Coraline is about a young girl who is unsatisfied in her own life, so she goes exploring and finds another

world;
however, nothing is as it seems. Coraline is a dark tale of learning to appreciate what you have and not
running from your fears.

New Home
At the beginning of the story, a young girl named Coraline has just moved into a home that was converted into
several small apartments. Her parents, busy with a writing project, are neglecting Coraline, which allows this
curious little girl to get herself into trouble. Coraline starts to explore their new home first and stumbles upon a
door in the living room. When she tries to open it, she discovers it's locked. Coraline harasses her mother until
she agrees to open it. However behind the door is just a brick wall, which disappoints the young girl. So she
sets off to visit her neighbors: Mr. Bobinsky, a rat trainer extraordinaire whose rats tell Coraline not to go
through the door; and Ms. Spink and Ms. Forcible, two old ladies that in their prime of life were amazing stage
actresses. When Ms. Spink and Ms. Forcible share a cup of tea with Coraline, they read her tea leaves,
determine she may be in trouble and offer her a stone with a hole in the middle. They explain to Coraline that
the stone will be of assistance in her future.
Coraline, a child not to be dissuaded, decides when her parents are gone to try and open the door by herself.
She believes it to be special, especially since her neighbors have tried to steer her away from it. This time
when she unlocks the door, there is not a brick wall, but a hallway. Without much thought, Coraline bolts down
the hallway, which seems to go on forever. When she finally makes it out, she is back in the same apartment.
However, the lights are brighter, the colors are deeper, and everything seems much more exciting. When she
starts to explore this other home, she runs into her parents - well, what looks like her parents, until she realizes
that in the place of their eyes are shiny, black buttons.

Other Mother
Coraline is taken aback by the eyes of these parents, but they win her over with their constant attention,
willingness to cook whatever food she wants, and the toys and excitement they bring into her life. She plays for
hours, and goes to visit her neighbors again, realizing they are more exciting and younger versions of the
people at her old home. She also runs into a black cat that can talk. The cat is rude and sharp with her, but
eventually tells her that he is the same cat from her other home as well. He just has the ability to move
between worlds, like Coraline. Although Coraline is enamored of this new home, she decides to go back to her
real home and parents for now.

Back Home Again

She goes home again, but everything seems even more dull and her parents are still too busy to play with her.
So she sneaks back to the other world and has dinner with her other parents. At dinner they tell her that she
could live there forever, as long as she is willing to let them sew buttons onto her eyes. Coraline becomes
terrified and runs back home. When she makes it home again she realizes her house is very quiet. She goes
searching for her parents but cannot find them. She deduces that the other mother must have taken them
when the black cat leads her to a mirror in which she sees her parents on the other side. Coraline realizes she
must go back to save her parents.
Coraline Symbols, Allegory and Motifs
These notes were contributed by members of the GradeSaver community. We are thankful of their
contributions and encourage you to make your own.

Written by jelo singson

Buttons
Buttons in the novel act much like masks in that they conceal. Buttons though conceal a being’s intentions rather than
identity. Coraline cannot read the Other Parent’s intentions, as they reveal no perceptible emotion through their dead,
plastic button eyes. She can’t even discern if they’re watching her, as the buttons don’t rotate the way normal human eyes
do. The buttons therefore become a symbol of the inscrutability and inhumanity of the Other Parents.
Key
The key serves as a plot device and is central to the novel as such. The key allows the bearer access to the human world
and the dimension where the Other Mother/The Beldam lives. Both Coraline and the Other Mother/The Beldam want
possession of the key as it represents freedom and power for them both. The Other Mother/The Beldam desires the key as
it affords her freedom to move back and forth with impunity between dimensions, allowing her both to hunt and escape
reprisal as she pleases, which in turn gives her immense power over her victims. Coraline wants the key because to her it
is both her means of escape, and as with any key, it can also lock doors barring entry giving her power over The Beldam,
who can only find prey in the human world.
Mirrors
Coraline is both a respectful homage and an original take on Alice Through the Looking Glass and as such, mirrors are a
frequently occurring symbol in the story. In the human world, mirrors are just that, tools to reflect images that are placed
in front of it, truthfully revealing flaws. In the Beldam’s dimension however, the whole place being nothing more than a
twisted mirror image of our world, mirrors likewise reflect the ugly truth behind it---revealing the dimension to be what it
is: nothing but a deadly simulacrum of our world created by the Beldam for luring in children.

