Braddy in Wonderland

So have you all seen Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland?

Holy Harry Belafonte, I HATE this movie.

I really don’t know why I’m writing about Alice in Wonderland so long after it’s come out. By this point, most people already have their opinions formed about the movie, so I doubt I’m going to change anyone’s mind. I just barely saw it, though, and I feel motivated – nay, compelled – by the deep, abiding love I hold towards the original Lewis Carroll books to speak.

That, and it’s been a while since I’ve had a good angry rant about something. I think I might develop acid reflux. I don’t think I’ve ever been so delighted that I hated a movie, because now I just get to unload.

If you just watch the movie without actually LISTENING to any of the dialog, you may notice that it LOOKS a whole lot like what Alice in Wonderland should look like. And, make no mistake, the visuals are fantastic. Every character looks perfect. Yes, I know the Mad Hatter is just Johnny Depp in another bizarre and slightly effeminate costume, but I think it’s a good look for the CHARACTER, if you can forget about the actor. The Queens look brilliantly strange – and I actually think I like Anne Hathaway’s mincing princess look over Helena Bonham Carter’s bloated head effect (more on that later, though).

The problem, though, is that the film sounds like it’s embarrassed by its source material. The original Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (and its sister novel, Through the Looking Glass) aren’t so much structured narratives as they are a romp through the craziest nursery rhymes you’ve ever heard. Most of the famous sequences from the original novels are explicitly structured after nursery rhymes – like Tweedledum and Tweedledee or the Queen and Knave of Hearts. Even sequences that aren’t explicitly from nursery rhymes have a nursery-rhyme feel. Think of the Mad Hatter and the March Hare stuffing the Dormouse into a teapot, then think of Peter Pumpkin-Eater – see what I mean?

The minds behind the new Alice in Wonderland seem to think the movie should be more “mature,” not all caught up in this nursery rhyme nonsense. They even go so far as to change the name: Alice is now having adventures in Un-derland, not Won-derland. “Look,” they say subtly, “we changed the name so it’s DARK now. This isn’t your sissy kid’s book – this is DEEP.”

Actually, I think most of the problems with Alice in Wonderland can be summed up by just complaining about the NAMES of things. It seems a silly complaint, but I find it deeply symbolic (and, besides, when you’re talking about Alice in Wonderland, a little silliness SHOULD be right at home).

The movie gets the names of EVERYTHING all wrong, and there’s no greater evidence of that than the way the poem “Jabberwocky” is used in the plot. In the original novels, “Jabberwocky” is a nonsense poem Alice finds in the Looking-Glass world – and that’s it. The genius of the poem is in the way the words IMPLY meaning without actually meaning anything. Take a look at this:

‘Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

Half those words don’t actually mean anything, but they FEEL like they do. You can imagine what something “mimsy” would be like. Personally, I think of milkweed, but that’s just me. Even when Humpty Dumpty (if you’re playing the nursery rhyme drinking game, you can take a shot now) explains the meaning of the words, he REMAINS vague – a “tove” is “something like a badger, something like a Lizard, and something like a corkscrew.” The truth is, the meaning is completely irrelevant – it’s all about the delicious sounds and the images they create in your head.

The Burton flick, though, takes all these strange, wild words and ties them down to explicit meanings. I NEVER thought the Bandersnatch looked anything like that great shambling dog-muppet from the movie, nor did I imagine the Jubjub bird looking quite like that. The Jabberwocky… well, that looked all right, but there’s a pretty famous illustration of the beast that they’d probably be crucified if they strayed from.

But still, they got the NAME of the creature wrong (and yes, even I’ll acknowledge that this is a petty complaint). The POEM is called “Jabberwocky.” The MONSTER is called “Jabberwock.”

The “Frabjous Day” bit is the BIGGEST offender here, though. In the original poem, even though we don’t know what “frabjous” means, it’s obviously an exclamation of delight. “Frabjous day” is said in the same way someone would say “happy day.” It’s NOT some foretold future event. The Alice movie turns the poem into a prophecy about the “Frabjous Day,” which I found tragic. When you attach a definition to the poem, you weigh it down to the point where it can’t move anymore – and that’s a shame, because the poem used to dance.

