Alice in Wonderland

[osprey_archer]

Alice 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!”

Comments

[kore]

I remember when we read that at college and one person commented, "If this wasn't so zany, it would be Kafka."

[osprey_archer]

KAFKA BUT WITH NONSENSE POETRY.

[kore]

AND ACTUAL TALKING INSECTS

[osprey_archer]

Gregor Samsa would have been way better off in Wonderland.

[kore]

"You're nothing but a bundle of blank forms!"

[osprey_archer]

Thinking about it more: I think that Alice is slightly more in control of her fate in the book than in the movie, which may be part of why I liked the book and not the movie. Oh, sure, there's that scene where she cries a literal lake, but most of the time she just rolls with the punches.

[kore]

Yeah, as opposed to her bizarre surroundings, Alice is very sober, thoughtful, logical even, and constantly resourceful ("all must have prizes"). Poor K never has a chance, he doesn't even have a box of comfits. (Which greatly confused me as a while, since I read it as "comforts.")

[sholio]

My mom used to read me chapter books as bedtime stories when I was a very small child. Apparently I was fine with things like Lord of the Rings and Wizard of Oz, but she had to stop reading Alice in Wonderland because it was giving 3-year-old me nightmares. (I do not remember this at all.)

[osprey_archer]

I can totally see that. It's just the kind of book that would slip easily into nightmares, especially for a small child.

[evelyn_b]

I think the movie and the book do have a bit of a different vibe, just because accepting things in a written narrative is different from having an audiovisual experience. It's been a long, long time since I saw the movie, but I definitely remember thinking the book was much funnier. And Alice is as sensible a Virgil for this logic inferno as anyone could ask for.

[osprey_archer]

Oooh! I love the idea of Alice as Virgil. And it totally makes sense: she really is leading us through the underworld.