Coraline

[owlectomy]

Coraline was a really satisfactory movie, amazing visuals (though I didn't see it in 3D), but -- there is one thing in it that I just can't get over. Well, two things that make a really bad combination.

The first was the trope of the Evil Mother, the overbearing, smothering, devouring mother. You'll note that Coraline's fathers are almost completely ineffectual -- even in the real world, Coraline's mother is the "boss of the house." So all the evil of the other world is placed into the hands of Coraline's other mother. At the same time, the movie introduces Whybie -- who was NOT there in the book, thank you very much -- who goes on to save Coraline at the end. And while I don't agree that there's enough there to justify Nick Mamatas's psychosexual interpretation, I do think that it lurches dangerously in that direction. (Warning: don't read that if you want to like the movie, whether you've already seen it or not.)

I would like to think that the theme is really about ego: the other world is so appealing initially to Coraline because it's solipsistic. The world revolves around her, everything in it exists FOR HER. But that requires an erasure of everyone else's identity and everyone else's agency -- and finally, her own. But the really heavily gendered nature of the other world undercuts that (the other mother cooks and bakes for Coraline, and makes her clothes, and the other father gardens -- these things are gendered as feminine), as does Whybie's rescue of her towards the end. Does Coraline need to realize that the world doesn't revolve around her because she's a human being, because we're all in this thing together? Or does she need to realize that the world doesn't revolve around her because she's a girl?