The Uses of Disenchantment
T able of C ontents
List of Illustrations... ..
Acknowledgements...xiv Introduction...1 Catriona McAra and David Calvin
Part One: History and Definitions
The German Enlightenment and Romantic Marchen as Antimarchen...18 Laura Martin
Reader Beware: Apuleius, Metafiction and the Literary Fairy Tale...37 Stijn Praet
Some Notes on Intertextual Frames in Anti-Fairy T ales...51 Larisa Prokhorova
Part Two: Twisted Film and Animation
Wonderland Lost and Found? Nonsensical Enchantment and Imaginative Reluctance in Revisionings o f Lewis Carroll’s Alice Tales... 62 Anna Kdrchy
The Forceful Imagination o f Czech Surrealism: The Folkloric
as Critical Culture... 75 Suzanne Keller
Bruno Schulz’s “Generatio Aequivoca”: Sites of (Dis)Enchnntment
in the Quay Brothers’ Street o f Crocodiles...$4
Suzanne Buchan
Table of Contents
Part Three; Surrealist Anti-Tales
“B lind D ate” : T a n n in g ’s S u rrea list A n ti- T a le ... 100 C atriona M cA ra
T he Lum inary Forest: R o b ert D esn o s an d U n ic a Z iirn ’s T a le s
o f (D is)E nchantm ent and T ra n s fo rm a tio n ... 115 E sra Plum er
Paula Rego, Ja n e E yre and the R e -E n c h a n tm e n t o f B lu e b e a r d ... 130 H elen Stoddart
Part Four: Sensorial Anti-Tales
V isual A nti-T ales: T h e P h an ta sm a g o ric P rin ts o f F ra n c isc o G o y a
and W illiam B la k e ... ...142 Isabelle van den B roeke
In the R ealm o f the Senses: T o m o k o K o n o ik e ’s V isu a l R e c a stin g
o f “L ittle R ed R iding H o o d ” ... 152 M ayako M urai
Part Five: Black Humour
The Phoney and the R eal: R o ald D a h l’s R e v o ltin g R h y m e s
as A n ti-T ales... ... 164 C hristina M urdoch
“You K now H ow H appy K ings A re ” : T h e A n ti-F a iry T a le s
o f Jam es T h u rb e r... ... 173 John P atrick P azdziora
Landscapes o f A n ti-T ale U ncertainty: The D a rk K n ig h t... 185 D eborah K night
M etam orphoric E nch an tm en t in R ikki D u c o rn e t’s A n ti- T a le s ... 2 0 3 M ichelle R yan-S autour
Part Six: Inverted (Anti-)Fairy Tales
B lo o d on the S now : In verting “S now W hite” in the V am pire Tales o f N eil G aim an and T anith L e e ... 220 Je ssic a T iffin
In H e r R e d -H o t Shoes: R e-T elling “Snow W hite” from the Q ueen’s P o in t o f V ie w ... 231 D av id C a lv in
In th e S h a d o w o f th e V illain: F airy T ale V illains Tell their Side
o f th e S t o r y ... 246 M a ry C ro c k e r C o o k
E x p lo d in g th e G lass B ottles: C onstructing the Postcolonial “Bluebeard”
T a le in N alo H o p k in so n ’s “T he Glass B ottle T rick” ... 253 N ata lie R o b in so n
Part Seven: (Post) Modern Anti-Tales
A .S . B y a tt an d “T h e D jin n ” : T he P olitics and Epistem ology
o f th e A n ti- T a le ... ...264 D e fn e Q izakga
M a rg a re t A tw o o d ’s A n ti-F airy T ales: ‘T h e r e W as O nce”
and S u r fa c in g...275 S h a ro n R. W ilso n
M o d e rn is m an d th e D ise n ch a n tm en t o f M odernity in Katherine
M a n sfie ld and D .H . L a w re n c e ... ... ...285 M a ria C a sa d o V illa n u e v a
C o n trib u to rs 295
W onderland L ost a n d F o u n d ? N onsensical E n c h a n t m e n t and I maginative R e l u c t a n c e in R evisionings of L ew is C a r r o l l ’ s
A lice T ales
A nna K er c h y
Figure 1: John Tenniel, Illustration for Alice Through the L ooking G lass and What She Found There, m t .
