Rabbiting on

I’ve heard so much criticism about Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland that I wasn’t at all sure that I wanted to see this movie, but in the end curiosity, and Johnny Depp, got me to a session this morning.

Where to begin? First of all, I liked it -anything that promotes Girl Power in an age that increasingly seems to be doing its darndest to make young women feel bad about their bodies and their abilities and their prospects is all right with me.

I’m not sure why people would bother bagging it for not following the original story, since this is a different journey altogether. So Alice is 19 year-old Victorian lass (entrapped by a corset rather than raunch culture) – well gosh, that’s the whole point of the movie. She’s on the cusp of adulthood and has to make choices about what kind of a woman she wants to become. Whether this Alice is the Alice is something all the characters debate over and over, and just how much of the original Alice is still left inside her is something the protagonist herself must discover.

And why shouldn’t Tim Burton use Alice? She is the quintessential Everychild, or more specifically, Everygirlchild. Who is better suited to the typical tale of a girl who is told to be sweet and good and obedient, and who is about to married off to a life of decorative conformity which puzzles her as much as the hypocrisy of adults? The world isn’t telling her to grow up, however – it wants her to remain submissive and infantile, pretty and passive, to in effect become a girl in a woman’s body, but to abandon the imagination and sense of wonder that can make childhood such a powerful place.

As for Wonderland, it, like Narnia, is one of the archetypical kingdoms where kids can wander without adult supervision, where quests are taken and boundaries are pushed, where mettle is tested and character is formed. It is childhood.

Alice and Wonderland are both a part of our common narrative, and together they provide Tim Burton with a shortcut to a story that is ultimately not about prolonging childhood, but about taking the best things from childhood with you into your adult life. It encourages imminent adults to go bravely forth into a big wide world that can be every bit as exciting and wonderful as imaginary places.

That it is especially saying these things to our beleaguered girl children is, as far as I’m concerned, a great big plus.