Coraline Background
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contributions and encourage you to make your own.

Written by Cathy 598 and other people who wish to remain anonymous

Neil Gaiman is the author of Coraline, an exciting, adventurous children's novel. Gaiman was born in the United
Kingdom during 1960. He has authored many creative works, such as novels, graphic novels, short fiction, comic books,
audio theatre, and movies, etc. His love for reading and writing started during his childhood and strongly shaped his
unique literary style. For example, he was inspired by C.S. Lewis, Edgar Allan Poe, Gene Wolfe, and many others.
Gaiman wholeheartedly credits his stays at the library as a child. Fortunately, his parents nurtured this intense literary
wonder. His creative works don't only focus on children's literature. He wrote picture books, short fiction, and novels for
teenagers and young adults. Regarding Coraline, he started writing this book during 2002 when its genre (i.e. gothic
horror) wasn't popular. Not to mention, this story was once considered too scary for children.
Yet this peculiar and imaginative novel won him several awards, such as the British Science Fiction Award and the
American Elizabeth Burr/Worzalla Award. Coraline leaves readers with compelling lessons on self-discovery, courage,
and rebellion. Several literary critics have described this story as creepy and stunning.

SUMMARY

Coraline by Neil Gaiman is about a girl named Coraline who shifts to a new house with her workaholic parents,
who never have time for Coraline. Feeling bored and with a curiosity to discover her new house, she finds a
secret door which she later discovers that opens into an other world where there are replicas of her parents
and neighbors, where cats and dogs can talk. She begins visiting the alternate world where she receives
kindness and love from her other parents.
As it turned out, Coraline was happy with the other world until her bewitched mother asked her to sew buttons
on her eyes like they had. There was nothing original in the world, only the replicas of the real world created by
The Beldam. Coraline returns to the real world and finds her real parents missing. A cat whom she had
befriended in the other world tells her that her parents were kidnapped by the mother of the other world.
Coraline goes in the alternate world to bring them back but she is denied. Coraline also learns that the other
mother had captured souls of three children on which she was feeding and deriving nutrition from.

Coraline, with her intelligence and the help of the cat, brings her real parents back to real world. She also frees
the souls of those children and they go to the afterlife.

CHARACER LIST

Coraline Jones
Coraline is a little girl with big courage but to those around her she seems a little bland and unmemorable. Her family's
neighbors call her "Caroline" (which is ironic since this is also what the author had intended to call her too, but his
autocorrect erroneously altered the vowels) Even her parents overlook her many talents, especially her vivid imagination.
She is also bold and brave with a thirst for knowledge and adventure. Coraline is not really sure what brace actually is but
she thinks it's when a person deliberately goes into a situation that scares them.

Coraline is often compared to other brave and adventurous children in novels but she is most reminiscent of Astrid
Lindgren's Pippi Longstocking, primarily because she is often called upon to act like an adult whilst she is still a little girl.
Like Pippi she cooks for herself and also tells herself when to go to bed at night. However she still likes the trappings of
childhood such as playing with dolls and being outside. She is also smart enough to know that nobody is going to honk
her adventures are true and so her heroic exploits go largely unlauded.
The Beldam (the other mother)
Beldam is another word for witch which is very fitting in this instance. The Beldam in the novel is extremely frightening
but is largely unidentified; where has she come from? Where is her family? Does she even have a family? Descriptions of
her are largely visual - she is incredibly old and has long creepy fingers - and the way she speaks is almost Shakespearean.
We assume that she metamorphosis to look like the mother of any child she is currently trying to kidnap but there is no
definitive statement in the book that validates this. She is also a complete contradiction in that one side of her is motherly
and kind and the other is conniving and evil. Her manipulations are designed to get her whatever she wants. She is often
compared to a spider and like a spider she sound a world of her own that looks absolutely beautiful but that is designed to
entrap her prey before they realize what has happened to them.
Coraline' s Father
Mr. Jones seems like a decent enough man. He works from home and has trouble separating work from family time;
consequently his best intentions to spend time with Coraline fall by the wayside. Despite not having as much time with his
as she would like, Coraline idolizes her dad and knows that he loves her.
THEMES

