The movie we know as BEETLEJUICE is a kind of “feel-good” movie about death as the franchise’s theology about the here-after is no less twisted—a wild, convoluted tale of our universe so much vaster and stranger than we can imagine, yet more true to the day-to-day indignities and drudgery than we could ever guess.
What, you thought “being dead” would be some kind of picnic, or something?
In that gnarled, creepy Tim Burton way— it’s outrageous and dead and so unclean—whether punk-midnight-rebellion or sin is more interesting to an admission-paying audience.
There can’t be light without the opposite, or even absence of light—which is darkness. And as we know-it, populated with demons and aliens and lost-souls like side characters in the on-going parable of survival. Call it “a roll of the dice” when everybody “kind of shows-up” and does the best they can as the greater mysteries may be more a common misunderstanding like missing the bus or not having “your number” at the waiting-room window.
Just because you believe or don’t believe—well, if you start making enough noise eventually someone or something will show-up to investigate. That goes for talking into CB-radios or playing-around with Ouija boards as you might not want to mess-around with that. Corporeal indignities and spiritual energies are not mutually-exclusive as we access hidden, deeper realms of innate psychology—as we self-reinforce ourselves to become a moving body full of the life-force.
Don’t forget that energy comes from a clotted, talking pile of cells and blood and flesh from whence a hunger is asserted, the urge to self-preservation and survival. Hopefully, off to brighter realms. . . . .
Nor should you decide that “the fish-bowl” is turned upside-down and how you’ll die on your own expiring oxygen and cruddy wastes on a waning course of pitiful existence.
I come from a mixed Lutheran/Jewish cultural background which gives you a glimpse into how circles of society interact, as it’s a broader-view than being raised in a mono-culture. With the ability to compare and weigh distinctions, you become a kind of trickster or wandering “gad-about”
There was that book, “Flat-Land” put out by a mathematician in the late 18th century that described how 2-dimensional shapes slide around a flat grid and talk and live there. And how would the world appear to them—if a 3D shape from a higher dimension descended down into their corner of things. If an apple made a guest appearance, the flat figures would only see “slices” of the spherical object dissolving through the table like a mind-warping hallucination.
Postmodernism brings in a collage of clashing world-views, as it least part of something points toward a universal truth—and reality is what happens, whether you agree with it or not. . . . . and even if you close your eyes, it’s still “there”. It doesn’t follow that there’s much purpose behind-it, only that we arrive and move around while in a dream, yet awake.
Maybe that makes me a varied and comical-enough writer to come up with “Beetlejuice 2”.
Back again, soon.
Beetlejuice 2 Fan-Fiction 