Haven’t we seen this before: a young boy, isolated, frightened, able to see dead people? Didn’t he come with a shrink as the vehicle for a shocking reveal? This assumption and the corresponding visceral reaction to The Sixth Sense probably kept me from seeing Paranorman sooner, which is unfortunate.
Paranorman is a fine film with meticulous animation, a sharp script, and some deep themes that run throughout. Like a number of films geared primarily toward children, the obvious moral lesson is to be kind to everyone, even those who are different. In a contemporary context, there is a fine lessons on the repercussions of bullying. In addition, this new film by writer Chris Butler (Corpse Bride, Coraline) takes aim at adults and society at large, positing that we continue to bully as we age; we just mask it under the heading of “experience wins” and “age is wiser than youth.”
While these might be appropriate foils with which to parry at times, they become dangerous when the past is the object of bullying. In a sense, we practice this when we invoke our respective revisionist histories, or when we laud the achievements of victory, eliding the victims that fell by the wayside. Paranorman explores this in Blithe Hollow, a Massachusetts town resembling Salem, whose name bespeaks the elision of the past. What’s more, the history of witch condemning and burning has been turned into something of a tourist draw. Whereas Puritans were searching for a place to live without sin – according to the annual school play used “to sell postcards and keychains” – the current inhabitants use their spooky history to generate commerce: restaurants like Witchy Weiner and Witch’s Kitchen line the main street, encouraging denizens and tourists to dine with green-skinned, wart-nosed women whose religious practices were antithetical to Protestant doctrine.
And with this, Paranorman takes aim at our desensitization to mucky histories by transforming women accused of witchcraft into horribly ugly and unwanted creatures. History has taught us – if we can think back to middle-school rhetoric – that the Salem Witch Trials were bunk and misguided. Perhaps they were influenced by argot; perhaps they were just zealots; perhaps they were sexually oppressed. Regardless, the legislative logic they used (if she floats, she’s a witch, if she drowns, she’s human; if she survives the fire, she’s a witch, if she burns to death, our bad), was horribly flawed and resulted in the deaths of 37 witches in 1692.
The fantastic mythology that surrounds witches, their familiars, and their appearance is a way to alleviate ourselves of the past. The preternatural beings are both fantasy and a transformation of reality that allows us to separate our precarious existence from the all-too-near past.
This transformation is also akin to the way that we have begun to view death. An example of this might be found in horror movies. As Paranorman begins, our protagonist watches a horribly low-budget horror film. The actress looks at the camera; the boom microphone appears in the frame; she pushes it away; the effects are minimal at best. But the acted fear represents the disingenuousness that we feel toward death and the afterlife. This, in turn, creates a sort of binary world where we are either alive or dead. The cause of each is written off cursorily. Norman’s father illustrates this when he minimizes his mother’s life and death: “Your grandmother was sick and she died.” It’s simple; it’s clean; it keeps him ignorant of the fact that her spirit occupies the couch in the living room. Norman is aware of this and converses with her regularly – since he is mostly shunned by the living.
This cynical narrative also creates a circuit of ignorance. Norman’s father’s focus – much like everyone else’s focus – is on the present, whereas the past emerges, converges, and influences all that is around them. This is why the witch’s curse is perpetuated. Instead of remedying the problem, they placate and acquiesce. They read the young victim a bedtime story and hope she sleeps another 365 days.
Quick recap: Norman is recruited by his crazy-appearing, dying, homeless uncle to carry on his tradition of preventing the witch – a little girl accused of witchcraft, taken from her mother, and hung from a tree a few hundred years prior — from coming back to Blithe Hollow and destroying the town.
The horrendous action taken against a child is one thing, but it’s a thing that screams xenophobia and fear of the different. This is not a new trope to tackle, but the way in which Paranoman addresses the issue is laudable inasmuch as it is geared toward children, young adults, and the parents who accompany them. There’s something unfortunate about the need to address our need to “qualify bullying,” making it acceptable under vacillating guidelines. But, Paranorman is well-constructed enjoyable experience to investigate the phenomenon.
