Which Dreamed It?

Hello there Alice. After a year or so of eager anticipation Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland arrived with the expected fanfare and everyone has been of course talking about it. Critics have complained about it being an okay film if not mind-blowing. I myself am honestly a little tired of Depp playing so many weird characters. That man needs to do something else that doesn't involve period dressing or eccentric dressing, period. But then I'm a Depp fan and I don't want to have to eat my words and complain about the dearth of Depp-in-kooky-films later either.

When my sister asked me which my favourite character was, I sighed and said the Mad Hatter won by default (see paragraph above) but on more consideration, I definitely liked the Cheshire Cat, which incidentally shared my liking for the Hatter's hat and Ann Hathaway's White Queen. That woman is amazingly funny and I only wished there had been more scenes involving her.

Having gotten the fangirl rant bit out of the way, I want to go on to defend this film (in all its scripterly mediocrity). First of all, it's the first really successful Alice screen adaptation. Of course, that could just have been the audience moving on since the first botched attempt by Disney and other lesser entities and you'll have to admit that there has been a significant increase in dragons, trolls, elves, knights, wizards (and certain vampires) etc lately. Still, this doesn't detract from the film getting a number of things right and that's what counts. You can make a perfect flash in the pan like Twilight and then you can make something like Alice.

The plot suffers of course and I find the good-triumphs-evil dichotomy problematic, especially since both Queens are treated sympathetically and one ends up feeling sorry for the Red Queen (not that she wants your pity - Off with your head!). On the other hand, it does capture the spirit of the original books pretty well. The film keeps a sense of wonder going strong, though haunting may be the better word for it, as Wonderland seems to have experienced rather a bit of wear and tear since Alice first fell down the rabbithole. The castles (both white and red) were fantastic to look at, and Burton obviously had a very good look at the sources of Alice images because certain of the scenes looked almost true to how Tenniel imagined them - that is, before Burton adds his whimisical and sometimes cheeky interpretation to them. I am thinking of the 'Drink Me' scene with all the extra doors. I don't think they were there in the original book... And my personal favourite - the cherry tinted sunnies on the Red Queen's nose as she plays croquet is a clever addition to the scene.

Still, a word of warning: don't go looking for Carroll's Alice in Burton's updated adaptation. You'll be sorely disappointed and while I find myself enjoying the movie, it's hardly a substitute for the novels. (Beware lazy lit student who thinks watching the film is as good as reading the book) This is good. It's about time somebody considered re-inventing Alice rather than try to slavishly copy it or worse still, water it down till the punch it ought to have made has absolutely no impact...

Rating: 4/5

Poster Talk: Weird things and Tim Burton and Alice in Wonderland

There is something fishy in the air, only it ain't mermaids. Will the person who is cooking blaachan at a very inappropriate time please desist?

And, of weird things in the air, look what Johnny Depp and Tim Burton did for Alice in Wonderland. And you thought Willie Wonka was weird.

For this edition of Poster Talk, I will also be refraining from placing publicity material of the movie of discussion in the post. This is to ensure that no reader will get hurt, suffer any injuries, physical or mental on having to repeatedly look at Johnny Depp's rendition (apparition) of the Mad Hatter when it finishes loading and pops out at the top of my page.

Disney, in the vein of the Pirates series have released several posters each featuring a different character from the film. So far, spotted include Tweedle Dee & Tweedle Dum (sharing one poster), The White and Red Queens, the Mad Hatter and Alice herself. All of them feature circusy looking backgrounds that are colour coordinated with the indivdual characters. In Depp's case, the background is a lovely peridot green with a painted looking texture and the silhouettes of little black top hats radiating from the centre of the poster in an outward spiral.

If that doesn't sound psychedelic enough, look at Depp in Hatter mode. That shock of orange hair springing out from under the battered hat stuffed and pierced with bibs and bobs, that really ugly bow tie, that hideous make-up. He looks like a walking child molester for goodness sake. Or-or a walking mistake at the very least. Putting aside the purple eyebags that suggest that the Mad Hatter has been imbibing on caffeine for far too long, there is that taut, leering overstretched grin and a generous layer of white powder to rival Robert Pattinson's.

And yet, such a mess of a look which hardly looks like the effort of a rational person and more of a certain escapee from Arkham Asylum was in fact put together with a lot of careful in-depth thinking which makes my own academic experience of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass look like a walk in a park. With such effort on the part of Depp, I can only imagine that the mad hatter, which has played a secondary if memorable role in the novels, would have a more central one in the film.