Lewis C a rro lP s V ictorian child ren 's classics, Alice'.% Adventures in W onderland ( 1865) and T hrough the lo o k in g Glass (1871/ favcirtarç readers by the am biguous ev o catio n a n d subversion of fairy talc fantasy narrative conventions. 'H ie dy n am ic interaction o f strategies of familiarisation and defam iliarisation1 2 results in a “curiouscr and curiouscr” inceflcctoal- imaginative turm oil o f m eaning-dc/form ations and rcconceptuahvarior,«;. Ï wish to arg u e h e re th at these self-destabilising textual dynamici, increasingly fo re g ro u n d e d by postm odernist rewritings, and canonically attributed to literary n o n se n se, can be equally associated with the dmidexr notion o f “a n ti-fa iry ta le /fa n ta s y .” Im m ersed in the Carrollian univerve, are invited to b e c o m e c h ild lik e read ers, w illingly suspending our disbelief to interpret A lic e ’s m a k e -b e lie v e tale in a literal, referential way. W*
em brace the fairy ta le fa n ta s y ’s alternate reality, where even the most bizarre things - fro m g ro te s q u e anthropom orphic animals to shape-shifting m etam orphoses - c a n c o m e true, to be accepted as natural simply cn account o f b e in g “e ls e w h e re ,” in an unknow able, consistently illogical, fictional re a lm m e a n t to e x e rc ise our im aginative capacities. Yet the illusion c re a te d is d e lib e ra te ly disillu sio n in g . A lice’s adventures seem oddly n o n -(c o n )se q u e n tia l, a lm o st static; instead o f a teleological progress of trials, trib u la tio n s, a n d triu m p h s, th ey are disorganised by an aimless wandering b e tw e e n n e a rly -in te rc h a n g e a b le dream-Iike-scenes/states- M eetings fail to e s ta b lis h a re a l c o n ta c t o r com m unication with characters that co n fo u n d th e a rc h e ty p a l p o le s o f good versus evil, and rather proliferate as m a d tr ic k s te r fig u re s, m isguiding the slightly amnesiac protagonist, w ho is p a rtic u la rly fo rg e tfu l about her own self-identity and w hereabouts. A lic e re m a in s so lita ry all the w ay through, embarking on a quest that q u e s tio n s its o w n v alid ity , as it has no real aim apart from a vague d e sire to g e t b a c k h o m e to th e calculable safety of Victorian E ngland’s “d u ll r e a lity ” 3 o f ra ttlin g five o ’clo ck tea-cups, books without pictures, and ra in y a fte rn o o n s . H e r ad v en tu res im ply a shift from predictable bourgeois b o re d o m to a p r e d ic ta b ly e c ce n tric, proto-surrealist nonsensical m adness an d th e n b a c k . In th e o n e w o rld o f historical referendalitv "we
1 Lewis Carroll, The A n n o ta te d Alice: The Definitive Edition, Martin Gardner (ed.), (London: Penguin, 2001).
2 Familiarisation allow s for the recognition of a fantastic but feasible fictional universe, reinforcing in terpreters’ expectations concerning the knowability of (an imaginary) reality, while defam iliarisation fosters the recognition of tnisrecognition, the awareness o f illu sio n ’s disillusioning potentials, as well as the succeeding delightful-disturbing “forgetfulness” o f ontological, epistemological, linguistic regularities.
3 Carroll, 131.
arc not [that easily] am used,” as the legendarily d etac h ed Q ueen Victoria famously claim ed;4 in the other, im aginary one, “ w e are all m ad” as the Cheshire Cat puts it in a witty conundrum that un d erm in es its own truth value to illuminate the very illogics o f W onderland. S ince the two worlds are alike in their uncertainty and their lack o f a solid reality status, limits between fictionally conceived reality and un reality becom e blurred.
According to the typology o f Farah M en d leso h n ’s R h eto rics o f Fantasy,5 the Alice-books arc “portal quest fantasies” in so far as an alternate universe is entered upon the fall down the rabbit hole, and then a passing through the looking glass. But here the pro tag o n ist does not gain any radically transformative knowledge in/ffom the o ther w orld that could help her in somehow changing that world and m aturing in h er own reality too.
The unchanging W onderland only teaches A lice that th e sole rule is that there are no rules (of chess, card, or language g am es alike) that cannot be transgressed, no homely knowledge that can n o t be defamiliarised as uncomfortably incom prehensible unheim lich, and no dislocations that cannot be regarded as journeys worth a story.
We get no real sense o f transgression, though. T here is no conflict to initiate the adventures, “once upon a tim e” is set in m ed ia s res in a “dull reality” that Alice is “tired of,” or “h alf asleep ” in, and there is no resolution by either a happy or tragic ending. On the contrary, the finales seem to further trouble the genre o f children’s literature its e lf by explicitly introducing metafictional considerations into the open endings. Alice’s sister dreams about A lice’s past dream and likely future as a storyteller inspired by that dream at the end o f W onderland. A n om niscient narrative voice questions readers about the com plicated in terconnections and much- relativised authenticity or reliability o f dream , fantasy, and reality at the end of Through the Looking Glass. The closure is m arked by a practically unanswerable rhetorical question: “W ho dream ed w hom /it?”
