The Nightmare Before Christmas

I've certainly enjoyed that this beloved artifact from my childhood is enjoying a sort of resurgence as a cult favorite. From my 14 year old sister's friends sitting around drawing Jack and Sally on their binders to Blink 182's reference in the song "Miss You" (The unsuspecting victim/ of darkness in the valley/ we can live like Jack and Sally if we want/ where you can always find me/ and we'll have halloween on Christmas.) It's not really set up to appeal to the age group that it is marketed to in our culture. Not only is the subject matter somewhat above the exposure of most middle children, but the stylized artwork is almost too abstract, and the song composition too complex for children raised entirely on post-Walt (Eisner, Bird) Disney which has not only managed to steadily grind the intellectual quality of animated features into the ground, but has also managed to alienate Pixar, the upstart CG studio that still understood how to make a real movie.
that said, I love animation for the raw technical prowess it requires, the mental ability to break something down into all the usual aspects of cinema, and the added concept of that being presented a frame at a time. Claymation has an even dearer place for me because of the lighting. Lighting is is one of my favorite aspects of this world, the way that light effects things, the way that objects cast shadows, and claymation, because of the true physical aspect of the world and characters, allows for a more complex system of light and shadow than conventional drawings.
"Kidnap the sandy claws/ beat him with a stick/ lock him up for 90 years/ see what makes him tick."
Lock, Shock, and Barrel's song about kidnapping Sandy Claws is, perhaps, the most disturbing song ever peddled as children's fare, ever.
One of the things that particularly intrigues me about the present fascination with this movie, or at least its characters, among 13-16 year old girls is the fast that they were between 2 and 5 when the movie came out originally. I suppose the simplest answer would be that they acquired it off their older siblings, those of us who were 9-13 when the movie first came out.

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