In that piece, I defined American Cringe as:Īmerican Cringe is a particular aesthetic sensibility that developed near the end of the Cold War and was dusted off again at the beginning of this century after receding into the background a bit. It’s only an hour and a half long (if I’m nostalgic for anything, it’s for films that can tell a story in less than three hours.) However, I stand by what I said about the movie previously: it is part of that genre I mentioned and labeled American Cringe. I recommend rewatching it if you get the chance. Look, I didn’t think I had been gearing up to write about the Tim Burton movie Beetlejuice, but I’m really seeing that a lot of what I’ve been talking about fit into this movie, and I really must admit that it’s a fun movie. I’m not even going to make this a piece a bout nostalgia for the 1980s and how frustrating it is, because it barely counts as presenting itself as taking place at a particular time. Eventually, the Deetzes and Maitlands agree to share the house, with Lydia essentially having four parents: two living and two ghostly.Ī lot of this movie dovetails with things we’ve talked about on this website: I could go into a discussion of the afterlife bureaucracy and its reflection of real-world social services, I could talk about how apparently ghost capitalism is a thing that exists there (also: hands off, Reaganite, ghosts are a leftist symbol), I could talk about the socially constructed nature of identity in the film (“I myself am the strange and unusual,”) the connection between property and selfhood, how blind the narrative is to its own material underpinnings, or simply how the situation of the Maitlands illustrates the way that quarantine (necessary though it is) leads to depression. The Maitlands go to incredible lengths to get them out, being unhelpfully chewed up and spat out by the bureaucracy of the underworld and then, at wit’s end, they hire the titular Betelgeuse (Michael Keaton,) who goes to incredible lengths to fulfill the deal that he feels he made with them and has to be chased away by the Maitlands, who have developed a fondness for Lydia in the meantime. Since neither, apparently, had any sort of family, their home and all of their possessions are acquired by the Deetzes - father Charles (Jeffrey Jones), daughter Lydia (Winona Ryder), and stepmother Delia (Catherine O’Hara) - who make no sense as a family unit (none of them seem to like one another). ![]() If, like me, you haven’t seen it in a long time, allow me to refresh: the Maitlands (Geena Davis and Alec Baldwin) die in a freak accident involving a stray dog, and are stuck haunting their house in rural Connecticut.
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