As Jack Zipes notes, the fairy tale fantasy o f the Carrollian kind emerges in the Victorian era, inspired by G erm an R om anticism , as an antidote to the barren, bourgeois realist novel. It enchants by its non-
4 The line “we are not amused” was first attributed to Queen Victoria in the anonymously published Notebooks o f a Spinster Lady (1909), and recounted with further details in the memoirs of Lillie Langtry. The Queen’s comment on a poor parody of her royal persona in a risqué joke of an equerry was soon misinterpreted as demonstrating her lack of a sense of humour, an epitome of the presumed prudishness of the entire Victorian era. See Helen Rappaport, Queen Victoria: A Biographical Companion (Santa Barbara: ABC Clio, 2003), 402.
5 Farah Mendlesohn, The Rhetorics o f Fantasy (Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, 2008), L
mimetic frenzy o f im agination and inventiveness transforming even familiar lopoi and them es o f talcs into mysterious, symbolical landscapes and nonsensical c o n fig u ratio n s that “lure readers to question the former secure w orlds o f co n se rv a tiv e fairy tales and the very real world of their immediate su rro u n d in g s.” 6 H ow ever, fairy tale fantasies arc also often interpreted as “cracked m irro rs”7 endow ed beneath the fantastic filter with a cultural critical po ten tial an d latent referential strata of historical social and biographical data. A cco rd in g ly , A lice’s adventures are telling of C arrolls ow n lifestyle, and the broader social circumstances of Oxford Christ C ollege, and V icto rian England. Their meticulous decoding uncovers hidden, sub tex tu al m eanings, as M artin Gardner’s annotations' demonstrate. E arly rew ritin g s, V ictorian authors’ didactic, parodie or political A ltern a tive A lic e s co llected in Carolyn Sigler’s anthology' support this latter asp ec t an d function as “cracked mirrors” on enacting Wolfgang M ie d er’s d efin itio n o f “anti-tale:” they stress more negative scenes and m otifs as m o re realistic reflections o f their own society’s problems, including so c io -p o litic al issues, econom ic worries, marital problems,10 and especially lim itations by engendering. These are fictionalised via claustrophobic spaces, ab o rtiv e plotlines, and scenarios of misogynistic abuse, part and p arc el o f a harsh reality that is clandestinely criticised within the ta le ’s p re su m a b ly secure (because primarily child-reader oriented, thus c a n o n ic ally in significant) realm by dissatisfied women- writers, such as C h ristin a R o ssetti or Jean Ingelow .11
This tw isted re a lism ca n o f course be easily traced in later adaptations too: ever-m utable cu ltu ral anxieties and aspirations are projected upon Alice’s im aginary fig u re b y m eans o f m etaphorical re-readings that associate with the m y th ified c h a racter self-reflexive, abstracted meta-takes on “real-life” phen o m en a. In terestingly, A lice keeps embodying the iconic artist persona o f each era: in the eyes o f the fellow Victorians she is the mystified, idealized, p u re-h ea rte d D ream -C hild, for Freudians the agent of
6 Jack Zipes, Fairy Tale and the Art o f Subversion. The Classical Genre for Children and the Process o f Civilization (New York: Routledge, 2006), 10S.
I Ibid., 107.
8 see Carroll, 2001.
9 Carolyn Sigler, Alternative Alices. Visions and Revisions o f Lewis CanrolTs Alice Books (University Press o f Kentucky, 1997).
]t) Donald Haase (ed.), The Greenwood Encyclopaedia o f Folktales and Fairy- Tales (Greenwood Publishing 2008), 50.
II Further outstanding female artists arc anthologised in U.C. Knoepflmacher and Nina Auberbach, Forbidden Journeys. Fairy Tales and Fantasies by Victorian Womenwriters (Chicago University Press, 1992).
infantile drives and neurotic fantasies, fo r th e S u rre a lis ts a traveller of dreamscapcs and an alchem ist o f the w o rd sp ru n g fro m the systematic derangement o f the senses, for the 1960s’ c o u n te rc u ltu ris ts a rebel toying with hallucinogenic experim ents, for p o s tm o d e rn is t sc h o la rs a veritable language-philosopher “putting m eaning an d s u b je c t o n tria l/in process"12 amidst epistemological and representational crise s.
