Tim Burton's Bodies

Offers a novel, body-centric approach to Burton's films that provides a distinctive way to consider his filmmaking Explores unique technical personnel perspectives into creative processes of Corpse Bride that enhances knowledge about Burton as a filmmaker, and provides previously undocumented facts about the film Includes a range of theoretical approaches, drawn from psychoanalysis, philosophy, animal studies, aesthetics, feminism and representation Provides a multidisciplinary approach with inclusion of animal studies' expertise that illuminates different strategies for analysing characters/bodies Examines works including The Jar that are little explored and which will extend knowledge of Burton's canon Provides up-to-date research including Burton's most recent film Dumbo (2019) Tim Burton is an internationally celebrated director, critically acclaimed for his fantasy horror films and the macabre ghosts, animated corpses and grotesques that inhabit them. This innovative study centres on the body as a centripetal force in Burton's work and considers the array of anomalous, extraordinary and transgressive beings that pervade his canon. It broadens the focus of living forms to include animated, creaturely, corporeal and Gothic bodies, exploring the way that Burton celebrates the body - whether human, animal, animated or anthropomorphised. In prioritising the somatic aspects of characters, Tim Burton's Bodies spotlights actual physical attributes and behaviour, and considers what meanings these may impart in terms of race, class, gender, sexuality, humanimality and disability.