“You know, you could stay forever, if you want to. There's one tiny thing we have to do first…” Other Mother, Coraline (2009).
What would you do if you found a way to escape reality whenever you pleased? A magical, ethereal blue and purple tunnel magically appears at life’s most misunderstood moments, just waiting for you to crawl into a realm that looks and feels like yours…but better. Lights are brighter, the beings are kinder, the food is an endless buffet of goodies and dishes to try, and your parents let you do anything and everything. It’s a dream! So much so that you want it to become a reality, but there’s just one catch: you must sew buttons in your eyes.
In 2002, English writer Neil Gaiman published the dark fairytale children’s book Coraline - an eerie British children’s book about a young girl named Coraline Jones, who discovers a secret door in her and her family’s new home in Oregon. The hidden door uncovers a parallel world that appears better than her own! And in this world, she meets her "Other Mother" and "Other Father," who are similar beings to those of her real parents but with button eyes. While her “Other Parents” may treat her well and want her to stay, Coraline soon realizes that something more significant and more menacing is afoot and must find her way back to her world before the needle and the thread meet their dreadful maker.
Coraline’s story takes place in the (dis)comfort of her own home, The Pink Palace Apartments: a Victorian-styled mansion turned apartment complex that housed wacky neighbors such as the onion-eating mouse-ringleading Mr. Bobinsky and the superstitiously eccentric Miss Spink and Miss Forcible: two elderly best friends that tell tales of their days as trapeze artists in their youth, read tea leaves, and offer Coraline stale laffy taffy. These characters not only add color to the present scenes of the movie when Coraline is in the real world, but they also demonstrate how differently other people outside of Coraline’s at-home world can live and be. In comparison, they add sustenance, a feature that our main character’s life currently lacks as an only child with busy parents who barely give her the time of day due to their busy schedules.
As I watch this again at twenty-five, I find myself relating to that eleven-year-old blue-haired girl all over again. Sassy, curious, adventurous, and always making the most out of her alone time, and sometimes, juuust sometimes, messing around and finding out. We have arrived at the creepy little door with the blue and purple tunnel that lines the crawl space, only big enough for a little girl that leads to the “Other World.” Here, we meet Coraline’s “Other Mother” and “Other Father.” Everything is grand here: the saturation is turned up to ten, the parents are giving our girl all of the love and attention she needs and deserves, Wybie’s tagging along and letting Coraline boss him around, the neighbors are less wacky, and the food is to die for. It’s like the real world but better! Nothing can go wrong here, and why would it? Better yet, why should it? Knowing she still has her other life, Coraline jumps between both worlds and gets the best of both worlds - no blonde wig or pop sensation stardom necessary.
When things begin to go wrong in the real world, such as Coraline’s parents disappearing and the “Other Mother” doing everything she can to get Coraline to stay with her, things get spooky fast. One day, Coraline’s parents go missing, and she consoles the “Other Mother,” whose appearance is no longer warm and motherly but rather ghastly, bony, and spider-like. She resembles the same darkness in the natural pigment of black widows with the nasty sting in words that bite. Remember when I mentioned those button eyes earlier? Well, the offer still stands on the table from the “Other Mother” to Coraline, and in order to get her real parents back, she must find them in the “Other World,” or get buttons sewn into her eyes, and stay with the “Other Mother” forever. From this point in the film, we see Coraline race against the clock to find clues that connect to the disappearance of her parents. The “Other Mother” enjoys games and has made this one a three-parter: hide n’ seek, a scavenger hunt, and tag. Coraline, who is undoubtedly intuitive and cunning, beats the “Other Mother” in all of her games and, to the disbelief of the “Other Mother,” outwits her in her own game but tricking her into losing her own button eyes, and escaping through the same door that led her to the “Other World” from the beginning.
Coraline is a dark movie on the surface but a beautiful one at its core. It teaches that home isn’t just where you lay your head at night, though that’s how many prefer it; rather, it’s where the people, the real people you love and care about most, are. Not only that, but Coraline also teaches us the importance of showing up for the people in our lives when they need us most. Whether their cries for love are loud or soft, showing up counts the most.
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