Overcoming Fears
An argument can be made that this entire story is supposed to encourage readers to overcome their fears. Coraline is a
regular kid who is called upon to be incredibly courageous in order to do the right thing. She introduces herself as just the
kind of person who is capable of these things from the beginning by saying she's an explorer. In good fortunate and poor,
she's already said yes to the adventure. Initially terrified of her evil doppelganger mother in the other world, she ends up
personally destroying this woman and saving several people in the process. She's putting other people's needs before her
own security, which makes her a very brave girl. Compared to the stress of her adventures throughout the book, Coraline
finds herself more than prepared to face school when it starts. She's already proven to herself that fear is just a roadblock
that must be overcome by courage and determination.
Independence
Coraline is an empower kid. With her parents gone at work all the time, she finds herself alone most of the time. After
years of this she has grown resourceful. She demonstrates her independence by never asking for help, not that that would
be a sign of weakness. Instead she trusts herself to find an acceptable solution to her problems. This becomes particularly
important when her parents are kidnapped, and she's the only one capable fo saving them. While a less independent girl
may have gone to the police for help, Coraline recognizes that these events seem to be centered around her so maybe she
is the one best qualified to fix them. She takes it upon herself, trusting in herself to come up with solutions, to rescue her
parents and defeat the beldam.
Curiosity and Optimism
Coraline has a superpower: choice. She chooses to say yes to things, a direct manifestation of optimism. Choosing to
believe in the possibility of good, she remains optimistic despite her rather dire circumstances. Being left home alone so
much is an opportunity for adventure rather than a trial. These sorts of positive frames help her to remain hopeful and
most importantly curious. Her curiosity stems from the belief that good things exist that have yet to be discovered. She
wants to learn everything possible about the world around her, a perspective which naturally stems from a conscious
commitment to hopefulness. This gives Coraline an advantage over her evil other mother: the power to believe the best.
Solitude
The flip-side to Coraline's fiercely independent nature is her loneliness. She's spent most of her time alive alone thanks to
her workaholic parents. While Coraline does not complain, she is obviously bored. She talks to cats after all. Although
never explicitly stated, readers can assume that the world which Coraline finds is in her imagination. She uses her time
thinking up these wild stories to entertain herself. This is entirely possible and would not detract from the validity of
Coraline's experiences in the least. Consider it. What would a child who basically lives alone dream of? Parents who pay
attention to her. How about a mother who won't leave her alone? Coraline's vision of a perfect mother quickly sours when
she realizes that her real mother is the one from whom she truly desires attention.

ANALYSIS

Neil Gaiman's Coraline is fascinating tale about childhood fears. Maybe Gaiman was frustrated by a timid child
or perhaps he just has a penchant for disturbing children's literature, but whatever the reason this book is
terrifying. Playing with themes of abandonment, claustrophobia, stalking, kidnapping, and death, Gaiman hits
on a lot of scary topics for children. That being said, the overall tone of the book is cheerful because of little
Coraline's persistent good attitude. She is an adventurous spirit who chooses to extend the benefit of the doubt
in every situation.
Left alone most of the time by her hard-working but neglectful parents, Coraline considers herself an
adventurer. She's exploring their new house when she stumbles upon a door which opens into a secret world.
Here she talks to animals and meets doppelgangers of both of her parents. Gradually this magic sours when
her other mother -- the beldam -- tells Coraline to sew buttons onto their eyes like they have. Coraline chooses
to return to her own world, but she finds the beldam has kidnapped her parents. She takes it upon herself to
return to the secret world and rescue them, which she does. She also happens to rescue three other children
which the beldam has lured into her world and has been using for energy. Back in the routine of safety and
normal life, Coraline realizes that she's no longer nervous about starting school because she's just proved to
herself that she's way more courageous than she thought she was.

The sharp contrast between the disturbing nature of the events happening to Coraline and her attitude about
them is in and of itself a little disturbing to see in a child so young. She has astonishing clarity about choice. At
one point Gaiman even expounds upon her rationale in choosing optimism. Coraline prefers to believe in hope
because, after all, something good could happen. No sense in expecting only tragedy. This unique point of view
serves her well when she is called upon to rescue her parents and the other children which the beldam has
taken. She views each obstacle as a challenge, another stage of the grand adventure of life. This way she isn't
disappointed and even enjoys the challenges in front of her.

Now for all that know me Coraline is my favorite movie, and I watch it very often. Each time I see something
new I didn’t notice before, so here are 5 symbols you may have overlooked when watching this film.
First here’s a little background on the movie. Coraline is a young girl from Michigan who is uprooted and now
living in an apartment complex called the pink palace. She is unhappy with the way she is constantly overlooked
by those around her and wants to be heard. She soon finds a small door that unlocks a world that gives her all
she ever wanted, but this magical world turns out to be dangerous and darker than expected. Okay now let’s
jump right in.

