If I had a world of my own, everything would be nonsense. Nothing would be what it is, because everything would be what it isn't. And contrary wise, what is, it wouldn't be. And what it wouldn't be, it would. You see? ---Alice, Alice in Wonderland
This is what I get for procrastinating....I had so much to say about this movie and now that I've left this window open for ages while I studied and ate, I've forgotten it all.
Maybe it'll come back to me tomorrow.
Go watch Coraline folks. You won't regret it.
*Edit*
Watching Coraline made me feel like a kid again. That probably sounds really cheesy (and God knows I wouldn't want to be a kid again) but it's true. Not in the idealistic sense you may be thinking of but more along the lines of what makes childhood frightening.
Possible Spoilers!
Coraline is the story of a little girl who moves into a new house with her overworked and often busy parents. The audience finds Coraline neglected and cast aside by her parent's obsession with their work: their joint composition of a gardening book. What then begins to unfold is a delightful acid trip of imagery through perceived parental abandonment and love.
I suppose every child at one point or another thinks that their folks aren't giving them enough attention and by extension, not loving them enough. Through the eyes of a child, the world is often simpler and thus demands a more balanced approach to the duties and delights life can offer. Coraline sees her parents actions as burdens; openly commenting on the drab sentiments that their work on their gardening book is giving them, "I can't believe it. You and Dad get paid to write about plants, and you hate dirt."
Why, wonders Coraline, put effort into something if you don't enjoy it? Surely, she wonders, they have more fun if they entertained her instead? Of course, like every parent who has long since forgotten their own youth, Coraline's parents can't begin to grasp the impressions their daughter has made of them. Even if they explained how incredibly important it was for them to get back to work and finish,their preoccupation with finishing their book was incongruous to the potential loving and attentive relationship they should be having with her; leaving her to marvel in the book version of the story why "[...] why so few of the adults she had met made any sense."
And that is where the heart of this story lies. It isn't enough of a tragedy that her parents are placing everything else in their lives ahead of the good spirits of their daughter. The real tragedy lies with her parents inability to see how disconnected they are from their daughter. In so much that Coraline is the story of a little girl looking for love, it goes on to reflect the fear and ever present danger of a parent casting aside a loving relationship with their children for the sake of meeting some occupational satisfaction. The tragedy of the Modern family.
Watching Coraline go to the lengths she did to get away from her parents and ultimately attempt to save them reminds me that we all have a bit of Coraline and her parents within us. For most of us that haven't had children yet, the experience of childhood neglect easily pertains to our most basic infantile fears. For those of you lucky enough to have children, her parent's preoccupations emulate what you often find yourself doing and abhorring: forgetting that your children exist. One must not forget that they are there for you to not only enlighten and play with but to allow the adult in you to step back and find delight in the joy and innocence of life through the eyes of a child.
If anything, the beauty of the parent-child relationship is that it intrinsically allows the agency for both individuals to share in a perception of life that is otherwise denied to them either through their lack of experience, as the child initially is, or through the passage of too much and experience, where the adult needs a reminder of the elated and care free consciousness that youth can bring.
Anywho, go watch that movie and read the book!
Labels: Dishes, Forgetfullness, Gaiman
posted by Luis @ 2:06 PM
