Comparing Disneys Alice in Wonderland

INTRODUCTION
While “major events from the past have often been the staple of world cinema”1, world
cinema has not been at all genuine or accurate in its retelling of such events. None the
less, this dissertation aims to explore the notion of cinema as a historical record of
humanity, though not at all in relation to its retelling of factual events... One of the most
interesting aspects of film is the way that it has transformed and evolved throughout
history in different national and cultural arenas. Since its conception in the late 19th
century cinema has had many faces, from French new wave to British new wave to
Italian neo realism to German expressionism and so on and so on, each movement having
been a result or reflection (at least in part) of some social, cultural, political, and or
economic development. It is with this in mind that I write that cinema is a product of
society and as such has developed along side society, often reflecting our own history
such as our wars, technological developments, and political and cultural revolutions. For
instance cinema from America in the 1920s documents the eroticism of the U.S. at the
time (which would soon be vanquished by the Production code in 1930), and the coming
of sound in films such as The Jazz Singer (1927), while cinema from Russia in the 1920s
documents the nations economic and artistic strength, and the beginnings of montage in
film.2 Perhaps the very environment surrounding a film’s production is influential and
evident in the film itself. I aim to explore this potential relationship between cinema and
society through a comparative study to see whether social, economic, political, and other
1
Gillespie, D. Russian Cinema, p59
“Timeline of Influential Milestones and Turning Points in Film History”
http://www.filmsite.org/milestones1920s.html, (20 th March 2008)
2
1
circumstances surrounding the production of a film can be used to explain and understand
certain key aspects of the film itself. Hence this dissertation will compare Disney’s 1951
animation, Alice in Wonderland with Ephrem Pruzhanskii’s 1981 animated short, Alisa in
the Land of Miracles to explore what differences exist between the two films and whether
these differences can be understood or explained by the contexts in which these films
were made.
I have chosen to look at Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, and these two
adaptations in particular, for a number of reasons. Firstly, Alice’s Adventures in
Wonderland is a book that I am personally very interested in, and that furthermore has
been appropriated and re-appropriated into popular culture many times, in many different
ways, through many different films, thus it lends itself nicely to this project in that it is a
flexible text and there are at least fourteen cinematic adaptations of the text to choose
from.3 It is also a very controversial text in that, while it is quintessentially a children’s
book, it seemingly has elements of psychedelia, psychosis and other adult themes in it, as
many have argued over the years. Hence it is open to manipulation and alternative
understandings, which provides some leeway for filmmakers to express themselves and /
or for culture and society to manifest themselves through the process of production, and it
is precisely this ‘manifestation’ which I aim in explore.
As for these two films in particular, first and foremost they are quite comparable in that
they are both animations, and are both primarily intended for children, unlike, for
“Alice in Wonderland; Film and TV productions across the years” http://www.alice-inwonderland.fsnet.co.uk/film_tv_intro.htm, (20 th February 2008)
3
2
instance, Jan Švankmajer’s dark and troubling Alice (1988) which features crawling
pieces of meat and walking, talking, stalking skeletal creatures. Being children’s films,
they do not openly or directly communicate any social, cultural or political critique, thus
there is some inquiry necessary to explore the possibility of social, political and economic
influence in these films. Being animations, Alice and Alisa function quite differently to
live-action film as they are wholly different creatures. The fact that everything in
animation is (or was until recently) hand drawn means that visual aspects are completely
imagined and hence any clear connection made to a reality (a real time and place) is more
purposeful and meaningful than if it was simply filmed there. Otherwise put, “images in
animation are never accidental.”4 Secondly, and very importantly, the stark differences
(and similarities) between the environments surrounding these two film’s productions
provides a very good setting in which to compare the films themselves and explore some
of their contrasts and similarities. I have found that comparing two films (rather than
analysing one) is the only way to effectively execute this dissertation, principally because
it provides a means of limiting the amount of information at hand, as through comparison
one film defines and distinguishes the other... without comparison this project would not
be fit for an undergraduate dissertation, as it would require much more time and expertise
than I am afforded here and would become far too flexible and subjective.