Even if fantasies’ referentially su b v ersiv e c a p a c itie s are lim ited due to their interrogating real problem s re tro sp e c tiv e ly a n d allegorically, as Rosemary Jackson argues,13 A lice rew ritin g s still p re s e rv e a non-didactic, non-moralizing, and an ultim ately troubling n o n -fin a lis in g quality. Alice- tales dearly refute the traditional B e tte lh eim ia n th e ra p e u tic a l function of tales14 as affirmative means o f disciplinary id e o lo g ic a l norm ativisation in the bourgeois public sphere. Instead o f b e d tim e sto rie s o f socialisation reinforcing finite set scenarios o f being and te a c h in g c h ild re n to mind their manners, these are rather “wake up stories,” in v itin g to o u r recognition of misrecognition in identity positions p re sc rib e d b y cu ltu ra lly assigned master-narratives “meant to preserve status q u o a n d h eg e m o n ic privilege of those in control of dominant discourse.” 15 B e y o n d fin ite choices, a fairy tale fantasy represents the world as an “e x e m p lific a tio n o f a possibility to be embraced or avoided” 16 - or rather o f p o ssib ilitie s to b e embraced and avoided in a sort of M any-W orlds m odel o f r e a lity .17
12 Julia Kristeva, “Le sujet en procès,” Polylogue (Paris: Seuil, 1977), 55-106.
13 Rosemary Jackson, Fantasy: The Literature o f Subversion (London: Methuen, 1981), 91. See also Zipes, 107,
14 Bruno Bettelheim, The Uses o f Enchantment. The M eaning and Importance of Fairy Tales (London: Vintage Books, 1977). For a critique of Bettelheimian interpretation see Jack Zipes, Breaking the Magic Spell: Radical Theories o f Folk and Fairy Tales (London: Heinemann, 1979), 160-82.
15 Jackson, 43 in Zipes, 2006,91.
16 Jackson, 35 in Zipes, ibid.
17 Many-Worlds is a postulate of quantum physics that argues that all possible alternative histories and futures are real on accounts o f their representing a potentially actual world or universe. And this already leads us to the Cheshire Cat disappearing, always elsewhere, leaving only a grin behind, here and (here - eerily reminiscent of the early twentieth century (1930s) physics thought-experiment, a favourite example for the Copenhagen interpretation o f quantum-mechanics, called the “Schrôdinger’s Cat paradox.” It argues for the simultaneous coexistence of multiple, parallel realities’ potentialities, where the actualisation of any of the superpositioned states depend on the human observer, whose experience/cognition/interpretation literally realises the abstract concept of truth/reality, and calls into life one actuality out of the spectrum of multiple possibilities, which continue to exist unactualised.
One o f the m o st im p o rta n t fea tu re s o f the postm odern reinterpretations of A licc-talcs is p re c ise ly th a t th ey inhabit m ultiple alternate universes' (un)rcalitics at th e sa m e tim e on v ario u s grounds. First of all, the original always lurks b e n e a th th e ad a p ta tio n as its prim ordial subtext, but here the two-volume set o f A lic e 's A d v e n tu r e s in W onderland and Through the Looking G lass a lre a d y c o n s titu te s a d ia lo g ic unit o f Genettian hypolext,1*
almost n ec essarily e lic itin g fu rth e r polylogic variants, that frequently con/fuse the e p iso d e s, c h a ra c te rs and puns o f the tw o books within the new retelling. A p p a re n tly , a m o n g a d a p ta tio n s o f Alice, we rarely ever find
“duplications,” in th e Z ip e sia n sen se o f the term , sim ply because of the difficulty to d efin e th e o r ig in a l’s can o n ical form , plot or moral that the duplication co u ld p e rp e tu a te . S im ilarly , the im pressive number of
“revisions” d o n o t so m u c h n e c e ssa rily q uestion, challenge, or subvert the story by in c o rp o ra tin g n e w v alu es, perspectives, aesthetics, or politics, as Zipes claim s “c ritic a l re v is io n s ” d o .* 19 R ather, they gain inspiration from the original, to re im a g in e the sa m e fantasy patterns with a different manifest d rea m c o n te n t, an d th u s co u ld be called “creative revisions.”20 The familiarity w ith C a rro ll’s original is not a prerequisite o f comprehension but certainly helps in en ric h in g the interpretation by providing a background, a relational rea lm o f re fe re n c e , a lre ad y contrasted with the canonical Perraultian, G rim m ia n fairy tale trad itio n it subverts. Sometimes, in a Chinese box- o r R u s sia n d o ll-lik e structure, the Carrollian original’s fictional realm m ig h t b e in v o lv e d as m ake-believe within the revision’s fictional realm c o n s titu tin g th e sto ry -w o rld ’s truthful reality. This is the case when a c h a ra c te r o f the a d a p ta tio n ’s alternate universe is seen reading or enacting A lic e 's A d v e n tu r e s in W o n d erla n d: the original is fictionalised within the fac tu alised re w rite .
,s According to Gérard G enette’s notion o f transtextuality, a text never stands on its own, but in an obvious or concealed relationship with other texts. Hypotext is a text that refers to its sources, previous editions or versions. It is immediately connected to paratext: the apparatus that surrounds the main textual body with extra information, such as illustration, preface, introduction, bibliography, or even typography. See Genette, Palimpsests: Literature in the Second Degree. Channa Newman and Claude Doubinsky (trans.) (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.
