Best/Worst Alice in Wonderland and Lewis Carroll related things I saw this year

 I watched so many things with friends this year that I can actually afford to do a year end list of Alice related stuff. So...

BEST

Alice in Wonderland: Black Light Theatre of Prague (1994) Directed by Jiri Snec (Youtube) 

This is not technically new at all, but it is new to the internet. It took a dear friend of mine neigh on 7 years to find the VHS of this obscure Japanese video of a Czech "black light" theatre performance. I think I can say on viewing that the wait was worth it. A silent theatre performance using aspects of dance, and using Carroll's books as a leaping off point for ever stranger spectacles. Marcela Skrbkova's Alice captures wide eyed wonder in the way most variations of the character don't. Even the darker aspects of this version (the addition of some menacing red birds) seem in keeping with the dark-light balance of traditional Czech fairy tales. I can't really do this justice in words, its one of those things you'll have to seek out for yourself and experience. 

MOST SURPRISING

Alice's Wonderland Bakery (2022) Directed by: Nathan Chew, Arielle Yett, Steven Umbleby, Donald Kim and Sarah Frost (Disney +) 

I'm breaking my rule here because this TV series has nothing to do with Carroll's books. But I'm writing this at Christmas and this IS a year end list. This is something friends and I enjoyed enormously towards the end of this year. Alice's Wonderland Bakery is inspired loosely by 1951 Disney where a new generation of Wonderland inhabitants form around "Alice" the supposed great great granddaughter of the 1951 Alice (the linage and connection is confused and contradictory, but just go with it) This new "Alice" owns a bakery, and the plots are based around cooking. Despite the strange, strange jumble of elements (Doorknob that moves everywhere? Dodo living on the Walrus and Carpenter beach? Talking cookbook? Rabbit hole as Bakery pantry?) the show eventually grows into something very adorable and the references to '51 do grow more thoughtful over time. Some episodes even seem to hint and play with concepts familiar to Carroll (we see a hall of doors in the Hearts' castle, and Alice and co embark on a deeply absurd search for a lost flower singer) By the end of the series, you'll be wondering why you ever doubted such a concept working. 

MOST FORWARD/2020s ADAPTATION

Alice nel mondo da Internet (2022) directed by: Fabrício Bittar (Netflix) 

OK so, this is on Netflix Brazil and also Mexico, but not UK or US outlets. You'll need to use internet trickery to watch and also download eng subs by yourself (subs by one of my friends who was good enough to translate for me)

This is a very fun made in lockdown 2020 version which brings the Alice books bang up to date by setting the story inside a laptop. Said laptop belongs to Alice, an arrogant young youtuber who has fallen out with a friend recently. During a livestream, Alice falls a long way down into her own desktop. In Wonderland she meets a cat meme, two twins who hold gateway entry, and an antivirus blue caterpillar who is obsessed with order. The joy of this adaptation is seeing how Wonderland and Looking glass characters and scenes are retold and reinvented to fit this updated tech theme. Although its packed with green screen, its very well done and not too intrusive. 

WORST

Alice (2022) Directed by François Roussilon (France Televisions) 

On one hand, this nightmare of a carroll myth influenced dance disaster DID give me excellent citation material for my essays on how fiction writers have misinterpreted Lewis Carroll, on another... it exists. Its one of the worst Alice related things I've ever seen, without any hyperbole. Please, even if you are curious about how wrong a portrayal of Carroll can be, do not seek this out. It is not worth your time. 

A failed post about Sylvie and Bruno (1889, 1893)

 

 "Less Bread! More Taxes!" - Title of chapter 1 of Sylvie and Bruno

Sylvie and Bruno is an experimental 2 part novel by Lewis Carroll (Charles Dodgson), its his last major work.

The story is divided into 2 main strands: a love triangle set in England between a doctor, Arthur, for the Lady Muriel, and a fairy tale parody of Oxford University, "Outland" with 2 fairy characters, the children of the title. Loosely connecting these two strands is the narrator, an elderly gentleman prone to a condition similar to narcolepsy who sees both these worlds, often in tandem. 

This summary is as close as I can approximate this novel for anyone. Somehow in the space of 2 years an aging Charles Dodgson decided to throw every idea he'd ever had into a novel and see if it stuck. Originating as a short story ("Bruno's Revenge", published in Aunt Judy's Magazine, 1867) the book grew ever complex, split into 2 parts and with seemingly endless tangents on Religion, Morality, and Love. It flopped upon release and faded into obscurity, with only major Carroll scholars and a few writers here and there acknowledging it. 

