팀 버튼의 <유령신부>와 그 근원설화에 관한 비교문학적인 고찰

Abstract

This article attempts to examine the origin of folktales which inspired Tim Burton and his story team to make the Corpse Bride. His Corpse Bride is possibly influenced by the following three tales: (1) a Palestine-Jewish hagiographic legend of Rabbi Isaac Luria (the Ari) who lived in Safed in the sixteenth century, (2) Howard Schwartz’s adaptation of that Jewish legend, and (3) a Russian-Jewish folktale version of the legend, which <The Tim Burton Collective> has introduced as “the original folktale” of Tim Burton’s Corpse bride. These three tales can be titled as “The Mock Marriage,” “The Finger,”“The Corpse Bride,” respectively. The comparative study of the relationships between the three Jewish tales and Tim Burton’s animation clearly shows the remarkable differences in theme,characterization, and world view. First, Tim Burton embellished the image of the demon or the corpse bride from a terrifying creature to a light-hearted,lovable monster. Second, the binary oppositions between life and death, between the living and the dead become blurred in Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride. On the contrary, the film presents the land of the dead as more utopian than the land of the living. Third, as I have already mentioned, the hagiography of Rabbi Luria has been transformed into a romantic fairy tale with the triangle of love. These new elements can be said to result from Tim Burton’s penchant for the age-old tradition of the tale “Beauty and the Beast” and for the ‘Frankenstein’ motif, as well as from the influence of the Mexican tradition of the “Days of the Dead.” Though Tim Burton borrowed the original source material from Jewish narrative tradition, his animation reflects his unique aesthetics and world view, quite different from that tradition. The originality and creativity which Tim Burton shows in his reinterpretation or subversion of the Jewish folk narrative may help us seek for the way to make the best use of Korean folk narrative