Why The Need for Wybie? A Critical Discussion of the Adaptation of Coraline

            In 2002, a slim book was published that pledged to tell the tale of the “marvelous adventure” of a girl who finds a twisted world behind a mysterious locked door in the drawing room, a fresh fairy tale set in contemporary times. As cliché and widely accessible as the portal fantasy narrative is in literature, Neil Gaiman’s Coraline proved itself an imaginative reinterpretation of a young individual’s coming-of-age story, where she must save herself and her parents from the clutches of evil. Then, in early 2009, a film was released that promised a spectacular display of 3D amazement and wild visualization through the technique of stop-motion. It too had the title of Coraline, and was directed by Harry Selick of The Nightmare Before Christmas fame. The film also featured a girl traveling to a sinister world to save her parents, but with one major alteration - the addition of a character named Whyborn “Wybie” Lovat, a talkative, slightly annoying (at least to Coraline) male character who provides much more than a mere companionship for Coraline. His addition to the story changes not only the ending, but the significance and meaning behind what is originally one young girl’s solitary quest for self-reliance and maturity.

            As the movie is an adaptation of the book, the audience must remember that to adapt is, by definition, “to adjust, to alter, to make suitable” (Hutcheon 7). Often when making the transition from print to screen, major changes are made to the story without much reasoning. Linda Hutcheon notes in A Theory of Adaptation that it is usually the case of taking things away, as when adapting a longer novel, “the adapter’s job is one of subtraction or contraction; this is called ‘a surgical art’ for a good reason” (19). Film is a visual medium and so much more can be shown than what can written about. But the case is opposite with Coraline. Gaiman says he was “aware [that] if you filmed the book faithfully, it’d be a 47-minute movie” (Selick and Gaiman, “Extras”), and so more background, dialogue and action needed to be included in the film to make it the longer 100-minute movie that audiences are used to seeing – and paying for. In the film, we see Coraline interacting with (or perhaps bothering) her parents more and her exploration of the new house occurs much slower than in the book, which helps demonstrate her loneliness at being away from her friends.  Therefore, it is no wonder that a new character was added who was not originally in the story, for this allows for a lengthening of the narrative, as well as filling in gaps and providing action.

            In the book, Coraline is a resourceful, independent, headstrong, stubborn, imaginative, and strong female role model. She enjoys exploring the limitations of her world, even against things that might frighten other little girls. After being told by her neighbors Miss Spink and Miss Forcible that she is in danger, she thinks to herself “In danger?... It sounded exciting. It didn’t sound like a bad thing. Not really” (Gaiman 21).  When her parents first disappear after being captured by the Other Mother, Coraline’s wicked witch figure, she calmly takes care of herself, brushing her teeth and taking a bath. She ends up crying in her parent’s empty bed – which, of course, what young child wouldn’t in a situation like that? – but as soon as she discovers that they are in danger, she sets about to save them. She even tells the cat, who guides her through her journey, that being brave is “when you’re scared but you still do it anyway” (Gaiman 59).

            She is radically different from other females in fairy tales and children’s stories, for she is not passive, obedient, co-dependent, or submissive in any sense or form. She openly defies and questions the adults around her, and remains throughout the story a tomboy of sorts, always looking for something to explore. The movie version even show her finding creepy-crawly bugs in a bathroom that she fearlessly smashes with her hand, very unlike what other little girls might do. Most significantly, she eventually escapes the Other world, saves the souls of the previous children the witch has trapped, rescues her parents, and puts an end to the Other Mother without any help. (It should be noted that the one exception to this is when the cat helps her collect one of the souls; however, his involvement in her quest is meant to show she has finally won his trust and respect.) Gaiman’s story ends with her affirmation that after what she has gone through, her upcoming first day of school was not leaving her “apprehensive and nervous… there was nothing left about school that could scare her anymore” (161).

            Truth be told, the movie version of the character Coraline is virtually the same; it is only through the inclusion of Wybie is her personality and circumstances altered slightly. A nervous, twitchy and awkward boy, Wybie is about as headstrong and eccentric as Coraline is, making him both a useful acquaintance and interesting opposition to her – she even refers to him initially as “too psycho to be friends with” (Coraline, “Deleted Scenes”). Adding Wybie allows Coraline to use him primarily as a sounding board to rely important discoveries and observations to the audience and to learn background, as Wybie’s grandmother has an awful and heartbreaking connection with the house. And just as there is an Other Mother and Other Father in the Other world, so there appears Other Wybie, who shows compassion and sorrow at Coraline’s doom if she decides to stay. The Other Wybie also helps her escape the Other Mother’s imprisonment. His rescue is sort of a deus ex machina, a significant break from the original story, where instead Coraline must wait by herself before confronting the Other Mother. And once more, at the end of the film, as Coraline is battling with the hand of the Other Mother, real Wybie appears on his bike to save the day, ultimately destroying the hand with a large rock.

            It stands to argue that perhaps the defeat of the Other Mother by the two children is intended to be a joint effort, a sort of combining of intelligence and strength in order to defeat the evil which threatens them both. However, it takes away from Coraline’s sense of achievement, for in the book, she carefully plans out how she traps the hand in a deep well all by herself. By doing this, she takes an active role in not only her own salvation, but also preventing other children from being threatened. One look at the princesses and beauties of fairy tales show that most of the time, the heroines are passive individuals with little to no input into their futures, and they certainly do not usually go around saving people. As Jack Zipes notes in Fairy Tales and the Art of Subversion, there is the perception that typical male heroes of fairy tales have “remarkable minds, courage, and deft manners… [whereas] the fairy tales dealing with women [have] the primary goal… [of] marriage” (42). The male figures are “active, pursue their goals by using their minds, and exhibit a high degree of civility” (42). Undoubtedly, these same characteristics can be applied to the character of Coraline, but she seems to be an exception to the general rule.

