Beauty and freedom: A feminist reading of Tim Burton’s “Alice in Wonderland”

by Les

Here is a delayed review of Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland. I wanted to write about this movie earlier, but my Facebook status messages had stolen my thunder. Let me try to describe my wonder and insights more coherently.

I’m not exactly a Burton fan, and I think Alice is only the first or second movie of his that I’d seen, not being particularly susceptible to the appeal of his studied gothic treacliness. But Alice: Wow! The trailer alone had me reading Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass. The movie is actually a sequel: our seventeen-year-old protagonist (Mia Wasikowska) returns to “Underland” and encounters the characters she had first met a decade ago. These include the sad, vulnerable, and sweet Mad Hatter (Johnny Depp); his coterie of rodents; Tweedledeedee and Tweedledeedum; the Hookah-smoking caterpillar (voiced by Alan Rickman); the Red Queen (Helena Bonham Carter—bravo!) and her courtiers; and many others. There’s also a rather superfluous Knave of Hearts who seems to represent the egotistic but powerless male, but the male characters are not my main concern here.

This time around, Alice discovers that her quest is somehow to slay the Jabberwocky—a dragon-like creature that serves the oppressive, bulbous-headed Red Queen. Apparently, the inhabitants of Underland have been waiting for Alice’s return all these years, counting on her as a kind of messiah. For the Red Queen has usurped the crown from her much nicer sister, the White Queen (Anne Hathaway). The new despot has a penchant for ordering decapitations (hence her all-too-frequent exclamation, “Off with his [her] head!”), for reasons that make sense only according to the illogic of her grandiose narcissism. To restore the crown to its rightful owner, Alice must deal with the Red Queen’s pet monster.

Literally, this isn’t Carroll’s Alice, but another Alice in a parallel universe whose story includes themes from the beloved classic. Burton has transformed the innocent dreamer into an intrepid hero. Either way, she represents the best of girlhood: Her beauty does not cater to the male gaze inasmuch as she retains her wonderful, recalcitrant subjectivity. Even as everyone else is telling her what to do or interpreting her destiny, she insists that it is her story, her dream.

Ultimately, hers is a hero’s journey. Via Joseph Campbell, hero myths are about transformation, hinted at here rather obviously by the blue caterpillar and his metamorphosis. The child Alice must become something other than herself, and this requires a showdown with the most horrifying monster imaginable. I love her because female hero archetypes are rare: Psyche, Erin Brokovich, Neytiri in Avatar, Mulan, Xena and her sidekick Gabrielle, Selene in the Underworld movies, Elle Woods (in a sort of Iragayan mime-the-mimes subversion) in Legally Blonde. On second thought, there are many female heroes. Only they are not the predominant representation of what we call femininity.

There are at least three main faces of femininity in Burton’s Alice, three paradigms of “power”: The narcissistic drama queen; the people-pleasing goody-two-shoes (Cinderella anyone)—a tired character Hathaway often seems to portray; and the brave girl. The brave girl is the least identified with femininity and it’s high time that she became a prevailing icon.

Freedom is the ability to fight your own battles directly, without prevarication, without blackmail, without deception, without fakeness.

Beauty is the invisible grace that emanates when you finally become who you are.

There can be no beauty without freedom. This is how we should redefine femininity.

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Speaking of movies, for the five-day break I have from school on account of Lent (there were no classes as early as Wednesday), I thought I’d have a movie marathon. So I replaced our old DVD player, which was a casualty of the Ondoy flood back in September. (Yes we’d been living six months without a DVD player; somehow we hadn’t missed it that much.) As there seemed to be a DVD and VCD sale everywhere, I bought eight movies, some of which I’d seen already. Anyway, guess what the following have in common:

Kate and Leopold
Van Helsing
Wolverine

Incidentally, I was also thinking of getting Australia, but I had just seen it on HBO something like four times. And I already have the X-Men trilogy and The Prestige.

The common factor is—you guessed it—Hugh Jackman!

I dreamt of this Aussie hunk two nights ago. We were married!! (The hell?!) There were other details, but suffice it to say, the dream left me feeling like I had to see more of the Hugh.

Jackman as Leopold. Damn!!!!!!!!

Unfortunately, the love of my life has made some bad movies. Van Helsing sucked. I’m keeping the VCD only because Jackman’s in it. It’s a total waste of Kate Beckinsale’s talents. I looooooove Beckinsale and if she were to be in a movie, the movie has the obligation to be, at the very least, okay. But the only thing interesting about Van Helsing is the aesthetics of Anna Valerius’ costume. She’s a vampire-slayer, people! She’s not supposed to be some lame damsel in distress always to be rescued or upstaged by Jackman. After the Underworld films, how can we expect anything less than serious ass kicking from Beckinsale? In Van Helsing, hardly anyone else’s butt gets kicked but her own. She has no special strengths or skills or anything. Her gorgeous red costume and obscenely sexy mass of curls would seem to constitute just another rendition of femininity as eye candy. Then again, perhaps a heroic performance is too much to ask if you’re wearing an impossibly tight suit and high heels. Again, why does it have to be a choice between beauty and freedom?

Oh, Anna Valerius! You could've been so much more.

So much for the movie marathon. Well, I still have yet to pop The Time Traveler’s Wife into the player—I’ve saved the best for last. Hugh might not be in it, but I’m curious as to how they rendered one of my favorite novels into a film. Hope I won’t be too disappointed.