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Alice in Wonderland
Dec. 29th, 2019 08:02 pmAlice in Wonderland terrified me when I was young. I think I watched it maybe once, and I still remember the weird little fuzzy creatures who arrange themselves into some sort of arrow to show Alice the way to go (not horrifying) and the Cheshire cat’s stay-behind smile (very horrifying).
Today I watched it again and it turns out that it is STILL HORRIFYING, possibly MORE HORRIFYING than when I watched it as a child. Everyone that Alice meets is mean to her! The birds, the Tweedle twins (there’s also just something generally terrifying about their animation), THE FLOWERS, even the flowers are mean! Why should flowers be mean? WHY CAN’T SHE GET A FUCKING CUP OF TEA FROM THE MAD HATTER AND THE MARCH HARE?
What’s weird about this is that I read the book when I was a teenager and I remember quite enjoying it, so I’m not sure why the movie alarms me so much, because this is not one of the Disney movies where the movie and the source material have a very different vibe.
Well, except for the part in the middle where Alice sits down and Gives Us a Moral about how she’s always giving herself good advice and never takes it and that’s why she’s in this mess, which I feel is against the spirit of Wonderland - not the specifics of the moral itself, but the existence of the moral in the first place. I guess the weirdness of Wonderland is less upsetting to me if it doesn’t feel like the story is saying “Look what Alice brought upon herself when she wished for a nonsense world!”
Today I watched it again and it turns out that it is STILL HORRIFYING, possibly MORE HORRIFYING than when I watched it as a child. Everyone that Alice meets is mean to her! The birds, the Tweedle twins (there’s also just something generally terrifying about their animation), THE FLOWERS, even the flowers are mean! Why should flowers be mean? WHY CAN’T SHE GET A FUCKING CUP OF TEA FROM THE MAD HATTER AND THE MARCH HARE?
What’s weird about this is that I read the book when I was a teenager and I remember quite enjoying it, so I’m not sure why the movie alarms me so much, because this is not one of the Disney movies where the movie and the source material have a very different vibe.
Well, except for the part in the middle where Alice sits down and Gives Us a Moral about how she’s always giving herself good advice and never takes it and that’s why she’s in this mess, which I feel is against the spirit of Wonderland - not the specifics of the moral itself, but the existence of the moral in the first place. I guess the weirdness of Wonderland is less upsetting to me if it doesn’t feel like the story is saying “Look what Alice brought upon herself when she wished for a nonsense world!”
