The Ghost With the Most…D?

FilmBeetlejuice Is a Thirst Trap on TikTok, and I’m Here for It“He beetle on my juice till show time” — TikTok, I Shit You Not

In 1988, depressed that Warner Brothers wouldn’t greenlight his Batman project, Tim Burton began working on an even less likely-to-succeed film called Beetlejuice with Larry Wilson, who would go on to write Addams Family and this year’s anticipated hit, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice (2024). Wilson went to a Cure concert and realized that teenage girls loved goth. “It felt to me that there were 50,000 teenage girls in black!” (Film Courage). He then wrote the original Beetlejuice screenplay with teenage girls in mind.

Beetlejuice 1 featured a 17-year-old Winona Ryder one year after her film debut. It launched her career as the Manic Pixie Dream Girl of the late 80s-90s, a new scream queen who starred in iconic goth-girl angsty roles like Edward Scissorhands, Girl Interrupted, Bram Stoker's Dracula, and Alien Resurrection. She was only to be rivaled by Christina Ricci, and together, the two set a new precedent for what girls liked.

Suddenly, goth was cool. It was in. Goth was girlhood.

All of this probably happened because of the energy of these actresses, who captured the existential dread of growing up femme in the 90s in a way that made teenage girls want to be them or be with them. They weren’t Cher in Clueless or, god forbid, Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman. The wave of 90s goth girls was counterculture femininity in a way that hasn’t ever been celebrated, even to this day.

And it represented feminine desire in entirely new ways. In Edward Scissorhands, Winona Ryder’s character cares about the knife-handed, awkward, soft-boi Johnny Depp because he’s different than anything she’s ever encountered. Her boyfriend is a football jock, while Edward is monstrous but sweet, kind even. Across the board, these films, while being counterculture iconography in the way they represent femininity, are also often low on the totem pole in terms of sexuality. The girls represented by 90s goth films are often shown as being uninterested in sex or above it in some way.

The sex didn’t quite matter. For young teenage audiences (like myself at the time), we were drawn to monstrous boys because they were othered like ourselves and somehow less dangerous than the men reality presented. Goth male leads were a dystopian vision of men — in order to be kind, the men had to be broken. Dracula was bound to try and eat you. Edward was sure to cut you up in bed. But at least they were kind.

Romance as a genre works because it manages divides — it creates a conflict without much external plot needed. Something has to keep the characters apart, and in the case of 90s goth films, it was usually that the character was a monster.

In the OG Beetlejuice, the titular “evil” character is represented as a crass, sexist disaster. His desire to wed Lydia is pretty much out of left-field and as a result of his character’s demeaning of women. He’s trying to find a way into the world of the living — for what, we don’t know. His ex-wife is a throw-away joke line as he takes her finger out of his pocket to steal the wedding ring. In many ways, the romantic spark could be seen as between Beetlejuice and Barbara Maitland, not Winona Ryder’s character Lydia.

But even I can admit that I have fallen down the TikTok rabbit hole of Beetlejuice-as-heartthrob memes overtaking social media since the release of the latest Beetlejuice movie.

If you haven’t seen them yet, take a scroll through the app and you’ll see a similar pattern. Clips of Beetlejuice are strung together with a contemporary song, often in amber or sepia tones, the results meant to encourage you to fall even more in love with the character — kink-shaming bedamned.

How Did We Get Here? To, You Know, Beetlejuice Crotch Shots?

As far as remakes go, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is pretty standard. We meet Lydia Deetz as an adult who now has a talk show, Ghost House. Lydia is hallucinating, thinking she sees Betelgeuse in the audience — a bad omen. Then we learn her father, Charles, has died in an accident while traveling, so Lydia must make the journey back to Winter River, Connecticut, for the funeral, bringing along her estranged daughter Astrid (Jenna Ortega), who very strictly Doesn’t Believe in Ghosts.

The film builds on the lore of the first by casting Lydia in a speculative role. It’s not that she grew up in a haunted house — it’s that she is one of the few people who can actually see ghosts. However, this ability creates a rift between Lydia and her daughter Astrid because Astrid is angry that Lydia can’t see her father, who died when she was younger.

One major difference between the two movies is that now, Lydia is an adult with a kid and a job and a fiance and a dead husband. Ryder does a fantastic job, in her characteristically spotty way, of showing that Lydia is struggling with these average problems. Not only does she have to deal with seeing ghosts every day, but she also can’t seem to connect emotionally with anyone.

When she needs help to save Astrid from the afterlife, who does she call? Of course, Beetlejuice. He represents a fascinating contrast with her fiance, Rory, who is clearly just interested in Lydia for her money and fame. Beetlejuice, on the other hand, has been pining for Lydia since he got banished back to the afterlife in the first film.

The film puts Beetlejuice in the role of protector and helper. He quickly dispatches Astrid’s toxic new crush to hell, forces Rory to admit he’s only after Lydia for her money, and tries to marry her again. But this time, the audience can’t help but appreciate the romantic aspects of the scene, in particular, Lydia and Beetlejuice dancing together as they rise up in the air, reminiscent of the Casper (1995) dance scene.

