Thanks to Tim Burton, Disney's 3D version of Alice in Wonderland, wisely honours "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland," and "Through the Looking-Glass," by Charles Dodgson (aka Lewis Carroll), without looking outdated. And that's not as simple as it sounds.
For starters, the book was published in 1865 - and Disney's animated "Alice in Wonderland" was, without question, groundbreaking in 1951.
I trust Carroll would have loved to watch his move in 3D, to make a point about mathematics too. Melanie Bayley, a doctoral candidate in English literature, understands that some of the book's characters were real people in Carroll's life at Oxford. But think numbers too, she writes.
Bayley notes:
In the mid-19th century, mathematics was rapidly blossoming into what it is today: a finely honed language for describing the conceptual relations between things. Dodgson [Carroll] found the radical new math illogical and lacking in intellectual rigor. In ‘Alice,' he attacked some of the new ideas as nonsense - using a technique familiar from Euclid's proofs, reductio ad absurdum, where the validity of an idea is tested by taking its premises to their logical extreme.
In this respect, Alice is conservative and I'd also draw number-centric nerds to Carroll's card soldiers and militant chess-pieces.
The viewer is almost killed with laughter however, when he gets to know the Red Queen (Helen Bonham Carter) and one very charming porker under her feet, in this Halal-unfriendly movie. Or as the tyrannical ruler cheekily states: "I love a warm pig belly for my aching feet."
And yet, the queen's - sorry Queen's - penchant for chopping heads off and scaring her submissive monkey servants, though is offset by Alice's innocence. While Carter's character appeals to her own authority, Mia Wasikowska is simply appealing, like the film's complimentary computer-generated objects that seem to fly into our laps.
Familiar voices, from the White Rabbit (Michael Sheen) to the unforgettable Cheshire Cat (Stephen Fry) also add to the movie's very British appeal. And even when the Mad Hatter (Johnny Depp) switches from English to Scottish accents, I'm sure this is a sign of his delightful madness, and not a pointless exercise, as one reviewer claimed.
Of course, some human beings are prone to imposing politically-correct values on storybook characters, raising yet more questions for conservative-minded viewers. "So, does Disney's movie succeed in highlighting Alice's individualism over the Hollyweird's desire to present antiseptic girl power characters?" I hear some people ask. "Yes," I'd answer. "Alice is strong - but not in the annoying sense of the word."
But here's what I really love about Alice. I love the fact that Disney's movie captures Carroll's disdain for groupthink, double-speak, and folly as illustrated in "Through the Looking-Glass" before Orwell's day:
"When I use a word, "Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it too mean - neither more nor less."
"The question is," said Alice, "whether you can make words mean so many different things."
"The question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "which is to be master - that's all."
While, Disney's Alice isn't Carroll's word-for-word Alice, the character's spirit lives on, thanks to writer Linda Woolverton. And to Burton's credit again, her father, a merchant trader and seafarer isn't presented to us an evil free-trading, worker-bashing capitalist, with wicked patriarchal plans. In truth, he's actually very nice.
What's more, Alice the neoconservative dreamer also offsets Matt Damon's smug antiwar flop of a movie, Green Zone. For in addition to her free-trade tendencies - which become more apparent near the film's conclusion - she taps into her inner crusader. Blood will spill. Wars will liberate.
Ben-Peter Terpstra is an Australian satirist and cartoon lover. His works have been posted on numerous sites from American Thinker (California) to Quadrant Online(Sydney, Australia). His commentary has been linked to such popular websites as Ann Coulter, WorldNetDaily,Rush Limbaugh and Big Hollywood.
