MINM: Alice In Wonderland 3D
Sadly, I do not think Disney and Tim Burton are two entertainment institutions meant to coexist. I didn’t actually realise that this new venture of Burton’s was a Disney flick.
As an Alice lover, the film disappointed on a few fronts. Yes, it was utterly gorgeous, surreal and visually sumptuous, but I went in thinking it would be a fairly straight-but-awesome adaptation of Carroll’s book Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Not so. The ideas are, however, unmistakably original – a girl named Alice Kingsley is plunged back into a world that she thinks is part of her dreams after trying to escape societal pressures placed upon her.
When she falls down the rabbit-hole, she seems to spend a lot of her time proving that she is indeed an Alice, not necessarily the Alice, in a very confused mish-mash of Carroll’s oeuvre – both the Alice books, and the delicious poem ‘Jabberwocky’. I’m trying to determine whether or not Burton has any references to ‘The Hunting of the Snark’ but I think I’d need to rewatch the film.
It’s definitely worth a watch if you enjoy the Alice mythos as of course there are some brilliant bits. Johnny Depp as the Mad Hatter is spot-on, though I really adored Alice. Helena Bonham-Carter’s Red Queen seems to have shades of Miranda Richardson’s Queenie (from Blackadder II).
I like that it raises a few interesting issues or concepts for consideration, though perhaps to a very specific (read: wanky) audience. For instance, what is in a name? By extension, what is in the name of an author? Alice constantly has to prove herself, and acknowledges that she is not the Alice this Wonderland wants, or needs. A scroll telling of the ‘Frabjous Day’ has already ‘written’ Wonderland’s history and fate. As a former lit student, I was naturally reminded of Roland Barthes’ ‘Death of the Author’ and Michel Foucault’s ‘What is an author’ essays – both of which are shoved down every first-year lit student’s throat.
We also get a dose of watered-down Freudian psychoanalysis with the Red Queen’s obsession with decapitation (which one supposes translates to Freudian castration). Yawn, yes, I know, this has been pointed out ad nauseum in relation to Carroll’s text. It is extended to include the rather surreal and grotesque practice of pricking in this particular film, and the taking out of various characters’ eyes – this to me reeks of Burton proper, none of this candy Disney stuff. Poking out eyes is disturbing, and its use in the film is deliberate.
The Red Queen makes an interesting point to her knave (who accuses the object of his desire, ‘Um’ of making an unwanted sexual advance towards him), about how one must decapitate or kill those whom she fears, so that she cannot be let down by them. Both of these characters have very unusual and unconventional modes of acknowledging their sexualities. A straight Freudian reading would intimate that they fetishise, and therefore are deviant in their sexuality.
A very sad way to live one’s life, killing those we fear, but not dissimilar to America’s modus operandi in regards to world politics. Yes, yes, us arts grads are an annoying lot when it comes to reading metaphor in any text.
Edit: @coliwilso has kindly pointed out to me that the poem ‘Jabberwocky’ is in fact in Through the Looking Glass, or, What Alice Found There. Cheers, old man!