The film entirely passes over the previously icky concept of Beetlejuice wanting a teenager and instead re-casts Beetlejuice as a potential undead mate. The film ends with a scene where Lydia is still dreaming about Beetlejuice — and their potential spooky Beetle-baby. But it doesn’t feel like a nightmare anymore, does it?

Image Courtesy The Geffen Film Company/Tim Burton Inc.So What Changed?

One thing that might have bridged the gulf between the two movies was the Beetlejuice animated series (1989–1991).

The series follows up on the movie’s popularity by putting Lydia and Beetlejuice on the same level for the first time. In the series, Lydia and Beetlejuice are active partners in their adventures. In many episodes, Lydia becomes the voice of morality for Beetlejuice and the watcher. In Drop Dead Fred fashion, Beetlejuice goes on bad-behavior rampages and has to be reeled back in by Lydia. His animated character may look older than Lydia, but he basically has the mindset of someone who never grew up. In flashbacks, he’s presented as a teenager or a baby, and the series also introduces us to Beetlejuice’s family.

It’s the animated series that first shows Lydia calling Beetlejuice’s name three times to have him save her. By placing the two on the same level, the audience is primed for friendship, if not romance.

Image courtesy Warner Records

Another piece of media that may have an impact on the character is Beetlejuice The Musical (2018).

Like the animated series, the musical also features Lydia and Beetlejuice as the two main characters but still follows the plot (somewhat) of the original Beetlejuice. In the musical, Emily Deetz dies and Lydia feels like her father doesn’t see her. This gives Lydia more of a reason for her goth sad girl vibes, using the trope of killing off the mother to give Lydia “issues”, something which wasn’t terribly clear in the original film.

A major difference between the original movie and the musical is that the end scene reveals Juno (the caseworker) as Beetlejuice’s mother. She becomes the defacto villain, and because of his interactions with Lydia, Beetlejuice is able to appreciate the world of the living and defeat his mother with a sandworm.

By the end of the musical, we get the song “Creepy Old Guy”, where Lydia sings about wanting to marry Beetlejuice:

Way back when I was just ten
Simple and sweet
Everywhere, fellas would stare
Out on the street
And I felt used, kinda confused
I would refuse to look in their eyes
But now I really love creepy old guys!

The song pokes fun at the fact that the original movie’s age difference was inappropriate (“Have you guys seen Lolita? This is just like that but fine!”), but it also kind of acknowledges the weirdness of why women are in love with Beetlejuice. Lydia is acting in the scene to trick Beetlejuice, but is she?

It’s these two pieces of media — Beetlejuice the animated series and Beetlejuice the musical — that likely contributed to today’s viewers seeing Beetlejuice as a more sympathetic character than the original movie intended.

Goth Girl Reclaimed

To go back to the goth girl stereotype, one thing I’ve always loved about Winona Ryder and that thrills me about the Ryder Renaissance is that she GOT the character of Lydia. Being a teenager, she understood that Lydia was a girl who hated the world’s sappy-sweet facade and thus wanted out of it. She played Lydia honestly and with vulnerability. Winona Ryder’s position on the character has been explained in many interviews. She often talks about how she saw Lydia as someone who would never get married — that she would be living alone. But when she met Jenna Ortega — the new goth girl for the 2020s, she began to see a world where Lydia, as a character, had a child. In many ways, it’s not so much about the character becoming a mom but passing the proverbial goth torch.

Oh yeah — and Winona Ryder has admitted in interviews that she always saw Lydia as ending up with Beetlejuice.

“He’s like endgame for me…I totally want them to be truly together.” (Interview with ComicBook.com).

Perhaps the appeal of Beetlejuice IS his crassness, but in Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice, it’s also the actions he takes for Lydia. If he wanted to marry you from beyond the grave, he would. The reality is that the world loves to treat anything teenage girls like as cringe. Sexuality, particularly at puberty, is a strange thing, and I kind of love how TikTok, like its predecessor Tumblr, is a safe space for that.

Of course, I have to give credit where credit is due. Michael Keaton is also a huge part of the enduring sexiness of Beetlejuice. From the moment he put on that leather bodysuit in Batman (1989), he became utterly crushable for not just goth girls but everyone else. Were our brains just mixing the two? Maybe. Whether it’s in full leather bat ears or wormy moldy wigs, Keaton will always be a major heartthrob.

Here’s my advice: If you find yourself crushing on a dead, creepy old guy, just go with it. After all, it’s 2024. TikTok’s got you, bestie.

Interstellar Flight Magazine publishes essays on what’s new in the world of speculative genres. In the words of Ursula K. Le Guin, we need “writers who can see alternatives to how we live now, can see through our fear-stricken society and its obsessive technologies to other ways of being, and even imagine real grounds for hope.” Visit our Patreon to join our fan community on Discord. Follow us on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.

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The Ghost With the Most…D? was originally published in Interstellar Flight Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.