1997).
19 Zipes, Fairy Tale as M yth / M yth as Fairy Tale (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1994), 8-10.
20 Tim Burton calls his film adaptation o f Alice neither a sequel, nor a reimagining, but an extension, in Christopher Ryder, “Alice in Wonderland - Press Conference with Tim Burton,” Collider.com (23 July, 2009)
http;//www.collider.com/2009/07/23/alice-in-wonderland-press-conference-with- tim-burton/ accessed 30/08/2010.
Curiously, this gradation b etw e en in tra -te x tu a l fictionalisations ¡s already taking place in C arro ll’s orig in al, as A lic e d istin g u ish e s between this story she is partaking in and o th e r f a i r y s to r ie s sh e could safely distance herself from in the p ast on a c c o u n ts o f th e ir being clearly
‘"unreal,” fabulous inventions, belonging to the T o d o ro v ia n pure marvelous,21 likely inviting metaphorical readings to d e d u c e th e ir m oralising, didactic contents. On the contrary, the W o n d e rla n d ad v en tu res she is metatextualising about on the spot w hile sh e is b e in g in v o lv e d in them do have real stakes related to her lived e x p e rie n c e o f hun g er, confusion, disillusion, anger, hum iliation, and overall c u rio sity , an d thus formulate a story that should be read referentially as “re a l.” 22
On the other hand, the interm edial sh ifts a c c o m p a n y in g transmissions of a preexisting literary text to a stunning v arie ty o f d iffe re n t media bring about changes in dominant modalities o f exp erien ce affectin g our perception of realities. However, contem porary m u ltim e d ia l a rtistic adaptations like American M cGee’s gruesom e com puter g am e w h e re A lic e loses her mind along her way in a strange insane asy lu m ,23 o r A n n ie L eib o v itz’s highly stylised Vogue fashion-photographs co m b in in g th e sym bolism of late nineteenth century tableaux-vivants w ith a m o c k in g ly kitschy camp aesthetics24 are closer to the C arrollian o rig in a l th a n o n e w ould perhaps presume at first, exactly on accounts o f th e ir m u ltim e d iality . The Alice tales are conceived from the very b eg in n in g as p ic tu re books. The manuscripts first illustrated by C a rro ll's o w n th e n T en n ieT s grotesque drawings both enhance the nonsensical p lo t an d facilitate the understanding o f neologism s’ referentless sig n ifie rs lik e th e Jabberwocky or the “slithy toves” described as “som ething lik e b a d g e rs ,” “something like lizards,” and “something like corkscrew s.” 25 C a rro ll’s novels, authentic image-texts, are most frequently associated w ith im m e n se visual powers and nonsensical language games. T he m ere m e n tio n in g o f Wonderland 21 Tzvetan Todorov, The Fantastic. A Structural Approach to a Literary Genre, (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1975), 50.
22 “It was much pleasanter at home/’ thought poor Alice, “when one wasn’t always growing larger and smaller, and being ordered about by mice and rabbits. I almost wish I hadn’t gone down that rabbit-hole - and yet - and yet - it’s rather curious, you know, this sort of life! I do wonder what can have happened to me! When I used to read fairy tales, I fancied that kind of thing never happened, and now herel am in the middle of one!” Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, 40.
American McGee, Ajnerican McGee’s Alice (Rogue Entertainment. Electronic Arts, 2000).
24 Annie Leibovitz, “Alice in Wonderland Fashion Editorial,” Vogue USA (December 2003).
25 Carroll, 226.
almost c o n se n su a lly ev o k e s th e m ental image o f a blonde little girl in a blue p inafore, w h o is u n a b le to m ake sense in a world, where logic and language turn to p sy -tu rv y . H er disorientation - shared by readers - is partly due to th e p re-e m in e n c e o f linguistic representation’s pictorial quality. T h is is fo re g ro u n d e d b y 1 itéraiised metaphors, mirrored verses, typographical p la y , an d p ic tu re poem s or figured verse, the “visual analogue o f p o e tic o n o m a to p o e ia ,” and “ artistic chirography,”26 (when a tale m ay ta k e th e fo rm o f th e m o u se ’s tail it describes). Our understanding of C arroll’s o rig in a l fa n ta sie s as im age-texts foregrounds the significance of applying d iffe re n t in te rp re tiv e attitudes adjusted to different media, and helps us to a p p re c ia te le ss effic ie n t adaptations, such as Tim Burton’s recent film ic on e (2 0 1 0 ). A lth o u g h in B urton’s Alice the nonsensical language and p h ilo s o p h ic a l g am es are lost for the sake o f a more coherent, didactic, m o ralisin g p lo tlin e, th e celebration o f the 3D spectacular visual style’s su p rem a cy o v e r d ram a tu rg ic sophistication can be regarded as the filmic eq u iv ale n t o f lite ra ry n o n se n se ’s celebration o f “sound’s supTemacy over sense,” w ith th e fo rm still predom inating the content, only transm itted to a d iffe re n t m edium .
