There are a number of key messages to take away from Coraline. At the top of the list is the old platitude, “The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence.” (Until it isn’t.) Or, as Ovid once put it, “The harvest is always richer in another man’s field.” However one chooses to phrase it, the point is that everything else seems better than what you actually have. Whatever you don’t have is the thing (or, more often than not, things) you can’t stop wishing you did have. In Coraline Jones’ case, that thing is parents that actually give a shit. And while it’s hard enough to be born to parents who can love you in the way you want (and need) to be, perhaps the worst curse of all for a child is to be born to writers. Not just any creative people, but writers in particular. Arguably the most mentally checked-out and self-involved breed of artist, to be born to a writer is to spend most of one’s life trying to pry their attention away from the page (and trying to avoid appearing on it in the story). From the interior world they’re usually so much more interested in than their own child. Coraline’s parents might not exactly be Simone de Beavoir and Jean-Paul Sartre, but they’re still writers of a sort (more implied in the book than directly stated). Or, as Neil Gaiman puts it, “Both of her parents worked, doing things on computers, which meant that they were home a lot of the time. Each of them had their own study.” But what use to a child is a parent being home all the time if not to actually spend that time with them? 

In the film version of Coraline, writer-director Henry Selick (more recently recognized for directing The Nightmare Before Christmas instead of all credit being given to Tim Burton) further accents the writerly qualities of Coraline’s parents that were perhaps more tacit in Gaiman’s book. Granted, coming up with the copy for a gardening catalogue isn’t exactly “high art.” Nonetheless, it doesn’t change the idea that having parents who write for a living, whether for humdrum or creative purposes, is not ideal for a child seeking attention and care. 

After all, to be a writer is to essentially have your head in the clouds—no matter what you’re writing about: horticulture, mulch, etc. Unfortunately, Coraline’s parents in both the film and book versions of the story seem to lack the writerly quality of being, let’s say, more lax about cleanliness. Which is why it’s so vexing to any reader with a creative nature that Coraline should be told by her mother, “I don’t really mind what you do as long as you don’t make a mess.” But the only reason Coraline is “threatening” to make a so-called mess is because she’s cooped up inside on account of the rain, accustomed to being able to explore the grounds of her new environment. One that does not include, as is the case in the movie, the presence of a neighbor boy named Wyborn a.k.a. Wybie (Robert Bailey Jr.). Insead, the Coraline of the book appears to have the writer’s tendency to relish her solitude. But perhaps one of the key reasons for Selick’s addition of Wybie wasn’t just so that Coraline could have someone else to talk to besides herself (not to mention Hollywood’s inherent love of adding a male presence to anything), but so that there could be the contrivance of having someone give her what amounts to a voodoo doll of her own likeness. In the book, there is no such doll. Though Coraline has plenty of other dolls in her room. Just like how she, apparently, is daughter to her “other mother,” the aforementioned Beldam (it’s only later that she gets slapped with that damning nickname). And her “other father.” Both of whom she encounters via a small door in the wall of the drawing room, where her mother and father are so afraid she’s going to “make a mess.” In truth, these are the only instances when they seem to take a genuine interest in what she’s doing, as it might result in them needing to clean something up in lieu of writing for a change (and it’s true, most writers abhor the mundanity of cleaning). 

Constantly trying to get just one of her parents to take a little more notice of her, Coraline is usually met with their backs instead. Case in point, Gaiman setting the stage for Coraline to ask her mother something with, “Her mother was working in her study. Her mother’s study smelt of flowers” (that must be where Selick got his idea to make them gardening catalogue writers). Coraline tries to get some advice in that study about what she should do if she’s bored. Rather than giving her a viable suggestion, her mother queries, as though counting down the minutes, “When do you go back to school?” Coraline informs her of something her own mother ought to know already by replying, “Next week.” In a totally non sequitur response, her mother then says, “Hmph…I suppose I shall have to get you new school clothes. Remind me, dear, or else I’ll forget.” Such a thoughtful, involved mother, n’est-ce pas? And before Coraline can even confirm she will remind her mother to be, well, a mother, the narrator describes how “she went back to typing things on the computer screen.” So fucking concerned with whatever precious prose she’s “banging out.” 

Of course, parent apologists are liable to insist that oblivious parents such as Coraline’s are just doing their best to stay afloat, to put food on the table—and that that is the highest form of care. In reality, it is the most minimal form of care. Something bell hooks speaks to in her landmark treatise, if you will, All About Love: New Visions. In it, one of the many things she says about parental love is that it cannot really be love if abuse or neglect is involved. And, in some people’s minds, neglect is abuse. 

