Alice160... happened

(Charlotte Bradley as Alice and Daniel Page as the Queen of Hearts in Penny Farrow's Alice in Wonderland, London UK cast. Image by Steve Gregson)

As we're coming towards the end of Alice160, the 160th anniversary of the publication of the first Alice book, Alice's adventures in Wonderland, its worth reflecting on what this anniversary has meant and what events took place. I really do wonder what cultural studies scholars (such as Will Brooker) will make of this anniversary. Unlike 1932 or 1997, it is not a birth-year centenary for Dodgson. Like 2015, it is an anniversary of the first Alice novel's publication, except this year lacked major projects for the most part. Its worth thinking, first and foremost, on what an anniversary's purpose is. We might say to re-engage the general public on why a work of art exists and why it matters. With long dead artists like Dodgson, anniversaries help to keep the work relevant. In that regard, I think we can say that Alice160 has mostly worked, even if there are big gaps with mainstream projects this year just not really popping up. 

I'm going to focus on the UK the most here, since I know this place the best. If you as an international reader had a different or better Alice160 experience, I do hope you enjoyed it!

In the UK, the year has been dominated by smaller celebrations, often with a community focus. You can see this with the wool based character installations in Rugby, and a wealth of community theatre productions, normally of Duffield's adaptation, Wade's modern adaptation, or La Gaillenne's adaptation of almost everything.

(Aside: Adrian Mitchell's 2 part version (also known as the RSC/Royal Shakespeare Company Alice) is still criminally underseen in theatres, despite being the best script on the market. I maintain it does both books better than La Gaillenne's does. I strongly recommend theatres go for Mitchell when considering a version of Alice to produce.)  

The big theatre project this year was Penny Farrow's sell out musical Alice coming to London with a new UK cast (it had premiered in Sydney a few years ago). I didn't get to see this, and unfortunately I don't think it has a published script so I can't review it. However it got rave reviews in the press, with many saying that it had same whimsy and spirit as the novels. There was no brand new big theatre creation like for 150, where we had Wonder.land from National Theatre. Several new works have popped up for the festive season, although at the moment no one knows if Geoff Aymer's modern Peckham set adaptation or Chinonyerem Odimba's play will go the distance, or even if those two will be published or get good reviews. We'll see!

The biggest new bit of information academically we had this year was the collection donated to Oxford University, something I hope will get a catalogue book or digitalised listings. 

Film/TV this year was sadly mostly an off year. There are 2 Alice160 projects, but you'll likely see them next year. The P.A works anime Dive in Wonderland, with dual Alice characters, and the Russian/Estonian musical Alisa v Strane Chrudes. Both, oddly enough, have had very mixed reviews in regions that have had first release. Dive has been criticised for being too random and Alisa has been criticised for not adhering enough to the audio musical its adapting. Time will tell if these critiques are relevant for worldwide viewers of these works. 

I noticed the most in the UK, that events around Alice160 were almost always to do with the novels, or adaptations of them. This is fantastic, but the keen eyed among you may have noticed something. Apart from small things here and there, minimal mention of Lewis Carroll/Charles Dodgson himself! Unfortunately the biographical elements were mostly missing from this anniversary year. Culturally the UK seems somewhat keen to capitalise on Alice160, but very much not keen to talk about Charles Dodgson.

After 25 years of post myth research (Leach, Woolf, ect) I have to wonder why!

Alice160: Reading Alice's adventures in Wonderland, in French, for the first time

 

(Photo source: Le boncoin, Magnard/Classiques et Patrimoine Alice au pays des Merveilles, schools edition. I highly recommend this edition for B1/B2 french learners. The footnotes make it way easier)

NOTE: Since much of this post is about reading the Alice novels for the first time or in a new language, it might interest you to know that the North American Lewis Carroll Society offers free readings of the novels to US schools. You can donate to this project here (Choose the Memorial fund option)

My first ever encounter, aged 7, with Carroll's novels (then Wonderland, I didn't read Looking-Glass until I was about 9 or 10) was with a dictionary in one hand, and the book in the other. I remember the dictionary was heavy, it was one of those that my family had sellotaped to stop it from pulling apart MANY times. I had to look up a lot of words on that first reading. No 7 year old alive in the last 2 centuries would know what a "bathing-machine" was, nor a "quadrille" unless they were very into dance. Despite the hard words, it didn't matter. I can't quite remember what my feelings on first reading were, except that this 100 + year old book somehow spoke to me in the way at the time 2000s era children's fiction could, only really half do.