Whilst Dodgson at the time may have considered it to be his best piece of work, for the modern reader it is almost impossible to read (and I should know - I attempted it in 2020 and barely made it through, if it wasn't for friends) I was thinking over recently why this is just so hard to read, and realized that unlike later experimental novels or poetry, a context guide, notes or introduction has seemingly never materialized in the mainstream for Sylvie and Bruno. A scholarly annotated version exists: but it is not for the casual reader or carrollian. 

The context guide I found online last year seemed to give up halfway through, confusing one chapter for another.  This is an oversight in my eyes as a simple guide would make the whole book far less daunting to new readers and also explain just what Dodgson is saying in the sections where characters debate 19th century values. And also, why the concept of fairy children existed in Victorian literature and its link to mortality issues. 

This is a book which places you in a room in Outland (an Oxford parody) in chapter 1 with the phrase "-And then the people cheered again" and leaves you to slowly decipher its plot, or to wonder if it even has any grasp of one. Any idea of plot is tied up in Outland with a conspiracy by the Sub Warden and Chancellor to oust the Warden of the university, and in the real world, formed around Arthur and Muriel's relationship. Transitions from waking to dreaming flip back and forth so suddenly you may not be aware the narrator is awake or asleep. There are sections that work. There are sections that really don't. There are poems, often with a moral (something that a younger Dodgson would have winced at, most likely)

Within this maze, there is something to be commended: Dodgson tried to write one of the first experimental novels with only a vague idea of what he wanted. But I believe his ideas of this being a grand work, would be with editions that fully explained his vision, with notes and footnotes. 

At this moment the novel is hellishly difficult to understand because it requires you know 19th Century English culture, Oxford, Christianity and mental states well enough to engage with what Dodgson is offering. For most people (myself included) this is most likely too much to handle. 

I didn't want to dislike this book at all. But without proper context: it becomes almost utterly meaningless. 

NOTES:

• A case for this novel as extremely early Experimental Literature is made persuasively by Thomas Christensen's 1991 article for Right Reading. 

• An abridged version of the novels, called "The Story of Sylvie and Bruno" was published in 1904 and includes only the Outland strand of the narrative. Many translations omit the social realism side of the story, for example in Polish. 

All in the golden afternoon (Poem by Lewis Carroll, 1865)

NOTE

This poem is about the boating party in the Summer of 1862. As ever with Dodgson it is laced with a lethal wit. Here Dodgson jokingly identifies himself as the "wary one" the storyteller, Prima is Lorina, Secunda is Alice, and Tertia is Edith. The three Liddell sisters who along with Canon Robinson Duckworth, heard the tale of Alice over the summer. In the poem, they are jokingly referred to as the "cruel three", the people that make the teller of the Alice tale keep going. The "dreamchild" that is in this poem refers to the fictional Alice. Dodgson always took great pains to differentiate the fictional Alice of his stories from his friend Alice Liddell. 

ALL in the golden afternoon

Full leisurely we glide;

For both our oars, with little skill,

By little arms are plied,

While little hands make vain pretence

Our wanderings to guide.

Ah, cruel Three! In such an hour,

Beneath such dreamy weather,

To beg a tale of breath too weak

To stir the tiniest feather!

Yet what can one poor voice avail

Against three tongues together?

Imperious Prima flashes forth

Her edict 'to begin it' -

In gentler tone Secunda hopes

'There will be nonsense in it!' -

While Tertia interrupts the tale

Not more than once a minute.

Anon, to sudden silence won,

In fancy they pursue

The dream-child moving through a land

Of wonders wild and new,

In friendly chat with bird or beast -

And half believe it true.

And ever, as the story drained

The wells of fancy dry,

And faintly strove that weary one

To put the subject by,

"The rest next time -" "It is next time!"

The happy voices cry.

Thus grew the tale of Wonderland:

Thus slowly, one by one,

Its quaint events were hammered out -

And now the tale is done,

And home we steer, a merry crew,

Beneath the setting sun.

Alice! a childish story take,

And with gentle hand

Lay it were Childhood's dreams are twined

In Memory's mystic band,

Like pilgrim's wither'd wreath of flowers

Pluck'd in a far-off land. 

4th of July

(Dodgson's original drawing of the fictional Alice, via British Libary)

Today marks 4th of July 1862, the day that Charles Dodgson, on a whim during a boat trip in Oxford, began telling the story that would become Alice's adventures in Wonderland to Robinson Duckworth, Edith Liddell, Alice Liddell, and Lorina Liddell. The tale continued over subsequent weeks and further into the summer.

(Photo, detail of Christ Church, Oxford, image by Wordlander)

ARTE's documentary which now is uploaded with English subtitles to my Youtube and Archive.org (with thanks to @Hatteriastrange for subbing) goes into this day in more detail :)