No doubt, Burton's adaption of the text would be a looser one, something which may breathe fresh air and significance for a well-loved and familiar text if executed well - see Cuaron's adaptation of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. Disney for one, seems determined to put behind the apparently bad cartoon version that they released in 1951 and is gunning for Burton's rising clout and a audience raised on and innured to the temptations of vampires, gothic-chic, LOTR, Harry Potter, anime, fantasy, and horror. Weird is cool again. It's now or never people, if you want to don a bowler, loud checkered tweed and gloves while walking down Toa Payoh.

No doubt, even if Burton doesn't stray far from the original, and preliminary reports* seem to hint that he will be, the visual mishmash which looks like the twisted dregs left over from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory are a far cry from how Tenniel and the Golden Age Illustrators for Children's Books like Rackham envisioned Wonderland - less tame and a lot more dangerous for one - if the deep and intense hues of the poster are anything to go by.

*scroll down. down. somemore. look for the article called "Burton's "Wonderland" Revealed", which gives some insight into how the world of Wonderland works.

Eye Candy: The Many Faces of Alice

Who is Alice?

And, because one gets fascinated by the oddest things, here are more pretty pictures to look at. There are plenty here by various artists over a stretch of time, and the list is certainly not inexhaustible:

Fig 1: John Tenniel's Alice. Tenniel is the original illustrator of the Alice books.

In class yesterday, we talked about visual archives, and how technology has helped to build this visual memory bank of images that become part of how we look at history and culture too. It's interesting that the artists below incorporate easily recognizable aspects of alice into their drawings, such that we know what they are referencing even if they are out of context.
A note before wonderland kicks in: The sources of the images are linked via the labelling for the pictures.

Arthur Rackham:

Fig 2: A series of Alices. Don't know if it's me over-reading, but two of the scenes are inverted horizontally (like through a mirror). The first Alice with all the cards faces left in Tenniel's version, while the mock-turtle and griffin in the 3rd picture faces right.

Lisbeth Zwerger: And except for the Wizard's coat in NYEDC'S OZ (which was modelled after The Matrix's Morpheus), Zwerger also provided some nice background ideas for an alternative Oz, though due to money constraints and the way the script was headed, idea got abandoned.

Fig 3: Her Alice is pretty darn unique too. Not blonde?

Ralph Steadman: The druggie version. And he wouldn't be half wrong too as somewhere along the way, Alice becomes symbolic of the phantasmogorical and amoral, though he keeps the satirical legacy from Tenniel:

Fig 4a, b: Seriously. the mad hatter is a yogi bear like creature?!

It's not all blue pinafores...
Yup. Even though the Alices all bear some resemblance to the original, artists have focused on more than just her dressing, which is one of the first few things artists are determined not to copy directly. Rackham, who is a famous children's books illustrator from the 19th, early 20th century has his Alice in a pink flowery dress, as if in opposition of the traditional Alice in blue. On the other hand, the striped stockings, crown, pinafore, bushy hair , cards, chess set, Victorian-esque setting and associate white rabbit are often retained in some form to remind the viewer that this alludes to the books.

In fact, moving away from Tenniel's political caricature roots, the Alice of today is definitely more of an icon of fantasy, gothic and Victorian periodization which subsequently fits nicely into consumer culture quite nicely - be it for gaming and video culture, manga, food, or films.

Fig 5: Miaki Kari. Looks like it ought to go on a chocolate box. Also looks like this:

Fig 6: Tenniel's original illustration. Also compare Rackham's above.

Some artists, and in particular those from pop culture, appropriates the Alice figure for themselves. For example, the topsy-turvy game-like rules of Wonderland and questing style of the Alice text adapts itself nicely into gothicky pop art well.

Fig 5a, b: The red or blue debate goes beyond existentialism...

Then there is Tim Burton, master of the macabre and wacky:

Fig 6: Mia Wasikowska as Alice. Very Victorian. Very pop culture. Very blue.

The stockings. As I said....

Fig 7: Vintage Classics edition of the book

Then there is the pinafore, which gives some people odd ideas.

Fig 8: The Internet is for porn. And for everything else.

And just for the heck of it...

Why indeed.

F.g 9: Stuio I.G. and CLAMP.

What kinds of cultural cache is there in the Alice? I wouldn't know. But it does make for a convenient signfier for the weird and precarious nature of society...

And in the end, there is no other Alice like Alice.

Fig 10: Drawn by E.T. Reed, one of Tenniel's successors at Punch, in response to the many imitators out there. Spot Rackham's? A detailed account of Tenniel's illustrations and the new illustrators after him can be found here.