A nother im p o rta n t ch a racteristic o f postm odernist nonsense fantasies approaching th e a n ti-ta le s ’ counter-tradition is their already mentioned m etafictional asp ect. T h e su sp en sio n o f disbelief allowing for an absorption into the a lte rn a te fictional rea lity ’s elsewhere (no matter how- eerie) is often c o m p le m e n te d by m ore or less explicit biographical contextualisations, an d allusions, tying fantasy to a factuality, that ironically proves to be ju s t as u n k n o w ab le . A surprising number of sequels in the recent collectio n A lic e R e d iix ed ited by R ichard Peabody27 comment on the necessary fictio n a lisa tio n o f reality and the realistic ‘life-likeness’ of fictionality. T h ey in te rtw in e (life)stories of the real-life writer- m athem atician-photograph C h a rles D odgson, his self-pennamed authorial persona L ew is C a rro ll, the actual m use Alice Liddell, and the make- believe A lice c h a ra c te rs. T h eir narrative play primarily concerns contradictory sp e c u la tio n s, facets o f the myths: Carroll as saint, weirdo or paedophile, A lic e tro u b le d by drug-abuse, senility, or her writer’s artistic crossdressing. A lo n g sim ila r lines, J e ff N oon’s book-length cyberpunk trequel A u to m a te d A lic e (1 9 9 6 ) ingeniously exploits the idea of time-travel to create w ithin p a ra lle l u n iv e rse s parallel imaginations, tracing a neo- Victorian retro -fu tu re , in v e n tin g a contem porary fantasy about past fantasies ab o u t a fu tu re , th at is already our present. Past, present, and 26 Gardner in Carroll, 35.
27 Richard Peabody (ed.) Alice Redox. New Stones o f Alice, Lewis and Wonderland (Washington D.C.: Paycock Press, 2005).
fu tu re s e lv e s ’ p o te n tia litie s a re e m b o d ie d b y d o u b lin g s : real Alice by fic tio n a l A lic e, fic tio n a l A lic e b y a m e c h a n ic a l tw in twister/sister A u to m a te d A lic e, a u th o r b y a lte r e g o , a lte r e g o L e w is C a rro ll by Zenith O ’C lo c k sta n d in g fo r J e f f N o o n , a n d so o n .28
O n a m u c h m o re a b s tra c t p la n e , th e A lic e - ta le s meta-narratively fo re g ro u n d th e m a lfu n c tio n in g o f o u r r e p r e s e n ta tio n a l strategies and the in su ffic ie n c y o f in te rp re tiv e m e th o d s in m a k in g s e n s e o f w h at we call our R e ality , w h ile illu m in a tin g la n g u a g e ’s r u le - b o u n d a n d lud ic aspects, as w ell as its u n sp e a k a b le tra u m a tic k e rn e l. I b e lie v e th a t th e m ost exciting co m m o n d e n o m in a to r o f v a rio u s d is tin c t p o s tm o d e r n is t Alice tale re p u rp o sin g s is th e c o m p le m e n ta tio n o f th e o r ig in a l’s “en chantm ent by the u n k n o w n ” - w hat C .S . L e w is c a lls th e “ lo n g in g fo r th e [I] know not w h at” 29 - w ith the re v is io n ’s “ k n o w in g d is e n c h a n tm e n t.” Factuality and fan tasy are in te rtw in ed , th u s u n m a k in g e a c h o th e r, resulting in the m isb eh a v io u r o f b o d ie s, d isc o u rs e a n d tru th /k n o w le d g e -c la im s , which p ro v id e re a d e rly e x c ite m e n t th ro u g h th e ir p la y fu l destabilisation of sign ificatio n s. T h e “ fa m ilia rly u n f a m ilia r ” w o n d e r s a re paradoxically d efa m ilia rised th ro u g h d isru p tin g th e f a ir y - ta le fa n ta s y make-believes illusorily safe, h o m o g e n ise d a lte rn a tiv e fic tio n a l u n iv e rs e by introducing troubling re a listic elem e n ts, fra m e s o r p e r s p e c tiv e s . T h is provokes im aginative re lu c ta n c e ,30 31 a c o g n itiv e d is s o n a n c e a n d in te rp re tiv e hesitation w ithin p ro tag o n ists and sp e c ta to rs a lik e , u p o n b e in g faced with the clashing o f p o ssib ly re fe re n tia l, m e ta p h o ric a l a n d m e ta te x tu a l meanings d em anding m u ltifo cal re -re a d in g s.
