Jack Skellington in A Nightmare Before Christmas utilizes many aspects of rhetoric throughout the film. In one particular scene, his character convinces his community, Halloweentown, to celebrate the holiday of Christmas after he has accidentally journeyed through Christmas Town. As a prominent member of his society, Jack is able to hold a town meeting and speak to his fellow citizens in a way that persuades them to think as he does. He adheres to the form of rhetoric that John Poulakos attributes to the Sophists in his essay, “Toward a Sophistic Definition of Rhetoric,” by incorporating the ideas of kairos, to prepon and to dynaton within his speech.
Jack speaks at the opportune moment concerning Christmas. Halloween has recently come and gone, and his town is in need of some excitement. Jack himself is battling ennui; he grows tired of the same preparations for the same holiday with the same results. He needs more in life, and he believes his town needs more as well. Poulakos asserts that speech “must take into account and be guided by the temporality of the situation in which it occurs” (39). Jack’s speech takes time into account because there are less than two months to prepare for Christmas. He speaks (rather, he sings) with urgency; he jumps right into explaining this new concept to his audience: “There were objects so peculiar, they were not to be believed / All around, things to tantalize my brain” (The Nightmare Before Christmas). Furthermore, Poulakos explains that Gorgias felt that it is unnecessary for someone to speak about a topic that has been talked about many times previously. Jack’s audience has never heard of Christmas. He brings an entirely new subject to his world. The audience is simultaneously intrigued and confused; it relies solely upon Jack’s account of this novel idea.
Rhetoric is concerned with the idea of to prepon, or the appropriate. Poulakos claims the following:
When appropriate, speech is perfectly compatible with the audience and the occasion it
affirms and simultaneously seeks to alter. An appropriate expression reveals the rhetor’s
rhetorical readiness and evokes the audience’s gratitude; conversely, an inappropriate
expression indicates a misreading on the rhetor’s part and a mismeeting between rhetor
and audience. (41)
Jack realizes quickly that his speech is inappropriate to his audience. Listeners constantly interrupt him in order to understand his examples of Christmas. As he tries to explain the concept of a present, various audience members ask what kinds of horrible things are put inside the present’s box. He discoveries that these ideas thrill no one in the audience, aside from Sally. To get the audience on his side, Jack changes his approach; at the end of his speech, he feeds into the audience’s need to scare people and its desire for horror. While at first there is a mismeeting between Jack and his listeners, now the audience feels gratitude toward Jack and an excitement to create its own Christmas.
Lastly, Jack employs the concept of to dynaton, the possible. As he speaks, all Halloweentown has ever known is the holiday of Halloween. That is the town’s reality. Jack has seen another reality, one that holds true to the citizens of Christmas Town. He introduces this new concept to his town, calling it “a most improbable dream” (The Nightmare Before Christmas). He makes this new way of living sound more incredible and delightful than Halloweentown’s current situation.
While it all sounds so wonderful, Jack’s audience does not quite grasp his intentions because it needs time to process this new reality. Protagoras explains in Truth or Refutations that “all appearances and opinions are true and that truth is a relative matter because a man’s every perception or opinion immediately exists in relation to him” (18). Now that Jack has broken through his town’s version of reality into a new form of reality, he wants to share it with his citizens. However, since they have not seen or experienced this alternative world of Christmas Town, they must morph Jack’s ideas into something more relatable to what they perceive as real. Ultimately, this lack of understanding causes Jack to fail in his attempt to bring a successful Christmas to his town.
“The Nightmare Before Christmas - Town Meeting.” YouTube. 25 Oct. 2008. 2 Sept. 2012.
Web.
(1983): 35-48.
Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 2001. 18.
As a fan of any- and everything Tim Burton, I must say--I greatly enjoyed this post! I think it's fascinating how we can find these tie-ins and inclusions of rhetoric in the most unthinkable places.
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