The characteristics that make Alice a female role model and helped her survive Wonderland are the same characteristics that make the story an influential one, and helped it survive many years, and many different forms of media.
Books - Most of these books are just different versions of the original story - I will be looking at each of them and comparing the characteristics of Alice to see if they change at all. My guess is that most of the characteristics will stay the same, but certain ones will change slightly, just to fit the time period in which the story was written. Just as Alice is able to accept the strangeness of Wonderland and adapt to survive while still staying true to herself and her basic characteristics, the stories will most likely also adapt to survive new societies while still holding on to the basics.
Alice in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll: Carroll, Lewis, and Donald J. Gray. Alice in Wonderland. New York: W.W. Norton &, 1992. Print.
This one is the original. I will base everything in my paper on this particular piece of literature.
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland & Other Stories – Lewis Carroll: Carroll, Lewis. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland & Other Stories. New York, NY: Barnes & Noble, 2010. Print.
This is a larger volume that includes the original story, but also includes other poems and things by Lewis Carroll that were not in the original, and also has some things written about Alice by the author, so it will be useful for quotes and such.
Alice in Wonderland and Philosophy: Curiouser and Curiouser - William Irwin; Richard Brian Davis: Davis, Richard Brian. Alice in Wonderland and Philosophy: Curiouser and Curiouser. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2010. Print.
This particular book will be one of the most helpful to me, as it includes an article about Alice as a female role model, and the different characteristics that make her so.
Alice in Zombieland – Lewis Carroll and Nickolas Cook: Cook, Nickolas, and Lewis Carroll. Alice in Zombieland. Naperville, IL: Source, 2011. Print.
This book is essentially the original story, but with different words/phrases thrown in to make it about Zombies. I will use this to show how the story adapts to new media and society (the Zombie Craze that's happening right now) while still holding on to its roots and staying true to the original story (again, the actual book is almost exact to the original).
Alice I have Been – Melanie Benjamin: Benjamin, Melanie. Alice I Have Been: a Novel. New York: Bantam Trade Paperbacks, 2011. Print.
This is a book about Alice Liddell. It's fiction, but it's written as non-fiction. Alice Liddell is the little girl whom "Alice" is based on. This book will be used to show how influential "Alice" really is.
Film - The films will be compared to the original book, and used as a way to show how the story has adapted to different societies (each of the films was created in a different time period, thus a different social time), yet still kept much of the original characteristics of the original.
Walt Disney’s Alice in Wonderland: The Masterpiece Edition: Walt Disney's Alice in Wonderland: The Masterpiece Edition. Walt Disney, 2004. DVD.
The Disney version of "Alice" is the one that most people know.
Alice in Wonderland: Alice in Wonderland. Dir. Nick Willing. Prod. Dyson Lovell. Perf. Robbie Coltrane, Whoopi Goldberg, Ben Kingsley, Christopher Lloyd, Miranda Richardson, Martin Short, Peter Ustinov, George Wendt, Gene Wilder and Tina Majorino as Alice. Hallmark Entertainment, 1990. DVD.
This is a live action film version which is a little bit closer to the book than the Disney one.
Alice in Wonderland: Alice in Wonderland. Dir. Tim Burton. Perf. Johnny Depp, Helena Bonham Carter, Anne Hathaway, Mia Wasikowska, Crispin Glover, Matt Lucas, with the Voices of Alan Rickman, Stephen Fry, Michael Sheen, and Timothy Spall. Disney, 2010. DVD.
The new Tim Burton film which is not necessarily based on the original story, but takes the original characters and brings Alice BACK to Wonderland after she's grown up.
Television
Alice: Willing, Nick, dir. "Alice." Alice. SyFy. 2009. Television.
This SyFy mini-series (directed by the same man who directed the 1990 film) brings Alice as an adult into Wonderland, where she has many adventures that are sort of "nods" to the original, but a completely new spin on them.
Music
Alice: Waits, Tom. Alice. Tom Waits. Epitaph Records, 2002. CD.
This entire CD includes songs written for a play called "Alice" directed by Robert Wilson. Every track is about "Alice in Wonderland" so I will use the music to show, yet again, how influential the story has been, and how it has adapted to all different forms while still keeping its roots.
I will also be showing paintings, photographs, graphics, etc, to show that Alice is still influencing people, and that often, her original characteristics do shine through, even as she adapts to new forms of media and societies.
Ryan-- Excellent! I am intrigued by the confluence of the influence of the book/text/story itself, and the character(istics) or qualities of Alice herself. Did Carroll write an ur-text of a girl in the world (which would then be taken and adapted) or did he create something enigmatic (in terms of language and characterization) which is just vague and enticing enough for other artists to try to reinterpret?
ReplyDeleteJust wondering. This seems to be a pretty thorough list, and I love the varied adaptations. You will want to add more secondary critical literature, however, to cover all your angles on the text.
In my opinion, Carroll wrote an incredibly unique text with a rich language and a new world, and the intense strangeness of the whole story is what makes it so easily adaptable and something to relate to. In other words, everyone has had the feeling of "falling down the rabbit hole" - being thrown into a new situation that seems completely backwards and strange, and maybe a little bit scary. It's that feeling of the unknown; not knowing how to act, because all of the social norms seem obsolete, that people can relate to when they read Alice. Because it's so strange and unique, artists and creative minds are all able to see something completely different when they read it. Carroll doesn't actually describe the characters to a full extent: he gives a vague description of them, and there are illustrations in the book, but overall the characters are fairly open to interpretation. This helps the readers use their imagination and almost create their own characters as they read it. He also doesn't try to paint a picture of Wonderland - instead he might mention a few things about the landscape around Alice, but typically he'll just talk about the situation, and the interactions she's having. This leaves the entire world of Wonderland open for interpretation. Whether he did it on purpose, I don't know, but it has definitely led to many, many, many different interpretations and versions.
ReplyDeleteI'm still working on some research, so I'll be trying to find more secondary critical literature over the next couple of weeks. One of the books (Alice in Wonderland and Philosophy) is made up of nothing but secondary articles, so I'm sure I'll be using those quite a bit).