle-class, petty-bourgeois life seems to show that it is so solid that it even nullifies the fear of machines, and is actually that scary.
Conclusion
We have looked at Edward Scissorhands from four different angles. We have seen the meaning of Edward Scissorhands as a creation myth, and we have identified the character of Edward Scissorhands as a transformed hero. And by comparing the rules of melodrama with the movie, I defined “Edward Scissorhands” as a fantasy melodrama. I also found elements of parody in this movie about fantasy horror. The movie shows how meaning and memories of things are created, while criticizing the modern small-town life that hinders the creation of such meaning.
In the end, the story the girl heard about the origin of snow on a winter night was a very sad love story. It was the love story of a mechanical man who could not be fulfilled because he was bumped into by petty people. However, he was bringing beauty to the world through his cursed hands and scissors. Now, I wonder how the girl will look at the world.
