Oogie-Boogie: the Anatomy of a Monster

The Nightmare Before Christmas has become a movie staple for both Christmas and Halloween. While the debate on whether Nightmare is more a Christmas movie or more a Halloween movie, one element which never needs debating is how Oogie-Boogie is one of the scariest villains exposed to children. What makes Oogie-Boogie a good villain, and quite frankly a scary monster, is his confusing nature, and how he stands in such contrast to the rest of the characters in the film, while still being clearly a part of that world.

 The main idea of Nightmare is that there are small towns where it is a particular holiday year-round. We are primarily focused on the world of Halloweentown, where the characters and setting are focused on what it means to be in Halloween. In the opening number, we see how Halloweentown views the fear and scariness associated with Halloween. For Halloweentown, the fear is always light-hearted, and never meant to harm other people. It’s a fun-fear, light-hearted and meant to be something which brings a community together.

 But that is not how it works for Oogie-Boogie. Oogie-Boogie’s ostracization from the rest of Halloweentown is made obvious – his lair is under ground, and outside of any main gate. It takes his henchmen Lock, Shock and Barrel a bit of time to get there, which we see in their song “Kidnap Mister Sandy Claws.” Jack Skellington, the proclaimed king of Halloweentown, also demonstrates clear disgust of the guy. Oogie-Boogie does not represent what it means to be a part of Halloweentown.

 The fear Oogie-Boogie insists to inflict is not communal, and it is not benign. His fear is intended to harm. He purposely inflicts pain and suffering for his own amusement. His point is not to bring people together with his fear, but to rip people apart, and seemingly quite literally. In a movie which caters to the childlike wonder associated with a simple and fun form of fear-inducement, the main villain who rears its bug-filled-sack head is one which breaks this and demonstrates there is something less friendly and less childlike. It demonstrates how important the benign fear is by showing us the true fears of the world – people who want to hurt for the sake of hurting.

 And there is something truly scary about the monstrous form of Nightmare’s Boogeyman. He’s not just a strange sack, but one full of bugs. Spiders come from his eyes, he’s got a snake for a tongue, and small bugs flow in and out of him at will. At the end of the battle between Oogie and Jack, his sack is gone, and a big conglomeration of bugs is left in his same form. This particular image of many bugs, holding one form, is something which sticks in the mind of many people who have watched the movie. It’s something so strange and also really awful, in the true sense of the word. It makes you wonder, and it makes you really not want to sit and wonder about it. One of the most interesting questions about Oogie-Boogie’s monstrous form is in how it all works; how can so many bugs all act, sing, and talk with one voice and one idea of motion? It brings up questions about personhood, and how it all works.

 Personhood is a conception which goes beyond just the understanding of human or not. Personhood is a conception of what it means to be you, in all its aspects. Most people, particularly those in the post-Enlightenment Western countries, tends to think of ourselves and the individuals as precisely that: individuals. We are separate beings from those around us, and while we may be influenced by others, we are still singular beings as we move about in the world.

 But there is an understanding of beings as dividual – rather than individual. What this means is that, while we are separate beings, we are not actually made up of just ourselves. Rather our selves are also formed by a mixture of the others we interact with. A lot of the discourse around dividual personhood is based on the social. We are ourselves because of the influence of the other people who we are surrounded by. I wrote a little about this in my discussion on how the video game Spiritfarer had roots in the sociology of grief –who we are as persons is made up from the interactions we have and influences of the people around us.

 Oogie-Boogie takes this to a whole other level. Instead of being an understanding of how the social impacts the person, Oogie-Boogie’s dividual personhood is incredibly literal. He is literally made up of a society, a society of bugs. His individual-seeming personhood is only possible due to the community formed into one cohesive being. He is the monstrous form of dividual personhood embodied.

 There’s something inherently scary about knowing your personhood is not entirely based on yourself. This is something quietly present in the modern zombie, as opposed to the original Haitian one – the mass outside of us making something of us. For many in grief studies, dividual personhood is seen as something positive, but not everyone finds it comforting to think of our dead friends and family members as still being a physical presence in our own personhood.

 Oogie-Boogie takes this inherent fear and turns it into something different than what we’re used to seeing in the zombie fiction of today. The society is made up of creepy-crawlies that occasionally fall from his eyes, or crawl from under him. It forms him entirely, and the destruction of the thin veil of canvas that kept them together means they all fall away.

 The strange contrast of colours in Oogie-Boogie’s lair from the rest of the movie really helps to set him in complete contrast to the way the rest of the movie is set. His neon bright colours are completely different than the grey and subtle colours of Halloweentown and the pastel-pretty of Christmastown. It’s fitting for the setting to shift so drastically – tearing us away from the comfort of fun fear to one that is meant to harm, dragging us into a different understanding of both ourselves and our own world.