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Dialogues@RU is published
annually
by the
Writing Program at
Rutgers, The State
University of New Jersey
Volume 4
Fall 2005
The non-human characters are as easily ascribed genders by those who watch the film as the more human-like characters. Jack Skellington, Dr. Finklestein, Lock, Barrel, and the Mayor are masculine. Sally, Shock, and the witches are feminine. What then is to be made of the rest of the characters, who are not quite so human? In doing research on the attribution of gender to Halloween costumes, Addie Nelson discovered that "[m]asculine costumes were also more likely than feminine costumes to depict a wide range of villainous characters (e.g. Captain Hook, Rasputin, Slash), monsters (e.g. Frankenstein, The Wolfman), and, in particular, agents of death (e.g. Dracula, Executioner, Devil Boy, Grim Reaper)" (141). This suggests that we have been culturally biased to view even imaginary things with a gendered eye. With this in mind, the town meeting called to discuss Jack's discovery of Christmasland should have an overwhelmingly masculine audience, and indeed most of the characters are decidedly masculine in appearance. Sitting in the audience we see a mummy, a pumpkin head, a devil, and a Cyclops. All of these characters are more powerful and represent more imposing monsters than the female creatures. The overtly female characters are vastly underrepresented at the meeting and seem only to include Sally, a few witches, and a monster whose role in the movie is to be the mother of a young male monster. The only creature that is not immediately classifiable is a rather ambiguous sea creature, whose voice is somewhere in the vocal range between an adult male and a female. The creators of the film have attempted to undo some of these pairings of gender to imaginary creatures. To this end they gave titles and names to some characters that impart gender like Undersea Gal and Man Under the Stairs. However, these designations cannot be inferred from the movie and must be found in a list of the cast of characters. The town meeting reinforces two problematic views of men and women and the social roles they play. First, males continue to be shown as more imposing, powerful, and better represented than females. Secondly, the under-representation of females in the town meeting reflects the belief that females do not belong in politics. This message would be processed on an unconscious level, possibly affecting the way the film's young viewers think.
On a more psychological level, The Nightmare Before Christmas appeals to gender archetypes in the collective unconscious of children during the time period when they are most likely to be in the process of integrating the qualities of these archetypes into their own conscious.
Research by Taylor (1996) suggested that children younger than age 9 or 10 tend to believe in gender stereotypes (i.e., that biology is destiny), and, at around age 9 or 10, children generally begin to consider social environment and other influences on development. Implications of such research . . . include support for the notion that developmental and individuation processes include an increasingly sophisticated understanding of gender to the extent that the possibility of nonstereo-typed behavior can be considered. (Ryback et al. 153)
This statement implies that at a relatively young age, children are better able to open up to the idea that gender stereotypes are not set in stone. Further, if children at this age are exposed to gender non-stereotypical conduct they may come to understand this as acceptable behavior. Sally's independence and ability to persist in her goals despite adversity would be encouraging to a young girl who has begun to consider the social environment's effect on how girls, and therefore women, should behave. Sally models a positive role for young women, one of independence and perseverance. The MPAA film's rating of PG, as well its content, places the film in a range that allows these children to view it.