What do you tell kids when they wake up in the middle of the night with a nightmare? Especially if they prayed not to have one and did anyway?
My new review of Coraline, opening today in theaters, opens (rather unconventionally) with one way I’ve tried to deal with that question.
The question “What is the point of nightmares?” seems to me related to the question “What is the point of scary stories?” Why are many fairy tales scary, and why do we tell them to our children? Why do many people like scary movies?
Jimmy has touched on this question before, in posts on imagination and imaginative play. (Any other posts I should link to here? Let me know.)
My Decent Films essay on horror, the grostesque and the macabre goes more into it, as does my review of The Wizard of Oz. (I’ve previously linked to some other relevant pieces here, notably an essay on Terence Fisher).
A number of creepy films I admire are animated: The Nightmare Before Christmas, Corpse Bride and Monster House. (Much as I love Pixar’s Monsters, Inc., I wish they had taken the figure of the monster in imagination more seriously and tried to suss out what monster psychology would really be like, the way they did so brilliantly with Toys in Toy Story and Toy Story 2.)
Today, add Coraline to that list.
My daughter will be so happy to hear that you recommend this film. She is a big Tim Burton fan.
We will go see it together soon on a Father/Daughter outing.
That’s not quite a non sequitur, but just to be clear, Burton had zero to do with this film. (Lots of people don’t know that Selick, not Burton, directed The Nightmare Before Christmas. Burton produced Nightmare, and wrote the picture book the film is based on.)
Burton did direct Corpse Bride, which I also admire.
Incidentally, Tim J, how old is your daughter? I would consider bringing my 10-year-old son to Coraline, but there’s not a chance in hell I would bring my 8-year-old.
Melting Nazi faces and decapitated orc heads are no problem for the 8-year-old, but anything involving parents going missing, getting replaced or turning into something else totally freaks him out. (He doesn’t even like Jimmy Neutron, and completely cannot handle Spirited Away.)
She’s almost fourteen, SDG, and as tall as her mom.
Young inside, though.
Also, I guessed Burton wasn’t involed in the film (just because he is never mentioned in any of the publicity I’ve seen for it) but Coraline seems very Burton-esque, and looks like something my daughter would enjoy.
“But now that the dream is over, you don’t have to worry about having it again. You won’t, I promise. You’ll see in the morning.”
That’s a promise you can’t keep
Some thoughts.
I thought about asking a rather stupid question:
Since your family members are movie-oriented, have you ever tried to argue that a dream may be regarded as a customized, original movie they have the chance to watch all by themselves? From that point of view, a scary dream may be an equivalent of one of these A-grade Tim Burton-produced flicks, or just a 50’s trashy horror/sci-fi of which they can laugh a lot afterwards.
I had this thought because, given that I’m way past the age of being in any way emotionally affected by my dreams, I seem to only judge them now in cinematic terms (script, editing, cinematography, etc.):)
It’s interesting that Coraline’s real parents get a bad rap in the movie. In the book, I felt that they did seem like good parents on the whole, although they did receive some criticism.
When my 4-year-old daughter started having nightmares on a fairly regular basis, we taught her how to pray the Guardian Angel prayer before bed. Now she almost never has a nightmare anymore. If she does, and comes into the room where my husband and I are sleeping, I give her a hug, pray the prayer with her again, and she goes right back to sleep, reassured that her angel is watching over her.
She also really likes the prayer card of Saint Michael with his sword, stepping on the devil. She pictures her Guardian Angel doing that to her nightmares.
Coraline sounds like Mirrormask, in which a teenager angry with her parents goes into a surreal world, only to find herself trapped there by a Queen Mother, while her double takes her place. Is Coraline a tween version of it?
“Coraline sounds like Mirrormask”
Ha! I believe that Neil Gaiman wrote both of these.
I have to admit, I’m more a fan of Gaiman’s comic book work than his novels or screenplays.
I just read Coraline over the weekend, and I found it to be delightful. I was sorry to read that Coraline’s parents weren’t portrayed as sympatheticaly in the movie as they were in the book, not that I think they were great. I’m looking forward to seeing the movie and I also liked Mirror Mask. incidently, I thought the movie based on the novel Star-Dust was tons better than the book, which doesn’t happen that often for me. The ending of the book was a real let-down compaired to the movie in my opinion.
I wasn’t so thrilled with Coraline. Actually I found the message quite the opposite of THe Chronicles of Narnia. Instead of children going into a strange new world, where they meet a noble lion who is its creator who shows them the noble life he has called them into existence for, a child goes into a world created by a witch for the purpose of luring children in and devouring their souls. The moral I got from the story is that we should be content to live in our natural world and that any aspiration we have for having an “other parent” (God the Father) is based on a dangerous illusion that will suck the life out of our souls. I find both the book and the movie Coraline to be mirror images of Narnia except being ruled by a noble lion, it the fantasy world created and ruled by a maniacal fraud.
I would not recommend this movie to anyone. The movie is full of dark and creepy imagery some of which is downright disgusting (ie. the fat old woman dressed like a stripper). I know I am in the minority, but I cannot see anything redeeming in this movie.
In Christ,
Ken