The film ruins most of the original elements from the book by endowing the nonsense names with significance. Then, they continue to mess things up by trying to create nonsense names that have the same strength as Carroll’s originals. The problem, though, is that the words they come up with are just STUPID. They assign names to the juice Alice drinks to shrink and the cake she eats to grow – and I can’t for the life of me figure out why. These items lasted 150 years without names, and they sure didn’t need names now, especially not ones that sound like something a six-year-old came up with while trying to recreate the complete works of Robert Jordan – uninteresting and completely forgettable. Seriously, I don’t remember what they even called the darn things, so why include the names.

And the Hatter’s dance at the end of the movie… I think they called it “Funterwaggin” or something like that. The entire time, though, I thought of someone committing unspeakable atrocities with a Radio Flyer, which is NOT what the film intended, I’m sure.

Strangely enough, though, it’s the names that remain true to the original story that bug me the most – simply because they now feel out of place in the story. I mean, sure, they CALL that thing in the green hat the Mad Hatter, but he moves and acts a whole lot more like Aragorn from The Lord of the Rings.

Let’s beat that comparison some more. Alice is Frodo, the Red Queen is Sauron, the White Queen is Galadriel, the Tweedle Twins are Legolas and Gimli, and the Dormouse is Reepicheep.

I know that last one’s from Chronicles of Narnia, but… screw you.

Speaking of Lord of the Rings, there seems to be some rule now that every big fantasy flick has to end with an epic battle. Now, I like a big fight as much as the next guy (actually, considering my favorite storytelling medium regularly involves men in spandex punching aliens who are shooting them with guns loaded with bears wielding chainsaws, I probably like a big fight MORE than the next guy). Battles, though, are more appropriate in works like Lord of the Rings and Narnia, when the whole story is told DURING A WAR.

Now, there is a bit of war imagery in Alice in Wonderland. Still, the biggest fight in BOTH books is over a broken rattle. That’s it. Lewis Carroll’s work didn’t NEED a big dumb fight because the story was more about the innocent explorations of a child, which often lead into nonsense. Get rid of the nonsense, and you have Alice talking to herself for two hours.

“We can’t have that,” say the producers, “so let’s have her be the prophesied warrior that delivers the land from darkness. Why not?”

I’ll tell you why not: because THAT’S NOT ALICE IN WONDERLAND. You take the nonsense away from Alice in Wonderland, and it turns into… The Once and Future King, apparently.

And, yeah, ALL the nonsense is gone. Every little bit of nonsense from the original source material is explained away, rationalized. The Cheshire Cat doesn’t just “disappear,” but he’s “good at evaporating” – which makes me think there’s a course at the local community college for that. The Hatter’s not mad “just because,” but he’s driven to madness by the Jabberwock’s attack (and, frankly, for a “Mad” Hatter, he seems pretty lucid most of the time). Even the Red Queen’s bulbous head is explained away as a birth defect.

I could go on (ask me sometime about the Knave of Hearts, I dare you), but I’m writing this late at night, and I have work in the morning. Let me sum up like this: Tim Burton’s adaptation of the J.R.R. Tolkien epic fantasy The Lord of the Rings somehow showed up to my birthday party wearing a “My Name Is Alice in Wonderland” sticker. When it noticed the mistake, it chose instead to pretend it actually WAS Alice in Wonderland and pranced around, talking in a high squeaky voice, little noticing me shake my head and sigh, because I know the REAL Alice in Wonderland, and boy is she going to be embarrassed.

Oh, and it forgot to bring me a present. Shame on you, Lord of the Rings. Shame on you.

I'm a Dork, and That's Okay

Sundays are supposed to be a day of rest. For many, that means studying scripture, spending time with family, attending church… well, I did all that this past Sunday, as well as indulged in several hours of gratuitous Doctor Who watching. And I must say that the episode where the Doctor teams up with William Shakespeare to battle witches may now rank on my list of “The Coolest Things in the World” between Jim Halpert asking Pam on a date and Ben and Jerry’s cinnamon buns ice cream. Seriously, if Batman had showed, I might have died of joy.

As much as I enjoyed my evening in the “Who-niverse,” it got me thinking about how many incredibly DORKY habits I have. Even though I claim not to be fanatical about any of them… oh, who am I kidding? I just said “Who-niverse,” for crying out loud.

Now, I say “dorky,” and I mean “dorky,” not “nerdy” or “geeky.” See, a “nerd” is someone completely given over to academics – specifically math and science. “Geeks,” on the other hand, tend to obsess over a single subject, usually something along the lines of Star Trek or comic books. I have a brother who claims to be a “sports” geek, obsessing over stats and team-lineups.

