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.

Big Brother’s Harem

I’m actually quite surprised it took them 8 years to do what I suspect was something they’d had in the pipelines since its conception: creating the inverted harem. A preoccupation and cause for fascination throughout history, the harem was characterised by its impenetrability, by its secrecy and closure. So it is an inversion of the concept, since Big Brother is, of course, the opposite of all that. Or is it?



The physical BB harem itself is anything but secret, and is utterly penetrated by the outside world… except that we can only watch – we cannot physically go inside – and we know almost nothing about the entity that is ‘Big Brother’. We do not know who s/he/they is/are. So what we have is the modern version of an Orientalist painting: a vision of a world we can see and imagine but not touch. The harem inhabitants who, though theoretically are the hidden ones, in reality become the most visible ones. Whereas the forces behind the creation of the harem, as well as the painter of the picture, or the eye behind the camera and television, are the ones who remain anonymous and omnipresent.



Harems have a special place in the imagination of the west. They have been re-imagined in western art and film from the 18th century onwards, when we fed upon everything coming out of the Ottoman Empire. I find it a very telling paradox that one of the most defining cultural events of the 21st century – the conception and realisation of Big Brother – the definitive mark of the televised, digital age of voyeurism and surveillance – should be taking as its conceptual base an ancient world of containment that is no longer in effect in the worlds where the phenomenon originated.






Although Big Brother is certainly not alone - the harem is very much alive and kicking in other contemporary art forms (especially in anime it would seem) - it's surely the most influential and visible form.





And, of course, what’s so significant about this resurrected concept is that it focuses on the lives, behaviour and bodies of women. We claim liberation and gender equality and then, when given half the chance, reveal in gaudy, abrasive, decadence all that still lurks in the (apparently not so deep and not so far below the surface of the) recesses of our social and cultural imagination. Oh certainly women are no longer hidden – they are very visible – very, very visible. In fact, we cannot not look at them. In fact, we can see every movement, every action, every piece of momentarily unguarded flesh. And in the case of BB, there is containment. When we watch, we are Big Brother…



The Ziggyman Empire:

And at the centre of this excess of female bodies and feminine culture, is Ziggy. Ziggy is not Big Brother. Ziggy is like Elvis Presley in Harum Scarum: he’s the one we watch watching! He’s the Harem King. This is the Ziggyman Empire. This is the dark Lord we, on the outside looking in, do our slave trade with!





The entrance to the harem of Gerry and Seany has been no threat to Ziggy’s throne. In most harem cultures, and most certainly in the historic Chinese harems of the Forbidden City, males that could pose no sexual threat were placed in the harem as protectors and guards. In early modern history these would be castrated men. Big Brother (despite often appearing to be beyond censure) hasn’t quite gone as far as castrating its male contestants (although I wouldn’t put it past them!) opting for gay men instead: they diffuse some (although not all) of the excessively feminised environment, hone its borders a little bit, whilst not in the least bit depriving Ziggy of his ultimate position as Head of State and Ruler of Kingdom.









Although I have a feeling that today’s eviction will see the beginning of the end of the King Ziggyman era…

On a way more superficial note: I don’t buy all this Ziggy-praise that’s knocking about on Big Brother blogs. He’s a slippery character as far as I’m concerned: he is blatantly in his thirties, whilst Chanelle has barely outgrown the pram she keeps throwing her toys out of. He is also arrogant, judgemental, subtly sexist and dismissive. I absolutely can’t stand it when men (and women) dismiss an argument – without necessarily knowing what it’s about – that is occurring between two or more women, as ‘girly bollox’. Somehow being female discredits any heated and passionate debate going on if that debate does not involve a male. Take two men fighting about football: in my opinion = ‘blokey bollox’, in society’s opinion = legitimate argument about an important event! Argh!!

Also contrary to general popular opinion at the moment, is that I currently favour Nicky. Ok she moans, but most of the time I completely relate to everything she moans about: apart from Carol, Nicky’s about the only one in the harem who isn’t concerned purely with his/herself, and his/her own wellbeing. She’s cynical, wise and witty, and she’s seen straight through Ziggy. Although it’s Gerry who’s gunning for the post, it’s Nicky who’s my harem queen!



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