1. The garden. Gardens tend to symbolize purity and innocence, and within the movie that is all Coraline is. She
is an innocent and naive young girl who just wants someone to pay attention to her. When she arrives in the
new world with her other mother the garden is filled with life and is prospering. However, once the other mother
reveals that she is up to no good the gardens beauty diminishes. Much like Coraline’s innocence. She is no
longer a naive girl with clouded judgement.

2.The dragonfly hair clip. Throughout the film Coraline wears a dragon fly hair clip throughout the film, that is
more than just a fashion statement. Dragon flies symbolize self realization and growth. Typically in films where
there is a young protagonist the dragon fly shows that they are coming of age and taking off the rose colored
glasses they once wore as children. Towards the end of the movie Coraline changes drastically. She now sees
that even though her parents aren’t the best, life could be much worse.

3.The cave. When Coraline finds a hidden little door, she opens it to find a vibrant little tunnel/cave. In films and
books the protagonist usually ventures off into the unknown in search of something better. This cave was
coralines search for a better life then the one she had.
4. The cherry blossom tree. Towards the end of the movie Coraline is walking in the woods to discard the key to
the other world. As she is walking cherry blossom tree petals are falling around her. The cherry blossom tree is
often a reminder that life is beautiful and should be cherished, but it is fleeting much like the petals on the tree.
Coraline spent so much time trying to escape and live another life that she forgot to live her own.

5. The starry night background. Once Coraline has made it home and gotten her parents back, she has a dream
of the ghost children. In that dream the background is the famous starry night painting by Vincent Van Gogh.
For those of you who may not know the inspiration for this painting was Joseph in the Bible, who was a dreamer
much like Van Gogh. Another thing both men shared was being ostracized by those around them because of
who they were. Coraline too is a dreamer and often feels like she has no one but herself, hence why she went
through the small door in the first place. She was a dreamer looking for people who would listen to what was on
her mind.
Well that’s all on the list of symbols you may have missed when watching Coraline. I hope you enjoyed. See you

next time      .
 is a recent movie, ostensibly geared to children.  Nonetheless, it tells a story deeply rooted in the realities of
soul.  In that sense, its story is of deep relevance to all of us.
The film itself is something of a visual wonder.  It is an exercise in 3-D stop motion photography, giving a film
experience that certainly I have never had before.  It's a very rich and imaginative world that is created, based
on a story of fantasy and science fiction writerNeil Gaiman.
Coraline is a girl of about ten years of age, whose family moves from Michigan to "the Pink Palace
Apartments", a big pink house near the mountains.  She is undergoing a difficult time accepting some of the
realities of her life.  Her parents seem totally absorbed in their work as writers, and both the house and the
environment in which she lives seem uninteresting and lacking in vitality.  Even the food she has to eat seems
singularly boring and unappetizing.
In the midst of the house into which her family has moved, Coraline discovers a portal into another world.  In
that world she discovers her "other Mother" and "other Father", who are, in essence, perfect, and geared to
meeting all of Coraline's needs.  All the inhabitants of this world are more vivid, more interesting, more what
Coraline would want them to be, with the one odd exception that they all have doll-like eyes made from
buttons. 
Everything in this tiny parallel world seems ideal, and Coraline is highly tempted to flee to it to live in the realm
of her "other Mother" forever.  But then she learns that the price of admission for entry to this world: she must
give up her own real eyes, and have a pair of doll-like button eyes sewed into her eyes in their place, and then
she will be imprisoned in the witch's world permanently.  With the help of an unusual cat, she is able to escape
the witch's realm, and free her real parents from her grip. 
Like Coraline, sometimes the outline of our own real lives is something that we would rather not see, and in
which we would rather not live. Perhaps we don't find it meaningful.  There can be a seductiveness to seeing
things in our lives as the way that we wish they were, rather than the way that they are.  We willingly make the
trade, and give up our own real eyes for illusory eyes that willing get caught up in the spider's web of illusion.  It
is not without significance that the witch mother, seemingly so ideal, turns out to be a monstrous spider who
devours the souls of her victims.  The ancient eastern symbol for Maya, or illusion, is the spider's web.
It's the cat — the ancient symbol for authentic feminine instinct — that is Coraline's aid and guide out of the
witch world.  Through the earthy reality of the cat, Coraline finds her way back to her reality, which, once the
seduction of "the ideal" or "what could be" is removed, turns out to be much more vital and alive than at first
appeared.
It often takes real courage to give up our illusions and to live in the real non-idealized world that we actually
inhabit.  It can take real strength to engage that world, and really dwell in it, rather than allowing fantasies of
idealized possibilities to keep us hovering above our real lives.  We all know people whose lives never get
grounded, who are always flitting from one idealized goal or dream to another, but who are never able to
actualize any of their dreams or realize any of their aspirations in the real world.  Perhaps we recognize those
tendencies in ourselves. 
The spider-witch can keep us so caught up Maya web to such an extent that we never materialize our projects,
never really go after the things we really need in our lives, and perhaps we are never satisfied with our lovers,
children or friends, and we always are looking for the "next great thing".
An important part of therapy can be finding ways to get "down to earth", and to really grapple with the lives and
the selves that we actually have.  Like Coraline, we have to free ourselves from the witch's enchantment, and
really live — right here, right now.
I highly recommend this wonderful, charming movie!
My very best wishes to each of you on your individual journeys to wholeness,
Brian Collinson
Website for Brian's Oakville and Mississauga Practice: www.briancollinson.ca ; Email:brian@briancollinson.ca
Get "Vibrant Jung Thing" posts delivered to your email using the "FeedBurner" box in the left column.
 

