Tim Burton from the book Burton on Burton (Faber and Faber).

Tim Burton, the director of such popular films as Beetlejuice, Batman, and Edward Scissorhands, has consistently extended a kind of comic book aesthetic into his work, combining childlike fantasy and visual stylization. Like other animators-turned-directors--notably George Pal and Terry Gilliam--his work is visually diverse and rich. Like them, Burton's ability to construct a complete, coherent fantasy world at times overwhelms larger considerations of story and meaning. His oeuvre is rich in references to other films (e.g., Frankenweenie ), ironic in praise of marginal pop culture icons (Ed Wood) and campy in its celebration of cultural ephemera (as in the suburban mise en scene of Edward Scissorhands). His work mirrors much post-World War II's mass culture, particularly the cultural landscape of his home in Southern California. This mirroring process. This ransacking of pop culture places Burton among artists that are now conveniently if ambiguously described as "postmodern."

Mirroring other texts, according to Linda Hutcheon in A Theory of Parody, gives artists a method of justifying their own work. She argues that in an age when there is a profound distrust in systems of thought requiring external validation, that "Art forms have increasingly appeared to distrust external criticism to the extent that they have sought to incorporate critical commentary within their own structures in a kind of self-legitimizing short circuit of the normal critical dialogue. . . .The modern world seems fascinated by the ability of our human systems to refer to themselves in an unending mirroring process." A close examination of Vincent, the first film Burton made with Rick Heinrichs, gives specific support to Hutcheon's claim.

Hutcheon discusses pastiche as one method that contemporary artists use to mirror other texts. "Pastiche" incorporates two meanings that are specifically applicable to Vincent. First, it is "a work that closely and deliberately imitates the style of previous work," and secondarily it is "an incongruous medley of different styles." More importantly, it denotes a relationship in which the viewer is aware of a background text that the work at hand imitates, the mimicry of another's style.

Specifically, Vincent is a pastiche of styles lifted from the writings of Dr. Seuss and Edgar Allen Poe, and a range of movies from B-horror films, German expressionist works and the films of Vincent Price. One could even argue that the techniques used represent a pastiche of 2D and 3D animation methods, particularly UPA's limited animation style. And though Hutcheon does not discuss the relation of parody to the development of the artist, it seems likely that pastiche is one strategy that maturing artist frequently use to legitimize their own work: it is often easier to mimic a style than to establish one's own. Burton was 24 when he made Vincent, so mirroring other texts may have freed him from serious consideration of his own style while focusing his directorial efforts on other matters.