The imminent release of Tim Burton’s (epic failure) remake of Alice in Wonderland has me thinking about that story. What’s that? I’ve already offended you? You think it’s going to be wicked awesome? Well, you should stop sniffing glue. Have you seen the new official trailer? It looks like a CGI monster snotted all over some film and they called it a movie.
Phew. Now that I got that out of my system, let me get to the point. I think the long-running appeal of absurdist stories like Alice in Wonderland (based, let’s not forget, on the book by Lewis Carroll) is related to a few themes that aren’t often acknowledged. The Wizard of Oz is a similar example. In each case, a young woman bored or frustrated with her surroundings dreams (or hallucinates) that she travels to a land where things are more exciting and unpredictable, but a land that’s also more dangerous and terrifying. (Also note: the 1986 cult classic Labyrinth, featuring David Bowie and an early performance from Jennifer Connelly).
It’s clear that the characters whom Dorothy meets on her journey bear heavy resemblance to her friends and family back home. But since we don’t see as much of Alice’s life, we can only infer that her trip down the rabbit hole closely resembles Victorian England. Alice still escapes her boredom by traveling to a mystical place, but what she finds is even more defined by madness than the Land of Oz. It’s a madness that she cannot tolerate. She seems to think that people are not only capable of acting logically and responsibly, but they ought to do it all the time. I would argue that our society is more like Wonderland; it’s in a state of constant, rumbling madness. Yet the citizens of Wonderland are convinced that all is well — that they’re doing exactly what they should be doing, and it’s Alice who is acting peculiar.
It seems symbolic that a young girl is the protagonist in each story. It’s a literary device used by the author to express his (or her) own feeling of inadequacy. That’s not to say that little girls are actually powerless — but in the old British sense of “seen and not heard,” little girls are sort of at the bottom of the social structure in terms of who decides what. And of course this isn’t unique to gender or time period. South Park uses the exact same storytelling device with the four young boys. Almost every episode points out how dumb adults can be, as if they were ruled by madness but certain of their sanity. The unfortunate person who points out the truth is deemed to be insane — and, if the reaction is sharp enough, the person is destroyed for their inconvenient observation. (Here Bill Hicks would have called attention to Martin Luther King Jr, John Lennon, etc.)
Aside from the pervasive madness and the young female protagonist, the third important theme or concept is that, when things get out of hand, the main character simply wakes from the dream and is returned to “normal life.” This is such a ripe fantasy that no one even wants to admit that it exists. So many would like to “wake up” from what we take to be reality, saved by some greater force and reassured that this couldn’t actually be how the real world operates. (See: most major world religions)
A.O. Scott recently suggested in a New York Times article that Where The Wild Things Are contains a theme similar to the Wizard of Oz. Scott felt that Max was seeking a place where he could do whatever he wanted, and more importantly, where he’s in charge of his social circle. According to Scott’s essay, Max’s view of reality changed for the better after living with the Wild Things. Max decided that his imperfect life was worth putting up with. (Scott noted a similar theme in Coraline, another well-received 2009 film.) But the message behind Alice in Wonderland and the Wizard of Oz is actually quite the opposite. I think a story like Alice has endured because of what it says about the real world, not what it says about the dream world conjured up by the main character.
This is what Normon O. Brown was getting at in his Freudian study Life Against Death. In Chapter 2 he references the James Joyce quote, “History is a nightmare from which I am trying to awaken” (p. 15). And while Brown failed to fully answer my questions on this subject, he did make it clear where this points. He said that by gaining a better sense of consciousness, “man would be ready to live instead of making history, to enjoy instead of paying back old scores and debts, and to enter that state of Being which was the goal of his Becoming” (p. 19).
That leads to another conversation entirely — one I’m not going to spoil here, but one I can assure you I will (finally) be able to provide some context on in the near future. For the time being, I’ll just reiterate the three most important — but unrecognized — themes in these tales of absurdist fiction: the protagonist (or author) feels surrounded by madness, completely powerless to change it, and unable to wake from the nightmare.
Now, have you fulfilled the necessary materialistic rituals to prepare yourself for the Holiday Season? Have you been thinking about the themes hidden beneath these worn-out traditions? This is, after all, how we claim to celebrate the concept of annual renewal — regardless of which religious jersey you wear. The more important question is, are you renewed?
