"When you're a teenager it's true: Life is hard. You're beginning to see how profoundly you can be disappointed or disappoint others yourself; you can be taken aback by cruelty, both that of others and, shockingly, that of yourself; you feel the pressure of the future as you're pressed about colleges, about majors, about extracurriculars; you begin to keep secrets about your thoughts, about what you do; and sex! my god, sex is so confusing."
Shining Light on the Demons of Adolescence by
jdeguzmanThought a lot about
Coraline this weekend, as per usual. In the book and movie, she's twelve, maybe eleven - But not a teenager, and certainly not 16 or 17, when concerns about college and sex grow prominent.
I like thinking and writing about Coraline as a kid or as an early teenager, but shit gets real when she's a bit older.
Ok, tangent: I was talking to The Boy the other day about how I don't like the "oops I fell onto you" trope that pops up in (or "oops I fell into" hur hur hur) fiction. Crappy romance novels love this: the heroine accidentally trips and lands on the hero, tee hee hee, and they realize how physically attractive the other is. I don't like how it strips the characters of choice. Characters, especially adult characters, shouldn't have interaction forced upon them because they're too immature to initiate something themselves.
I think Coraline has a clear image of what she wants. She thinks she's independent because she's often alone - her parents are too busy to attend to her. It's only at the end that she realizes how she can be truly independent. Coraline's an instigator, too.
Tangent again: In my mind, Wybie's mother was a single parent. I like the idea that Wybie's always been around independent women, that all his role models are strong and female. He's more than content to follow Coraline - He learns to trust her (even though she's
batshit insane as far as he's concerned) and willingly puts himself in danger because he so strongly believes in her (and his Other version even SPOILER!
diesfor her).
What I like about her (and Yuffie, too, actually; in my mind they share a lot of characteristics) is that Coraline is bold and confident in her actions and decisions. There's a scene in the movie where she runs up a flight of stairs with (Other) Wybie behind her.
He holds onto the railings; she doesn't. Coraline's movements are certain, unlike Wybie's, which needs support. (Coraline could totally be a meme like Chuck Norris. Coraline doesn't run up stairs, stairs run from her! ...Let's pretend that made sense.) That's a very telling scene.
Where was I going with this...
The quote is taken from a post about YA literature and teenagers' experiences in general. And hell yeah do I agree. Those years were hard and confusing and painful - I still am baffled by a lot of what happened, by a lot of what I did. I read YA novels as a kid and teenage, though I don't think I actively searched for them or even realized that I was reading in the YA genre. When I got older and started to differentiate between YA and adult novels, I moved away from the former. But now I think I'm becoming enamored with them.
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tithenai wrote an interesting entry about silencing female characters: The Graveyard Women: Lest We Forget.
