Fairy Tale and Film

Edward Scissorhands
(Tim Burton, 1990) is just such a figure. Left 
unfinished by his inventor father, his subsequent ‘deformity’ – having 
scissors for hands – estranges him from the suburban community where 
he is initially a source of fascination yet ultimately fear. Unable to stay 
with his adopted family, or have any kind of relationship with the 
object of his desire, he never quite becomes ‘human’ – although within 
the context of the film this is regarded as a relative mercy. Too innocent 
for this world, he is forced by resentment, jealousy and malice to return 
to the castle he came from, an incongruous residence that also serves as 
a sanctuary for a misfit with no place in the candy-coloured suburbia 
where the genuine monsters lurk. The film presents an inverted ‘Beauty 
and the Beast’ in many ways, in which the heroine’s mother (rather 
than father) enters a strange castle and brings its occupant home, taking 
pity on what is clearly a lost boy. When daughter Kim (Winona Ryder) 
warms to their strange guest, an altercation with her possessive boy-
friend, Jim (Anthony Michael Hall), leads to his death, forcing Edward’s 
flight. The result is a thwarted transformation for this ‘Beast’, who 
starts and ends the film in isolation. His innocence serves as a form of 
protection initially, as Edward is also a youth who does not know how 
to ‘shudder’. As Brian Ray asserts, ‘he remains docile and compliant 
throughout the first half of the film, largely because the multiple insults 
he receives simply do not register’ (2010: 204). Although humanised by 
love, this fails to bring about his salvation, partly because he cannot be 

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Fairy Tale and Film
fully human and is suggested to be better off as a robotic man-child. As 
Ray argues, the usual narrative expectations accompanying the humani-
sation process are consequently subverted: ‘that Edward never obtains 
human hands violates the standard cultural script and rejects the idea 
that a Beast needs to change’, particularly if doing so means colluding 
with ‘shallow aspirations toward wealth and conformity’ (2010: 205). 
Written by Caroline Thompson, in collaboration with Burton,
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the film 
presents ‘civilisation’ as hypocritical and cruel and also questions what 
successful and approved masculinity entails. Like Disney’s Beast/Gaston 
parallel, the film rejects Jim – brazen and bullying – as a manifestly 
more threatening figure, yet Edward can never be successfully ‘rehabili-
tated’, despite winning Kim’s love, and missing hands are by no means 
the only problem.
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Edward may be man-made, yet is unable to find a 
footing in this world. Like Frankenstein’s monster, he is at the mercy of 
an ignorant society, and similarly forced to flee a mob, able to survive 
only by retreating to his castle. Even if some form of surgery could 
replace what is ostensibly ‘wrong’ with him, the monstrosity of humans 
is the genuine problem. Warner contends that we are invited to regard 
Edward’s marginalised state with approval, adding that ‘any return to 
full human shape might have degraded rather than redeemed the hero, 
limited his nobility rather than restored it’ (1995: 313). Whether noble, 
or tragically misunderstood, the fact that assimilation is out of the ques-
tion forces us to rethink how desirable such a ‘civilisation’ is, as well as 
refuting the idea that redemption necessarily comes through romance. 
The film may go out of its way to show what a hit he is with the ladies, 
despite his odd appearance, yet a relationship is not an option for 
Edward, and isolation his only means of protection.