(Charles Dodgson (Lewis Carroll) 's original vision of Alice and the croquet game, illustrated in

Alice's adventures Underground manuscript)

In Wonderland, no adult or animal makes sense, Alice is (at least a first time reader who doesn't know the ending reads) alone with no help. She must rely on her own intelligence and her own perceptions. The things she is taught by other people, school, authority: lessons, poems, don't work in a chaotic world that is upside down. Alice is strong willed, and, for the most part, isn't really afraid of anything that gets thrown at her. Sure, Alice's adventures aren't real in narrative, they are a long, strange, asleep-for -too-long dream. The idea is one any reader can relate to, since we've all likely had at least one memorable one in our lives. Alice herself is brilliantly eccentric. Carroll informs us, Alice in the real world loves to pretend to be two people, views her cats as her best friends and equal to people, and maybe even scares the people around her a little. Its this that makes her such a fascinating and brilliant character, and somehow film and TV versions often fail to capture this part of Alice's personality. 

This summer, as part of my French learning attempts, I read Alice's adventures in Wonderland for the first time in another language. It was partly like going back to being 7 again. Lots of words I didn't know. Here a whole tense (Passé Simple) that was partly new to me. The translation I read was the very first one into French, from 1869, by Henri Bué. With footnotes for some words, of course. Bué's translation is for the most part very faithful to Carroll's text, except that its wonderfully french-ified. Alice attempts to speak Italian to the mouse, recites "monsieur corbeau" (mister crow, a fontaine fable, based on the crow and the fox) wrongly, and the Hatter recites a distortion of "ah vous dirai-je" a famous french Victorian nursery rhyme, with the exact same tune as Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. Little things here and there transplant the story not to Victorian England Oxford but to somewhere in the France French campagne (countryside) and this works brilliantly. 

There are, I'm sure, jokes I missed in Bué's translation, as an early B1 french learner, I'm almost certain. Then again, I missed quite a few jokes on my first reading of Wonderland in English aged 7/8, and that didn't stop me. 

I think sometimes when carrollians worry that children or teenagers will never pick up Carroll's books, and will never enjoy them "now". That publishers must produce abridged editions even for children who are old enough to read the two classics (I don't think age 7/8 is too young an age, even if all jokes aren't understood) We forget how some children will always be drawn to these stories naturally, including all the Victorian words that they don't understand. Folio Junior in France (in an edition I don't have) has footnotes, and a explanation of the author and characters and their world at the back after the novel itself ends. Puffin Classics in the UK do similar but somehow don't have footnotes for some words (why is this?) But, if a child connects with the novels, trust me, they won't really care about what a few words are, and might just look things up just to know. For some people, reading Carroll just fits their personality, or is a way of reading about dreams, or gives them a way of understanding a bizarre, complex world (which the adult world very much is, Carroll knew this as much as anyone) 

I think despite all the complex readings (and sometimes total mis-readings) us adults have given Carroll's two little books, to forget that they were intended for the enjoyment of the 3 Liddell sisters (all under 14 at the time of hearing these tales) is to deny ourselves of both these stories true meaning: fun, and things to read that aren't lessons. Any child can relate and will always relate to that.

4th of July!

(Above: the boating party listen to the story of Alice,  Alice in Wonderland (1986 BBC) Dir: Barry Letts)

Today officially marks so called "Alice's day" (Or at least, that's what Oxford calls it now) when, in 1862, Charles Dodgson/Lewis Carroll started to tell the Alice stories to the Liddell sisters and Robinson Duckworth on Oxford boating trips. This by Karoline Leach:

Summer of  1862.  Charles Dodgson  is telling the ‘Alice’  story to the three famous sisters, Ina, Alice and Edith Liddell,  while  on their famous river-trips.  Indications are the girls  loved  the tale and were always begging for new instalments, but that Dodgson was less enthusiastic (on one occasion he calls  it the ‘interminable’ Alice’s Adventures, and is peeved because he wants to sing them a new song he just made up instead). At around the same time Alice asks him to write her story down. He promises he will do so.

 Whilst the actual writing of the story would take Dodgson over 6 months to start, the germ of what would become Alice's adventures Underground and, world famous as Alice's adventures in Wonderland, indeed started on these boating trips between friends, the story's episodic structure reflects this, as do the in jokes made for the 4 listeners of the tale. Even if Dodgson was less enamoured with having to continually come back to the Alice story and add extra episodes. The world is forever glad he did! 