There are of course some disadvantages in choosing these films as well, namely the lack
of theoretical and academic work concerning either of them. While Carroll’s novel is the
subject of countless academic works, most film adaptations have failed to warrant much
consideration. Disney’s adaptation was not a commercial success and Walt Disney
4
Kotlarz, I. “The Birth of a Notion” in Screen 24/2 (March / April), p28
3
himself is quoted in numerous books stating Alice had “no heart”.5 It was also nothing
new for Disney, animation or Alice as a text, hence it does not stand out in any particular
way. It is referenced in many books for many reasons, though usually only in passing.
Pruzhanskii’s Alisa is similarly scarce in academia, particularly that (those) written in
English. There is relatively little information on Soviet cinema from this era largely due
to state oppression, widespread apathy and helplessness of the people. However I am
somewhat fortunate in that Kievnauchfilm, the studio behind Alisa, was arguably “one of
the worlds leading animation studios”6 of its time and hence there is at least an adequate
amount of information on Alisa (and Disney’s Alice) to carry out this dissertation.
Furthermore, this project relies heavily on textual analysis and background information
rather than in depth academic works on the films themselves. It is also important for me
to acknowledge that comparing Alice and Alisa is complex and somewhat precarious due
to their temporal and geographical differences.
This dissertation will comprise of historical research and qualitative textual analysis, thus
the issue becomes one of structure and forward planning in order to be able to address the
relevant topics and gather the information necessary to effectively compare these films
and their relative contexts. I will lay out my dissertation in the following manner: In the
first chapter I will present my historical background research and cover the basics as it
were. I will outline and review the basic plot and themes of Lewis Carroll’s novel,
providing a general backdrop with which to review and analyse the films. It is important
to recognize what aspects of the original book have been included and excluded from
5
6
Clarke, S. & Smith, D. Disney; The First 100 Years, p70
“Статья для ASIFA news” http://www.pilot-film.com/show_article.php?aid=16, (21st February 2008)
4
Alice and Alisa, and furthermore what themes have been elaborated upon, suppressed,
and manipulated. Following this I will explore Walt Disney Productions, American
cinema and to a lesser extent the social, cultural, political and economic state of the U.S.
in 1951. Similarly I will look at Kievnuachfilm, the Soviet Union and its national and
cultural cinemas in 1981. This information will provide the groundwork necessary to be
able to properly and thoroughly compare Alice in Wonderland and Alisa in the Land of
Miracles to each other and their respective circumstances of production.
I have chosen to carry out this background and contextual research before the qualitative
textual analysis because this will put me in a better position to analyse and comprehend
the films effectively. “When we perform textual analysis on a text, we make an educated
guess at some of the most likely interpretations that might be made of that text”7, hence
there is a certain danger of subjectivity and flexibility due to the lack of ‘concrete
evidence’ and presence instead of subtler, more hypothetical logic and deduction. This is
a largely undeniable and inescapable element of textual analysis and theoretical work at
large, however one can certainly take steps to combat and contain the potential for
unsupported deductions. My preliminary contextual research will inform my textual
analysis and give me an idea of what to look out for, and how to best conclude if Alice
and Alisa reflect in no uncertain terms particular aspects of the environments in which
they were produced.
Hence, in the chapter following my background research I will first and foremost
consider what, if anything, I have learnt about Disney, Hollywood, Kievnauchfilm and
7
McKee, A. Textual Analysis: A Beginner’s Guide, p1
5
Russia that might help direct my textual analysis and pinpoint certain potential key
issues. This is not to say that my textual analysis will be biased by this information, but
rather that it will make me more able and adept at assessing these films in relation to their
circumstances of production. With this in mind, I will carry out my textual analysis of
each film, focusing on the plot, characters, mood, themes, and style of animation of each
film, and relating them to one another and the book to see what differentiates them all.
Since I will focus solely on the texts themselves rather than how they might have been
received by the masses, I can hence adopt a realist approach which presupposes there is a
correct and incorrect way of understanding a text. Lastly, I will compare my findings and
relate them to the respective contexts of production of Alice and Alisa in order to deduce
if and how these contexts are manifested in the film’s themselves.
6
Chapter One: Covering the Basics
ALICE’S ADVENTURES IN WONDERLAND
Since its initial publishing, the story of Alice has remained a popular, poignant text
throughout the ages, consumed across the globe in a variety of mediums and adaptations.
