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Beetlejuice
Movie

Beetlejuice

1988 • Comedy, Fantasy

Woke Score
2
out of 10

Plot

Adam and Barbara are a normal couple...who happen to be dead. They have given their precious time to decorate their house and make it their own, but unfortunately a family is moving in, and not quietly. Adam and Barbara try to scare them out, but end up becoming the main attraction to the money making family. They call upon Beetlejuice to help, but Beetlejuice has more in mind than just helping.

Overall Series Review

Beetlejuice (1988) is a dark comedy focused on the conflict between the traditional values of a deceased couple (the Maitlands) and the superficial, modern materialism of the new living tenants (the Deetzes). The narrative champions the Maitlands’ quaint, simple life and their physical home against the Deetzes’ pretentious art-world aesthetic and gentrifying ambitions. The movie centers on two nuclear, albeit distinct, family units: one representing a wholesome, complementary partnership, and the other a more dysfunctional, career-obsessed structure. The central villain is a demonic entity, Beetlejuice, whose chaotic and predatory nature is ultimately defeated by the combined efforts of the remaining family members, leading to a resolution that emphasizes a harmonious blended family unit. The conflict is based on taste, property rights, and generational differences, not on modern political ideology.

Categorical Breakdown

Identity Politics2/10

Characters are judged based on their behavior, specifically their taste and attitude toward the Maitlands' home, rather than race or immutable characteristics. The primary conflict is a clear-cut class and culture clash between simple rural life and affluent, pretentious city life. The entire main cast is white, and the narrative contains no forced diversity. Some critics have made external, modern interpretations about the title character's design and the use of Caribbean music in one scene, but these racial politics are not explicitly foundational to the core narrative.

Oikophobia1/10

The film acts as a defense of the home and local heritage. The protagonists (the Maitlands) are ghosts fighting to protect their quaint, old-fashioned house and way of life. The antagonists (the Deetzes) are ridiculed for their desire to deconstruct the house's original form and impose a 'posh modern art' style, which is a critique of a specific kind of destructive 80s yuppie materialism, not Western civilization as a whole. Institutions like the family and the sanctity of the home are defended.

Feminism2/10

The core relationship between Adam and Barbara is complementary; they work together to protect their home. Barbara, the wife, is shown to be the more focused and competent in handling the afterlife's reality, but this competency does not emasculate Adam, who is an equal partner. Delia, the female stepmother who embodies a career-first, anti-natalist attitude toward her stepdaughter, is consistently portrayed as a self-absorbed and comical figure of ridicule.

LGBTQ+1/10

The story's central relationships are traditional male-female pairings. The structure of the narrative centers on the preservation of a nuclear family unit, even an eventually blended one (Maitlands, Deetzes, and Lydia). The villain's sexuality is predatory toward a minor, and the hero characters' actions focus on stopping this perversion. The film contains no lecturing on alternative sexualities or gender ideology.

Anti-Theism5/10

The film creates a detailed afterlife, complete with bureaucracy, a case worker, and rules. This secularizes the spiritual realm, replacing a faith-based transcendent moral law (Heaven/Hell) with an amoral, indifferent, and mundane government-like process. Traditional religion is not actively demonized, but it is rendered irrelevant and is absent from the spiritual framework of the plot.