Night of the resurrected pets: The popular monsters of Tim Burton’s Frankenweenie

Abstract

Tim Burton’s stop motion-animated remake of his 1984 short film, Frankenweenie was produced and released by Walt Disney Studios. In the film, a young suburban Victor Frankenstein’s dog, Sparky, dies in an accident. In keeping with Burton’s absurd, macabre and Gothic auteurism’s, Frankenstein resurrects his pet. This ultimately leads to a series of chaotic events where the other students discover Frankenstein’s creation and subsequently resurrect of all of their deceased pets which reflect the form of other popular monsters such as, Frankenstein’s monster, Dracula, the Wolfman, the Mummy and the Creature from the Black Lagoon, among many others. I will analyse these satirical reflections of popular monsters through the lens of the whimsical Gothic and seek to identify the implications of Burton’s work to Disney’s brand and aesthetic through the popular monster outside of Disney’s popular repertoire of ‘child friendly’ fairy tales.