Written in 1865 by Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, better known by his pseudonym Lewis
Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland was first put to film in 1903 and has since
been adapted to the stage, song, cinema and television, and is even referenced in
medicine8 and economics9. It is still of interest to both adults and children alike with a
new animated version by Tim Burton in pre-production at the moment. The story of Alice
originated years earlier when Dodgson told three girls an impromptu story during a boat
ride on the River Thames. This developed over the years into Alice’s Adventures in
Wonderland, a story of literary nonsense about a young girl named Alice who follows a
talking rabbit down a rabbit hole into a ‘wonderland’ full of strange anthropomorphic
creatures and bizarre paradigms and events.
In order to properly understand Alice and Alisa it is important to consider how Carroll’s
original text differs from and hence has been adapted and manipulated to suit Walt
“Alice in Wonderland Syndrome” http://aiws.info/ (8 th March 2008)
“Alice in Wonderland Economics” http://www.valleypatriot.com/VP060507drchuck.html, (9 th March
2008)
8
9
7
Disney Productions and Kievnauchfilm (though one must consider if such dissimilarities
are intentional or possibly due to a genuine, alternative understanding of the book, of
which there are many). Hence, a very brief literature review will follow: Carroll’s Alice’s
Adventures in Wonderland is a timeless tale that is themed largely on nonsense,
imagination and the surreal. It deals with highbrow literary nonsense and language
games, as well as exploring some mathematical laws and theories,10 all done in a very
subtle, delicate manner that affords the book its intangible playfulness and excuses the
otherwise bewildering events that occur in it. One of the most resounding messages that
one may find in the book is that it is “good to dream”11, as the plot attests to, following
Alice through what might be seen as her own ‘dream land’ where wonderful and
enchanting events unfold. Another popularly conceived theme of the book is growing up,
and maturing, which is presented through Alice’s changing in size continually, until she
learns to control this with potions, cakes and mushrooms.12 However it is not in essence a
story of morals, in my opinion. While there are many references to morals, ‘lessons’ and
popular sayings for children throughout the book, Carroll does not concern himself with
making sense, but nonsense. Much of the plot and peculiarity of the text is derived from
(and hence only truly meaningful to) the personal and past experiences of Lewis Carroll
and Alice, Lorina and Edith Liddell, (the three girls on the river with him that day).
Kirk, D.F. “Charles Dodgson; Semeiotician” in University of Florida Monographs; Humanities no.11
(Fall 1962), p62
11
Ross, D. “Home by Tea-time: Fear of Imagination in Disney’s Alice in Wonderland” in Classics in Film
and Fiction, p214
12
“Lenny’s Alice in Wonderland Site” http://www.alice-in-wonderland.net/explain/alice841.html, (2nd
April 2008)
10
8
Due largely to the abstractness and nonsensical splendor of the book, it is very lighthearted and up beat, despite the sometimes cruel events of the plot. For instance, while
the King and Queen of hearts continually have people beheaded, they do so in such an
outrageous and entertaining way that the reality of the situation never worries the reader.
The book is so far removed from reality and so calm, reassuring and matter-of-fact in its
tone and manner that nothing could seem threatening (despite the sometimes threatening
events), and everything instead seems as it should be, almost. Also, I should add, Alice is
a very optimistic character, often finding the ‘silver-lining’ to any situation.13 Alice’s
Adventures in Wonderland is a very complex story, as it functions on many different
levels to children and adults alike. It is a book of literary nonsense, yet there are many
themes that can be taken from it. It is a children’s book, yet it is laced with mathematical
and semiotic paradigms (Carroll was a teaching and practicing mathematician and
semiotician)14 and appeals to adults around the world. However for the purposes of this
dissertation I need only look at the text on a basic level, and largely as a children’s book.
Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland consists of twelve chapters, the titles of
which give a very, very basic idea of the structure of the plot of the book. Hence I will
list and annotate these chapter titles below, and where necessary I will explain the plot in
more detail in my analysis of the two films.
Chapter One, ‘Down the Rabbit Hole’: Alice chases the White Rabbit ‘down the rabbit
hole’ into a large hall full of doors, with one in particular that she cannot pass through.