(Above: The Three Liddell sisters, 1864, Lorina (seated) Alice (right) and Edith (left) captured in the artwork The Sisters by Sir William Blake Richmond)

Today's recommendation is Alice in Wonderland (1986 BBC) which begins at this very first storytelling boating trip, on the 4th of July. Kate Dorning plays a dual role in this version. She plays both a quiet Alice Liddell, and a delighfully eccentric, wild Alice. For once the two look different, perhaps reflecting that Dodgson never saw his fictional creation as actually being Alice Liddell herself!

Of course Alice160 celebrations will be all year round this year, but the epicentre, as always, is Oxford. Alice's day celebrations are tomorrow there.  If you can't make it, there's a whole list of events worldwide that I've curated here, including at home options. For reading recommendations, I VERY much recommend Macmillan's complete Alice for English language readers, and Jenny Woolf's biography the Mystery of Lewis Carroll (originally published 2010) which is available in English and Japanese editions.

Whichever way you decide to celebrate, have a wonderful July 4th, and July!

Alice160: New Carrollianism in Film/TV

 

This post is part 1 of 2 discussing Alice160, and its cultural relevance, as well as future relevance. This part examines cinema and upcoming/new visions of Alice in Cinema. Part 2 will discuss legacy of Carroll, current legacy, and possible ways to increase engagement.

This is a post I've wanted to write for a while after seeing quite a lot of new Alice films pop up at film festivals and elsewhere relatively recently :)

After an obliterating 20 year gap of adaptations of Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass, outside of the 2010 films which didn't adapt the books, and TV specials of filmed theatre, cinema and TV finally heralded a new interest in 2020/2021 with Carroll's works. All directed by independent filmmakers, this new group of films we can include:  Daniel Leite Almeida 's Alice in Backlands, Giulia Grandinetti's Alice and the Land that Wonders, Fabrício Bittar's Alice in the Internet, and Adam Donen's Alice Through the Looking. 

 Releases specifically upcoming for this year of Alice160 will be Toshiya Shinohara and PA Works's anime Dive in Wonderland, and Yuriy Khmelnitskiy's musical Alisa v Strane Chudes. These are both non traditional adaptations and so could be added to the above list.

These films are all disparate, appealing to different audiences, and demographics, and using Carroll's texts for  different ends. Sometimes these films have shades of politics, sometimes they put 2020s lifestyle under a microscope by using carroll's work as a lens, but always they are startlingly original. Not every project from this list is out commercially yet (and some were seen for a limited time) but this short list shores up interest by screenwriters and directors in Carroll's work for the first time in a long while.

Because the 1999 TV film got such a mixed critical reaction upon airing, and related to this, the 2016 in name only attempt by Disney getting such a disastrous reception, it is noticeable that many "new" alices from the above list make a point aesthetically and artistically by choosing the opposite choices to Disney's 2010 duology or 1999's spectacle. Spectacle in big budget visual effects, big ticket million dollar actors, and CGI landscapes. None of the new films since 2020 place Alice and her dreamworlds in a Victorian setting either, Backlands opts for the landscape and community of the Northeastern Brazil outback, Internet opts for the internet, Land that Wonders reconfigures its Wonderland as a cold health clinic and Looking throws its student Alice into an alternate satirical London. 

In the question for how to make 2020s audiences connect to Alice, her dreamworlds, and the mysterious characters that populate it, this new film trend opts to go as modern and therefore as understandable to audiences as possible. Gone are the poems, the remarks about bathing machines, mock turtle soup, victorian railway journeys and teatimes. Whilst it is a shame to see some of these elements from Carroll disappear in new adaptations, the non success of the last versions that tried a Victorian setting is an obvious reason as to why this choice is no longer taken. If audiences do not connect with the Victorian setting, filmmakers' revisioning the novels to now remains the only viable option to connect the Alice tales back to cinema audiences and to invite new ones in.

I invite you to watch the trailers of these "new carrollian" films below. Some you can find around online, others are awaiting release. All are worth your time:

(TW: some trailers contain strobe lighting)

Alice 160 events list!

 

(Source: Official Alice160 Japanese logo by MacmillanAliceJP)

Scroll all, all the way down to the very bottom of this blog to find a list of events that will be updated monthly as Alice160 starts to roll out celebrations, performances, TV broadcasts, film screenings and much more. Exclusives, world premieres, and rarities will be highlighted amongst many other things.

The calendar contains contributions by the good people of Lewis Carroll Society Facebook, and is made possible by Elfsight.