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| "Who Are You?" |
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1014759/
If Tim Burton’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factor (2005) was an exploration of some traditional vices (gluttony, anger, pride, and materialism) and virtues (faith, hope and charity), then his new Alice (screenplay by Linda Woolverton who wrote the script for Beauty and the Beast and co-wrote The Lion King) reassembles the children’s classic in light of developmental depth psychologists of the 20th century, especially S. Freud and C. G. Jung.
For all of Tim Burton’s entertaining, unique and fascinating
bizarreness, I’m beginning to think his films’ messages are
sound messages for the viewers’ growth and development;
good movies for kids and enlightening for older viewers like myself.
When Lewis Carrol (Oxford professor and ordained minister,
Charles Lutwidge Dodgson) published Alice’s Adventures
in Wonderland in 1865, it played with logic and language
and came to be known as the best example of the literary
nonsense genre. This was pre-Freud, and in this re-telling
at the beginning of the 21st century, it could be argued
that Carrol struggled to describe things that would later be
described in psychological terms, e.g. archetypal figures,
identity crisis, narcissism, macho attitudes and the will
to power. Freud would publish The Interpretation of
Dreams in 1900. In 1960, philosopher Martin Gardner
published The Annotated Alice in which he cites seven
major article on Alice in Wonderland by Freud. Erik H.
Erikson would publish Identity Youth and Crisis in 1968.
Various authors that undoubtedly were influenced by
Carrol are L. Frank Baum (The Wizard of Oz - though I once
read an article that said it really was about FDR taking us off
the gold standard), and fellow Oxfordians J. R. R. Tolkien
(The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings) and C. S. Lewis
(The Chronicles of Narnia).
Alice knows that she thinks differently for a young
girl in Victorian England. (She is an early feminist.)
Her Father, an innovative thinker himself regarding trade
routes in Asia, tries to reassure her. But the story gains
its new orientation when Alice is now 19 and must face
THE problem in her life. Should she marry someone
she feels is totally inappropriate and that she does not
love. In her dream, this manifests itself as a universal
archetype of the dragon. Carrol had some idea of what
this meant, and calls it a Jabberwocky. Jung would not
be born for another ten years and would not describe
the collective unconscious and archetypes for decades after
that.
In like manner, “the frabjous day” is Alice’s turning to
the path that will lead to her authentic self, and “muchness”
could be described as ego strength. The Red Queen is an
angry narcissist, symbolized by the large noggin. (The Red
Queen is Tim Burton's wife, Helena Bonham Carter who
also played Charlie's mum in Charlie and the Chocolate
Factory.) Does Alice have this “complex” (marriage vs her
own unique path), or does this complex have her?
The Mad Hatter could be her masculine side. The moon,
insects, birds and animals show the importance of the
always changing natural world and morph in illogical and
irrational ways; the essential nature of the unconscious,
i.e. the disguised sublimation of ideas unacceptable to the
conscious mind.
Along the way she is too tall, too short, not the right Alice,
hardly Alice, not like she was before, and stuffed in a teapot.
It is difficult, scary, humorous, puzzling, and it takes a lot of
courage to be herself. Alice demonstrates her “muchness”
(which was an idea put in her mind my the Hatter when
she was there before) admirably when she puts on the armor,
picks up the vorpol sword and at the last totally
visually and thematically stunning and exhilarating moment
says, “Off with your head,” ironically using the words of the
Red Queen who set up this battle.
In thinking about the first Disney animated Alice In
Wonderland (1951) in relation to this Disney version,
I think this version is much more sophisticated
psychologically and the combination of computer
generated animation and live acting lends itself, to
state the obvious, to a significantly greater range of
possibilities for film makers, which are admirably
utilized by Tim Burton. I hardly ever watch a film
twice in a row, but I watched this film three times in
three days, and I’m looking forward to revisiting it
again, after I have had a chance for my unconscious
to work on it for a while.
