Pushing Away

I went to the opening night showing of ParaNorman and was touched by the human theme. --As some of you may know, a lot of the same people who worked on the movie Coraline worked on ParaNorman. Coraline, too, has a very human theme and I expect this pattern to continue on any future movies these individuals work on.
Once you look passed the creepy, freaky, trippy scenes in Coraline you realize that at its core, the film is about a girl who ought to be happy with her needs being met rather than wanting more and better things.
ParaNorman, much less creepy, freaky, and trippy, is about how a society can harm the life of individuals who they don't understand.

[SPOILER ALERT]
In ParaNorman we realize that the witch who is haunting the town is just a little girl who was a little different and who was punished for being different. Although this is VERY true so far, the one scene that strikes me the most is the climax, where Norman states the blatantly obvious (obvious if you understand human nature, that is--which 99% of the film's child audience probably doesn't): The only reason why the witch is haunting the town is because they caused her so much pain. ParaNorman sends a very human message: even though it is human nature to seek revenge and to hurt the bullies who bullied you, it's better to let it go and move on with life (or death) in peace.

*People tend to push away those things that they are afraid of. They tend to be hurt a little too easily when they don't get everything they want and don't understand why. They become more afraid of the unknown because of the bad experiences they have had with the known and the cycle continues. [return to *]

Eventually they push so far to the opposite corner of their little boxes that they fall out of their boxes and land in unknown territory anyway.
Because people reflect so much on the bad, they easily forget about the good or fail to notice it entirely; so their decisions are rarely based on keeping the good things alive but on killing the bad--a bad that they don't understand and aren't sure on whether its good or bad anyway.

We've advanced far enough as a society that we don't need to hold grudges, we don't need to eradicate anything--good or bad--because there is always a way to live with it in harmony. We don't need to fear anything because we are fully capable of surviving through anything. If history and human nature says anything, its that we are all individuals looking for a safe harbor and the only way we can find that harbor is if we build it ourselves.