Fashioning the gothic female body : the representation of women in three of Tim Burton's films

Abstract

This study explores the construction of the Gothic female body in three films by the director Tim Burton, specifically Batman Returns (1992), Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (2007) and Dark Shadows (2012). Through a deployment of Julia Kristeva’s theory of abjection, the intention is to indicate the degree to which Burton crafts his leading female characters as abject Others and embodiments of Barbara Creed’s ‘monstrous-feminine’. In this Gothic portrayal, the director consistently draws on the essentialised stereotypes of Woman as either ‘virgin’ or ‘whore’ as he shapes his Gothic heroines and femmes fatales. While a gendered duality is established, this is destabilised to an extent, as Burton permits his female characters varying degrees of agency as they acquire monstrous traits. This construction of Woman as monster, this study will show, is founded on a certain fear of femaleness, so reinstating the ideology of Woman as Other.