Who the f**k is Alice?

If Wonderland had only manifested itself once Alice had fallen through the vaginal rabbit hole then we might in fact share Alice’s conviction that her time in Wonderland is all a part of her dream. But Wonderland is Carroll’s and now Burton’s creation, as is Alice, and their creation spills either side of the hole. Wonderland begins with the start of the film and ends when the credits role, and is not confined to an underworld as such, and so we find we don't believe Alice when she repeatedly declares that this is all a dream: not because we know Wonderland to be real, but because we know she’s right about one thing – this is a dream – but wrong about the other: this dream is not hers.



“Why is it you’re always too small or too tall?” the Mad Hatter asks Alice. It's because Alice is not only a character in the story, she is an 'event'. Or rather, her body and its persistent growing and shrinking is an event: one that recurs throughout the story. Its unruliness, its disorder, Alice’s lack of control over it – in fact, the lack of control any character has over Alice’s body – is of major concern, revisited in the story from many angles – literally, graphically.

We see, graphically, in the excess and disorder of Alice’s body, how this adventure in Wonderland must be someone else’s dream: for it’s observed from the outside, not experienced from the inside, and therefore she can never be The Alice; she can never be herself. As she is frequently accused of being by the other characters, this Alice is an unwitting, accidental impostor in Carroll’s and Burton’s dream of a female – a girl-turning-woman – who they have called Alice. She is larger than life, she is exaggerated, fantastical – she bursts through the confines of the usual female body. Then in turn she is small and infantile, vulnerable, small enough to clamber over men’s faces. We have seen this girl/woman many times before: she is the fetishised figure of the feminine.



As a ‘figure’, a ‘motif’, an ‘event’, Alice is denied any form of agency usually enjoyed by the protagonist of a story, because she is always more object than subject. She cannot be The Alice, whoever that might be, because her body, her beauty, does not belong to her. Alice is the property of everyone who watches her, (so that includes us), setting her on a faulty, fraudulent quest from the outset, because there is no way for her ever to belong to herself and no possibility of her retrieving the “muchness” the Hatter has accused her of losing. She cannot lose something she never had in the first place.

So who is Alice? No one knows, and nor are they likely to while film-makers – especially those with claims upon the realms of the uncanny – regurgitate tired, over-used themes and figures and indulge themselves in equally tired, over-used myths about the madness and anarchy of ‘the feminine’.



Oh and guess what? There’s a monster in need of castration. And what could be fit for that task, I wonder? Oh let me think: could it be a sword? Yes? Well that’s handy because there just so happens to be one lying around. Somebody (the caterpillar? Or the White Witch?) says to Alice: “The Vorpal Sword knows what it wants; you just have to hold onto it.” Now there’s an instructive euphemism for any young woman.

*Spoiler alert*: And so, after much fannying around, Alice cuts off the head of the monster, thus vanquishing the sexual queen – and “evil” – and reinstating the virginal queen – and “goodness” – so that all may live happily unmolested throughout "Wonderland". Banality triumphs – well, it sort of limply drops its swords and slumps about looking relieved – and someone does a silly dance. Oh how delightful and all so unexpected. (Yawn).

Burton explores the extraordinary, or so I’m sure he’d like to think, but no floppy-eared, squished-caterpillar of a “feminist” reworking can save Burton’s Wonderland from the ordinary. As a finale, we are meant to believe that a re-imagined business-woman Alice happily hops off to colonise the new world, opening trade routes as she goes. I wouldn’t buy it: not for all the tea in China.



It’ll take more than a blue-screen-ful of exaggeratedly gnarled tree-roots or grandiose waterfalls to disguise this very ordinary world. And no amount of red paint on white roses is going to fool us into believing that this is The Alice. The Alice in Wonderland of Carroll and Burton is just a bit too much of a muchness.

Beware the Monkey Bird My Son



Last week in Luanda Eran had a nightmare about a monkey-bird creature. It wasn't just the content of the dream that caught my imagination, it was the fact that he had a dream at all. Eran claims not to dream, or at least that he never remembers them if he does, so for him to have had a dream that he remembered, and that it was so specific and striking in its detail, I found kind of touching. Of course, naturally, it was all my fault! In the dream a monkey bird arrived in our bedroom, and I didn't want to touch it, so I asked Eran to get rid of it, assuring him that it wasn't dangerous and it was just a nuisance. So he went to grab it, and it caught one of Eran's fingers in its talons and squeezed so hard that he called out - which I actually heard him do - before waking up. He told me the pain was excruciating.

Something about his descriptions reminded me of two things: Lewis Carroll's the Jabberwocky...
...and the henchmen of the Wicked Witch of the West in the Wizard of Oz...




Since its movie origin the winged monkey has maintained a
strangely prevalent hold on concepts for creatures: as this picture shows...



and I'm not even the first person to write a poem about one...



But here's my offering, and it's for Eran, and his rare dream:

The monkey bird

The monkey birds were the witch’s pets:
the wicked witch who cursed the birds,
and cursed the apes, and cursed the men
and turned them all blue.

I did not comprehend what I’d asked you to do.

The moment she died I took up her broom:
and on that throne I wore her gown
and her pointed hat in place of a crown.

And I stretched her stripy tights
right up my legs of wood
‘cause I could carry them off
like no-one else could
like not even she:
my predecessor of ugly nose.
Now I lay down with her man
and dressed up in her clothes.



But I did not want her creatures,
though they were part of the deal;
those monstrous servant birds
hanging on my every command.
Those tens of eyes, I could not stand:
begging for scraps of words.

So up upon my turret, amidst one hell of a gale
I sent them off, one at a time,
on a treacherous, storm-struck trail.

Fly my pretties, fly.
Fly far and bring me wealth
And I will use my broomstick
To sweep my ashen heart
and watch the skies and fear the rain
that will wash away your magic paint
and soak your feathers to your skin.
(As if the Icarus bird had a monkey twin.)

Blue ribbons of ink
flickering flames streaming forth.
I regretted my actions
when they plunged to the earth.



You fell through my turret and into my bed
with an almighty crash to awaken the dead.
I woke with a start and there it was on the rug:
it had flown in through the window
and was picking at threads:
all winged and blue and unnaturally bright
against the static of studio air
and a backdrop of night.

Maybe I really was to blame
and I had summoned the monkey bird
to awaken you to memory and dream
of which, until now, only I had suffered.
So out of spite I inflicted pain:
fuelled by a bitterness, twinged with envy.

So grouchy, like the Queen of Spain:
I hollered: “where’s my cup of tea,
and I thought I asked you to get rid of that thing”?!
And like the true blue, the soldier-servant you are,
you asked if that would be Ceylon or Jasmine
and went for the ape with the wings.



As you approached it,
it rose up and turned brown.
You grabbed it and hugged it,
but before turning round,
it took hold of your finger
and squeezed hard and pulled down.
And it would not let go
and it would not give in:
fearing for its life
in your memory bin.

You, the undreamer,
with your anti-dream shield
which failed to protect you
in the memory field
from dreams that do not happen,
and are not heard,
when you remembered your fear
of the monkey bird.



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