“Nerds” are starting to gain a bit of respect from the mainstream. At least, they tend to find success in their obsessions. As for “geeks,” they may not find quite the fame that nerds tend to, but even their little hobbies get a bit of decent press – mostly favorable. Both “nerds” and “geeks” tend to take at least a little pride in their labels. Nobody wants to be called a “dork.”

So when I say I’m a dork and have a lot of little dorky-quirks, I refer to a lot of different hobbies and interests – some nerdy, some geeky, all a bit socially maligned. Here are probably the dorkiest – and what I find so intriguing about each. We’ll start with one I’ve already mentioned:

Doctor Who

Why it’s dorky – Let’s look at the premise of the show Doctor Who, shall we? An alien from a planet of time travelers explores the history of Earth with various companions – both human and extra-terrestrial. He does battle with alien overlords, hostile invaders, would-be gods and the rest of the stereotypical sci-fi villains. Doctor Who ranks right up there with Star Trek and Star Wars among the holy trinity of science fiction franchises. It even has a cult following similar to the Trekkies and Jedi Knights – or whatever Star Wars freaks call themselves.

Why that’s okay – Doctor Who is one of those rare victories of substance over style. The show started with a threadbare budget. Case in point: the Doctor’s arch-enemies – an alien race known as the Daleks – were first crafted from upside-down garbage cans mounted on tricycles, armed with kitchen whisks and toilet plungers. Yet when England first saw the Daleks, they dived behind their couch cushions, too scared to watch, too captivated to leave. For the most part – and I’ll admit it’s sometimes hit-and-miss – Doctor Who represents the kind of storytelling I’ve always respected: emotional, engaging, witty, character-driven… not to mention funny (which is always a plus).

Batman

Why it’s dorky – Seriously, a comic book. You know who reads comic books? That guy from the Simpsons. Oh, and President Obama, who’s allegedly a Superman fan. But we won’t hold that against him – his suits are too nice.

Why that’s okay – At its heart, a good Batman story is a good detective story, a psychological thriller. When Batman features in a story, he does more than kick out teeth – although he does plenty of that, too. A Batman story focuses on the psychology of his enemies. The Joker’s mania, Two-Face’s sense of justice, the Scarecrow’s obsession with fear – each represents a primal human emotion, and thus affects the reader personally. The easy example is Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight – a deeply troubling examination of man’s evil nature against a backdrop that just so happens to contain superheroes. I could go on about my favorite Batman stories, but then I’d be fawning a bit, I think.

Poetry

Why it’s dorky – Ever seen a poet? They’re pretty freaky-looking: wild, unkempt hair (if they have any), bulbous noses, red from years of acne, droopy eyes – like they’re tired of comparing eggs to starlight, or whatever. As for young poets… well, there’s a character from Stephen King’s The Stand (and if that’s not a dork reference, I don’t know what is) who constantly writes love poetry to some red-headed girl (I swear it’s that chick from The Breakfast Club) who’s… well, just not that into him. So, yeah, poets are nerds that never get the social redemption of having an important job – or a girlfriend.

(By the way, I have to say that I just got about halfway through an episode of Doctor Who that I’m told is one of the best ever, only to have the stupid library disc crap out on me. I’m ticked!)

Why that’s okay – I think I’ve gone over this subject to some extent before, but I’ll hit on why I think poetry’s a big deal here in a few bullet points:

1 - Poetry, like all art, both shapes and defines generations (re: T.S. Eliot’s “The Wasteland” or Alan Ginsberg’s “Howl”).
2 - Poetry evokes powerful emotion – including love. People wouldn’t write love poetry if it didn’t work sometimes.
3 - Poetry challenges the system, encourages thought – and even if it doesn’t change the world, that’s a victory on some level. Look to “Howl” again for an example, or the poetry of Wilfred Owen, Langston Hughes… countless others.
4 - Poetry entertains. Not everyone has a thing for it, but a lot of people enjoy a good Shel Silverstein verse every now and again.
5 - Poetry adds an extra fifty pages of material to The Lord of the Rings that nobody actually reads.

Okay, other than that last one, they’re all valid points.

Silent/Black and White Films

Why it’s dorky – Ever been to a party, only to have the host pull out some Bing Crosby for everyone to dance to? Same with old black-and-white pictures. Sure, they were cutting-edge at the time they came out, but now they’re too old-fashioned. Anyone who likes them must be a square, right?

