How is a Raven like a Writing Desk?
The other night I was having a discussion with a friend about what movie to rent for our movie night. I suggested we watch the new Tim Burton version of Alice in Wonderland. He looked at me like I was nuts. I know that not everyone is into the weirdness Tim Burton weaves into the stories he retells so I was prepared to leave it at that. But then my friend said something I wasn’t prepared for, he asked if it bothered me that Tim Burton was bastardizing our childhood. And then he went out on a rant about what a horrible thing Johnny Depp and Tim Burton had done to Charlie and the Chocolate Factory ending with “proof” that Gene Wilder thought the new Charlie and the Chocolate Factory was just a money making scheme.
Of course that is true. All movies, well at least all commercial movies, are made with the hopes that they will make a profit. That’s how studios decide they are worth the investment. I don’t necessarily think that negates their importance or worth but it does make me think what would Lewis Carroll think of all that has been done to his original creation. Alice in Wonderland has been retold in animated form, as a satire on Cuban society, as a musical, and has even been retold through a Korean musical. Though I haven’t seen all of the different variations of Alice in Wonderland and they all do seem very different but they all seem to draw on the essential themes Carroll was trying to get through to his readers, that there is something wonderful and magical about being a child and how difficult it is to grow up.
Personally, I don’t think that Burton did such a horrible job. The story felt more like an excuse to play with cool cinematic tricks and give weird characters a voice there was some sort of connectivity that was lacking in the story. Characters like the Mad Hatter who were foils in the original story had depth forced on them that wasn’t organic and didn’t really help move the plot forward. But it was a beautiful movie and entertaining. As far as book adaptations go, not too bad.
I think this post evokes the question of what we as writers expect from our work once it’s out in the world. The friend who thinks Tim Burton has bastardized our childhood (and he very well might have) seems to want the text left alone, kept pristine (and I might be wrong about this), but I think that’s impossible. That’s like saying I want to control what every reader gets out of my writing. Impossible. The various adaptations and remakes and spin-offs are kind of cool, even when they don’t succeed, they show what an influence the original text had on people. This is kind of what I think fan fiction does. To a certain degree, I think it’s silly, but after I get over that, I think, man, how cool would it be to find something I wrote on a fan fiction site? It means people are getting it, they’re loving it, they care. What’s better than that?
I’m pretty sure that when Lewis Carroll wrote Alice in Wonderland he hoped it would make money more than he hoped it would enrich our childhood. :-)