"Beetlejuice" and the great actor Michael Keaton [Mizumaru Kawahara's CINEMONOLOGUE Vol.21]

Fun spirit world and goth idol Lydia

I've always liked `` Beetlejuice '' because the scene in the government office in the spirit world, where a lost ghost couple goes to seek advice, is so entertaining. At the reception desk, there was a woman with a gaping cut on her wrist while wearing a ``Miss Argentina'' sash. The dead people who are kept waiting in the waiting room are a woman whose upper and lower body have been cut off in a magic show costume, an explorer whose head has been shrunk to the size of an apple, and a man whose entire body has been charred while smoking a cigarette. There is no explanation at all, such as a diver with a large shark still attached to his body, but it is an interesting picture that gives you a sense of why he died. By the way, the receptionist cuts his wrists, and the person carrying documents hangs himself while walking back and forth on the rail, but this is a reference to Glenn Shaddix's words in the movie, ``If you commit suicide, you will be punished in the afterlife.'' This leads to the statement "I am forced to do something."

The Day After there's Lydia, a goth girl also played by Winona Ryder. I think she's a goth icon, along with Christina Ricci's Wednesday in The Addams Family (actually, Anjelica Huston, who played Wednesday's mother, was originally scheduled to play Lydia's stepmother). At least for me, these two are what I associate with the word idol. I try to do that. I think Lydia is the first of the ``Grumpy Girls'' who appear in many of Burton's later works, but she is the most easily understood character who embodies the typical goth image and Burton's dark side.

Lydia is a lonely teenager who doesn't get along well with her parents, but she is the only one in her family who has psychic powers, and when she comes into contact with a ghost couple, she is drawn into the center of the story. In the end, the story reaches its climax when she summons Beetlejuice (reciting his name three times, a setting I've heard somewhere before) to help the ghost couple in crisis. The duo of Beetlejuice and Lydia continue to create a stir after the movie, starring in an animated series. It can't be helped that the duo of the troublemaker ghost and the goth girl are stronger as icons of the work than the couple who are supposed to be the main characters.

Bird of Prey actor Michael Keaton