R ecent film ic ad a p ta tio n s fu n c tio n e x a c tly b y th e s e s a m e m eans. Czech p u p p etee r Jan S v a n k m a je r’s 1988 sto p m o tio n a n im a tio n A lic e presents a p u re ab stractio n o f W o n d e rla n d re d u c e d to a s im p le garden-shed, m in im alistic p ro p s o f lo st an d fo u n d o b je c ts , an d th e m o n o io g ic voice of a solitary child a t play. T e rry G illia m s u rro u n d s h is A lic e w ith drug addict parents, perv erts, p se u d o -p a e d o p h ile s, d e tritu s , a n d c o r p s e s to explore the shocking n atu re o f in fan tile in n o c e n c e th a t n e g le c ts th e culturally conditioned, p reju d iced sy ste m o f n o rm a l/a b n o rm a l differentiations in T ideland (2 0 0 5 ),32 a film th at fu ses fa n ta sy w ith s o c io -d ra m a . In Tim
28 Jeff Noon, Automated Alice (London: Crown, 1996).
29 C.S. Lewis, “On Three Ways o f Writing for Children,” On Stories and Other Essays on Literature (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1982), 31-43. 35.
30 Shaun Nichols, The Architecture o f the Imagination: N ew Essays on Pretence, Possibility>, and Fiction (Oxford University Press, 2006).
31 Jan Svankmajer (dir.), Alice. (Neco z Alenky) (Channel F our Films, 1988). See also Suzanne Keller’s paper in this volume.
32 Terry Gilliam (dir.), Tideland (Recorded Picture Com pany, 2005).
B u rto n ’s la te s t fa n ta s y a d v e n tu re film ic adaptation,33 a grown-up Alice constitutes a c o u n te r p o in t to sp ectato rs ravished by 3D photorealistic sim ulation o f w o n d e rs th ro u g h h er inability to remember, and unwillingness to b eliev e in h e r c h ild h o o d ’s W o nderland (devalued as “Underland”), which she ab a n d o n s to a c co m p lish the fram e-story’s rationalistic, pragmatic project o f a d u b io u s fe m in is t an d colonial em powerment.34 These revisions are often tro u b lin g , d isillu sio n in g , o r difficult to watch, yet we cannot avert o u r e y e s fro m th e m ; w e are m esm erised by a surprising interaction of im aginative c o m p u ls io n a n d im a g in a tiv e reluctance, an urge to fantasise and an im p o s s ib ility to b e lie v e as real.
W h e reas A n d ré J o li e s ’ c la ssic d efinition o f Anti-marchen identifies the tragic en d in g as th e a u th e n tic resistan c e to the fairy tale’s idealistic perfectio n ,35 th e C a rro llia n fic tio n a l realm is marked by an open-ending, or rather an o p e n - e n d le s s n e s s th a t evokes a riddle-without-answer (of the
“why is th e ra v e n lik e a w ritin g d e sk ? ” type), the trademark wonderlandish nonsensical s p e e c h ac t, u rg in g in w h at could almost be described as a p o stm o d ern ist a e s th e tic , a n ep iste m o lo g y o f uncertainty where endings do not n e c e s sa rily c u lm in a te in u ltim ate answ er and final solutions, and w here th e c u ltu ra l v a lu e o f e n d le ss curiosity is redeemed.
T h e flu c tu a tio n o f b e lie f a n d disbelief, o f tale and anti-tale, realised via transitions b e tw e e n d if fe r e n t m e ta/lay e rs o f fictional ir/realities is perfectly illustrated b y th e c h a n g in g a n ti/h e ro ic status o f Burton’s Alice. In the first part o f the film A lic e d e n ie s h e r rea lity status in Wonderland, which she refutes as m a k e -b e lie v e ; as th e cre atu res say, she has lost her “muchness,”
m eaning h e r a b ility to b e lie v e in the authenticity o f their fictional realm, and h er b e lo n g in g w ith th em . H o w ev er, by virtue o f the implied readerly identification, s h e fin a lly a c c e p ts the heroic place assigned to her, willingly e n te rin g a d e e p e r la y er o f fiction-within-fiction, as the protagonist o f an e m b e d d e d n o n s e n s e an ti-tale (w ith in -tale) in Wonderland’s fictional realm ’s m y th o lo g y 36 a b o u t a b eam ish boy fighting the monstrous
33 Tim Burton (dir.), A lice in W onderland (Walt Disney Pictures, 2010).
34 In the surprisingly sim plistic finale, celebrating girl-power’s dubious feminist empowerment strangely com bined with entrepreneurial, pro-capitalist, colonising might and even a touch o f O edipal desire, pragmatic Alice instead of being married off to her wealthy, pedantic suitor decides to step in the footsteps of her father, undertake family business and embark on oceanic trade routes towards wonders of China, locus of exoticised otherness.
