Alice's Adventures: Lewis Carroll in Popular Culture

Rating:
Summary: what is it saying?
Review: "Curiouser and curiouser." "Beware the Jabberwock, my son!" "When _I_ use a word it means just what I choose it to mean - neither more nor less." "You're nothing but a pack of cards!" Even if you don't know the Alice books by Lewis Carroll, chances are you have heard these quotations. The books are so well known that they have, according to one report, been quoted more than any other source except the Bible and Shakespeare. The timelessness of the appeal of _Alice's Adventures in Wonderland_ and _Through the Looking Glass_ can easily be appreciated in the book _Alice's Adventures: Lewis Carroll in Popular Culture_ (Continuum) by Will Brooker. It is an examination of the manifestations of Alice in the past fifteen or so years, with some attention paid for historic context to the rest of the twentieth century. That there is still lively participation by Alice in many surprising aspects of our modern world is a cheerful reminder of how good the original books are, and Brooker's own witty book gives hope that Alice will always have a role to play in the culture of any age.

But Carroll (actually The Reverend Charles L. Dodgson) himself has in the past decade played a darker role than he ever did before. In an age when we worried about pedophiles, and also worried needlessly about people accused in atrocious error of being pedophiles, Carroll's fascination for little girls has become suspect and smutty. Academic papers have been issued to reinforce such views, but all are largely circumstantial. Thus it seems wiser to think of Carroll with more magnanimity, and to remember that he was never in his time considered anything more threatening than a respectable Oxford don with an eagerness to entertain by mathematical and linguistic puzzles and stories. The popular press has followed the academic lead, however. The darker themes of Wonderland have been brought out in recent illustrations for the books, but even here, "... none of these illustrators taps to any noticeable degree into the reading of _Alice_ as steeped in sexual overtone..." Brooker shows how the original illustrations by Sir John Tenniel have always influenced subsequent illustrators. Brooker has great fun taking part in the activities of the Lewis Carroll Society, and finds a pleasant peer pressure: when he wrote to other members he found himself gradually using an address that was much more formal and polite "...than I would ever have used towards, say, the _Star Wars_ fans of my previous research."

_Alice's Adventures_ gives a look back to how other generations interpreted the tales. The stories don't have pedophilia in them, but these suppositions color our current view of the author. In the 1930s, there were abundant psychoanalytic interpretations, and in the 1960s there were psychedelic interpretations. Brooker also spends a chapter on an animated computer shooter game, "Dark Wonderland," with Alice as a sexually provocative heroine. The books themselves, however, represent to Brooker "...an innocent, timeless, very English work of charming fantasy, suitable for reissue to another generation of young readers." In showing Alice in current culture, Brooker has written an admiring tribute to Carroll and his creation that will have the laudable effect of getting readers to look again at an inspired original.

Rating:
Summary: Contemporary Manifestations of a Timeless Classic
Review: "Curiouser and curiouser." "Beware the Jabberwock, my son!" "When _I_ use a word it means just what I choose it to mean - neither more nor less." "You're nothing but a pack of cards!" Even if you don't know the Alice books by Lewis Carroll, chances are you have heard these quotations. The books are so well known that they have, according to one report, been quoted more than any other source except the Bible and Shakespeare. The timelessness of the appeal of _Alice's Adventures in Wonderland_ and _Through the Looking Glass_ can easily be appreciated in the book _Alice's Adventures: Lewis Carroll in Popular Culture_ (Continuum) by Will Brooker. It is an examination of the manifestations of Alice in the past fifteen or so years, with some attention paid for historic context to the rest of the twentieth century. That there is still lively participation by Alice in many surprising aspects of our modern world is a cheerful reminder of how good the original books are, and Brooker's own witty book gives hope that Alice will always have a role to play in the culture of any age.

