Alice in Wonderland is a timeless classic that is ever present as it grows even older, As with many stories of its age it not only received numerous adaptations over its years but it had also received two specific adaptations published by Disney, that of course being the 1951 Disney animated film and the 2010 Tim Burton directed film. Alice in Wonderland adaptations are always interesting to look at how a story about identity, sense of self, childlike wonder, and the many allegories to puberty and growing up can be told differently. One would assume that Tim Burton’s Alice had successfully managed to improve on any outdated elements present in the original film and even potentially the original text, but what’s most interesting is that I believe this is far from the truth. It is of course the job of an adaptation to substantially shift and stage “‘Adaptation’, in all its narrow and broad conceptualizations, implies change and movement.” and “[A]daptation involves an in-between phase of unsettlement, going from an old point of stability to a new one.” So what happens when the adaptation instead fails at this task and at the same time, manages to be surpassed by a work far before its time and societal standards.
These two adaptations of Alice share many similarities, but also a good number of differences in their attributes. Both characters are depicted with blonde hair and a blue dress that is most commonly associated with the character, However Alice’s appearance can and often is depicted differently and is almost always a welcome change, what I feel is a much less welcome change is changing Alice’s age. In Tim Burton’s Alice, she is not only a young woman but is also directly given an age, something that was never once mentioned in the original text or the previous adaptation and I believe for good reason. The answer to this is that Tim Burton’s Alice is a sequel to the original stories, but it fundamentally fails at making anything meaningful out of that and instead we’re given an unintentionally off-putting version of Alice that is an amalgamation of the remnants of the oafish young girl with the lack of any meaningful exploration of her as a 19 year old woman in 1800’s England, a context that is relevant in Tim Burton’s Alice. In the 1951 adaptation Alice is never given a direct age, she is simply just referred to as a little girl and that’s the only context the viewer needs. It also makes her strange way of acting more believable as she’s young and still has the implied naivety of a child. A core theme of Alice in Wonderland is developing your identity and understanding one’s self in the face of change, Alice will grow as large as a house or as small as a house and the constant changing leaves her jaded on her own identity and who she even is. It’s one of the core themes of Alice and it’s also why she recites so many of her lessons throughout the 1951 film, After all “Children’s morals can be formed by environmental conditioning” and aside from Alice; the environment, wonderland is the other main focus of the story.
What’s most egregious about Tim Burton’s Alice is the fact that it manages a rather promising start by offering commentary on the role of Women in 1800’s England. Alice makes comments during the opening act of the movie about now wanting to wear a corset or stockings, at some point exclaiming that she was imagining the men in dresses and the women in suits against the reaction of the one she’s sharing to, a man she’s expected to marry off of wealth alone which she strongly opposes. This is all a strong opening in potentially tackling a topic often unexplored in previous depictions of the story but once Alice ends up in Wonderland; the bulk of the movie, these themes are never once explored again as the visual noise of computer graphics takes over only ever offering Alice in a suit of armor near the end being the one time she isn’t depicted in a dress, and this very scene offers even less in terms of anything deeper than eye candy, Its as if Alice herself never even speaks in the movie there’s so little substantial dialogue. “Women and girls experience different mental health outcomes from men and boys for both biological and social reasons,” Commenting on those mental health experiences in such a distinct time frame could have added lots of necessary depth to the film, but it offers less even in comparison to 1951’s Alice in Wonderland. At some point in that original film, Alice would shrink down yet again in a field of flowers, the flowers speak to her all of which a play on some kind of exaggerated feminine stereotype, they talk about petals and stems like beauty standards and sensing Alice not falling into that standard, Shun her away calling her a weed. I firmly believe this is some form of commentary on the expectations put on young women and girls especially during the time, It may only be one small moment of a full length film but it offers deeper commentary then the entirety of the even longer Tim Burton film.
Alice in wonderland is an ever present story throughout its countless years since conception. In no part because these meanings can be pulled from it, that deeper commentary is present in the original text and therefore those who choose to adapt it should strive to add just as much of a deeper meaning in the characterization of Alice. The original team who put together the 1951 adaptation were aware of this to some extent, whereas Tim Burton and that team had tried but ultimately failed. Sometimes; even in our modern times, writers and directors can still fall flat and in this unfortunate case, that couldn’t be more true.
Bibliography
Mousavi, Nafiseh. “Media between Media: ‘Making-of’s and the Hidden Faces of Film Adaptation.” European Review 31, no. S1 (October 2023). https://doi.org/10.1017/s1062798723000455
Tanjung, Romi Fajar, Sigit Dwi Sucipto, Khadijah Lubis, Yuni Dwi Suryani, and Minarsi Minarsi. “Analysis of Child Development Based on Development Psychological Theory.” Journal of Education and Learning (EduLearn) 18, no. 3 (August 1, 2024): 1083–90. https://doi.org/10.11591/edulearn.v18i3.21769
Baar Mischa, Renata Anderson, Sandra Morris, and Kate Johnston-Ataata. “Towards a Gendered Understanding of Women’s Experiences of Mental Health and the Mental Health System” Women’s Health Issues Paper, November, 3–61. https://research-ebsco-com.ezproxy.tru.ca/linkprocessor/plink?id=14494c88-5ad6-3774-ae65-c83ac9e15faa
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