1. This week, as a much-needed relaxation (and to help with a ‘Batman’ fan-fiction I was writing), I revisited the Alice books. I’d almost forgotten how delightful they are. Just a wonderful romp of satirical nonsense, done in that delightful Victorian way. They’re also one of the best examples of capturing the feel of a dream that I’ve encountered: everything is linked through a kind of illogical logic, the environment and the people change depending on what the protagonist is thinking about, seemingly simple tasks simply will not come off, there’s a lot of repetition, and so on.

And ultimately, they’re just wonderfully charming, light fare. Alice doesn’t have a grand plan or goal she’s working towards, there’s no plot to speak of, and the characters for the most part just come and go as the story wants them. The story is just a means to go to weird places and talk to strange people and hear ridiculous things. They’re a creative writing teacher’s worst nightmare.

2. Reading them, I remembered what I’d heard and seen of Tim Burton’s…ah, versions of them from a few years back (I don’t think I can call them ‘adaptations’). Full disclosure; I haven’t seen the films, but I have seen clips and ‘run-throughs’ of them, so I have a pretty good idea of at least the plot. Burton’s Alice re-imagines it as a Narnia-like epic fantasy, where the now-adult Alice gets cast as a hero of legend destined to slay the Jabberwock(y) and defeat the Red Queen to free Wonderland from tyranny, with lots of feminist talking points and ‘oh, weren’t the Victorians just horrible to women?’ stuff (it then ends with Alice becoming a ship captain or something).

So you have things like the Mad Hatter nobly advocating a cause, the Dormouse swinging a sword around, Tweedledee and Tweedledum going to war, the Chesire Cat getting a big heroic moment, and so on, all in world with politics and magic rules and armies and battles and stuff. Gag.

Honestly, that all just makes me rather sad. One of the crowning examples of pure imagination in the English canon and all these morons can think to do with it is ‘epic fantasy, prophecies, girl power’. What a pathetic bore! You call it Alice in Wonderland, but you’ve made it ‘generic fantasy plot no. 2’.

This is the same thing I noticed re-watching 101 Dalmations: movies today feel much more ‘samey’ than movies of the past did. There’s a lot more formula, a lot more of forcing things into familiar plot beats and an ever-decreasing cycle of themes (“Be yourself.” “Girl power”. “Prejudice is bad.” “Our ancestors sucked”, Etc.). I doubt whether any studio today – least of all Disney – would be capable of adapting a story like Alice in Wonderland in any recognizable way.

Trouble is, I think this trickles down even into independent writers, where we’re nervous about creating things that don’t fit the ‘rules’. At least, I know I catch myself feeling like that. Because, of course, we want people to read what we write and like it, and so we get nervous about ‘well, will they read it if it doesn’t do this, that, and the other?’

It’s important to keep the free-breeze of ages flowing through our minds by frequently reading old books and watching old movies, just to remind ourselves of what we can become and how many more ‘options’ there are than we’re usually told.

3. There’s a song by the band Cruxshadows (whom I highly recommend, by the way) called Eye of the Storm that touches on this in the lyrics:

               “The pages of our history
               Are written by the hand
               With eyes and ears and prejudice
               Too far removed to understand.”

               “And so the heroes of the ages
               Are stripped of honesty and love
               To make them seem less noble
               And hide what we can become.”

4. Uncle Walt didn’t need to force a cliché plot onto things to make a classic adaptation. That film was, like the book, just a whimsical journey, where the point was going from place to place meeting crazy and weird characters and enjoying the ride (though to be fair, he wanted to have more of a plot than they ended up with, e.g. including the knight from Looking Glass as a heroic companion to Alice, and he didn’t really like the movie very much. But he at least had the sense not to force the issue in that case).

5. I think my favorite thing about the Disney adaptation, by the way, is just Alice herself. She’s trying to be sensible and polite, but is surrounded by lunatics and sometimes reacts accordingly (I love the bit at the trial when the Hatter and the March Hare start singing again and she just buries her face in her hands in exasperation). See, when you have one character who is more sensible, intelligent, and mature than everyone else, the thing to do is to make sure no one takes her seriously or pays the least attention to her, because that’s funny. 

I also like how, well, uncomfortable Wonderland is; the backgrounds are mostly dead black, everything is kind of shadowy, even with the bright colors, and the characters are all a little threatening and unpredictable. It’s fun to watch, but not really the kind of place you’d want to visit, which keeps you invested in Alice’s adventures. She’s a very likable character, and just about anything might happen to her at any time.

“There goes Bill!”
“Poor Bill…”