See, for instance; “And yet – its rather curious, you know, this sort of life!” Carroll, L. Alice’s
Adventures in Wonderland, p34
14
Williams, S. & Madan, F. The Lewis Carroll Handbook, p x
13
9
Chapter Two, ‘The Pool of Tears’: After shrinking and growing due to potions and cake
respectively, Alice cries a pool of tears which she then falls into after shrinking again.
Chapter Three, ‘A Caucus-Race and a Long Tale’: Alice washes up on a beach, where a
strange gathering of animals try to dry themselves by nonsensical means.
Chapter Four, ‘The Rabbit Sends in a Little Bill’: Alice pursues the White Rabbit and
gets stuck in his house, too large to get out. Eventually she removes herself.
Chapter Five, ‘Advice from a Caterpillar’: She comes across a large dog, and then a
caterpillar from whom she receives two pieces of mushroom that control her size.
Chapter Six, ‘Pig and Pepper’: Alice enters a house where she meets the Duchess and the
Cheshire Cat. The latter informs her of the Mad Hatter, and the March Hare.
Chapter Seven, ‘A Mad Tea Party’: Alice converses with the Mad Hatter and March
Hare, then finds her way back to the hall where the passes through the small door.
Chapter Eight, ‘The Queen’s Croquet-Ground’: She finds herself in a beautiful garden,
paints roses red, meets the King and plays croquet with the Queen.
Chapter Nine, ‘The Mock Turtle’s Story’: Alice converses with the Duchess, who soon
leaves. She is then sent off to meet the Mock Turtle with the Gryphon.
Chapter Ten, ‘The Lobster Quadrille’: These two characters tell Alice a story in song
about a lobster dance, then she is taken to a court room where a trial unfolds.
Chapter Eleven, ‘Who Stole the Tarts’: A nonsensical trial ensues, whereby many
characters stand witness until eventually Alice is called to the stand.
Chapter Twelve, ‘Alice’s Evidence’: Eventually the Queen orders the beheading of Alice,
who is much larger than everyone else at this point. The card soldiers flutter against her
10
and she wakes up on the riverbank with her sister. An end paragraph highlights the joys
and wonders of childhood and imagination.
11
WALT DISNEY ANDAMERICA IN 1951
Disney’s 1951 Alice in Wonderland was produced in the years following the end of
World War Two, at the beginning of the Cold War. For America, the 1950s “were a time
of conservative politics, economic prosperity and above all, social conformity… Many
look back upon the fifties with distaste and call it an uncreative and unidealistic time.”15
McCarthyism, the Cold War, and the open race for weapons of mass destruction sent the
American public into a state of autopilot. Under the surface of everyday suburban life
there was a climate of fear and confusion that few acknowledged. People were afraid of
the threat from Russia, the possibility of communism in America and / or the possibility
of being labeled a communist in America. Hence the public focused on simpler, more
manageable issues such as family, church, the economy, and the so-called American
dream. The result was a more plastic society where “appearance and acceptance had
replaced inner values as guidelines to life”.16
The youth became alienated and popular culture followed suit, creating a plethora of
films, books and songs that were in direct contradiction to the ideology of the time which
sought to create the illusion that everything was wonderful. The world of film was also in
a state of panic, confusion, and transformation due to the recent fall in cinema revenue
and the advent of television into the average household.17 Cinema responded to this with
technological innovation, challenges to censorship, wide screen formats, and more
15
Gordon, L. and Gordon, A. American Chronicle; Year by Year Through the Twentieth Century, p473-475
Gordon, L. and Gordon, A. American Chronicle; Year by Year Through the Twentieth Century, p474
17
Bordwell, D. Thompson, K. Film History; An Introduction, p328
16
12
colorful, visually stunning films than ever before in an attempt to “draw spectators out of
their living rooms and back into theaters”.18 Many studios also began targeting specific
audiences, such as children (Peter Pan in 1953) and the empowered youth “who had
money to buy cars, records, clothes, and movie tickets”19 with films like Rebel Without a
Cause (1955) in order to boost revenues and ensure success. Animation took a slight turn
for the worse during the fifties which is largely considered the beginning of the critical
decline of American animation.20 It was a fragmented and paradoxical time for America
in many ways.
