is the word 'diary' better than the word 'blog'? probably not.
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your alice is a wonderland.
Last night Caroleen, Heidi and I went to see Avatar in 3D on the giant IMAX screen at the Metreon in San Francisco. That was our plan. However, when we got to the theatre, the show was sold out. What? Avatar still selling out? Perhaps it's because of today's awards show, who knows. So we walked over to the Westfield Centre and discovered that Alice in Wonderland was playing there, and went to see that instead.
It was OK. It has a lot in common with Where the Wild Things Are (which I liked better than Alice in Wonderland). Here is what the two films have in common:
1. they are beautiful to look at.
2. they invent a new world full of new people (and animals) and new kinds of laws of how people (and animals) are.
3. nonetheless the new world doesn't escape the problems of the old world.
4. there is a weird question of audience with regard to these films, by which I mean:
a) they aren't really for kids (probably too scary, definitely full of ideas and dialogue that kids won't understand)
b) they aren't fully for adults either (the ideas and dialogue that aren't fully for kids aren't then developed enough to make them truly interesting for adults).
5. Inevitably, the hero of the story has to return to the "real world," where things are the same and yet different due to what happened in the "new world."
These are gross generalizations. Where the Wild Things Are does a better job appealing to adults when it leaves kids behind than Alice does... though there were glimmery moments in Alice when I thought the film was about to get interesting.
Of course Johnny Depp is great. I like the way the story is set when Alice is grown-up and facing the possibility of a loveless marriage, etc., and thus has to figure out questions of how to live. The ending is really unrealistic but that's not something I'd hold against it.
But mostly: it is beautiful to look at, worth seeing on a big screen, all that.
There's also this funny strand of commentary on Machiavelli in it. More than once the Red Queen (Helena Bonham Carter with a shrunken body and huge head) and her Knight, Stain (Crispin Glover with a stretched out body, facial scarring and a heart-shaped eye patch), discuss whether it is better to be feared than loved, and both come to the conclusion that, just as Machiavelli advised his Prince, it is better to be feared because people change their love feelings all the time but fear keeps them fastened to obedience.
However, Machiavelli gets proved wrong. (He often does. However he often gets proved right, too. That's how the world works--no easy answers unless you're watching a certain kind of a movie.) It's not a spoiler to tell you this because it's a minor part of the plot that you will see coming even if you've never read Lewis Carroll or Machiavelli. In the end one outcome is that fear does not always secure obedience.
But Machiavelli knew that, too. He was no crude teleologist. (A teleologist is someone who makes decisions based on what the expected outcome will be. For instance: if lying to the public will keep you in power, you should lie to the public.) In ethical philosophy teleology is often pitted against deontology (in Alice this role is played by the White Queen, aka Anne Hathaway). A deontologist makes decisions based on principle. For instance: it is never right to harm a living being. Or: Don't tell lies. When White Queen gets the crown back the laws of war dictate that she can do to the Red Queen what the Red Queen had done to countless others: off with her head. But that is against her principles, and she is a deontologist. Even if the outcome for most is better if she offs the Red Queen's head, her ethics are principle-based (don't harm a human being) rather than consequence-based (kill someone if it's better for the majority of people), and so she lets the Red Queen live (though she also banishes her forever--it's a qualified kind of mercy).
My point about Machiavelli: he said to his Prince--do good whenever you can, but do evil when you must. That means that Machiavelli is complicated, like that musician you tried to date in college (though Machiavelli is probably smarter). Machiavelli thinks that it is good to have principles and to adhere to them. But if adhering to your principles is going to make you lose power, with the result that all of the people you govern will be put in danger, then it would be stupid not to act in such a way that a better outcome would come to pass. He balances the two schools of thought.
Alice in Wonderland (the movie) does not. But that's not very surprising, I know.
I'm not saying that I think White Queen should have had Red Queen executed. About the death penalty I am a deontologist: just don't do it. (And there are plenty of teleological arguments that would be anti-death penalty, too.) As Caroleen put it: "I kept thinking the White Queen was going to do something bad." I thought she was also going to have some tragic flaw that would make her more of a real character rather than one side in a simplified Machiavellian false dilemma.
Also, the unrealistic ending I alluded to is not anything I discussed here.
2:28 p.m. - March 07, 2010
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