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Yuika Yoshida

Professor Harrington

Mass Media & Society

14 October 2019

Be Wise, Be Brave, Be Tricky

What do most of your favorite movies have in common with each other? Any popular

culture, specifically film, buff may be familiar with what’s called the Hero’s Journey. A

contemporary version of Joseph Campbell’s monomyth, the Hero’s Journey is an archetypal plot

structure that forms the basis of almost every movie in Hollywood. It makes for stories that are

character-driven, focusing on overcoming obstacles and experiencing a fundamental change. So

one might wonder how any films are able to become cult classics if the same frame for

storytelling is repeated so much. In order to keep this archetype exciting, the characters and

setting need to be distinctive in some way. In the case of Coraline, directed by Henry Selick, the

imaginative details and eerie tone are the reasons why the film feels timeless to this day, despite

having been released in 2009.

Stop-motion director Selick adapted Coraline from the children’s novel of the same name

by Neil Gaiman. Just like the novel it’s based off of, Selick presents the story as a dark fantasy

film centered around the growth of young Coraline Jones. The film opens with Coraline picking

up her life in Michigan and moving to Oregon with her mother and father. She feels neglected by

her stay-at-home workaholic writer parents. Her father is usually hunched over typing away at

his computer while her mother is seemingly devoid of any maternal instincts. Left to entertain

herself, Coraline wanders through the dilapidated mansion they’ve moved into. It’s dubbed the

“Pink Palace” and was renovated into several large apartments filled with her new, eccentric
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neighbors: Mr. Bobinsky, an eight-foot-tall blue Russian man who runs a circus of trained mice;

and Miss Spink and Miss Forcible, a pair of venerable theatrical troupers endlessly recounting

their glory days performing in the music hall.

The biggest source of interest for Coraline, however, is what’s behind the small locked

door concealed behind wallpaper. Like Lewis Carroll’s Alice and the children from Narnia,

Coraline ventures through the mysterious doorway into another realm. It’s a long passage that

leads to an apartment exactly like her new home. There are even parents identical to her own—

save for two things. Her “Other Mother” and “Other Father” in this realm dote on Caroline as if

she were the center of their universe. They pamper her with gifts, delicious feasts, and tuck her

into bed. Perhaps the more chilling difference is that they have buttons for eyes, along with

everyone else in the alternate world. Initially, Coraline thinks she has escaped the loneliness of

her normal life where she’s invisible or a burden. She feels wanted and, for a change, happy.

That is until Other Mother asks Coraline to stay permanently and join them by sewing buttons on

her eyes. Frightened, she flees back home through the passage to find that her real parents are

missing. A talking cat she befriended in the other world informs her that Other Mother has

kidnapped them and captured the souls of other lonely children through the same trap. Coraline

with her intelligence and newfound experience gets her parents back, unravels the world Other

Mother has created, and frees the souls of the children so they can move on to the afterlife.

Now taking a step back and looking at the film as a whole, there are some recurring ideas

that show up periodically. The idea of trying to escape one’s reality for a better one is one of the

more evident patterns within the plot. Selick establishes how dissatisfied Coraline is with her

normal life from the very beginning of the film. The entirety of the monotony that Coraline is

suffering from all starts because her family picks up and moves far away from the town she grew
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up in. This obtrusive upheaval in her life leads to her constant feeling of boredom and need to

explore in their new home. The discovery of a mystical, parallel world behind the hidden door

then, quite literally and figuratively, opens up a form of escape from her disappointing reality.

The parallel world represents her version of a better life, along with a better version of her

parents. Coraline reverts to this coping mechanism of escaping and avoiding the problems in her

real life whenever she finds herself bored or neglected. One of these many instances is presented

in the scene where Coraline visits her father in his office. She asks him to spend time with her

and help her count the amount of doors in the Pink Palace, only to be met with dismissive

rejection as he works on his manuscript. The following night she sneaks out through the secret

passage to eat dinner with her other parents who sing cheerful songs and fill her room with

various gifts and toys. Another recurring theme of independence and courage ties back to the

concept of a Hero’s Journey. Despite Coraline resenting the amount of freedom given to her by

her parents, taking it as neglect, it helps her later on in the story when her parents are kidnapped

by the Other Mother. She realizes that she’s the only one capable of rescuing them, and agrees to

the Other Mother’s twisted game of hide-and-seek because she knows she has to. Her

independent streak shows itself again through the friendship with the boy next door Wybie

Lovet. The way he timidly follows Coraline around is contrasted by the way she takes charge.

