A Critical Companion to Tim Burton

Introduction

Section I: Constructing Worlds

Chapter 1: Burton’s Bowl: Constructions of Space in the Films of Tim Burton by Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock
Chapter 2: The Abject, Carnivalesque, and Uncanny by Fran Pheasant-Kelly
Chapter 3: The Dark and the Darker: The Meaning and Significance of Dark and Light Colors in Tim Burton Films by Orsolya Karacsony
Chapter 4: Traces of Surrealism in the Work of Tim Burton by Sabine Planka
Chapter 5: Tim Burton’s Artists of Death by Elsa Colombani
Chapter 6: The Interconnectivity of Elfman’s Film Scoring and Burton’s Narrative by Andrew S. Powell

Section II: Fairy Worlds and Nightmares

Chapter 7: Nightmares and the Struggle for Existence in Alice in Wonderland and Planet of the Apes by Antonio Sanna
Chapter 8: Reading Burton’s TheNightmare Before Christmas with Paul Tillich by Christopher M. Cuthill
Chapter 9: Deconstructing (and Reconstructing) the Fairy Tale in Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas and Corpse Bride by Alissa Burger
Chapter 10: Mars Attacks! as Fractured Fairy Tale under Tolkien’s Principles of Recovery, Escape, and Consolation by Nicole Pramik
Chapter 11: The Heroic Journey of Ed Wood by Carl Sobocinski
Chapter 12: The Paranormal Hero as a Boundary-Crosser by Maria Dicieanu
Chapter 13: Miss Peregrine’s: New Home for a Peculiar Problem by Trip McCrossin

Section III: Identity and the World

Chapter 14: A Colonial Tapestry: Race and Ideology in Pee-wee’s BigAdventure by Florent Christol
Chapter 15: Willy Wonka as a Contemporary Dandy by Radoslaw Osiński
Chapter 16: Batman, Burton, and the Puzzle of Identity by Kyle Alkema and Adam Barkman
Chapter 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 Middlemost
Chapter 19: Tim Burton and the Determinist Impulse by Brent Peters and Adam Barkman
Chapter 20: Doll Doubles: Female Identity in Tim Burton’s Stop-Motion Films by Donna Mitchell

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]