            On the other hand, Sheldon Cashdan notes in The Witch Must Die that the females in fairy tales have characteristically been the central focus, for “males figures are relatively minor figures… In many instances, the intervention of the prince is incidental to the heroine’s survival” (28). This observation of course refers to the original versions of the stories by Perrault and the Grimm brothers, not the Disney-ified, saccharine love stories of contemporary versions. Because reinterpretations and adaptations of fairy tales are products of the culture and time context in which they arise, Cashdan is not surprised that more recent tales show “heroines who [are] bold, resourceful, and sassy… more likely to rescue the prince than the other way around” (240) due to the feminist movements of the past century and the general trend in contemporary society towards female empowerment. The book version of Coraline obviously functions and gets along just fine, saving the day all by herself, without the inclusion of a male character. She shows herself to be as curious and intelligent as any other heroine of popular stories, and yet equally as heroic and resolute enough to get out of the trouble she gets herself into. Compare Caroline to other curious protagonists like Beauty, Little Red Riding Hood, Dorothy, and Alice, and it is clear that she is different because she does not wait for a man to save her. This is, of course, changed in the film by the character of Wybie.

            There is no dispute of Gaiman and Selick’s explanation of why a character needed to be added, because for an adaptation, it does make sense. Obviously, a film is going to be very different than a book. They are, after all, completely different formats, as “film adaptations obviously also added bodies, voices, sound, music, props, customs, architecture, [etc.]” (Hutcheon 37) to the ideas that stem solely from the written words on a page. There is the shifting from “imagination to actual ocular perception” (Hutcheon 40), which is precisely what occurs in the adaptation of Coraline.  The book is told from a third-person, limited point-of-view with Coraline as the focalizer. Due to this narration style, the reader not only sees and hears what Coraline does, but also read exactly what she is feeling or thinking. Because there is no narrator of the film Coraline and yet she remains the focalizer, something had to be altered in the adaptation process in order to have an organized flow of information to the story.

            Adding a character to aid Coraline is a logical choice, but perhaps a more unique and contemporary solution would have been the inclusion of another female character. Vera Sonja Maass raises this concern in The Cinderella Test, as “no other girls with similar or different qualities ever befriend [the isolated heroine] or help her. Healthy female relationships do not exist in fairy tales” (49). Indeed, the girl may be the focus on the fairy tale, but the minor female characters who appear are caricatured, archetypal constructs: the dead mother, the jealous stepmother, the greedy stepsisters, the evil witch. Even Coraline has its share of archetypes in her humdrum real mother (who for most the story is essentially “useless” to Coraline) and the scary, soul-sucking evil Other Mother. Much of the film is centered around Coraline’s relationship with her real mother, and if the character Wybie were a girl, then Coraline would gain two positive, beneficial female relationships at the close of the story.

            More significantly, the audience would be exposed to two tough, bright and dynamic female role models, girls who help each other solve puzzles and rectify their problems. This would be a “challenge [to] many of the underlying fairy-tale assumptions about male-female relationships” (Cashdan 240), and more importantly, to the stereotypes about female-female relationships. It is satisfying to believe that girl-Wybie and Coraline would make a great team together. Instead, the audience is left with a last incongruous scene in the movie in which Coraline punches Wybie one last time, thanking him for “stalking” her, to which he blushes and shyly smiles. In fact, this exchange seems to stir up only one essential query: Are they going to kiss now? Adding a character, one who ultimately helps the female protagonist in her quest, gives the movie version of  Coraline a sense that perhaps she could not achieve her successes without help. Furthermore, making the character a male allows the film fall back into outmoded, patriarchic literary assumptions that female characters need a male figure in order to solve their problems.

            Wybie or not, Coraline does remain true to herself. In both the book and the movie version, she is a positive role model for young girls, a literary figure that embodies all the strength and courage all young children should aspire to. It is encouraging to see authors and directors showcasing competent, self-motivated females who are interesting, complex and well-developed characters who do none of the waiting and all the doing. Interestingly enough is the fact that Gaiman himself is on record defending Wybie’s inclusion in the film because then “you don’t have a girl walking around occasionally talking to herself” (Selick and Gaiman, “Extras”). Coraline is already breaking the classical assumptions and stereotypes about female characters in fairy tales, so thus a bold question might be bounced back to Gaiman, as well as other writers of children’s literature: Just what is so wrong with a girl talking to herself?

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Works Cited

Cashdan, Sheldon. The Witch Must Die: The Hidden Meaning of Fairy Tales. New York: Basic Books, 1999. Print.

Coraline. Dir. Harry Selick. Perf. Dakota Fanning, Teri Hatcher, Jennifer Saunders, Dawn French, Ian McShane. 

Focus Features, 2009. Blu-Ray DVD, 2010.

--- Deleted Scenes. Blu-Ray DVD, 2010.

Gaiman, Neil. Coraline. New York: HarperEntertainment, 2002. Print.

Maass, Vera Sonja. The Cinderella Test: Would You Really Want the Shoe to Fit? Santa Barbara: Praeger, an impint of ABC-CLIO, LLC, 2009. Print.

Selick, Harry, and Neil Gaiman, Commentary. “Extras: The Making of Coraline: Evolution of the Story.” Coraline. Dir. Harry Selick. Focus Features, 2009. Blu-Ray DVD, 2010.

Zipes, Jack. Fairy Tales and the Art of Subversion: The Classical Genre for Children and the Process of Civilization. New York: Routledge, 2006. Print.