“Since animation’s inception as big business in the early 1920s, several aspects of
(Hollywood) cartoon production were purportedly at odds with the Soviet praxis.”21 From
a very early age America saw animation first and foremost as a money-making enterprise
rather than a form of art or entertainment, which hence dictated some of the finer points
of American animation. For instance cel technology, once available, became the industry
standard as it allowed for faster, cleaner and more ‘efficient’ animation through assembly
lines and such. As a result of this “styles within any given studio had to be homogenized;
the style of bigger, team-drawn objects had to be interchangeable … The suppression of
individuality was an absolutely necessary mandate of Taylorism.”22 Technical skill, speed
(particularly in the fifties where sequences were notably faster and more frantic) and
homogeneity became the most important, defining characteristics of American animation.
18
Bordwell, D. Thompson, K. Film History; An Introduction, p328
Bordwell, D. Thompson, K. Film History; An Introduction, p325
20
“Walt Disney: The Triumph of the American Imagination”
http://www.powells.com/review/2006_12_26.html, (30 th March 2008)
21
MacFadyen, D. Yellow Crocodiles and Blue Oranges; Russian Animated Film Since World War Two,
p48
22
Crafton, D. Before Mickey; The Animated Film 1898-1928, p167
19
13
Disney by and large set the bar for American animation and defined the genre along side
other would be multi nationals like Warner Brothers and MGM. Walt Disney Studios was
founded in 1923 as a “modest two-man studio” and has since grown into “the
international multi-media/merchandise giant that it is today.”23 It is in fact the third
largest corporation of its kind in the world after News Corporation and Time Warner, it is
a classic example of media convergence and cultural imperialism, and “it all started with
a mouse.”24 Throughout the 1930s Walt Disney worked “to make Mickey (and, later,
other characters created by the studio) either a daily or weekly part of people’s lives”25,
and with much success. His success grew and grew as the company pioneered new
cunning ‘business strategies’ in entertainment, for instance “a lawsuit from Walt Disney
prevented (Lou Bunin’s stop-motion Alice in Wonderland) from being widely released in
the U.S., so that it would not compete with Disney's forthcoming 1951 animated
version.”26 Indeed most if not all of Walt Disney’s numerous enterprises have seemingly
been somewhat suspect and unwholesome, as various books conclude.27 Nonetheless
Disney Studios is also a ‘dream factory’ that has produced some magnificent work and
branded itself with the values of “individualism, escape, magic, innocence and
romance”28 to great success.
“Understanding Disney; The Manufacture of Fantasy” http://www.cjconline.ca/printarticle.php?id=890&layout=html, (23 rd March 2008)
24
Walt Disney quote, see “Q & A Archives” http://imagiverse.org/questions/archives/disney1.htm, (24 th
March 2008)
25
Smoodin, E. Animating Culture: Hollywood Cartoons from the Sound Era, p16
26
“Alice in Wonderland; By Lou Bunin” http://www.findinternettv.com/Video,item,552615244.aspx, (25 th
March 2008)
27
See: Schweizer, P. & Schweizer, R. The Mouse Betrayed; Greed, Corruption, and Children and Risk
28
“Understanding Disney; The Manufacture of Fantasy” http://www.cjconline.ca/printarticle.php?id=890&layout=html, (23 rd March 2008)
23
14
Preceding World War Two, during the so-called golden age of animation, Walt Disney
Studios was doing very well for itself, largely due to the success of Snow White and The
Seven Dwarves (1938) which became the most successful motion picture of the year.
Disney had come to represent ‘good old fashioned’ values and appealed largely to the
middle class through notions of romance and morality. Also important to note is that
Disney “had come to define animation as child’s fare”29 and the industry accepted this,
and while Walt left scope for and indeed encouraged everyone to watch his cartoons,
what is significant is that Disney labeled animation an endeavor primarily for children,
which changed the way it was both produced and received. Animation was disregarded as
a serious genre or medium for exploring adult themes and issues, and furthermore
animated film was viewed with a sense of playfulness and childishness, which was not
the case (relatively speaking) in many European countries, “where animation is a bold
chance to explore artistic expression, and perhaps to entertain children.”30
Also worth mentioning, when talking about any American animation preceding the latter
twentieth century if not later, are issues of misogyny and racial stereotypes. Disney was
like most animation studios of the time in that it found it was allowed to represent
“objectified female sexuality even to children (but only) as long as that representation
conforms to accepted standards of racism and misogyny.”31 American media seems to
have a well-established past time of misogyny and racism, though always presented (at
least in the case of animation) as a joke, as something harmless and funny, as playful.
