Ryan Foley
Alice in Medialand: Read Me Topic Proposal
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, written by Lewis Carroll in 1865, is still one of the most well known stories in our culture today. Somehow, this simple story about a young girl who falls down the rabbit hole and is bombarded with nonsense and the unknown, has affected audiences for nearly two centuries. Alice has been adapted into numerous films, a television series, books, music, art, and even video games countless times since its origin. Being adapted into multiple forms of media has enhanced Alice, making it even easier to relate to and understand as time goes on. Perhaps another reason for Alice’s survival lies within the qualities that make up the main character, Alice. Alice is a little girl with a lot of confidence, bravery, and an innocence that helps her confront Wonderland head on, thinking through her situations logically, if not a bit naively, and ultimately helps her find her way out of the alternate reality. Throughout her journey through Wonderland, Alice is able to adapt to her surroundings while still clutching on to her core qualities and characteristics. Just as Alice maneuvered her way through different sections of Wonderland, always adapting and finding out new things about herself, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland has maneuvered through different forms of media, meeting new audiences, adapting slightly and finding new aspects of the story to embellish and focus on. Alice is a strong character, and she is easy to relate to, which is why the story has survived for so long. To show that the adaptations have enhanced Alice, I will be writing my own version of Alice in Wonderland, incorporating those characteristics that helped Alice survive Wonderland. Alice in Wonderland has become a sort of palimpsest, in that analyzing and then reimagining the story has become a literary tradition. By analyzing Alice’s qualities and characteristics and reinventing the story in my own way, I will be carrying on the tradition that has led to Lewis Carroll’s novel surviving so many generations. To continue reimagining Alice in Wonderland is to help the story continue to survive.
A flicker of white somewhere to her left caught Alice’s attention. She looked around and wrote it off as a trick of the light. Another flicker caused her to put her book down and stare at the spot where she’d seen it. Staring for too long at one spot made her dizzy, and her eyes became unfocused. She shook her head and blinked to no avail as the color drained from the world, and the lights began to fizzle and hum like the fluorescent boxes on the ceilings at the old classroom that stole so many years of her life away. Alice stood from her chair and stumbled to the door. Flinging it open, a hallway appeared. One flickering light illuminated peeling dirty white walls and a dusty carpet. Another flash of white at the end of the corridor drew her forward. Leaning against the wall for support, shielding her eyes against the strobing bright light, she stumbled into a room at the end of the hall.
A round room covered floor to ceiling in various sized checkerboard squares caused Alice to be overcome with nausea. Breathing heavily on her hands and knees, she shut her eyes tight against the colorless hell. Blood seeped down the walls and filled the room, choking her, filling her mouth and ears and lungs until she spit and sputtered and finally opened her eyes. A single glass of red wine stood upon a table in the center of the room, throwing red light on the walls. A tiny red pill sat next to the glass. Alice snatched at the pill and placed it on her tongue. It began to dissolve almost instantly, filling her mouth with a chalky substance, absorbing any and all moisture from her tongue. Weary and desperate, Alice reached for the glass, but before she could bring the rim to her lips, the room started to shift. She groped at the table and the walls, but everything was spinning and moving just beyond her reach. The table in the center of the room began to shrink until it disappeared all together. Alice smacked her head hard against the wall - or the ceiling - she wasn’t sure which. She looked down, and saw a tiny door near her bare foot. It was no bigger than a crayon. Struggling for a better view, Alice shifted her weight so that she was facing the miniscule escape route. She stretched her arm towards the door, and found that it was smaller than her thumb. Fuming and distressed by her current situation, Alice thrashed violently, hoping to break down the walls that seemed to be ever tighter around her body. Her elbow collided with something sharp, and glancing down, she noticed that the table had returned to the ever-shrinking room, and the glass of red wine was perched precariously upon it. Alice grasped the glass, which seemed to grow to suit her size, and downed the drink in a single gulp.
The liquid slid down her throat in slow motion, coating her lips, tongue, lungs. Fire seared in her lungs, and though she tried to scream, not a sound escaped her. As quickly as the room had tightened around Alice before, it now began to shift and stretch away from her. Alice found herself sliding down the wall, and looked up to see the ceiling disappearing as it moved farther and farther from her face. The door that had not long before been smaller than her fingers was now growing to two, three times her size. Hesitantly, Alice reached out her now tiny hands, and pushed the door. It swung open easily, revealing a shock of color that caused Alice to cover her eyes and look away. When she eventually returned her wide eyes to what lay beyond the doorway, she forgot to breathe. Alice paused for a moment before standing up and stepping through into the bright, colorful world.
