Growing Up Alice

Anyone who follows my blog or knows me at all knows that I was kind of a nerdy kid. I read books. A LOT of books. No sports, no after school activities, not even that many cartoons… it was me and my books. And I liked it that way. I don’t have any regrets about that, and I feel sorry for kids who are constantly pressured to be “involved” in a million different things without really being involved in anything. I’m thankful that my parents encouraged my passion for books, and drove me to the Cedar Bluff library countless times to check out fourteen at a time. I haven’t kept a lot of stuff from my childhood, because my anti-clutter mom has always tamed the packrat beast within me (probably for the best!), but I have held onto several of my favorite, well-worn books.

One of those is Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland:

I have read and reread this book countless times. I was, and still am, in love with it. Growing up, I felt like I knew Alice well enough for her to be like a friend. And I know these days that’s not considered “normal,” but I truly believe that reading a lot fosters imagination and creativity, and I hope that one day my kids will want to become friends with some of my favorite literary characters. (Although, since half of their genes will be Jamie’s, this could be problematic. He was too busy eating Christmas ornaments and pooping out shards of glass, and dreaming of being a construction worker so he could eat his lunch on the roof, and dangling by his legs from trees, to care much for holing up with a good book. But then, I hope they have some of his adventurous spirit, too. :) )

But back to Alice. Every time I’ve read this book, the older I’ve gotten, the more I realize how truly insane it is. When I was young, I totally missed the drug references and the amazingness of Carroll’s wit and dry sense of humor. I laugh out loud at the same lines, every time. I think it’s wonderful, though, that a book can evolve with me as I grow up. It’s a tremendous testament to the complexity and timelessness of the story. But it makes complete sense, now, having studied Carroll’s life a little more closely. He, like J.M. Barrie, the author of Peter Pan, has fallen under a LOT of criticism, because it’s more or less been proven that both men had inappropriate obsessions with the young children for whom they wrote these books (this is something that was overlooked in Finding Neverland, which is just as well, because the movie would have been quite a bit less magical if the subject of pedophilia had come up). Carroll had a VERY close relationship to the Liddell family, and young Alice in particular. He wrote Alice in Wonderland for her, and included a poem at the end which, when you take away the first letter of each line, spells out “Alice Liddell.” However, he, along with Barrie, has also been fiercely defended by many children’s literature scholars, who argue that these “obsessions” were more manifestations of essentially a child stuck in an adult’s body than physical desires. I like to side with those scholars, personally. It’s almost tragic to see Alice, who is growing up, enter accidentally into an imaginary wonderland, where nothing makes sense, because it turns out that this “wonderland” is actually a place full of strangeness and characters who don’t care about hurting her. The education she received in the “real world” is meaningless in Wonderland, where everyone disputes everything she says and makes up their own versions of poems and lessons and such. It’s kind of heartbreaking to think that it’s not possible for someone to enter a dream world and not be content to stay there permanently. Everyone HAS to grow up at some point, and compromise at least some of the dreams of their childhood, because a world without norms and rules and predictable outcomes does not ultimately provide lasting happiness.

I am just as fond of John Tenniel’s illustrations in the book as I am of the story itself. I think he perfectly captures the bizarreness of Wonderland, and Alice’s melancholy and confusion and anger and sadness. Which is why I HATED the Disney interpretation of the story. I mean, let’s compare:

Ummmm….. yeah. No comparison! Which is why I was ECSTATIC to hear that Tim Burton would be doing a version, which would star Johnny Depp as the Mad Hatter and Burton’s wife Helena Bonham Carter as the Queen of Hearts. If anyone can do bizarre and complex, it’s Burton. And if anyone can bring the characters straight off the pages into life, it’s Depp and Carter. These three have a long history of working together, and every single time they combine their talents, I am blown away. Examples? Edward Scissorhands. Sleepy Hollow. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Corpse Bride. Sweeney Todd. Yeah. Convinced yet? I love that Johnny Depp is to Tim Burton what Leonardo DiCaprio is to Martin Scorcese… a muse. A partner. One who can realize the vision of the other and carry it out. So I have no doubt that this version will be amazing. And 3D? Yes please. AND it comes out in March, which is my birthday month and my favorite month of the year. Meant to be? I think so. :)

Honestly, the promotional pictures they released months ago were more than enough to convince me that this will be a success. Now THIS, I think, is what Carroll would have wanted. It’s about time we made up for the Disney disaster:

Finally, I just wanted to share some more amazing artistic interpretations of the story that are out there. All of these are for sale on Etsy, so check ‘em out! And notice how, in every one, Alice is depicted in a very somber, melancholy way. I’m glad there are other people out there who saw through Disney’s rose-colored glasses.

Alice and the Mad Hatter : Strangeling’s Etsy Shop

“A Mad Tea Party” : Synchronicty313′s Etsy shop

“The Pool of Tears” : artistamuerta’s Etsy shop

“My Name is Alice” : Wyanne’s Etsy shop

“Family Portrait” : Minasmoke’s Etsy shop

“Queen of Hearts” : anna127′s Etsy shop

“Alice in Wonderland” : sandragrafik’s Etsy shop

So basically…. I can’t WAIT for this movie! And I think it might be time to revisit the book too…. for the seventy-ninth time….