Tim Burton’s Alice In Female-Eunuch-Land

I recently re-watched the Tim Burton directed version of ‘Alice in Wonderland’ after seeing it for the first time sometime last year. However much its world design looks amazing, it never really wowed me as an experience. It’s not bad enough to be adorably inept either, though, so it’s all the more painful for reasons of simple mediocrity. More specifically, something about Alice’s character always irked me from my very first viewing. What bothered me the first time was Alice’s character not matching her period in history; being made into a sort of proto-feminist role-model, apparently independent and outspoken before such things would have actually been allowed for her. Like some sort of hipster girl who could write a slogan that read, “I was a feminist before feminism was invented.” It’s the old codger history buff in me, perhaps, for not liking this movie to pretend that 1800’s England was anything like this for women. However, I understand that not many people want to see an adventure film with a main character that’s a man-handled and socio-politically restricted young woman. Also, given that it’s a movie with a female lead and has Johnny Depp playing a prominent role, it was a foregone conclusion that hordes of girls were going to see this thing, and it’s nice for them to be able to see something where a woman isn’t a whore, or simply the main character’s girlfriend, and who might be made into a warrior instead. For that, I was willing to let the issue go.

But it wasn’t until my second viewing that I realise what my problem with it really is and why this movie bugged me more than a little. What bugs me is that Alice isn't really warrior enough. Not in the way she should be. She isn't supposed to be a proto-feminist role model, out of sync with her own time period, she's a girl who's trying to make sense of nonsense! In the books (and the original animated Disney film of the story) she’s actually much more of a feminist because she challenged beliefs that didn't make sense. In Burton's version, she's simply going along with everything and insisting they've all got the wrong girl even as she consistently proves them right. The wrap-up at the end of the film is pretty pathetic as well. Her character didn't change that much and really wasn’t given any reason to. Alice doesn’t fight the Jabberwock for herself, so why on earth would she have been altered by the experience? She fought it only because others wanted her to - not a very feminist idea. And then, because of that, we’re supposed to imagine that she suddenly has strength where she didn’t before? The “feminism” is all superficial lip-service, as it is for so many films, amounting to not much more than advertising buzz-words like “edgy,” “young” and “in-your-face” without much care for what the character’s actually do or believe.

Pictured (from left to right): The Hatter, Alice, The White Queen

Absent: Feminism

The Hatter doing his “futterwacken” at the end of the battle is also probably one the most asinine things I’ve ever seen.