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-----About two weeks ago I was watching the movie Nightmare before Christmas, directed by Tim Burton, in celebration of Halloween, and as I was watching it I noticed several overlaying themes that crossed over from the movie into several of the readings that we were assigned this term. Many characters, concepts and situations are easily related to ideas and characters from the books: The Autobiography of Malcolm X?, Their Eyes were Watching God and The Songlines. Many of the ideas from these readings struck me as very exciting when I was able to relate it to a movie I had such feeling for. It was because of this that I believe that the FP course should adopt this film and put it into their tuesday lecture curriculum. It drove me to put these correlations into substance. I believe it has just as much to do with what we are studying as any of the other films we have watched.
-----Jack Skelington is the male character in Nightmare before Christmas, he is a citizen of a community called �Halloween Town�. This town, much like it�s name implies, is obsessed with the holiday of Halloween. They spend all year preparing for that one special day and when it comes they have a gigantic celebration. Jack Skelington eventually became dissatisfied with the monotony and repetitiveness of the Halloween culture and went off to distant lands in search of something more. He eventually came to a place called �Christmas Town�. Guess what their culture is like? Inspired by this new holiday he returns to share his experience with the citizens of Halloween town. Having never heard or thought of anything besides their own holiday and culture, the citizens of Halloween town were unable to grasp the most basic concepts of Christmas. They didn�t understand the fact that Christmas is about celebrating joy and family, not giving people possessed and demonic gifts. Because of this, Jack retreats to his secluded house in order to research Christmas in depth in hopes of finding a way to explain it more effectively to the people of Halloween town. Eventually Jack reaches a point of self proclaimed mastery of the Christmas holiday and begins to create his own celebration with the people of his town. He sought to take the role of santa in Christmas town for just one year. So he put all of the citizens of Halloween town to work creating gifts to give the people of the other community. However, because of their misunderstanding of the concept of Christmas, the gifts they make completely inappropriate gifts that physically attack the recipients.
-----Now, you may ask what any of this has to do with any of the readings that we have done. Well, the first connection that I saw was between Jack Skelington and Malcolm X. This similarity had to do with both characters pursuits of religion in their lives. Both characters became aware of another religious practice under the guidance of an external force, in Malcolm�s case, his brother Reginald, in Jack�s case, mere chance. After the discovery of this religious practice, both Jack and Malcolm became inspired and eagerly researched as much as they possibly could about their respective religions. They both did this in solitude. Jack, in his prison-like tower which was his house, and Malcolm, actually in prison. On page 173 of The Autobiography of Malcolm X, Malcolm states, �For the next years, I was the nearest thing to a hermit in the Norfolk Prison Colony. I never have been more busy in my life. I still marvel at how swiftly my previous life�s thinking pattern slid away from me, like snow off a roof. It is as though someone else I knew had lived by hustling and crime. I would be startled to catch myself thinking in a remote way of my earlier self as another person.� Both characters consider themselves greatly enlightened at this point. Malcolm and Jack look back upon their former selves almost with a sense of disgust now that they have bettered themselves. However, this attitude changes when each of them go on their journeys. Malcolm with his pilgrimage to Mecca, and Jack with his pilgrimage back into Christmas Town. When Malcolm arrives in Mecca, he discovers that he doesn�t know nearly as much about Islam as he believed before. He realized that his practices and ideas about the religion were very much influenced by Elijah Muhammad and not entirely accurate. He did not know some of the most basic things, like how to pray correctly. When Jack arrives back in Christmas Town on Christmas Eve, he eventually realizes the same thing that Malcolm did. After distributing the demonic presents, he is actually shot down by artillery cannons in order to stop his reign of terror. After crashing in a cemetery, Jack also realizes the truth of his ignorance on the subject of Christmas, and truly regrets the damage that he has caused. �But I never intended all this madness, never/ And nobody really understood, how could they? / That all I ever wanted was to bring them something great / Why does nothing ever turn out like it should?��
-----The common situations between these two characters relates to a subject of our discussions in these past couple weeks. That subject being the idea of external validation versus self actualization. Self actualization is considered mostly to be the height of human consciousness. We would like to believe that we can achieve this independently of society, however that is not the case. Even in Maslow�s hierarchy of human needs, where self actualization is at the pinnacle, social acceptance is still a necessary step towards reaching it. Jack and Malcolm both thought they had reached a higher state of consciousness, however they had not. In all of their excitement they had been mislead by inconsistencies of thought and ideas. Neither of them realized this. They needed a definitive external force to alert them of this. They required external validation in order to confirm their actualization. Without searching for inconsistencies with other people, one can never really be sure that there aren�t any loopholes in one�s logic.