Alice does not have any exemplary racial or misogynistic themes that I recall at present,
29
Smoodin, E. Animating Culture: Hollywood Cartoons from the Sound Era, p15
“Animation not reserved to Children” http://twitchfilm.net/archives/009301.html, (26 th March 2008)
31
Smoodin, E. Animating Culture: Hollywood Cartoons from the Sound Era, p24
30
15
but perhaps my analysis will prove different, particularly when comparing it to
Kievnauchfilm’s Alisa.
World War Two put a huge struggle on Disney as it was demanded they make
propagandist, military animations to motivate and comfort the public. Many of the
studios releases in the forties gave disappointing results, such as Fantasia (1940) and
Dumbo (1941). However in 1950 with the success of Cinderella, “the Disney studio
found itself in financial good health for the first time in more than a decade.”32 Although
at the same time Walt Disney himself was getting unfavourable reviews from critics for
“violating his own rules”33 by exploring the technique of pastiche (combining animation
with live action footage) and furthermore by introducing more humanoid characters
rather than his earlier established standard of anthropomorphic creatures. Even
Cinderella was criticized for having too many ‘people’ in its cast (the three main
characters being the witch, the prince and snow white). In this sense Alice surely
provided a gleaming chance to ‘put right’ this move away from fantastical animals and
furthermore reiterate the romance and wonder that Disney thrives on. Though it is not
clear if Walt had any intention of doing so, as he was often documented publicly pushing
for the studio to move into live action film making, moving toward reality, rather than
away from it.34
Perhaps this turmoil between what Disney produced and what Walt wanted to produce
accounts for its critical decline in the fifties. The 1950s was not, as much as people
32
Barrier, M. Hollywood Cartoons; American Animation in its Golden Age, p402
Smoodin, E. Animating Culture: Hollywood Cartoons from the Sound Era, p106
34
Eliot, M. Walt Disney, Hollywood’s Dark Prince, p209
33
16
wanted it to be, a happy, romantic, or wondrous time at all, and while many film makers
acknowledged this, Disney seemingly tried to deny it. “In the light of the more
sophisticated and adult work of the post-war period the Disney features with their sugary
sweet sentimentality and slick, characterless drawing”35 seem unagreeable and out of
place. Many of Disney’s productions from the 1950s such as Lady and the Tramp (1955)
and Beauty and the Beast (1959), despite becoming classics, received mixed reviews at
the time which perhaps reflects largely on the situation in America. There was in fact a
critical decline in Animation in the 1950s due to “changing cultural attitudes toward such
disparate subjects as genre, cartoon style, audience … and the development of
television.”36 In a state of national anxiety a “suspiciousness enveloped American life”37,
people were confused and a sharp paradox grew between the way people wanted to feel
and the way they felt.
35
Kinsey, A. Animated Film Making, p13
Smoodin, E. Animating Culture: Hollywood Cartoons from the Sound Era, p104
37
Gordon, L. and Gordon, A. American Chronicle; Year by Year Through the Twentieth Century, p473
36
17
KIEVNAUCHFILM AND THE U.S.S.R. IN 1981
Comparatively, Ephrem Pruzhanskii’s 1981 Alisa in the Land of Miracles (АЛИСА В
СТРАНЕ ЧУДЕС) was produced in the decade preceding the collapse of the Soviet
Union, in a time of economic poverty, social recession and political instability. Under the
leadership of Leonid Brezhnev, the strain of the arms race, and the invasion of
Afghanistan, the economy floundered and the U.S.S.R. stagnated and withered.38
Brezhnev’s time in office saw a substantial increase in education, employment and
quality of life although there was a growing health care crisis,39 and it was all at the
expense of the economy and the dream of functioning Communism. He also led a reStalinization movement which, among other things saw an increase in repression of
anything ‘anti-revolutionary’, including books and films.40 The public became suspicious
and yet apathetic of the state as they were largely powerless, “most people spent their
energies trying to make the best of a bad situation and were more interested in the
entertainment programmes on television… than in politics”41 (which arguably inspired
film-makers to really say something about what was happening to the country in their
work). The film industry was in decline at the end of a more profitable and productive
