Weird Tim, Another Black Villian and A Failed Joseph Campbell styled Hero (spoilers included)

Tim Burton fascinates me. And Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children is the first Tim Burton movie I have ever watched without Johnny Depp. But I want to talk about this one for the mere reason that it has blurred my ideas of good and bad in ways that only a Tim Burton movie can. Oh the subtleties. Oh the blatant subtleties 

The basic plot is, according to Rotten Tomatoes, “When his beloved grandfather leaves Jake clues to a mystery that spans different worlds and times, he finds a magical place known as Miss Peregrine's School for Peculiar Children. But the mystery and danger deepen as he gets to know the residents and learns about their special powers - and their terrifying enemies. Ultimately, Jake discovers that only his own special peculiarity can save his new friends.”

Here is how weird Tim highjacked my mind:

1. The peculiar children are trapped in a time bubble nicely renamed a loop. The loop can be read as a prison as Miss Peregrine says she keeps them there because it’s what is best for them. But the narrative allows for us to accept that; who would want to see children who can create hearts and make inanimate things come to life, or women who are so light they must be held down by rope, or children whose face can turn you to stone, or women whose hands can turn you into fire, or who can manipulate nature, or a child who is so strong that she can lift a human the way ants can carry away a chunk of chicken ten times its size. So, they are to kept away from the humans who are so obnoxious and bothered by the presence of the queer or the other; after all Miss Peregine has had to kill the ordinary humans five times in one week. So, we assume that the children’s imprisonment is a necessity. That is in fact the premise, right? The problem with Miss Peregine’s prison is that it is not made on a perfect day, to ensure the happiness of the children, it’s made because it had to be made, which means that the prison is not perfect.

2. Now running just beside that are the villians, the hollows, the peculiar adults and Mr Baron. Mr Baron could have been a perfect role for Johnny Depp  but this villain is the only black person in the show. Samuel Jackson’s Mr Baron isn’t a troubling site for the Black Lives Matter campaign or even an argument about black roles handed to Hollywood actors. But how can that be? Mr Baron is in fact a peculiar adult, a child once trapped by the whims of Miss Peregine’s type who has a desire not for power but for time. He seems to have an advance case of Stockholm syndrome. He does not like his capturer, but likes what he was offered. He likes the idea of everlasting time. So rationally, he needs his own loop to exist in. He does not even want to be a villain. He tried to avoid murder. It was his companion-a hollow-who killed Jack’s grandfather. He is a reluctant hero. Eating the eyes of the peculiar people as a way to return to his humanity. And so, in this way the black character can be read as more than a villain. His methods are very Machiavellian; the means pale in the picture of the end. Are we to see the man as evil, or pity him? Well, what I am certain of is only a man with the ancestry of struggle and who understands the trauma of the plantation could have played that role. Because, only he can understand the ideas of imprisonment under the guise of for one’s own good, then make do in a place that lacks acceptance for him all the while wanting to exist as himself in conditions he has grown accustomed to, just without the suffering. He is my hero failed, with jacked up teeth and all. His real foil was an inability to articulate his position clearly to his comrades. He is a politician-thus a failed hero.

3. Joseph Campbell’s idea of the hero is a powerful narrative for the hero, yet it is so flawed and predictable it offers no solution for the humans watching in this era. While, the resistant hero is the model used from Star Wars to now, I am not sure if this fits with a Tim Burton styled movie. Jake is our most normal of the peculiars. Seeing the Hollows is something he doesn’t have to contend with in his normal reality where his queerness has no need for his peculiarity and his awkwardness makes him a curious, hopeful victim. He is so normal a peculiar he needs no time bubble, he is offered imprisonment and told he need not take it. Why? Simply because he can see danger- well the dangers of the peculiars, not human danger right? Jake’s resistance to help, rather to kill is where the storyteller posits Joseph Campbell’s hero. All heroes must be murderers? What kind of consolation prize are the words you are our hero Jake because “you taught us to be brave”? The hero is left with no growth no development of how as to exist in the world. This is Joseph Campbell’s fourth meaning of a mythology, the one values most. The hero cannot return to normal life and survive he must then chase the girl around the world, through time to find himself and happiness. Now some may say that this movement/ chase is evidence of his growth. But how can a boy who was eager enough to save his grandfather’s life not already brave, just not okay with being a murderer? Jake is a late bloomer, not a hero who wants friends- not a hero.

4. Now let’s return to time. What I appreciate in this story is the way that this movie uses time loops and time jumping and Harry Potter references. Time in no way in this movie is linear, and the details must be held together, so Jake must arrive, the squirrel must be returned to the tree, the carrot must be grown and extracted, the hollow shot, and bar tender must be killed in the loop. But September 03, 1943 will see the destruction of the Children’s Home. It must happen. But this movie sees time as a tool to be used and not something happening to humans-except of course when time becomes a prison or is a thing to crave and fight to keep in its linear state. And maybe that is what the late bloomer had over our Stockholm syndrome/ revolutionary villain: that time can be used and not held for eternity. 

So my version of the plot: The time when the curious misfit’s-Jack- grandfather dies and because he has no friends and his father is a dick of a dad with daddy issues Jack goes looking for friends he doesn’t even know, finds them in prison and thinks that is cool because well he has some kind of white boy with no friends psychology and then brings a revolutionary to their doors who frees the children from their imprisonment but because both their head is all fucked up there is a fight which leads to time hop a really cool carnival show in the middle of some strange town and then some childhood fantasy romance like a fairy tale and more time hopping for the boy so he can have a girl and some friends.

Weird Tim hits again