Thus, whether her writer parents mean to or not, they are neglecting—therefore, not really loving—their daughter. This, indeed, is the loveless fate that so many children must suffer in the name of capitalism’s side effects. With the constant focus of the adults being to make more money so they can not only support their “burden” of a child(ren), but also pay for any additional frills said child(ren) might want. The stress of always needing to come up with more, more, more on the financial front hardly lends itself to being a “positive vibes” environment for a child. And it’s a stress that gets compounded tenfold when one is a writer, that “profession” so rarely being commodifiable, least of all in the present epoch. It certainly ups the ante on a writer-parent being able to justify the ways in which they tend to ignore their children. To “gently” cast them aside the way Coraline’s parents do when she asks them harmless, innocent questions about what she should do to occupy her time as an only child in a remote town (in the movie, that’s Ashland, Oregon; in the book, it’s Somewhere in England), in a house far off the beaten path. While some might write off (no pun intended) being ignored as par for the course of childhood, one should never underestimate how much it can impact a son or daughter, regardless of their age, to be consistently glossed over by their parents. Take, for example, Allison Reynolds (Ally Sheedy) in The Breakfast Club. As the hours pass in detention, and the five divergent personalities start to open up to one another, she’s emboldened enough to tell Brian (Anthony Michael Hall) and Andrew (Emilio Estevez), “My home life is unsatisfying.” Andrew eventually offers, “Well everyone’s home life is unsatisfying. If it wasn’t, people would live with their parents forever.” In the end, though, what’s unsatisfying about it is to not find the acknowledgement or validation one so desperately seeks as a child. The same way Coraline can’t seem to find it in her parents, try as she might. Her desperation to receive what she’s looking for from them is thus preyed upon by her “other mother.” The one that exists through the strange portal that connects her real house to a “Bizarro World” version of it. 

Some might even argue that Coraline’s intense desire for a set of different parents—ones who can actually be bothered to take a vested interest in her—is what essentially wills this alternate realm into existence. Though there are many theories on how or why the Beldam exists, another one that can be added to the pile is the fact that Coraline has “manifested” the perfect illusion before it crumbles under the pressure of reality. Although Coraline was initially drawn into the Beldam’s lair because it felt like the safe space (something bell hooks deems essential to raising a child in a truly loving home) she didn’t have among her real parents, it becomes gradually obvious that the grass isn’t actually always greener. Sometimes it’s even more fetid and brown than the blades you’ve got on your own side of the fence. 

After Allison retreats from Brian and Andrew in that abovementioned scene in The Breakfast Club, Andrew goes after her to demand, “So what’s wrong? What is it?” When she says nothing, he adds, “Is it bad? Real bad? Your parents?” After staring at Andrew for a beat, she at last answers softly, “Yeah.” He nods in solemn understanding. “What did they do to you?” She laments, “They ignore me.” Something that still stings even when a child grows up and experiences the same treatment, no matter what they do or how “high” they achieve. It’s fitting, in this regard, that Allison should also be the one to say, “When you grow up, your heart dies” in reply to Andrew wondering aloud, “My god, are we gonna be like our parents?” Claire insists, “Not me. Ever.” But Allison is the one to dole out the reality check, “It’s unavoidable. It just happens.” Thanks to the whole “heart dying” thing once it’s ground into oblivion as a sacrifice to adhering to the tenets of capitalism. Something even (and perhaps especially) writers succumb to. When Allison explains in three words why her parents are so cruel—“They ignore me”—some viewers might be quick to balk at her “hyper-sensitivity.” But, indeed, it’s true that being ignored is one of the worst fates someone’s progeny can endure. 

And Coraline gets slapped repeatedly with that fate. For instance, in yet another crushing scene from the book, Gaiman reveals, “Coraline went to see her father. He had his back to the door as he typed. ‘Go away,’ he said cheerfully as she walked in. ‘I’m bored,’ she said. ‘Learn how to tap-dance,’ he suggested, without turning round. Coraline shook her head. ‘Why don’t you play with me?’ ‘Busy,’ he said. ‘Working,’ he added. He still hadn’t turned around to look at her.”

In the movie, her mother “cleanses” herself of Coraline’s presence by telling her irritatedly, “Coraline, I don’t have time for you right now.” Right after, her father in the movie turns around from his computer to briefly announce, “Just let me work.” The writer’s perennial demand of anyone who interrupts them, even their child. 

Among other significant takeaways about the child-parent dynamic, there is a message in Coraline that would have us believe no parents can be expected to deliver on their children’s false expectation of perfection. At the same time, it’s pretty obvious that writer parents have a much harder time achieving anything close to it.