Unfortunately, it’s this stubborn independence that also leads to Coraline ignoring her neighbor’s

cryptic warnings of the Other World and getting entangled in the mess in the first place.

The heavy emphasis on these two themes in particular ultimately speak to the main

messages the movie’s trying to convey. With the idea of escapism, it’s important to notice that

Coraline eventually sees that the seemingly better parallel world is not all that it’s chalked up to

be. Coraline’s rose-tinted view of the other world is shattered once she comes to terms with the
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fact that even with all the gifts her other parents shower her in, her real parents are irreplaceable.

Coraline didn’t truly want a new set of parents; she just wanted them to show a little more

affection. “Like many other literary works of fantasy, both traditional and contemporary, Gaiman

deploys the trope of the evil, powerful ‘other’ mother as a vehicle through which the protagonists

resolve questions of identity” (Parsons, 371). When she is pressured into sewing buttons to her

eyes she realizes that this overly-present and almost invasive mother is not what she desires. The

button eyes symbolize Coraline’s final step into leaving her real life behind, however when it all

comes down to it she finally values her independent character her parents helped create. In the

end, it is this other mother figure that makes Coraline understand she was wrong for not

appreciating her old life. This anti-grass-is-greener sentiment is representative of the film as a

cautionary tale to not take your family for granted. Like Coraline’s love for her unconventional

parents, Selick expresses Gaiman’s original message of how love for one’s family runs deeper

than material possessions.

The latter theme of independence and growth is arguably the most important theme

within the film. Coraline, above all else, is a bildungsroman and a coming-of-age story. What

makes her Hero’s Journey so compelling amidst many similar stories is the way Gaiman and

Selick capture Coraline has an imperfect hero, as well as a self-affirmed female lead. They break

the mold of typical heroines in the fantasy genre, where they’re usually damsels in distress or up

against a male power trying to force them into submission. She’s realistically portrayed as afraid

when standing up to Other Mother, but “Coraline becomes powerful enough to defeat Other

Mother not because she is different from everyone else but because, like everyone else, she is

afraid” (Campbell, 111). Her inner-strength allows her to outwit the cunning Other Mother when

she pretends to wrongly think that Other Mother has hidden her parents behind the portal door,
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when in fact she knew Other Mother would be delighted to prove her wrong, giving her an

opening to sneak through. Coraline does not find power through princes, knights, or a fairy

godmother, but through a journey of self-discovery. Just like in the Hero’s Journey, Coraline is

thrusted into unknown territory inexperienced, then comes out knowing more about herself as a

person. With the unique character of Coraline, Gaiman and Selick offer audiences a progressive

model for female heroes.

Regardless of viewers’ opinions of the Burton-esque storytelling in Coraline, the film

arguably demands to be a classic on craft alone. The 3-D aspects of Coraline are unusually

subtle. Now and then stuff is flung off the screen into your face, but the point is not to make you

duck or shriek. Instead, Selick uses the technology to make his world deeper and more

intriguing. The stop-motion technique he uses, based on sculptured figures rather than drawn

images, is already a kind of three-dimensional animation. The glasses you put on are thus not a

gimmick, but an aid to seeing what’s already there. Besides the imaginative and colorful style of

Coraline, I feel that the film can be appreciated for the celebration of a strong female hero.

As critical members of society, Coraline can be incorporated into today’s activism as

well. With all the issues surrounding feminism and how it’s currently under attack in the media,

Coraline can be a healthy role model for young girls to look up to. Many successful and

acclaimed women who have gone on to obtain government positions like Alexandria Ocasio-

Cortez all had to put themselves in the position they’re in, not rely on a male figure to help them

get there. Watching films and reading books like Coraline may inspire more girls to be confident

with their abilities and create higher goals for themselves.

When we sleep, we shut our eyes and drift off into dreamland. Most of the time, these

dreams are a better version of our reality because they’re what we wish our current situation
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could be. However, it is the nightmares that we encounter that provide us with a reality check.

Dreams show us what we long for, whereas nightmares allow us to appreciate our reality. In

Coraline, Selick uses Coraline to demonstrate how a dream can turn so quickly into a nightmare

through her creation of the alternate universe, thus making her grow through the realization to

appreciate the life she was given. Even though in life we are presented with circumstances that

we’re not fully happy with, we must learn to appreciate them because in an instant, life as we

know it could become much worse.

Works Cited

Campbell, Lori M. A Quest of Her Own: Essays on the Female Hero in Modern Fantasy.

McFarland, 2014.

Martinez, I. (2014). online. Dsc.duq.edu.

https://dsc.duq.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1030&context=first-class. Accessed 13 Oct.

2019.