For Halloween, I watched 1993's The Nightmare Before Christmas. I'd recommended it to many students throughout the week before as a good Halloween movie so I thought I ought to refresh my memory on it in case anyone wanted to talk about it. I've been seeing a lot of Nightmare Before Christmas merchandise here in Japan but most people I've talked to have never seen the movie.
I used to listen to the soundtrack frequently but I've only actually watched the movie two or three times since I saw it when it first premiered. I think it might be a valuable film to show kids growing up in a rural area, like the one I'm in, as it is about someone enchanted by a foreign, exotic culture only to realise, in the end, he belonged in his own, traditional, harvest festival world. It's probably a good message for kids, most of whom won't be finding new lives in the big city and who are needed in their community, anyway.
Trying to think of it through the prism of modern American bourgeois politics, I suppose it could be seen as either Jack Skellington being guilty of flagrant cultural appropriation or as a depiction of someone expressing an identity different to their biology. It could go either way, which is a sign the movie's a good fantasy.
Jack is a little pitiable, dressed as Santa. His song, "Jack's Obsession", when he tries to figure out Christmas by studying ornaments, is great. We laugh at Jack as he obviously fails to understand the significance of Christmas ornaments, but we also probably remember our adolescence when we tried to be things we simply weren't.
That's what makes Sally so sweet though she could've easily been patronising if Catherine O'Hara's performance weren't so meek.
On the other hand, ghost stories used to be a Christmas tradition. Maybe a good idea for a sequel would be to have Jack and Santa collaborate to successfully bring elements of both holidays to each other.
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