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The plural of Beetlejuice is beetlejice
[This post contains no substantial spoilers for Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice. It does contain spoilers for next to normal.]
Last month two of my friends hosted a 'Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice' marathon, where we first watched the original movie, then a boot of the musical (which is the only installment I'd previously seen, when its tour came around to Buffalo and my aunt chanced into some tickets), and then went to the local theater to watch the new sequel, and since then I've continued to spend a fair bit of time thinking about the franchise.
There are two things that stand out to me about the musical.
One, most of the content is really just a vessel for spectacle. I mean that approvingly! I got choked up seeing the 'Day-o' song live, because there's something really moving to me about a bunch of people coming together to put on something that competently silly. Precise and unnatural body language acting is enrichment in my enclosure. I recently saw The Terminator for the first time; the movements of people pretending to be robots and possessed people provide me with similar entertainment-vitamins. The songs are fine and well and good, and I do like them! But they're primarily here so that you can see a giant snake-worm puppet, or a guy break a ukulele in half and perfectly catch a thrown replacement five seconds later, or, yeah, the 'Day-o' song in its entirety.
Two... I think I also mean this approvingly, but a lot of the things that are good about this show are copied from other shows. I guess if I were going to frame it approvingly, I would say that you can really see the DNA of other musicals in this one. There's an amount of The Addams Family here, naturally ("Oh, and Full Disclosure: it's a show about death!", and the whole yellow dress plot element). 'No Reason' has a lot of Heathers's 'Shine a Light' in it, especially with how Delia slides into making her message to Lydia about herself instead.
(Sidenote: I do think it's kind of funny that, although real-life Delias are fully wrong about the sort of thing this song is about, Delia herself is a bit more right? Like, ghosts are real in this world; souls are real in this world—there's a lot more basis for saying that the universe is "random for a reason"!)
And the most notable DNA strand, to me, is next to normal. I think because it's the one that's the most thematic, rather than momentary, and also it didn't really need to be here at all? I definitely noticed the lack of dead-mom plot in the original movie, and the sequel goes so far as to directly call out that Lydia's mom was not actually dead there! Here, it's the whole emotional core, and the central conflict of 'Dad never wants to talk about the dead family member or address them by name, which is the main cause of the family's strife' is lifted pretty directly. I don't mean to criticize it! I think it's executed strongly and I do liek if u cri erytiem. Just, they absolutely did not need to do this, and did.
Which brings me to the actual reason I wanted to write this post, even though it wouldn't have warranted one on its own: I kind of get the impression that the naming thing is a worldbuilding element? Like, you could definitely say that it's just thematic; they were just copying next to normal and the reason they did that is because it would be sparkly to expand the narrative importance of saying a certain demon's name three times. You could also say it's just Lydia being a weird little girl; that it's important to her in particular but not really anyone else (which is just a change they made to justify the dramatic weight). But the impression I get, is that, yeah, names being an important thing in the Netherworld had consequences! Living people clearly ever interact with it, and so it leaked into their society, too. Being willing to say someone's name has not just mystical significance in narrow situations, but an amount of social significance, all the time.
And I think that's neat. Having a land of the dead would have effects on the rest of the world, and Delia is more right than Lydia knows.
Last month two of my friends hosted a 'Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice' marathon, where we first watched the original movie, then a boot of the musical (which is the only installment I'd previously seen, when its tour came around to Buffalo and my aunt chanced into some tickets), and then went to the local theater to watch the new sequel, and since then I've continued to spend a fair bit of time thinking about the franchise.
There are two things that stand out to me about the musical.
One, most of the content is really just a vessel for spectacle. I mean that approvingly! I got choked up seeing the 'Day-o' song live, because there's something really moving to me about a bunch of people coming together to put on something that competently silly. Precise and unnatural body language acting is enrichment in my enclosure. I recently saw The Terminator for the first time; the movements of people pretending to be robots and possessed people provide me with similar entertainment-vitamins. The songs are fine and well and good, and I do like them! But they're primarily here so that you can see a giant snake-worm puppet, or a guy break a ukulele in half and perfectly catch a thrown replacement five seconds later, or, yeah, the 'Day-o' song in its entirety.
Two... I think I also mean this approvingly, but a lot of the things that are good about this show are copied from other shows. I guess if I were going to frame it approvingly, I would say that you can really see the DNA of other musicals in this one. There's an amount of The Addams Family here, naturally ("Oh, and Full Disclosure: it's a show about death!", and the whole yellow dress plot element). 'No Reason' has a lot of Heathers's 'Shine a Light' in it, especially with how Delia slides into making her message to Lydia about herself instead.
(Sidenote: I do think it's kind of funny that, although real-life Delias are fully wrong about the sort of thing this song is about, Delia herself is a bit more right? Like, ghosts are real in this world; souls are real in this world—there's a lot more basis for saying that the universe is "random for a reason"!)
And the most notable DNA strand, to me, is next to normal. I think because it's the one that's the most thematic, rather than momentary, and also it didn't really need to be here at all? I definitely noticed the lack of dead-mom plot in the original movie, and the sequel goes so far as to directly call out that Lydia's mom was not actually dead there! Here, it's the whole emotional core, and the central conflict of 'Dad never wants to talk about the dead family member or address them by name, which is the main cause of the family's strife' is lifted pretty directly. I don't mean to criticize it! I think it's executed strongly and I do liek if u cri erytiem. Just, they absolutely did not need to do this, and did.
Which brings me to the actual reason I wanted to write this post, even though it wouldn't have warranted one on its own: I kind of get the impression that the naming thing is a worldbuilding element? Like, you could definitely say that it's just thematic; they were just copying next to normal and the reason they did that is because it would be sparkly to expand the narrative importance of saying a certain demon's name three times. You could also say it's just Lydia being a weird little girl; that it's important to her in particular but not really anyone else (which is just a change they made to justify the dramatic weight). But the impression I get, is that, yeah, names being an important thing in the Netherworld had consequences! Living people clearly ever interact with it, and so it leaked into their society, too. Being willing to say someone's name has not just mystical significance in narrow situations, but an amount of social significance, all the time.
And I think that's neat. Having a land of the dead would have effects on the rest of the world, and Delia is more right than Lydia knows.
