Alice’s Screen Appeal in the 21st Century
With Curiouser and Curiouser having opened last weekend in London’s V&A Museum, the real Alice in Wonderland’s great-granddaughter talks about the 21st century appeal of the world-famous heroine on the big screen.
On Saturday 22 May, the V&A started running “Curiouser and Curiouser” a theatrical show about one of the world’s most famous children’s stories, Alice in Wonderland. Visitors will descend a rabbit hole in Virtual Reality, before emerging into the Queen of Hearts’ croquet ground.
After being published 155 years ago, Alice is still inspiring filmmakers in very different themes, as in the gangster Britflick Malice in Wonderland, with its hilarious tagline: “Pimps and prostitutes. Wonderland just got dirtier.” Tim Burton reimagined her in the 21st century as a vorpal-sword-swinging crusader. From the 1903 short version of the 1865 fairy tale, to 21st century VR, why has Alice stayed so important to us on the big screen?
Vanessa Tait (@vanessa_tait), the great-granddaughter of Alice Liddell, the real life inspiration for Lewis Carroll, says the secret of Alice’s popularity is how easily the character is “endlessly interpreted” by each generation.
Tait, whose book The Looking Glass House was described as an “unsettling” look at the 19th century heroine, explains: “There’s the ‘60s psychedelic Alice, the Freudian Alice, and now the feminist Alice – something really brought out in the Tim Burton films.”
“And I always feel that essentially the book is about a child growing, and shrinking, towards adulthood, and learning to deal with the mad world of adults. And who hasn’t felt like that some time in their life?”
These days, Alice has ditched the petticoats and apron to be reborn as a feminist heroine of dystopian graphic novels. She’s been re-invented as a steampunk warrior, trapped in endless nightmarish asylum worlds while taking on a bloodstained Jabberwock with its demonic “eyes of flame”.
Burton’s 2016 follow up Alice Through the Looking Glass changed Carroll’s heroine even more as a timetravelling swashbuckler in a CGI-crammed pirate-infested adventure. He pitted her against a non-Carrollian new main villain called Time (Sacha Baron Cohen). This raises the question of creating new characters; is it enough that they kept Alice as the main character? When does a film stop being the book?
So what’s next – an Alice-based slasher? Possibly for collectors only, there is Alice in Murderland (2010) with the tagline: “Through the looking glass and straight to hell” which features the less-than-deathless dialogue: “Once you’ve killed, Alice, you’re a killer for life.”
Alice is still globally popular: in Egypt, you can sit in seaside coffee shops to watch Tim Burton’s remakes, and like the hookah-smoking Caterpillar, you could “sample shiska in a mad tea party of cakes and icecream”. More into Walking Dead-style theatre? Then you could visit Los Angeles’ Zombie Joe’s Underground Theatre for a “burlesque zombie Alice musical”.)
Or if Japanese-style surrealism is more your thing, then in Tokyo’s Alice in Wonderland Restaurant you can eat Cheshire Cats created with spaghetti and White Rabbits made of sushi. With the décor based on the famous 1951 Disney cartoon, it welcomes visitors with a phalanx of pink cartoon soldiers, over the logo: “Let the banquet begin!” The restaurant serves themed delicacies in a fantasy world of fake hedges, giant teacups and red heart decorated chandeliers over playing-card tables. The Alice manga-style waitresses were even kind enough to listen to my excited burblings – though mouthfuls of sushi – of how I once played a Red Queen’s Guard in a Carrollian-themed wedding. Now that’s good service.)
Maybe with all these different takes, as “Curiouser and Curiouser” arrives in London, here’s to another few centuries of global Carollian inspiration on the big screen…VR vorpal sword in hand.