CORALINE

Directed by Henry Selick; written by Mr. Selick, based on the book by Neil Gaiman; director of photography,
Pete Kozachik; edited by Christopher Murrie and Ronald Sanders; music by Bruno Coulais; production
designer, Mr. Selick; produced by Mr. Selick, Bill Mechanic, Claire Jennings and Mary Sandell; released by
Focus Features.

WITH THE VOICES OF: Dakota Fanning; Teri Hatcher Jennifer Saunders; Dawn French; Keith David; John
Hodgman; Robert Bailey Jr.;  and Ian MacShane.
PHOTO CREDITS:  ©  LAIKA
© 2009 Brian Collinson 
 
Coraline and Freud. Distinguishing Being and Semblance
By Timofei Gerber

The turning point of Coraline occurs when she tries to run away from the Other Mother and the whole world
begins to dissolve, leaving her in an empty white space. It is the moment where Coraline realizes that this world
that she’s discovered, and that was becoming more and more, as Freud would say, uncanny, is
actually fake, artificial: a “Small world.” This blank and unfurnished emptiness reveals that everything that
Coraline has experienced in the World Within, i.e. the world of Other Mother, has been aligned and arranged,
towards and around her (here a connection to the Truman Show). The house and the Other Family that were
initially presented as a simply present entity (Vorhandenes, to speak Heideggerian), turned out to be an
intentional construct, and, in its dissolving, an illusion. But what exactly is it that aligns this World Within?

When we move into an apartment, we furnish it according to our needs; similarly, the tabula rasa of the Other
Mother’s World Within is furnished according to Coraline’s needs, or, more precisely, her wish for a perfect
family. The World Within therefore serves as wish fulfilment and everything in it is created according to this
goal. There is an attempt to establish familiarity; the house, the neighbours and the family being almost exact
copies, but improvedcopies, whose sole purpose it is to fascinate and captivate Coraline. The beginning of the
movie establishes that Coraline feels neglected by her parents; the World Without, the ‘real world’, can therefore
be generalized as a world of deprivation, while the World Within, Other Mother’s world, is to be understood as
a world of fulfilment. This difference is illustrated by the picture of the boy [1]; the ‘real world’ version showing
his scoops of ice cream having fallen to the ground, while the version of the ‘fake world’ shows him happily
enjoying the dessert.
[1]
Coraline’s wish for a perfect family is not created by the Other Mother, she rather capitalizes on it. This becomes
clear in a scene where we can see that Coraline’s narcissistic wish goes far back; on a family photo we can see the
whole family on a visit in the zoo of Detroit [2]. It is the picture of a happy family. But what’s striking here is that
Coraline isn’t wearing her extravagant clothing — the yellow rain coat, the boots and her blue hair. This implies
that the latter were a conscious reaction to the feeling of neglect, a typical children’s strategy to catch the
attention of their parents. The memory of the perfect family drives Coraline like a motor. This image generates
the wish, the regressive wish for a return to the family as it once was. It is therefore no coincidence that Other
Mother stages Coraline’s entry into the World Within as a return: “Welcome home.” This dynamic, where a child
stages its belonging to a surrogate family in which it remains at the centre of attention, was formulated by Freud
in his text Family Romances (Der Familienroman der Neurotiker). There he describes, how children, out of “a
feeling of being slighted [Gefühl der Zurücksetzung],” develop the fantasy “of being a step-child or an adopted
child” (FR, p. 1987), fabricating daydreams that “serve as the fulfilment of wishes and as a correction of actual
life” (ibid., p. 1988). Just as Coraline’s nostalgia, this is “an expression of the child’s longing for the happy,
vanished days” (ibid., p. 1990). In short, the child wishes to remain a child, to remain within the family’s care
and its atmosphere of carelessness and joy.

