I Have Some Thoughts About the Ethics Lesson in Edward Scissorhands (1990)

This film was requested by Lauren McCurdy, a dear friend of mine who warms my heart every time I see her. She picked this movie because she and her sister used to rent it every Friday around the holidays when they were little and watch it while eating Little Caesar’s pizza, which is an early 90s memory so potent that it feels like my own. Can you imagine if Edward’s fingers were Crazy Bread? Want to request a film for a future issue? Subscribe to the paid version!

The overarching moral lesson of Edward Scissorhands is pretty easy to understand, I think: “Be kind to others, even when they’re kinda weird.” And it’s emphasized so drastically in the film by Edward’s black clothes and dark features standing in stark contrast with the drab, pastel nightmare that is the suburbs and its inhabitants. Edward simply does not fit in, and so they take advantage of him and then they turn on him.

But there’s one moment in the film that will stay with me now that I’ve revisited it after many years. A moral within the larger moral. One that has a sting of hypocrisy to it.

You see, Edward—an unfinished android of sorts—is adopted by a suburban family and ends up falling in love with their teenage daughter, Kim. (Which is okay, because he’s sort of a teenager as well. Also he’s not a human.) And so, to impress Kim, he agrees to break into her boyfriend’s house and steal some things from his dad. Unfortunately, he gets trapped and abandoned and goes to jail.

So when he gets home, Kim’s father gives him an ethics test. Here is the test:

“You’re walking down the street. You find a suitcase full of money. There’s nobody around. No human person is in evidence. What do you do? A. You keep the money. B. You use it to buy gifts for your friends and your loved ones. C. You give it to the poor. D. You turn it in to the police.”

This question sucks, man. It’s some decades-old institutionalized nonsense. As Kim’s father says, “We’re not talking nice. We’re talking right and wrong.” I hate it.

As Kim’s brother Kevin points out, the answer you’re supposed to choose is D (even though he says he would pick A). But D is the absolute worst answer. I mean, you don’t need me to tell you that anybody rich enough to carry around (and lose!) a suitcase full of marked bills depends on that money far less than “the poor,” or your friends and loved ones, or even you, probably.

Anyway, Edward chooses B, which I think is a really good answer. (Kim says it’s “the nicer thing to do,” and she says she’d choose B as well.) This comes full circle at the end of the film when the authorities are ultimately pretty useless and Kim and Edward are the ones who make things right again.

But here’s the thing that I love about this scene. It’s the layer beneath the empathy for Edward that the viewer is meant to take away, I think. It’s the fact that Kim’s parents stumbled into this exact scenario. And they made the wrong choice.

When Peg, Kim’s mother, finds Edward in his inventor’s laboratory, it’s quite obvious that Edward isn’t a normal boy. He’s not even a real boy. He has knives for fingers. He has the brain of a child. He looks like he’s never been outside. But he’s unique. He’s something that no one has ever seen before. And that makes him profitable. And exploitable.

So what did they do? Did Peg turn Edward over to the authorities to help him find a proper home? Did she put his talents to work for those less fortunate?* No. She kept him all to herself. Yes, she fed him and clothed him and loved him, but she also used his gardening and haircutting talents to curry favor with her petty neighbors (who all laughed at her for hawking Avon products). She even rides Edward’s coattails onto a local talk show so she can get her TV time.**

In the end, only Kim acts in Edward’s best interests—she lies to protect him and hide him and let him go back to where he belongs, even though it means she’ll never see him again. Now that’s a lesson in ethics.

*I don’t really know what Edward Scissorhands would have done to solve poverty but there’s gotta be a way.

**I just realized that Edward Scissorhands is basically the blueprint for The Blind Side except they removed all of the conflict. Man, I hate The Blind Side.

Edward Scissorhands is now streaming on Disney+ and Amazon Prime, and it’s available to rent elsewhere.