Alice's Adventures in This World

Watching the new Alice in Wonderland (2010) makes me think that there is

nothing new left to achieve. It cynically implies to me that the depth of art and

philosophy is a mere apparition that will soon depart; leaving the surface as

what it is and nothing more. It is another model of contemporary hero

mythology. The single-sided good signifies one incarnation of an event or the

simultaneous confrontation of a structural tenet of human existence: that one

begets another; two are unnecessary and soon become one. In order to offer

hypothesis for the deconstruction of myth, Levi-Strauss (1955) suggests that

myths offer a rational paradigm that is capable of resolving contradictory

beliefs (pg 443). Following this, the resolution of the evil perception becomes

univocal with 'goodness'.

The film is a timed return, possible without the original animated feature

albeit desultory with or without Lewis Carroll's baroque fairy tale, Alice's

Adventures in Wonderland (1865). Carroll delves behind the logic of narrative

with his prose--in it the Mad Hatter suffers from no more lunacy than any

other character. Alice especially stands for herself and makes discrete

meanings that are entirely misinterpreted by the characters of both

Wonderland and the garden outside her home. In the 2010 film Alice's new

identity is positioned towards our land of adult reality and against the variant

of her childhood imagination; both by her and by the reference to the outline

of her own predetermined life. I propose that this is an unjustified

interpretation of the Carroll text.

In this new installment oneness of choice is instantiated by a return to the

singularity of worlds. There is relevant discontinuity of another kind: Alice

must disassociate from her childhood wonderment to become part of

marriage. The attraction to binaries and homogeneity is a fear, a paranoia

about the risk of a future. My final thought on the matter is a question at once

reflective