[2]
But in its growth, the child’s role within the family, but also within society, begins to change; and the stronger it
begins to feel said change, the stronger, potentially, its regressive reaction. The task of the child, as Freud
describes it, is then to turn away from this wish; failure leads to neuroses, to a child in a grown-up’s body that
can’t handle this world. But how can this obstacle be overcome? In Coraline, the turn away from the wish is
initiated by the insight into the artificiality of the World Within in the scene described in the opening paragraph.
Not only is everything that Coraline sees and experiences fake, in all the ‘wonders’ that she experiences she
remains a completely passive subject, a spectator; the neurotic condition being essentially an inability to act. But
not only does Coraline realize that the World Within is essentially unreal, it also isconfined, and she can only
remain there as a prisoner.

So she needs to escape, for a failure to escape the World Within would lead to a complete integration into the
latter, a complete schism from the ‘real world’. This is what the Other Mother wants and the decisive gesture for
this total immersion is for Coraline to sew on the button eyes. Self-blinding, of course, is an
ancient topos (Oedipus etc.), symbolically lying in an abandonment of truth (in the case of Oedipus an attempt
to ‘unsee’ it), or, in this case, a relinquishment of the ability to differentiate between being and semblance. As
long as Coraline keeps her eyes, she manages to perceive the falsehood of the World Within; if she gave them up,
the simulation would become totalized. The distinction between being and semblance would fall apart, a
distinction that, in Coraline, is radical and absolute.
But what is it that distinguishes being and semblance? It isn’t materiality, as Coraline is able to touch the beings
and things of the World Within. For the differentiation we have two options: (a) the difference we’ve sketched
above between fulfilment and deprivation; (b) the difference between openness and confinement. What is
sketched out in Coraline, as well as by Freud, is the first option, as we can see if we bring to mind, what exactly it
is that is renounced here. It is the wish for the perfect family, but not the family itself. In fact, the happy ending
of the movie is itself one of a return to the family, but without the narcissistic wish, meaning, that Coraline no
longer takes up the role of the protected child that lives in a fulfilled world, and is stepping out into the ‘real
world’ that inherently follows a logic of deprivation. The desire structure of psychoanalysis is negative at its core;
the choice of one’s partner is a surrogate for a denied attachment to the father/mother (ref. Oedipus complex). It
is negative, because it can only be understood as an attempt to compensate for a lack. All joy and contentment is
viewed under the general suspicion of being only illusory, lacking the substance of the sturdy, earned through
self-sacrifice and suffering. Devoted to such a view, Coraline does not end with an escape into openness, but
rather with an escape into the confined structure of the family; Coraline gives up on her wish and accepts the
world of deprivation, where family is no longer a place of warmth and fulfilment, but essentially an social
obligation. From this shift stems a certain interpretation of realism and worldliness that is essentially
conservative.

An alternative understanding, marked under (b), would reflect the observation that to fulfil Coraline’s wish, the
Other Mother didn’t need to create a whole world, she only needed to create what is pertinent to Coraline’s wish:
the home and its immediate surroundings. Everything else, as we’ve seen in the opening paragraph, remains in
the state of pure whiteness [3]. The wish, then, will always create a confined territory that excludes everything
that doesn’t belong to it; if we wish for something, everything else ‘disappears from view’. In this reduction lies
its confinement. The ‘escape’ out of the prison-like World Within would then not lie in a refutation of the wish,
or of imagination itself, but of escapist tendencies of the imagination and of entities that promise a safe haven
from the dangers of ‘reality’, which includes the family as well. The differentiation between being and
semblance, as a way to separate the ‘false’ from the ‘real’ would then sharpen our wits to perceive structures that
try to trap and incorporate us into a machinery, and to find fissures where Openness shines through. The
artificial, just as imagination, that are both refused by the conservative ‘worldliness’ sketched above, both have
the potential to open up as much as to close; in such a view, then, artificiality and potentiality are not expelled
from participating in ‘being’, which the suppressive forces do not. But this critical edge remains unrealized
in Coraline.

