Everything You Think You Know About 'Edward Scissorhands' Is Wrong
Hey, kid, come closer. I have a secret to tell you. I warn you now, it’s going to sound beaver-shit crazy. It’s going to blow up everything you think about a film you quite possibly love. But I’m ready to back up my theory, and if I’m right — hell, even if I’m wrong — it might teach you a thing or two about reconsidering films you already thought you knew everything about. Here goes:
EDWARD SCISSORHANDS is about the commodification of Blackness by white suburban culture.
Yes, seriously.
With few details that suggest otherwise, Caroline Thompson’s screenplay for EDWARD SCISSORHANDS makes no mention of race. But the world it implies — a cookie-cutter pastel suburbia where men go off to nine-to-five jobs, women gossip for sport, and no one wants for anything — is very much white.
America was spoon-fed these tropes every night for decades on shows like “LEAVE IT TO BEAVER”, “THE ADVENTURES OF OZZIE & HARRIET”, “THE BRADY BUNCH”, and many more. Together, they formed a mythology of the country’s alleged Golden Age of middle-class prosperity that persists today. The world that director Tim Burton brings to life in his film looks and operates no different except it makes no pretense of being based in reality. It is a fantasy world, outside of time, populated almost entirely by cruel, selfish, and xenophobic white people who hide these qualities behind big smiles, a veneer of community, and virtue signaling.
As for the titular Edward (Johnny Depp), he’s a scissor-handed art-kid from the nearby gothic castle whose arrival breathes exciting new life into the otherwise monotonous suburb. He’s an outsider. A freak. His black costume and deathly skin color suggest he’s goth, his hair maybe emo. When you consider the filmmaker who dreamed him up — Burton — is a person who looked pretty much just like Edward at the time EDWARD SCISSORHANDS was made (sans bladed digits), there seems to be no doubt that the character is some kind of avatar for him and his self-perceived creative otherness. The film, thus, might be seen as a portrait of a tortured artist as a young man, trying to be original and beautiful in an ugly world. In fact, this is how I looked at it for decades.
But in more recent years, I’ve begun to see it as much more than that. Before I break down why, I want to acknowledge that Burton’s oeuvre is pretty much as white as you get. I haven’t actually tried, but I’m willing to bet good money that you can count significant Black characters in his films on one hand. In 2016, the director was given a chance to answer a question about this from journalist Rachel Simon. His response:
"Nowadays, people are talking about [diversity] more … but things either call for things, or they don’t. I remember back when I was a child watching The Brady Bunch and they started to get all politically correct. Like, OK, let’s have an Asian child and a black. I used to get more offended by that than just… I grew up watching blaxploitation movies, right? And I said, that’s great. I didn’t go like, OK, there should be more white people in these movies."
Obviously, this response is extremely disappointing, to say the least. It also argues pretty loudly against any possibility that Burton smuggled a race allegory into his beloved goth fairy tale. But I think there’s more to it than that, and I want to suggest that a single decision in the casting of this film and the changes to the script it resulted in during production transformed the director’s deeply personal story into a much more powerful race allegory. This phenomenon — of a film acquiring new, likely unintentional meaning because of a creative decision during its genesis — is something I’ve written about recently, by the way, in “A Tale of Two (Unlikely) Heroes: NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD and ALIEN”.
EDWARD SCISSORHANDS’ cast is as lily-white as you’d expect from my description of the film so far – with one exception. Yes, one. That exception is Dick Anthony Williams, a Chicago actor whose work primarily fell into the B-film category, but who always elevated whatever he came into contact with. EDWARD SCISSORHANDS is no different.
A cinematic aside, for those who find these things fascinating: Williams was an actor of some note in blaxploitation films, which you just saw Tim Burton refer to in the quote I shared. Former blaxploitation stars — including Billy Dee Williams, Pam Grier, and Jim Brown — tend to populate his twentieth-century films the same way Hammer film actors have.