But Carroll (actually The Reverend Charles L. Dodgson) himself has in the past decade played a darker role than he ever did before. In an age when we worried about pedophiles, and also worried needlessly about people accused in atrocious error of being pedophiles, Carroll's fascination for little girls has become suspect and smutty. Academic papers have been issued to reinforce such views, but all are largely circumstantial. Thus it seems wiser to think of Carroll with more magnanimity, and to remember that he was never in his time considered anything more threatening than a respectable Oxford don with an eagerness to entertain by mathematical and linguistic puzzles and stories. The popular press has followed the academic lead, however. The darker themes of Wonderland have been brought out in recent illustrations for the books, but even here, "... none of these illustrators taps to any noticeable degree into the reading of _Alice_ as steeped in sexual overtone..." Brooker shows how the original illustrations by Sir John Tenniel have always influenced subsequent illustrators. Brooker has great fun taking part in the activities of the Lewis Carroll Society, and finds a pleasant peer pressure: when he wrote to other members he found himself gradually using an address that was much more formal and polite "...than I would ever have used towards, say, the _Star Wars_ fans of my previous research."

_Alice's Adventures_ gives a look back to how other generations interpreted the tales. The stories don't have pedophilia in them, but these suppositions color our current view of the author. In the 1930s, there were abundant psychoanalytic interpretations, and in the 1960s there were psychedelic interpretations. Brooker also spends a chapter on an animated computer shooter game, "Dark Wonderland," with Alice as a sexually provocative heroine. The books themselves, however, represent to Brooker "...an innocent, timeless, very English work of charming fantasy, suitable for reissue to another generation of young readers." In showing Alice in current culture, Brooker has written an admiring tribute to Carroll and his creation that will have the laudable effect of getting readers to look again at an inspired original.

Rating:
Summary: The analysis juxtaposes perfectly with his life and times
Review: Lewis Carroll wrote "Alice In Wonderland" and is most noted for this achievement, but he did so much more, fostering the setting for later computer games, theme parks, and performances inspired by his works. Alice's Adventures: Lewis Carroll In Popular Culture isn't just another coverage of Carroll's life; it's a survey of how the characters he created live on in modern times, adapted since his death in 1898. The analysis juxtaposes perfectly with his life and times and creates for more depth in the analysis of Alice's ongoing effects on modern culture, than the modern biography could achieve.



Rating:
Summary: what is it saying?
Review: not sure what this book is supposed to be. It is really just a rehash of very old ideas about Carroll with some pop culture uncomfortably tacked on. The 'myth' has been dealt with far better by people who really seem to understand it (it's too deep I think for Brooker's milieu), and the pop culture is presented without any kind of analysis or penetration.

I think you are better off with Leach's 'In the Shadow of the Dreamchild' or Sigler's 'Alternative Alices'.

Rating:
Summary: IMAGES OF ALICE
Review: Possibly the 60s were the time when Alice began to enter the popular culture.In 1963 for example there was a girl singer who named herself Alice Wonderland and made a single.A month or two earlier Neil Sedaka had landed Alice on to the Top 40.
A matter of months later,as the Beatles began to conquer America,came John Lennon's 2nd book,like the first,influenced by Lewis Carroll's nonsense writings. (Carroll would be further immortalised by the Beatles when he was one of the figures on the Sgt Pepper sleeve).
Then came the first rumblings of the new American music influenced by both the Beatles and folk music in general.The Great Society were one of many trying for a bite of the cherry and lead singer Grace Slick wrote a song called "White Rabbit",more or less a comment about parents who gave their kids Alice books then wondered why they ended up taking drugs.
(Obviously tongue in cheek as Slick took more than her share during the Jefferson Airplane years:this was the band who she joined after the Great Society taking with her the 2 songs they'd recorded ,one of which was "White Rabbit". The rest is history.
Alice has always been at least of enough fascination to the music world as to have inspired no end of songs or band names from "Alice In Sunderland" to the Mock Turtles,Carolyn Wonderland or even the very title of the 2nd book ALICE THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS,who were a duo from the village of Ditchling in Suffolk and who wrote some music for a local Alice production.
The album was a limited edition and is now worth over £1000 as its regarded as Folk Rock or whatever but even the reissue is worth quite a bit

Someday the definitive book may be written about the Alice influence on popular music but meanwhile there's this one