[3]

The type of worldliness that is defined by a relinquishment of the wish (i.e. of fulfilment), is established by Freud
on a subjective level as part of any healthy coming-of-age, but also on the societal level — the renouncement of
wish-based religion towards worldly science that he formulates in The Future of an Illusion is essentially part of
Freud’s utopian streak: “By withdrawing their [men’s] expectations from the other world and concentrating all
their liberated energies into their life on earth, they will probably succeed in achieving a state of things in which
life will become tolerable for everyone and civilization no longer oppressive to anyone” (FI, p. 4457). The
energies that are released thanks to science lie in the power to use nature as a resource to cover the basic human
needs; instead of creating surrogate worlds, i.e. the afterlife, we should turn to the matter at hand. The natural
state, therefore, is one of deprivation and only the active technical and technological interference is able to
reduce, but not to overcome it. Just like one’s own family formation is a reaction to the denied utopia of
childhood, scientific and technological development is an alternative to the illusive utopia of the afterlife. What
is intertwined here are on the other hand naturalness and deprivation and on the other hand unnaturalness
(artificiality) and fulfilment; in other words, negativity is natural, positivity is artificial. The happiness of
childhood, as much as the serenity of religiosity are illusions to overcome.

If the relinquishment of the wish in Coraline is understood as a ‘corrected’ relation to family, what is implied is
the naturalness of the familial structure. What is illusive is a certain aspect of it, namely the narcissistic
understanding of the child as the centre, the protagonist of the family. The child’s narcissism is an obstacle in as
far as it hinders the future family formation of the child. Narcissists are unable to take up the role of the
potential parent — not that they’re unable to have children — as long as they consider themselves to be the centre
of the universe. To be able to lay out the care that a child necessitates, a parent needs to consider itself ‘second’,
to sacrifice their time for the child. The lesson of Coraline is, that Coraline learns to adapt her role as a daughter;
instead of being the protagonist-child that wants to resolve the family, she now understands that the family
doesn’t exist to fulfil her wishes; quite the contrary, her belonging to the family is happiness already; it is here
that we can see the bourgeois core of Freudianism the most clearly. This reflects the oedipal subject formation,
where the relinquishment of the desire for the father/mother is completed by the formation of one’s own family;
the initial ‘banishment’ from one’s family initiates the wish to establish your own, but with a different role
(daughter/mother, son/father). But to be able to do so, you first need to overcome your own narcissism. There is
a strong symbolism in the movie that points toward that; in the end, the snow ball with the Horace Rackham
Memorial Fountain from the zoo of Detroit, shatters. The family photo that captured the image of the perfect
family and that was taken in front of the memorial, is renounced, but not the familial structure itself; what is
renounced is the regressive wish for the perfect family: “Men cannot remain children for ever; they must in the
end go out into ‘hostile life’” (ibid., p. 4456), the world of deprivation, as we could add.

The surrender under a seemingly natural structure, the family, is based on a radical differentiation between the
artificial (the wish, the illusion) and the natural. The differentia specifica, though, is not a difference between
openness and confinement, but fulfilment and deprivation; the latter being a sign of authenticity — this does not
only lead to a legitimation of suppression and suffering, which have been ingrained in Christian thought in a
global gesture of world-renunciation where one’s suffering is a sign of sanctity but also in a prosaic worldliness
that bourgeois thought has incorporated, with its focus on hard work and suspicion of ‘handouts’ and things that
go beyond the pragmatic horizon, i.e. art and philosophy.

But what gets left out in such a perspective is that such subjugation is hardly a sign of authenticity, and much
rather a legitimation of power structures that demand our obedience. The ideological character of such ways of
thought lies in their naturalization of suppression, totalizing it and positing it as necessary and genuine. This
aspect is concealed by staging the return to the family as a reconciliation of the daughter with her parents, of the
subject with the “difficult situation” (ibid., p. 4456) — making us wonder, if not all reconciliation is a covert
submission, or, to cut deeper, if not all radical differentiations between being and semblance, between
naturalness and artificiality, are essentially a covert legitimation of a certain order. Just as slavery is legitimized
by an apparently ‘biological’ difference between slave and owner, the heterosexual family with the paterfamilias
is being posed as the only ‘natural’ constellation, excluding ‘deviations’ on the grounds of being ‘unnatural’. The
insight that said differentiation is subliminally based on power structures was worked out by Deleuze and
Guattari in their book on Kafka:
“On the one hand, one discovers behind the familial triangle (father-mother-child) other infinitely more active
triangles from which the family itself borrows its own power, its own drive to propagate submission, to lower
the head and make heads lower. Because it’s that that the libido of the child really invests itself in from the
start: by means of the family photo, a whole map of the world” (K, p. 11).

