Yearnings and Fantasy in Coraline

I read a review of that new kids' movie Coraline and don't think we'll be taking Charlie to see it. I'm not sure what he would think of the 3-D and other visual effects. The movies that he's most enjoyed have included lots of music, though we did have a good time at Kung Fu Panda with its unlikely, and roly-poly, hero, Po the Panda. And frankly, the story and cast of characters in Coraline---in particular, those in the parallel world Coraline enters through a door in the drawing room of her home, and especially the Other Mother, all of whom have buttons for eyes---seem downright creepy.

Ok, I'm not one for scary movies (even "for" children). And it's just a movie, and an animated one at that, based on a best-selling children's novel by Neil Gaiman. In Coraline, Other Mother seems (except for the sewn-on eyes) so perfect----she "cooks delicious meals, showers the little girl with praise, and asks Coraline to stay with her forever"----she's the embodiment of everything that Coraline's own mother lacks. At first Coraline is enchanted by this Other Mother and the house with interesting things to do (a theater in the house, a box of magical toys) and delicious food to eat (rather than leek and potato soup), and then she misses her own parents, however boring and harried and mundane they seem. But when she goes home they're missing and, after she ventures back through the drawing room door to find them, Coraline finds out that that the other world and all of its marvelous delights are but the transitory creations of the Other Mother, and that nothing, nothing, is as it seems.

I found the book online and found how everything in that parallel world---Coraline's Other Father, the theater where Scottie dogs sit in the audience, the rat circus, even the house itself---are indeed made by the Other Mother. There's a reason the New York Times review of the movie says that everyone in the other world has "buttons for eyes, like homemade dolls": The "wild wonderland" and "dream vaudeville" of the other world are only as "real" and "alive" as dolls.

Coraline is a book about wishes and the yearning---our yearning---for a better reality, or for what we imagine what would be better. You can dress up a doll to be whatever you please but it's still doll, a toy, not real.

I don't know if Charlie--who's just the same age as the curious Coraline in the book---ever wishes that he had someone else as parents. (I would think he'd have reason to be annoyed at me, that-person-who's-always-directing-him-to-do-this-or-that.) Certainly I've come to have no wish for anyone than him as my child.

Parenting Charlie has not been easy but I think it's been best, and certainly most fun, when we've learned to accept our child for who he is, and not nurse yearnings for some "other child" and seek remedies and treatments to change him into another---a "normal"---child. Accepting him isn't (as people sometimes construe the word to be) "doing nothing." It's knowing that the child you have is the child you have and that parenting him is all about nurturing him as he is, for who he is, and not trying to change him into some fantasized other. If there's another Charlie out there, he's not my Charlie.

Coraline learns that the parents and the life she's got may not be all that exciting and marvelous---may not always give her what she wants--but they're her parents, who love her as she is.  After her adventure in the other world, she sees her world with a renewed awareness of its color and wonder and, yes, magic and delight.