Alice in Wonderland - nothing is as weird as the original

Central Park, New York, has a sculpture of Alice in Wonderland surrounded by the Mad Hatter, the Cheshire Cat, the White Rabbit and the Dormouse. The image of Alice herself is 11ft in height, perhaps testifying to her strange contortions at the beginning of her adventures. It is proof, too, that the seven-year-old girl and her companions have travelled across the world. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland has been translated into more than 100 languages. Perhaps it has been turned into Martian.

The book has been the subject of ten operas and choral settings, appropriate for a work that contains several songs without sense. It has been adapted for 27 films, for cinema and television, the latest of which is Tim Burton’s version starring Johnny Depp as the Mad Hatter and Helena Bonham Carter as the Queen of Hearts. It will no doubt continue the tradition of arch overacting that the text itself seems to demand. Mannerisms must be exaggerated; costumes must be outrageous.

There have been at least two pornographic films based on the story, which will satisfy those who continue to see sexual secrets in the inhabitants of Wonderland. Many films, such as The Matrix and Resident Evil, borrow from elements of the Alice story. Salvador Dalí finished 12 illustrations inspired by Alice, and of course there are some who believe that Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland is the true origin of surrealism.

The first theatrical version was produced in 1886, and there have been countless dramas of Alice since. There is a certain justice to this since Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (aka Lewis Carroll) was a great frequenter of the mid-Victorian theatre, as a study of the court of his Queen of Hearts reveals. Alice has inspired many novelists, from Nabokov to Joyce. The influence on Joyce is clear, and it may be that Nabokov’s Lolita is soul sister to the little girl.

Alice has also affected contemporary musicians, from the Beatles to Jefferson Airplane, from Erasure to Aerosmith. The television series Lost made its obeisance to Lewis Carroll. An episode of Star Trek was devoted to his story. Yet enough is enough. It would try anyone’s patience to list the adaptations, retellings, prequels, sequels, video and computer games devoted to Alice’s adventures. There is room for one other derivative. A neurological complaint has been named as Alice in Wonderland syndrome; it entails the misperception of objects as smaller or larger than they really are.

It all began on the “golden afternoon” of July 4, 1862, when Dodgson rowed three little girls along the Thames from Oxford to Godstow. “Tell us a story,” one of the little girls, Alice Liddell, demanded. So it began. Alice fell down the rabbit hole, just like the holes they could see beside the banks of the river. Alice Liddell recalled in later years that Dodgson “had transported us into Fairyland”. She continually begged him to write down the adventures of her namesake. Two and a half years later he presented her with a complete manuscript bound in green leather. 

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