Asserted naturalness is always a positing of power, it is about controlling the subject, because what is natural is
deemed unchangeable and hence legitimized in its persistence. Naturalizing the family, its totalization, means
that it belongs to an order of things that transcends the subject and that demands of it the repetition of the
structure, one’s own family formation within the given roles and boundaries. There is an order to follow, but
who elicits it? Instances need to be established that survey the delimitation and pass judgment over what’s
‘inside’ and what’s ‘outside’ the territory. The dogma of naturalness shows its true face where the allegedly
natural course needs to be delegated, while at the same time it is posited as immutable. Far from being a gesture
of reconciliation with nature or atonement with a metaphysical entity, the dogma of naturalness has never
refrained from capitalizing on the powers that the control mechanisms release; the son serving his father
becomes a resource as a soldier serving his fatherland. This whole conception unmasks itself when we ask, what
idea of nature it is anyway, that serves as a criterion for the sanctity of its order? It is nature as resource; as we
can see in Freud’s understanding of science: “Their [men’s] scientific knowledge has taught them much since the
days of the Deluge, and it will increase their power still further” (FI, p. 4457); it is science, “by means of which
we can increase our power and in accordance with which we can arrange our life” (ibid., p. 4461). No
coincidence, then, that an ideology that propagates the control of nature will intend to control what it posits as
natural. If nature is depravation, then it takes the hand of man to retrieve what it needs to change the state of
misery. Ironically, the natural is that which needs to be changed, and can therefore not serve as a category of
legitimation. This conception does indeed call for a certain activity of the subject as it turns away from the
afterlife; but it is a destructive activity that comes undone in the act of subjugation. There is an ambivalence in
Coraline’s activity in the World Within; she struggles with the Other Mother over the control of this simulation,
seizing it by discovering the ghost children’s eyes (the eyes once again serving as a weapon to pierce through
falsehood). But at the same time, her activity is purely destructive, causing the dissolution of the World Within,
leaving nothing but the profane world where she flees to; consequently, the control of nature can only lead to its
destruction.

The shift that the postmodern criticism of Deleuze and Guattari attempted is one away from the division of
natural/artificial to the one of open/close; instead of normative, it is now topological. Where are the exits, the
passages, the stabilizing forces that delineate and judge what’s inside and what’s outside the territory? How can
a territory be left and what hinders the escape? Subversion, as the two writers found it in Kafka, lies in an
abandonment of the normative distinction — family is neither natural nor unnatural, it is a territory that includes
and excludes and that follows specific rules. The question now is: what aspect of this territory leads to
subjugation and how can the subject ‘raise its head’? The resistance against suppression is not normative; it is
reflexive and somatic; like a wolf forced into a corner. This is not to reintroduce the concept of the natural, and
much rather to reawaken the positive impulses that have been excluded and halted by the suppressive forces;
Nietzsche’s Dionysian, Kierkegaard’s choice, Deleuze’s désir. It is then not about refuting and refusing the
family, and much rather about bringing to light what prefers to remain hidden.

Here, Coraline fails, just as Gregor Samsa in Kafka’s Metamorphosis, for “Gregor refused to let go of the portrait
of the lady in fur. He sticks to the portrait, as if to a last territorialized image” (K, p. 15). Coraline gives up on the
family portrait, but not on the family; ultimately, she too is reterritorialized. When she escapes the prison of the
Other Mother, she jumps right into the arms of the family; and the movie ends, bourgeois enough, with a garten
party. Reconciliation, the hallmark of the happy ending, amounts to an appeasement of the liberating impulses
that initially fueled Coraline’s imagination — as occupied as it was by the regressive image of a lost childhood.
The appeasing wisdom of ‘no place like home’ can be rekindled by a shift of emphasis, a slightly different
intonation that reveals its nomadic potential; the negation of the very existence of such a place ‘like home’. This
is the first step of affirming Openness.