Friends and fiends, there’s been something
on my mind lately. (Breathe in) Buttons. You either love them (Aw! Cute as buttons!) or they trigger something
in your soul that makes you just a smidge... uncomfortable. Or you just use them to fasten clothes and
such and don’t have any weird emotions tied to them. Lucky you. BUT! After today’s video, you may have an altered
(haha, a little sewing joke) outlook on these little disks. WHY does this little fastener cause so much
of a stir? If you’ve seen or read “Coraline,” you
may have more than an inkling! But before we follow this thread too far… Today’s video is sponsored by Surfshark! Surfshark is a VPN that protects you on your
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video! There’s no doubt about it - the thought
of sewing buttons on top of your eyes is… really creepy and, if you’re squeamish,
nauseating. And there may be a really creepy reason (well,
a few reasons) that buttons seem so creepy! The movie and book “Coraline” bring these
plastic disks front and center. Our very first visuals into the Movie world
of Coraline are of the Other Mother sewing a doll together with… of course… button
eyes! Yikes! BUT it Kinda makes sense.. Movie other mother has button eyes on all
of her creations and constructs that inhabit the Other World. Rats, Mr. Bobo, even Ms. Spink and Foricble’s
dogs (?) have these creepy manufactured eyes. I think these buttons mark creatures as “hers”
- whether they be her creations or her victims. Maybe they are a metaphor, or maybe they literally
make her minions see only the things she wants them to see, (Literally blocking their vision
from reality!) or maybe she can see through their button eyes! Hive Mind Eyes Spies! (Whew!) While there is no creepy Coraline doll doppelganger
in the book, buttons are just as prevalent. On page 45 of 162, the Other Mother and Father
say that in order for Coraline to be with them “Forever and Always” she only has
to sew black buttons over her eyes! And it won’t hurt a bit! (which book Coraline
takes to mean that it will hurt quite a lot! And I’m with her there!) The movie goes extra hard and uses buttons
and sewing from the very start and throughout to drive home the idea that the other Mother
is like a spider literally threading a web through and around her world and the people
and creatures in it. And, while I could dive really deeply into
the metaphors about said creepy button eyes, I’m of course more interested in where this
potentially chilling association originated from. Because you know that has to be creepy! SO, WHERE DO BUTTON EYES COME FROM?! And, why are they so creepy? But here’s a button that’s not creepy! The SUBSCRIBE button! Some of you spooky souls watching these videos
are floating through, but why not stay and make this your haunted home? Subscribe (and bell click!) to this weird
channel today, and never miss a creepy cool thing. I promise we’ll have fun, forever and always.... Ok. Back to the creepy buttons! Let’s talk about dolls! Another thing that you either love or get
shivers from. Many with button eyes are creepy in their
own right - the way the light catches them juuuuust right to make them seem… alive! Did it move? Is it closer than it was a bit ago? There are so many old fairy tales and stories
that have dolls coming alive, either to help, or to hurt, and there are a lot of modern
stories that make these uncanny-lifelike-yet-not (maybe?) figures even more terrifying. (chuckie, etc) But getting back to buttons,
in the case of dolls and toys - buttons take something that was not alive and GIVE it a
bit of life. Buttons. Eyes. Windows to the Soul. Throughout time and stories and rhyme, the
eyes were thought to be the window to the soul. And, if a soul were to vacate a body (ie.
a person were to die), the eyes they leave behind… start to get weird. Lifeless eyes are unnerving in their own right. But. Warning here as I’m getting more realistic
and graphic, once a body dies, muscles stop working, and skin dries out and… you get
the picture. Coins, ceramic pieces, or anything else, really,
were used to ensure that the eyes remained shut after death. Hold the lids closed to hide the lifeless
eyes, and to keep the face looking peaceful. In recent times, eyelids were glued shut,
and today there is even a disk that sits under the eyelid, but atop the eye that “grabs”
the eyelid and holds it shut for viewings and such. (not a button, per say, but it sure functions
as one!) Ah, sweet repose! In other rituals and body preparation, the
eyelids are SEWN shut… which brings us erriely back to Coraline and the Other Mother and
sewing buttons on eyes! Yay?! Maybe the Other Mother is really marking Coraline
for death - I mean we knew she meant to drain the life out of her like she has done to the
other children, like a spider tying up her victims (FRODO SHLOB), but this really brings
it home. Did Coraline skirt death? Or did she die? Is she actually living in the afterlife? She DID partake of the Other Mother’s meals
afterall, in a Persephone-and-Hades type arrangement. The husks of the drained children she set
free may help answer that… p. 83: “Names, names, names,’ said another voice,
all faraway and lost. ‘The names are the first things to go, after
the breath has gone, and the beating of the heart.” (That sounds like “death” to me!) In order to set the children free, in the
book she was finding their “secret hearts,” their SOULS. In the movie, their EYES. Interesting word choices and concepts, right? In the book the worlds are parallel and opposite,
and Coraline’s potential straddling the line between life and death makes an already
eerie and chilling story that much more hair-raising! Another metaphorical take-away: (yeah, I know
I said I wouldn’t but here we are) In order to WILLINGLY stay in the Other World, Coraline
has to willingly sew her own eyes shut. Sew and shut out the truth of things and only
see what the Other Mother wants her to see. Through a button. In this case, she would be willingly giving
up her will and life essentially, and marking that with the ritual of sewing her eyes closed
- like a corpse in repose. Speaking of death, In mythology, souls were
transported from the world of the Living, across the river Styx, to the Underworld by
the ferryman Charon. The fee for bringing the body/soul to the
proper place was coins - which relatives or those morning a person were sure to place
in or on their dearly departed’s mouth, or around them somewhere. This is known as “Charon’s Obol,” and
is also considered “sustenance for the journey,” referring to the roads of the afterlife or
whatever the culture thought awaited them after death. Without those coins, the soul would be forced
to roam endlessly for ever after and eternity. And would probably haunt and torment those
left behind until they themselves died! (Yay! Fun!) Now, ritually, coins don't’ appear to placed
on eyes, aside from the whole weighing down the eyelids thing, but sometimes large Ghost
Coins were! Super cool name, and rather interesting concept. Basically, rather than depart with actual
money, the living would place an Impression of a coin or icon into a piece of metallic
foil, and would place that in the body’s mouth. Or larger ones over their eyes. This not-a-coin coin is dubbed “ghost coin”
because it’s there, but not really there! But now it’s time to button this up! (haha..
sorry) What are some of your thoughts? How do you feel about buttons NOW? And, if you were to stay in the Other World
forever and always, what button color would you choose? I’d probably go for purple. NOT that I’d go through with it, but purple
is a good color! Thank you, friends and fiends, for stitching
with me through this weird button hole dive thing. If you are new here, say hello! And subscribe and bell click if this creepy
weird stuff is your jam. Ok, I’ll see you soon in the next video. Good bye!
