Escaping Wonderland: Coraline and the Problem of Children's Fantasy

By Josh Hornbeck

It’s a cold and dreary world. At least, that’s what Coraline’s opening scenes would have us believe. Colors are muted and grey. Thick fog blankets a lifeless and barren landscape. The ground is full of mud and weeds, covered in a slick sheen of rain and puddles. Even the air seems cold and uninviting, forcing Coraline to bundle up in sweaters, mittens, and jackets whenever she ventures out-of-doors.

Let us not forget that life is boring and, at times, unbearable for our young heroine. Her parents are too busy writing copy for a gardening catalog (can you think of a more tedious occupation?) to play with her or to even cook a digestible meal. Though they write about plants and flowers, neither mother nor father has any love for flora, fauna, or the dirt and mud it takes to produce said vegetation. And Coraline, being something of a tomboy, tracks in enough of both to grow a small indoor forest – much to mother’s dismay. Having just moved to a new home, away from good friends, Coraline is beset on all sides by quirky neighbors, obnoxious boys, and soul-crushing school uniforms.

Life is dull and dreary... until Coraline discovers the hidden door.

Isn’t this monotonous drudgery the way we often begin our journey into the cinematic world of children’s fantasy (1)? Consider the stark, flat, black-and-white countryside of Kansas before Dorothy sets foot in the vibrant and color-filled Land of Oz. Or the mind-numbing boredom of Victorian England that lulls Alice to sleep before she tumbles headfirst into Wonderland. Life is dull. Life is hard. These are staple sentiments of children’s fantasy – whether it’s the persecution of Dorothy by a grouchy neighbor or the restlessness of Alice as she waits for her sister. It’s all to prepare us for the escape, for the fantasy, that waits just around the corner.

We all know that life is hard, that reality is difficult and painful. We’re reminded of it each and every day – in the haze of a grey Seattle afternoon, on the face of the computer programmer who has just lost the job he worked at faithfully for the last twenty years, and especially in the wall-to-wall news coverage of every tragedy, disaster, scandal, and injustice known to man. Even the minutest of inconveniences is magnified to epic proportions.

Is it any wonder that we seek out fantasy and escape anywhere we can find it? Whether it’s blowing off steam at the gym, pouring our energy into video games and distanced online interactions, or zoning out in front of television sets and luminous movie screens – there are as many ways to slip out of reality and into the fantasy as we can conceive. Perhaps that’s why, even as adults, we continue to find ourselves drawn to this world of children’s fantasy.

At first, the fantasy is everything we hoped it would be. It’s the Technicolor wonder of Oz. It’s the dizzying charms of Wonderland. It’s in the euphoric high of a grueling mountain hike, the anonymous thrill of a manufactured connection with strangers, the release after proving our skill and dexterity with a small plastic joystick. Why would we ever want to return to the real world?

For all of their many platitudes about the joys and comforts of home, in truth, most children’s fantasy leaves us pining for Wonderland. While the object of Dorothy’s quest may be to find a way back to Kansas, Oz is so much brighter and more vivid than anything we have experienced in the film’s presentation of the real world. Dorothy wakes from her dream to see friends and family gathered at her bedside, but we feel no relief that our heroine is home – all we feel is the loss of Oz and the stinging regret that fantasy must always come to a close.

Dangerously strange and surreal as Wonderland is, we’re never given enough of a glimpse into Alice’s life before the rabbit hole to care if she finds her way out or not – even if it’s her primary preoccupation throughout the film. Once she arrives back in England, the story’s over and we’re left with thoughts of Wonderland, not Alice’s life in the real world. The same scenario is played out over and over again in countless examples, from The Neverending Story to The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe(2).

This problem of Oz and Wonderland is also our dilemma. After all, don’t most of us live for our own personal fantasies, bracing ourselves for the long slog of a week just so we can make it to the weekend and those moments of escape and release? A preoccupation with hobby and vacation keeps us from fully engaging with the very real events of life which greet us during working hours. “It’s just a job,” escapes from our lips more times than we’d care to admit. “It’s just something I do to pay the bills,” becomes the motto and mantra that allows us to glide mindlessly through our days. In the world of fantasy and escape, no one really wants to go home, no matter how much they may give lip service to the contrary.

And it doesn’t seem to be all that different with Coraline. After all, our heroine is beset by inattentive parents, boredom, and a bleak and ugly landscape. When she discovers the doorway into a strange and fantastical world, she is thrilled beyond words. On the other side, she discovers a world that, while it bears a striking resemblance to our own, is void of the stark drudgery that has plagued Coraline since her story began. The dead garden teems with abundant life and dazzling color. Her other mother cooks a very real and very delectable meal. Her toys come to life and her other parents seem to exist solely for her. The fantasy is very good indeed.

Coraline doesn’t even entertain notions of returning home. When she falls asleep in her other bedroom and wakes in the real world, she can’t wait to escape from the mundane and travel once more into the fantasy. There are no half-hearted platitudes or sentimental whispers about there being “no place like home.” No. As far as Coraline is concerned, the fantasy – with her other house and her other mother – is the way it ought to be in the real world.

Of course, everything changes once Coraline begins to consider staying with her other mother – and in the fantasy – forever. Like all examples of the genre, Coraline has its villain. But unlike most other pieces of children’s fantasy – in which a good and beautiful kingdom is threatened by some malevolent outside force – it is the fantasy itself which is malevolent and evil. For the fantasy world of Coraline is a construct created by the other mother to lure Coraline into her grasp. The other mother lures dissatisfied children into her web, enticing them with dreams and fantasies of a life filled with delight and excitement. To remain in the fantasy, all the children have to do is sew buttons onto their eyes, blinding them, while the other mother consumes their very essence. Once Coraline begins to resist the other mother, the colors fade and drain into an empty grey and the details of this perfect fantasy crumble away into sackcloth and sawdust.

As much as we long for our fantasies, as much as we want nothing more than to leave the monotony of real life behind, we can’t escape reality. To keep striving after the fantasy means we blind ourselves to the things that are happening around us – the people in need, the work at hand, the joys of life that can break through even the most tiresome of days. And if we remain in the fantasy forever, it will consume us just as the other mother consumes the children she entices. We lose our desire to interact with the world. We shut down from our friends and family. We stop being present, in the moment, in our day-to-day lives. Eventually, even the fantasy we have taken to living for fades away until we’re left with nothing, chasing new fantasies and seeking greater escapes.

By film’s end, Coraline has made the choice to reject the other mother’s false promises and to step away from the fantasy. Instead, she chooses to remain in the real world and do what she can to make it a better place. She gathers family and friends out in the dead and barren garden, planting flowers, and bring color, brightness, and life into reality. That’s what happens when we stop living in the fantasy, when we stop living for our moment of escape. We can stop running away from reality and work to make the world we actually live in a better place for everyone.

1. For my purposes in this exploration of children’s fantasy, I will be referring to the 1939 film adaptation of The Wizard of Oz and Disney’s 1951 animated version of Alice in Wonderland.

2. Now, I have to be careful here and admit that sometimes fantasy isn’t about escape at all, it’s about reminding ourselves that there is something greater, something more than what we can see or touch. The best fantasy includes this element of reaching beyond ourselves. What I’m talking about here is the problem that occurs when we allow the fantasy to control our lives, not as a reminder of something greater, but as an end all to itself.

(Posted 03/29/2010)