-----The next correlation that I drew between the movie Nightmare before Christmas and one of our readings, was with Their Eyes were Watching God and Jack Skelington�s relationship with his community. Jack has a definitive control over his community, much like Joe Starks did over Eatonville. Joe, being mayor of Eatonville, had forced the citizens into digging a ditch in front of his store to drain out rainwater. None of the people participating in this task got any sort of reward or payment, yet they still did it. Joe had a strange control over his community made evident on page 47 of Their Eyes were Watching God, � There was something about Joe Starks that cowed the town. It was not because of physical fear. He was no fist fighter. His bulk was not even imposing as men go. Neither was it because he was more literate than the rest. Something else made men give way before him. He had a bow-down command in his face, and every step he took made the thing more tangible.� Jack does something very similar to Joe. He rather easily convinces the people of Halloween town to manufacture Jack�s own personal Christmas for him. Jack had no kind of physical dominance over others, much like Joe. So what was it about these two characters that made people crumble to their feet? It is true, Joe was mayor of Eatonville, however he had no legal dominance over any of the people in town. His status was entirely self-proclaimed. Jack also had a fancy title with nearly no meaning. His was �The Pumpkin King�. However throughout the movie this title does him nothing. He does not command a little army of pumpkins, it�s just a name. �The town had a basketful of feelings good and bad about Joe�s positions and possessions, but none had the temerity to challenge him. They bowed down to him rather, because he was all of these things, and then again he was all of these things because the town bowed down.�
-----Another connection with Nightmare before Christmas and one of our readings was with the book, The Songlines. This connection however, is differant from the two that I have already presented. This has less to do with plotline, and more to do with the concepts behind the songlines. In Nightmare before Christmas, Jack travels between Halloween and Christmas town merely twice. However, not only are these towns considered places, they are entirely differant worlds driven on the energies of differant holidays. In the movie Jack discovers a circle of trees secluded far from the outskirts of his Halloween town. Inprinted into the bark of each tree are doors of varying shapes and colors, each of these doors leads to differant holiday worlds. This circle of trees is a junction point that exisists in all worlds. These pathways between towns reminds me greatly of some of the ideas presented in the book, The Songlines. Songlines were (among other things) a spiritual mode of transportation for the aboriginals of ancient Australia. They believed that while singing along certain geological tracks, one could cover great distances almost effortlessly. �A �stop�, he said was the �handover point� where the song passed out of your ownership; where it was no longer yours to look after and no longer yours to lend. You�d sing to the end of your verses and there lay the boundary.� (page 59, The Songlines). I believe that the circle of trees was the boundary for Halloween town�s songline, it was a junction where all songlines meet in a corner. All along Jack�s journey to Christmas land he sang. He sang upon his departure, his arrival, and his return home. All of those points in time there was music in the air as he sang and moved. It was using the techniques of songlines that he was able to travel such a distance between worlds in less than a day. � �Does that mean�, I asked, �that a young man on Walkabout could sing his way across Australia providing he could hum the right tune?� �In theory, yes,� � (page 59, The Songlines).
-----There are many widely discussable issues delt with within the duration of Tim Burton�s Nightmare before Christmas, I have only made mention to a few of the stronger points that can be related to the readings from this specific term. I hope that in the future it will be considered for the tuesday lectures for FP.