As for Williams’ role in EDWARD SCISSORHANDS, he plays Officer Allen in it – the only respectable cop with speaking lines in an all-white town…who also happens to be, you know, a Black man. He makes his first appearance when Edward breaks into a local house at the direction of Jim (Anthony Michael Hall), but really to make the character of Kim (Winona Ryder) — his love interest — happy. When Edward is later released, Allen expresses genuine concern about the man-child’s well-being, even saying he doesn’t want his worrying about the kid to keep him up at night. In short, he’s not just respectable – he’s a good man.
Let’s take a look at how this noble character is introduced on the page:
As you can see, there is no mention of race in the screenplay. Officer Allen receives no description on the page beyond his name. Because of this, it might be reasonable to think that Williams’ part in the film is the result of race-blind casting. Just the best actor for the job, that sort of thing.
But the reality is, Burton’s casting of Black actors always feels consequential because of how rarely it happens. Especially here, where he’s the only one Black character on the screen. It inevitably means more, and now the question is: what does it mean?
More specifically, was it a random act of tokenism by Burton, a small narrative gesture meant to heighten a climactic moment I’ll describe later on, or — as I believe — a small narrative gesture that transmogrified the EDWARD SCISSORHANDS story into a powerful race allegory?
Now, let’s turn our attention to Edward to understand his part in this alleged race allegory I am presenting to you.
He’s the art kid, the goth, the emo freak with scissors for fingers. In every possible way, he does not fit into this sleepy, monotonous suburban community. Maybe he’s supposed to represent the hippies’ counter-cultural revolution that Tim Burton grew up during, but I’m skeptical. Consider the following:
Edward is a teenager. A boy, really. But how do the suburb’s residents react to him? At first, with a degree of healthy curiosity that wouldn’t have been afforded to hippies. Life is boring and he seems like a refreshing change of pace.
There is one naysayer in this regard. A Bible-thumping housewife who insists Edward is the Devil. Her language dehumanizes the kid. It’s the kind of thing white Christian hegemonic groups have said about every marginalized group from Black people to Jewish people to members of LGBTQIA+ communities for centuries.
Then, Edward creates his first topiary. It’s his first artwork. He’s an artist, we discover. Art is sexy, art is cool. Now, everyone wants a piece of him. They all want to say they have one of his topiaries, as if he’s the Banksy of ornamental hedging plants. So what if he’s a freak, so what if he isn’t one of them, they’re willing to make exceptions for him if they can rub up against whatever makes him so special and maybe get a little of his magic dust on themselves in the process.
Then, Edward styles a woman’s hair. Oh shit, all bets are off now. The ladies, bored and gossipy and sex-deprived, line up to let him put his hands all over them. They’re aroused by it. It’s downright sexual. In other words, they’re now openly sexualizing this other, this outsider, this freak. There’s no hint of respect. They don’t pay him. They use him. They exploit him like a cabana boy. Except cabana boys get paid. Enslaved people don’t.
And then, Joyce (Kathy Baker) decides to play the part of the “white savior” in this artistic dynamic and provide Edward with a way to create his art in a salon. It’s a partnership that will obviously financially benefit her much more than him given how his talent, coolness, and general exoticness will no doubt attract a lot of other white suburban housewives. To celebrate, Joyce attempts to seduce Edward. Edward, frightened by the sexual aggression of this white woman, flees.
It's at this point that Officer Allen enters the story. He brings with him the third act of EDWARD SCISSORHANDS. But before I get into the finale, reread the description of Edward’s journey so far. Imagine his deathly pallor replaced by Black skin. Imagine his wild hair (atypical for this environment) replaced by (similarly atypical) Black hair. Imagine his scissors vanishing, replaced by a guitar or a singing voice as his gift. Imagine Joyce as the white music producer trying to turn a gifted Black kid or kids into a product to be exoticized and sexualized for the entertainment of white suburbanites who otherwise have no interest in the well-being of such outsiders. In other words, Black people who are allowed to exist for the entertainment of white people, but not as whole individuals and only on the white people’s terms.
Just like Edward.
Have I convinced you yet? If not, read on because I’m only building up steam here.
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