Why it’s okay – Yeah, they’re probably square-ish. Still, most silent films age remarkably well. I’ll tell you this: Buster Keaton’s The Cameraman is definitely funnier than anything I’ve ever seen with Will Farrell. It’s difficult to tell a story without dialogue, but not impossible. When you watch a silent film CORRECTLY – with the appropriate organ music backing it up – you learn to appreciate the importance of body language in human communication. Besides, some of the best of these old films – like Charlie Chaplin’s Modern Times – still do an able job of pointing out flaws in our current society. We haven’t changed THAT much.

Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog

Why it’s dorky – First strike: it’s another superhero story. Technically, yes, it’s the story of the villain, but it’s still all… comic-y. Second strike: it’s in the form of a video blog – the “morning glory” of YouTube. Third strike: it’s by Joss Whedon, the father of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Firefly, two bottomless sources of nerd-fodder. And fourth strike (I was never very good at baseball): it’s a musical. *shudder*

Why that’s okay – Dr. Horrible turns the superhero genre on its ear just a bit by asking the viewer to sympathize with the villain. And you do: Dr. Horrible is a shy, nervous young man, yet a bit charming in that way shy young men are in movies. Meanwhile, his antagonist, Captain Hammer is self-righteous, narcissistic, condescending, and a bit of an idiot. Dr. Horrible’s goals are a bit misguided, yet we understand his motivation. He wants to change the world for the better. Captain Hammer (and mind you – he’s the hero) saves the day mainly for the prestige it brings him. And then the two fight over – what else? – a girl. By the end, you’re cheering for the super villain – you want Dr. Horrible to win. Yet, at the same time, he IS evil, and goes to horrible (can’t believe I just did that) lengths to achieve his ends. When you cut away the drama, you see Dr. Horrible is nothing more than a thief, a murderer… an extremist. What the villain does is wrong – there’s no way around it – but you start to see through his eyes, start to understand WHY he does what he does. A little compassion for those deemed to be “the enemy” could do the world a lot of good these days.

The Powerpuff Girls

Why it’s dorky – Again, superheroes. Drawn in a style heavily influenced by anime. About three little girls. Who fight a monkey super-genius.

And I’m twenty-four years old.

Why that’s okay – As a freshman in college, I wrote a paper arguing the social and cultural relevance of contemporary cartoons like The Powerpuff Girls. I’m going to come clean here and say I was completely full of crap. It’s a cartoon – there’s not really some agenda behind the series that’ll improve the human race. It’s not really art – although I will say it pushes the boundaries a bit when it comes to what you can and can’t do in a “kid’s show.” It’s just fun, and, really, what’s wrong with a little fun now and then?

Now, we’re on to the biggest question of all:

WHY SHOULD YOU CARE ABOUT ANY OF THIS?

And the answer: you shouldn’t.

I think I’ve mentioned this before, but a person isn’t defined by their tastes and interests. My interest in Doctor Who doesn’t make me a drooling, acne-ridden fan-boy (although the acne and drooling certainly don’t help that image). You may never understand why I like comic books or literature more than sports and dancing. By the same token, I’ll never understand why you like Better Off Dead so much, or Leona Lewis’s “Bleeding Love,” or… I dunno, football. But we can still be friends, right?

No, didn’t think so. Come back after you can admit that Better Off Dead is a stupid, stupid movie. Then we can get to making those boondoggle key chains.

P.S.: Happy Birthday, Dad!

Greatest Hits: Why I Write

So for the first little while, I'm going to repost here blogs that I originally wrote over on Facebook. Probably not all of them, mind - just the ones that I still enjoy. The following first appeared on Facebook on June 12, 2008.

For some reason, I feel like I have to defend myself every time I tell anyone I want to be a poet. I imagine that when someone asks what I want to do with my life, and I answer, “I want to be a writer,” all they hear is, “I want to live in my parents’ basement until I’m thirty-five and obese with Cheetos stains on all of my clever novelty tee-shirts” or “I want to be mistaken for a homeless man, with wild, unkempt hair and exactly three warts on my nose, until my chronic depression and savage alcoholism drive me to stick my head in an oven.” (Sorry, Sylvia).

Writing, especially poetry, never seems like the most practical option. When I got into college and declared as a math major, I cited practicality. “I can get a job with math because math is practical.” By the way, Webster’s dictionary defines “practicality” as “a prostitution of one’s hopes and dreams. See also ‘conformity.’” Look it up.