Alice couldn’t remember how long it had been since she’d set foot outside. Surely it had only been mere hours, though it felt as though it had been years. As she looked around at her unfamiliar surroundings, a flash of white made her turn on the spot, and Alice remembered why she had left her bed in the first place.
She wasn’t sure why she was so determined to catch whatever that blur of white was, but she tore after it through an increasingly thick forest of brightly colored flowers and trees, the likes of which Alice was sure she had never seen before. The deeper into the forest she got, the slower Alice moved. She picked her way carefully through the wild, exotic flowers, and ducked under the arms of huge, gnarled trees. Branches and leaves and flower petals stretched out to touch her milky white skin and caress her long brown hair. Alice tried to brush the strange foliage away from her, but her wrists got caught in a particularly nasty vine, and she was held fast. Panicking, Alice began to thrash violently, trying to rip her arms free of the wilderness that quickly closing in around her. The more she moved, the tighter the vines gripped her limbs. A particularly vicious tug, and Alice’s arm collided with a sharp branch. Wincing, Alice ceased her struggles to examine her injury. To her surprise, the branch hadn’t left more than a pinprick-sized mark on upper arm. It had felt worse than it looked. Now that she had stopped thrashing about, the vines that had held Alice fell away, and the woods seemed to open up. Alice found a path leading off to the right, and immediately began to follow it, not knowing where it led, and not caring.
For the presentation, looking at numerous adaptations of Lewis Carroll’s novel will be very time consuming, so I may need to narrow it down some. There are so many different interpretations of Alice in Wonderland that I have access to that I should be able to narrow them down without taking away from the presentation or topic at all. As for the writing portion, my main challenge will be completing the novel on time, though I started writing it last year, so I should not have too many issues with that. One of the books that I own, Alice in Wonderland and Philosophy: Curiouser and Curiouser has multiple scholarly articles, all of which take different views and approaches to Alice in Wonderland. The first article in the book discusses the qualities that helped Alice survive Wonderland and those qualities that make her a female role model. This article is what inspired my Capstone Project, and will help me to analyze each version of Alice that I look at.
What qualities and characteristics does Alice have? How does she use these qualities to survive Wonderland? What parts of Wonderland does Alice need to “survive”? What is it about Alice that people can relate to? How does the story use these qualities to survive “Medialand” (different forms of media since the original story) How might the story continue to be interpreted?
For my Capstone Presentation, using the books I already have, as well as the various forms of Alice that I own, in addition to articles I can find about Alice, I will answer the above questions. I will look at each characteristic of Alice, determine how audiences can relate to those characteristics and how those qualities helped Alice during her journey through Wonderland. I will then look at the story in multiple forms of media – film, television, music, etc… and show that those same characteristics show up in most every adaptation. Since audiences can relate to Alice’s qualities, maintaining those qualities through each adaptation helps the story survive. For the writing portion of my Capstone Project, I will be writing my own interpretation of Alice – a creative novel based on Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.
Alice in Wonderland is easily adaptable to current social and cultural situations, so audiences are able to identify with the story no matter when it is released. Lewis Carroll wrote his novel in 1865, and it is still being adapted nearly 200 years later. It is possible that Alice in Wonderland will never stop being adapted, and that the story will live on forever.
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland has been re-imagined countless times since its’ origin as Lewis Carroll’s masterpiece in 1865. Often shortened to “Alice in Wonderland”, Carroll’s story has turned up in film, television, literature, music, and even video games over the past 146 years. Alice as a character is a unique female role model, because she is strong and independent, and uses her wits to navigate an unfamiliar world with seemingly nonsensical rules. Alice has survived the last century in the same way she survived Wonderland – she has adapted to her surroundings, while still fighting the status quo, and questioning the rules of society. Alice’s qualities are easy for audiences to relate to, and through various adaptations, the story has maintained those qualities, helping Alice to navigate “Medialand”.
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.
Almost Alice (Music Inspired By the Motion Picture): Various Artists. 2010
This CD was included with my addition to the Alice in Wonderland soundtrack by Danny Elfman. Each song is written and performed by a different artist, and the songs were inspired by the 2010 Tim Burton film.
Websites
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (Wikipedia): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice%27s_Adventures_in_Wonderland
Lenny’s Alice in Wonderland site: http://www.alice-in-wonderland.net/
Both of these websites include basic information about Alice, and some interpretations of the story.
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.
