Why I must blog about Alice in Wonderland

1. I really, really like it
2. People are saying it’s morbid (blasphemy!)
3. People are saying it’s not for children (utter nonsense)
4. People are giving the same arguments against it as they ar
e for my favourite books (pure hogwash. Off with their heads!)

5. I really, really like it

Thus begins.

Having begun working Mondays instead of Sundays, the regular Sunday customers who have so trusted me (excuse presumption) have been replaced by numbskulls who are out to get the best deal. Nonetheless, being pleasant and unrelenting, I’ve pushed for Carroll’s version of Alice instead of the scaled-down, shaved-off, picture-heavy movie tie-in.

However, there have been nothing but upturned noses, winces and stuttering hesitation because “isn’t it a bit dark?”, “morbid”, “no story”? And is the movie also not a little “weird”, “crazy”, “scary”?

Really.
How is Alice morbid? The same way Coraline is morbid? The same way Thompson and Falconer are depressing? What about Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice? Or Gleitzman’s Once and Then?
Really.

Does one not understand laughter in the darkness?
Shakespeare, C. S. Lewis, Babette Cole, Colin Thompson, Ian Falconer, E. L. Konisburg, Neil Gaiman, Anthony Browne, even Morris Gleitzman and Louis Sachar (the two quintessential comic writers) all understand the textures that come with the resonance of darkness. It is in this shrouded light that a smile is illuminated and the palimpsest revealed.

It is not the circular plot, the death, the buttons for eyes that is scary. It is your fear that scares the shit out of your stupid children.

Obviously if the woman who has presumably clothed, fed and protected you frantically turns over your slouched body in a dark theatre and warns you frantically, “Cover your eyes!” just before the horrifying Jabberwocky sweeps in, perceptibly you would tremble in your pantaloons. Obviously if you’ve been told dark places are scary and “You see, what happens when you follow strangers”, without a thread of doubt you’ll sleep in fear.

In fear, what happens to the terrifyingly clever pacing, symbolism, imagery, musical score, and allegories (that are not painfully obvious like Avatar’s. Oh! Maybe you should just watch that instead)?

Or perhaps you should just watch the cleaned-up Disney version. After all, that version helps unravel the plotline you so desire to find and removes all the sexual innuendo you so worry about (no matter that the cartooned girls have miraculously pre-pubescent breasts and tiny, tiny waists topped with long, flowing hair) though one cannot fathom why.

You realise that children don’t see sex, yes?


That children who only know shapes of dolphins will never see the couple in passionate embrace? (unlike you who are so hypersexualised you'll only be able to see the dolphins because you were told they are there)

That the line of tension is for your pure pleasure and affectation alone?

Perhaps then you might also delineate that the scariest thing in Alice the Burton movie is the Hedgehog (the Red Queen’s game ball) being the only animal who could not speak.

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Happy birthday Allie!

Long overdue from almost a month ago. Is he not sweet?

"Yum yum!"

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And just this Sunday

"Oh my god I know I'm not the sourdough bun he craves so why is Farand smelling me?! And why did he put that big dog there?!"