Of course, the actual title of this Tim Burton film is Edward Scissorhands, which stars Johnny Depp and Winona Ryder. This fictional story tells of a newcomer who faces problems with the unfortunate negative consequences of living in suburbia. Several issues concerning the image of suburbia are addressed, including gender roles and homogeneity, but I will focus on the issue of race and diversity.

The fairy tale of Edward Scissorhands begins with the local Avon representative, Peg Boggs, calling on her neighbors. After some failure with selling make-up, she resorts to calling on the only different looking house in the neighborhood, a spooky, old mansion sitting on a hill. There she finds Edward, the product of the great inventor who inhabited the mansion before passing away, leaving his greatest invention unfinished. Edward was left with long shears in place of hands and a rather peculiar appearance. Mrs. Boggs decides to bring Edward back to her suburban home. Needless to say, all the neighbors are curious about the newcomer and rush to meet him. Edward becomes very popular with almost all the neighbors, especially Joyce, the neighborhood slut. However, Edward takes a special liking to Mrs. Boggs's daughter, Kim, and after recovering from the initial shock of his appearance, she begins to like him too. However, her boyfriend, Jim, immediately dislikes Edward for his differences and tries to destroy his reputation with the neighbors. Jim's father is very wealthy and owns very high-tech stereo equipment that he locks up with heavy-duty lock and security. When Jim discovers Edward's ability to pick locks, he asks Kim to ask him to break into his father's room and steal the equipment so Jim can buy a van for himself. To please Kim, Edward tries to do it, but gets caught by the alarm. This leads to his arrest by the police. After that unfortunate incident, the whole neighborhood turns against him for being a thief, completely disregarding their original feelings for him. All of a sudden, Edward is looked upon as too different to be able to live harmoniously with them. He is finally exiled back to his home, leaving Kim, the family he had grown to love, and what could of been his new suburban life.

Race and ethnicity are treated symbolically in this movie. Edward is very different from the other characters in appearance. He has large, dangerous scissors for hands, an ashen white complexion, and wears a stiff, black, uncomfortable-looking covering over his body. The homogeneous neighborhood that he enters is quite skeptical of him as a person, because he is so different. However, after Joyce accepts his appearance and even feeds Edward her famous ambrosia salad at the barbeque, the other neighbors follow her example and begin to treat Edward with the utmost kindness. They discover his talent for sculpting and help him towards opening his own hairdressing shop. However, several incidences create a picture of exclusion for this neighborhood as the movie progresses. First of all, when Edward eats his first dinner with the family, there is a lot of staring and uncomfortable conversation starters that lead nowhere. Secondly, Kim's boyfriend, Jim, dislikes Edward right away and uses every opportunity to make him feel that he is different. He spends a lot of time making fun of Kim for being the center of Edward's crush as if she would also face the same ridicule if she chose to like him back. Finally, the movie concludes with almost the entire neighborhood literally chasing him away with the worst intentions to hurt him. Throughout the movie, gossip plays a large role in communication and judgment calls. The women spread the news about Edward being the strange new visitor by calling each other up to discuss the peculiarities of his appearance. Plus, they certainly did not hold back in saying exactly how they felt. One neighbor puts it, "he's different . . . mysterious." The doctor that reviewed him after the arrest summed it up by suggesting that "his awareness of what we call reality is radically underdeveloped." Nobody in the neighborhood outside of the Boggs family took time to notice his personality, views, opinions, and feelings. His values were automatically assumed to be as bizarre as his looks, but ironically, he was taught very well by the inventor what love and proper manners were, probably a better job than what most parents of the neighborhood were teaching their kids.

This film give many insights to the way suburbia deals with race and ethnicity issues and how it uses exclusion as a tool to combat its ignorance and lack of strength to deal with these kinds of differences head-on. Since this film strongly mocked ideal American suburbia, there must have been some truth in the depictions of Edward and his unfortunate run-in with suburbia. This movie illlustrates that homogeneity causes major conflicts when a unique individual is juxtaposed with the majority. It should be noticed that there were no other races or ethnicities represented throughout the entire cast. As Rob Levondosky puts it, individuals become very sparse in suburbia and we see a good illustration of this in Edward Scissorhands. Since the neighborhood was seldom put in the situation to welcome people different from themselves, Edward was mistreated and used for their advantage, not treated as just another new neighbor. Suburbanites are indeed this snobbish when it comes to newcomers. They examine them a little too closely for their possessions, their special talents and skills, their aesthetics, and, how they can benefit from them. When they find a fault, which they most likely do, they explode it to seem like a larger problem or difference than it really is. Exclusion is the next step when slowly and subtly, the newcomers are made to feel very different from the rest of the neighbors, like they are not wanted or needed or even welcomed by them.

This film sarcastically depicted suburbia's faults - the major one being skepticism to inclusion. Although it seems ridiculous how extreme the feelings for Edward are, it is only a slight exaggeration from reality as we see it. A few decades ago, blacks and whites were entirely segregated. Blacks had to ease their way into white neighborhoods with great difficulty. We have seen evidence of this struggle for blacks to enter white communities in the class readings and viewing of Raisin in the Sun, during which a white representative from the new neighborhood is even sent to persuade the family that is not wise for them to move there. Edward was officially raising the issue of exclusion with his visit, which would not seem like the wisest thing to do nowadays.

The director of Edward Scissorhands, Tim Burton, was trying to get across to viewers how ridiculous suburbia is in terms of actively and thoughtlessly maintaining a homogeneous community. The development of the characters with their treatment of Edward from kissing up to kicking out shows just how insensitive suburbanites are to foreigners. At the end of the movie, Kim is forced to abandon Edward in the attic and has to tell the neighbors that he is dead in order to get them away from the house. Although it seems like things would have been better off if Edward had never entered the neighborhood, some good actually resulted. The family that hosted Edward for that short time learned to appreciate some differences in suburban life. Kim's character was developed the most and much change is seen as the movie progressed. She learned to stand up to her domineering boyfriend, Jim and learned how to love Edward for his docile nature and kindness. She also realized what kind of people she shared the neighborhood with and for that reason, she never visited Edward again.

My critical assessment of Edward Scissorhands is that the film successfully addresses the treatment of race and ethnicity in American suburbia. The cultural value of its portrayal goes beyond entertainment. It clearly shows how ridiculously stubborn and pretentious suburbanites can be when indirectly asked to judge differences. No suburban neighborhood can truly exist like the ones in Populuxe, by Thomas Hines, where homogeneity is a positive aspect and furthers the desire for perfection. Also, it is not realistic for people to get away with blatantly excluding members of the same community from living in their same neighborhoods, even if those members are of a different race and ethnicity. Every family in a neighborhood does not have to lead the same boring life. This film can be used as an accurate portrayal for the purpose of cuturally analyzing suburbia. However, it must be taken into account that this movie was filmed to mock suburbia, exploding all the bad points so the audience could feel compassion for Edward. All depictions of suburbia in this movie should be taken with a grain of salt. There are also good points about suburbia that are often overlooked. Diversity often creates a interesting environment for those who come in contact with it and should not be initially judged as either positive or negative. It was really interesting to observe real life issues that have to be dealt with in suburbia being played out during this film.