35 André Jolies, E infache Formen (Tubingen: Max Niemeyer, 1965), 242 in Haase, 50.
36 A more explicit celebration of the proliferation of fantasies against a rationalistic surface results from the numerous cross-overs and postmodern intertextual
Jabberwocky, intra-textually fam iliar as th e m y th ic a l messiah from t(ie famed Wonderland scrolls and ex tra-textually recognizable as a Jean^
d’Arc-ish feminist action hero-like re-em bodim ent o f V ictorian artist Jofo Tenniel’s original illustrations to C arroll [ F ig .l] . Paradoxically, Alice’s intratextual mythologisation results in her re je c tin g h er belonging to Uje daily reality of Victorian England on her retu rn , a rg u in g that its bourgeois conventions are impossible phantasm agorias she is u nw illing to believe ia
On the other hand, even the m ost d ise n ch a n tin g finales, are perhaps more enchanting than they seem. In the B u rto n m o v ie ’s finale, Alice’s concluding farewell remark to her crazy sp in ster A u n t (who is stuck in a Sleeping Beauty-like fantasy, waiting for h er P rin c e Charming), is that,
“There is no prince, Aunt Imogene. Y ou need to ta lk to someone about these delusions.” The line seems to su g g est a forced normative rationalisation, but at the same time could im ply th a t A u n t Imogene should keep on sharing the story, on talking tow ards a com m u n al dreaming-on, Similarly, the closing image of the caterpillar-turned-butterfly may refer not so much to kitsch clichés o f m oral m atu rin g , but rather to the destabilisation of the fantasy/reality divide and an o pening up of multiple possible worlds and alternate realities’ po ten tialities by invoking the Taoist maxim on human life’s potentially bein g m erely a butterfly’s dream.
Thus imaginative enchantment, or rational disenchantm ent, might very well be a matter of two kinds o f readerly attitudes, or interpretive positionalities that Hugh Haughton inventively associates with Carrollian characters, the Gryphon and the Queen.37 On the one hand there are the
borrowings/allusions, ranging from a framing familiar from the Wizard of Oz, to a mighty mouse warrior resembling the Chronicles o f Narnia's Reepicheep, to the two queen’s resembling Queen Elizabeth from Blackadder and star-chef Nigella respectively, Johnny Depp’s Mad Hatter, a fusion of Willie Wonka, Edward Scissorhands, and Sweeney Todd, or Alice’s father bearing the name of Charles Kingsley, author of another Victorian fantasy best-seller, The Water Babies: A Fairy Tale for a Land Baby (1863). The problem here is not so much the lack of originality one would be naive to demand, but the chaotic, unjustified confusion of different imaginings lacking a systematic pattern, and even more so the failure to benefit from the riches of the Carrollian fantasy. However, ambiguity is a defining feature of Alice-tales.
37 The two stances Haughton refers to are: ‘“No, noi The adventures first,’ said the Gryphon in an impatient tone: ‘explanations take such a dreadful time.’” (109)
“but the Red Queen interrupted her impatiently. ‘That’s just what I complain of!
You should have meant! What do you suppose is the use of a child without any meaning? Even a joke should have some meaning - and a child’s more important than a joke, I hope,”’ Carroll, 265, Haughton ix-lxvi .
enchanted G ryphons w ho sim ply wish to enjoy a children's story without making any efforts at serious interpretations, and who claim that adventures should com e first since ex planations are such a waste o f time. On the other hand, d isenchanting/ed Q ueens insist that even jokes should have meanings, that one should m ake an attem pt to make sense, especially when it com es to ch ild ren and an ad u lt’s responsibility for them, and stress that nonsense is m ade ex p re ssiv e precisely by its meaningfulness.38 These interpretive stances p u t forw ard fascinating theoretical dilemmas. They concern ju st as m uch th e (im )possibilities o f a perception without interpretation, and o f a joyously forgetful yet revelatory revelry in sustained m eaninglessness (see G ry p h o n s’ stance), as much as (im)possibilities of a neutral, objective m e aning-fixation lacking any emotional surcharge or affective side-effects o f signification -w h ic h wrould result from psychic involvement in or co rp o rea l reactions to reading experience (see Queens’
stance). H ow ever, in the lo n g run, the two stances fuse to create an exciting dynam ic out o f the im aginative (con)fusion o f incompatibles such as curiosity/scepticism, nonsense/com m onsense, fantasy/realism, immersive identification/ critical self-reflection: be it a Lobster Quadrille, a crooked contrariwise tango, o r the F utterw acken jig , the Gryphon and the Queen, and all can jo in the dance w ith A lice.
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