“It’s still new. It’s still fresh. If it were written yesterday and released on shelves today, people would still be as amazed by it as they were then.” ~ Johnny Depp
Before Harry Potter, there was Alice in Wonderland. Both created a fantasyland that enthralled children and adults. Like J.K. Rowling, English author Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, who adopted the pen name Lewis Carroll, could never have envisioned that his stories would become classics, influence other writers, and be made into one film after another. Tim Burton is the latest director to tackle the material. His film, starring Johnny Depp as the Mad Hatter, opens on Friday, March 5. And like previous Alice films, Burton’s has attracted many A-list actors. (See our story in Filming Around).
While the films are the most obvious example of Carroll’s influence, references to Alice turn up everywhere in our culture, from weekly clues on Jeopardy and in the New York Times crossword puzzle, to songs like the “White Rabbit” by the Jefferson Airplane to “I Am the Walrus” by the Beatles. A 2006 tour poster for the band, Alice in Chains, showed a young Alice being hanged by the Cheshire Cat’s tail. In the music video for Aerosmith’s song “Sunshine,” Steven Tyler is shown trying to protect a young blond Alice in the woods. Legions of artists have incorporated images from Alice, everything from the Queen of Hearts to the Caterpillar, into their art. Imitation is not always the most sincere form of flattery. Consider the 1976 production, Alice in Wonderland: A Musical Porno.
The visual imagery as well as a cast of quirky, colorful characters, makes Alice’s story an attractive takeoff point for artists. The basic story is a familiar one: a young girl is lost far away from home and must find her way back. Along the way, Alice, like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz, meets some interesting personalities, uses her wits to survive, and, in the process, learns a lot about herself and what she holds dear. There’s a timelessness to that story that continues to draw people in, generation after generation.”This child enters these adult realms and sees adults behaving badly, handles herself quite well, and gains some measure of control over her life,” says Andrew Sellon, President, the Lewis Carroll Society of North America. “At some time we’ve all felt like Alice. What is this place we’re in and why are people doing this and who is making the rules? You can apply that almost anywhere.”
Mark Richards, Chairman of the Lewis Carroll Society, agrees. “Although it is easy to see [Alice in Wonderland] as a Victorian story, the conversations and characters are timeless and we can easily see them as being of our own time.” Richards adds that people are captivated by “the way in which Alice observes her surroundings and feels emotions throughout the book. The sense of wonder is very strong in the books and is felt by the reader.”
Sellon says he was introduced to the books as a child, starting with a Disney version and then, thanks to his parents, moving on to the real books. “Whenever I pick up [one of the books] I find things I didn’t notice when I was younger,” says Sellon. “That’s why the books are still around.” One summer, Sellon, a professional actor, had an assignment to create a one-person show. He chose Lewis Carroll. “I didn’t know anything about Lewis Carroll himself,” he says. “That was the next step in my personal journey. Now I’m president [of the society]. You can’t tell where these journeys will lead.”
These days Sellon introduces other children to the books by doing readings at local elementary schools. Oftentimes the kids tell him that Alice is boring. He tells them: “Alice is you! She’s how you step into the story. It wouldn’t be the same if she was wacky. She’s the calm in the storm.”
The children, however, are not bored with the other characters. “I like to ask the children, `Do you know anybody like the Mad Hatter or the Queen of Hearts?’” he says, laughing. “It’s always hilarious to hear from these fourth and fifth graders that they know people with these characteristics—someone like Humpty Dumpty, whose smugness causes his downfall, to the Queen of Heart who is apoplectic.”
Both Sellon and Richards are often asked drug-related questions about the books, particularly whether Carroll used drugs. “People always seem eager to attach some other explanation for how these books were created,” says Sellon. “The answer is that the man had talent. No, Carroll wasn’t an opium addict. He lived a very abstemious life. He lived a remarkably straightforward life.”
Others compare Alice’s adventures to someone tripping out on drugs, like LSD. “On one level, one might observe a comparison between having a trip and entering a strange Wonderland-like world where one meets characters that are somehow familiar, yet are acting in a strange way,” says Richards. “It is a valid comparison in some ways, but this is not really a comment on the Alice books so much as a comment on the dream-like characteristics of a drug-induced trip. For example one might make a similar comparison between [Salvador] Dali’s work and drugs.”
Was Carroll sending a message with his books? “There is not an implicit moral that he’s pushing,” says Sellon. “He just told stories. And they did break with tradition. They were not pedantic. They are just romps, albeit peculiar romps.”
With the film’s opening drawing near, both Sellon and Richards have been busy giving interviews. “If the bottom line is that people will check out the books, [the film] will be worthwhile,” says Sellon.