But a lot of the stigma I perceive against writers may actually be projected on the “teeming masses” from my own biases. When I declared as a Creative Writing major, I expected that my classes would be full of hermitic nerds with second-hand jackets as patchy as their beards and spiral notebooks full of handwritten fanfictions about Hermione Granger’s passionate love affair with Legolas from Lord of the Rings. These social orphans generally refer to themselves as “fantasists.” The rest of us call them “nerds.”

For a long time during my childhood, I actually aspired to join up with the fantasists. I read fantasy novels. My first real exposure to fantasy literature came the summer when I was eight years old: my father introduced me to the Dragonlance series of novels. If you’ve never heard of Dragonlance, then you probably have friends.

Today I almost blush to admit that I genuinely liked reading stories about Schwarzeneggerian titans slaying dragons with their large toenails and wooing women dressed like they came out of a ninth-century Victoria’s Secret catalog. But those books actually contributed to my academic success in grade school, surprisingly enough. Nearly every year, I had a certain requirement for reading pages, usually in the 500-1000 range. I averaged at least double that every time, accumulating hundreds of points of extra credit while my muscles melted into limp balloons filled with Jell-O and all those other “normal, adjusted” children went OUTSIDE.

I’ve long since abandoned fantasy novels for the more respectable realm of “literary fiction.” An Oxford study I just made up identifies three distinguishing characteristics of literary fiction:

1 – The good guys don’t always win.
2 – Good storytelling is less important that making a point.
3 – Everyone has sex all the time, and no one likes it.

The great ethereal “they” say that all great writers should be great readers first. Turns out “they” have a point: since I began reading “literature” as opposed to… whatever the alternative is, I’ve actually discovered a few writers that have changed the way I look at life, not to mention the way I write. One of the most noteworthy is the poet E. E. Cummings, more commonly known as “e. e. cummings” or “the reason God invented Spell Check.” I first heard of Cummings in a choir classroom, of all places – and now that you’ve heard that I was a choir boy who read fantasy novels, you most likely have questions which I’ll answer by saying, “Yes, I did, in fact, get beaten up in school.” The chamber choir of which I was a member performed a Cummings poem set to music, which begins:

“i thank You God for most this amazing
day:for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky;and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes”

In high school, I liked the poem because it seemed to be giving grammar teachers all over the nation the proverbial bird. However, as I’ve grown and matured (stop snickering!), I’ve come see beyond Cummings’s tendency and found real wisdom in his writing. Consider the following passage from a lecture Cummings gave at Harvard University:

“My theory of technique, if I have one, is very far from original; nor is it complicated. I can express it in fifteen words, by quoting The Eternal Question And Immortal Answer of burlesk, viz. ‘Would you hit a woman with a child?— No, I'd hit her with a brick.’”

Violence against women is funny.

Cummings, I guess, is partly to blame for my poetry. And I’m not ashamed to be a poet, because, really, I can’t imagine doing anything else. I’ve wanted to be a writer ever since fourth grade, when I wrote that blasted poem about leprechauns. Fifteen years later and I can still recite the whole thing by memory:

“Every St. Patrick’s Day Morning
Get up at the crack o’ dawn.
The little people be dancin’ about
Enjoyin’ the mornin’s spawn.

These tricky and sneaky people
Have gold they give away
But only if you can catch one
On glorious St. Patrick’s Day!”

Did I even know what “spawn” means?

Well, a lot of people seemed to like that glittering pile of what I then alleged to be poetry. My oldest brother, who was twelve at the time, asked me to repeat the poem for him several times. He probably just got a kick out of watching me, because every time I recited it, I jumped up and down and flapped my arms like a retarded penguin.

Writing gives me an outlet. It allows sides of my personality that don’t normally get to come out and play (like the spastic penguin) to express themselves. So I can talk a bit more about how I hate touching people (and how I want to get over that), share the (I think) remarkably profound experience I had walking barefoot by the home I grew up in, and explore exactly why I think the story of Alice in Wonderland is so darn fascinating. Plus, since I write all of these opinions and experiences, I can send them out, share them, in the hopes that someone out there will agree.

Of course, since I write all of these opinions and experiences into POEMS, it’s a bit futile, something akin to putting out messages in bottles in the middle of a desert. Still, maybe someday, some poor, haggard traveler will trip over the bottle as he crawls through the sand. He’ll dig the bottle up, turn it over in his hands, and then angrily break it against a rock because there’s no water in it.

(I feel like I should apologize to D&D players, fantasy writers, women, penguins, and the rest of the world which I referred to as “the teeming masses,” but I’m not going to)