Isabel and I just watched the Tim Burton/Disney Alice in Wonderland film, and I have mixed feelings about it.
Visually, it was delightful. The artists involved took great pains to transform Lewis Carroll's concepts and Tenniel's illustrations into a realistic three-dimensional world. Indeed, perhaps so much emphasis was placed on the three-dimensions that the film lost something when viewed without funny glasses.
My biggest concern is with, obviously, the story. My understanding of the original texts was always that Carroll was writing against the grain of Victorian children's literature. He published a work that replaced moral didacticism with non-linear, anti-Aristotelian, proto-absurdism. There is, of course, a logic at work in the original stories (Carroll was the pseudonym for a mathematician after all), but it wasn't the standard logic of English pedagogy.
This is where the recent film makes me nervous. Whether or not the producers intended it, the new film ultimately hinges on a capitalist ideology and a late twentieth-century concept of feminism.
First, the feminism. Film Alice is a bit of a tomboy, a dreamer, and an independent woman. This doesn't entirely strike me as the essence of Carroll's Alice, but so be it. It does seem a pretty standard depiction of every female protagonist in fantasy literature of the last thirty years, though. Things become particularly feminist at the end of the movie (spoilers ahead) which also leads us to the other underlying theme of capitalism.
In the movie's framing narrative, a teenage Alice must decide whether to accept a marriage proposal from the son of a business partner to her late father (did you get that?). The son is a total loser and jerk (he also suffers from bad digestion, but I'm not going to point that finger). As obviously bad as this marriage would be, Alice doesn't seem able to declare her wishes when he asks for her hand. Instead, she has to escape to Underland (which we learn Alice mistakenly called Wonderland) in order to clear her head (if she can keep it on) and make up her mind (if she doesn't lose it first). Ultimately, she rejects the proposal for marriage...but her headstrong, assertive attitude leads her would-be father-in-law to sign her on as his apprentice.
The film ends with Alice developing a scheme to expand British trade into the Far East, followed by a shot of her going alone on a business trip to China. Her departure creates a mirror scene with the movie's opening in which her father was trying to convince his business partners to expand their trade routes into Asia. One might expect a modern film to be suspicious of European capitalists and trade...but Alice's father comes off as adventurous, spirited, and highly imaginative. Most importantly, he is not dismissive or cruel regarding Alice's reported visions of Wonderland creatures. Rather, he tells her they destine her for greatness. Greatness is realized in the concluding scenes of mercantilism. A strong, vivid imagination and corporate management are not strange bedfellows in this film.
The visions, the imagination, the experience of Wonderland is transformative -- but not as some commentary on the human capacity for creativity. Instead, they are the forces that drive successful business ventures. And this is where I am ambivalent. While the movie ends on a happy note, I can't help but think Alice is, in a way, a sellout. Her imagination proves not merely creative but productive.
Why shouldn't it? Tim Burton has been highly successful marketing his imagination. Disney has created a whole industry selling imagination (they've even employed Imagineers). Certainly Charles Dodgson cashed in on his imaginary tales under his pen name of Lewis Carroll. There's nothing wrong with reaping financial security through imagination. I wish I was better at it myself. Perhaps the story give hope to future entrepreneurs and writers.
Imagination is a commodity to be bought and sold...like movie tickets and tie-ins.
Still...while imagination-as-commodity might be true about the story of Alice in a material sense, I'm not sure its quite true to the heart of Carrol's "story" in a narratological sense.
In the film, Alice is somehow justified because she succeeds as fanciful, impossible vision of a Victorian businesswoman. As books, neither Alice in Wonderland nor Through the Looking Glass seem particularly interested in having to justify anything. The film might be aware of its own contradictions, though. At first, Alice resists having anything dictated to her. Not only does she refuse to marry a jerk even though everyone expects her to, she also initially refuses to slay the Jabberwocky. While the renunciation of marriage is retained, she ultimately accepts her role as the Bearer of the Vorpal Sword. She ultimately does conform to society's demands, even if she will not conform to the demands of her immediate community. Similarly, Alice ultimately submits to an almost stereotypical feminist destiny -- a young, single, entrepreneurial businesswoman. Again, the movie ends with a feeling of hopefulness as Alice sets off on a real life adventure...but an audience member might also see Alice as about to endure the fate of Peter Pan in the movie Hook. She gave up a life in fairyland for a career in business.
Sure, Alice will have sweeping adventures visiting new lands and trying to convince the to trade local products for British goods...but how will she feel once she has to fill out an expense report? And we just have to hope she's out of China before the Boxer Rebellion.
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