era, although some extremely artistic and powerful animations and films were produced
in this period such as Skazka Skazok (1979) and Kievnauchfilm’s own The Tree and the
38
Lowe, N. Mastering Twentieth-Century Russian History, p378
“Commentary; The health crisis in the U.S.S.R., looking behind the façade”
http://ije.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/full/35/6/1398, (22nd February 2008)
40
Dunlop, J.B. The Rise of Russia & the Fall of the Soviet Empire, p72
41
Lowe, N. Mastering Twentieth-Century Russian History, p387
39
18
Cat (1983). Lacking the capital to make grand, ‘block-buster’ films the U.S.S.R. instead
produced short, insightful, artistic and intriguing cinema, such as Alisa.42
There are some very interesting similarities and differences to be found when comparing
the Soviet Union and Kievnauchfilm in the 1980s to America and Walt Disney
Productions in the 1950s. The U.S.S.R. was economically unstable and stagnant in
contrast to America’s “back to the business of business”43 attitude in the fifties. This
influenced their film industries as Russia was at a relative low point while Hollywood
was on the up and up after its struggle during World War Two. There was also state
interference in media and the repression of all things controversial or counter-productive
in Russia, which carried the penalty of death in some instances, and exile in others. This
remained the case up until the late eighties where under Gorbachev’s rule there was a
brief “weakening of ideological and economic constraints”44 and some films such as
Elem Klimov’s Proschanie (aka FareWell, released in 1986) were brave enough to
directly challenged Soviet ideology.45
Politically, socially and culturally speaking the situation in the U.S.S.R. during its
downfall was surprisingly quite similar in many ways to that of America in the early
1950s… Both nations were ‘living a lie’ to an extent, struggling to pretend that
everything was all right, and in both cases this was due largely to the political situation of
the time, though things were certainly more dire in Russia. This paradox translated “in
“Alice’s New Adventures” http://context.themoscowtimes.com/story/174970/, (6 th December 2007)
Gordon, L. and Gordon, A. American Chronicle; Year by Year Through the Twentieth Century, p473
44
Taylor, R. Wood, N. Graffy, J. & Iordanova, D. Eastern European and Russian Cinema, p5
45
Gillespie, D. Russian Cinema, p117
42
43
19
the (Soviet) cinema of the 1970s and 1980s (where) there is a yawning gap between
public stance and private morality, between word and deed.”46 Culturally it was a creative
time (as times of struggle often are) for both nations, although in both cases said
creativity struggled to surface due to state repression and a lack of capital in Russia’s
case, and fear, confusion and a ‘business before brilliance’ mentality in America’s case.
Of course these similarities are somewhat dwarfed by the more fundamental differences
that exist between these two ‘time-spaces’, differences between capitalism and
communism, east and west, poor and rich... the 1950s and the 1980s.
“The USA dominated the cartoon film world as it did the film world in general, although
the Russians … also made their contribution.”47 It is not uncommon to hear the opinion
that Soviet animation is, or was, or has been at times, the most beautiful and artistic
animation in the world. Alisa’s parent company, Kievnauchfilm, was considered a truly
great studio48 and a cultural symbol of Ukrainian and Soviet life,49 which can certainly
also be said of Disney in America. The studio was founded in 1941 and all in all it
produced 342 films before the fall of the Soviet Union, at which time it came under new
ownership and was renamed the National Cinematheque of Ukraine.50 While it was
primarily a studio concerned with documentaries and science films, Kievnauchfilm also
turned out many animations that became infamous within the Soviet Union, making it the
‘Disney’ of Ukrainian and Soviet television, as it were, second only to Soiuzmul’tfil’m.51
46
Gillespie, D. Russian Cinema, p164
Kinsey, A. Animated Film Making, p13
48
“About this Video” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6zh3C-D9KpQ, (26th March 2008)
49
“How to tell if you’re Ukrainian” http://www.zompist.com/ukraine.html, (22 nd February 2008)
50
“Kievnauchfilm (Kiev Science Film)”
http://www.animator.ru/db/?ver=eng&p=show_studia&sid=94&sp=2, (21 st February 2008)
51
MacFadyen, D. Yellow Crocodiles and Blue Oranges; Russian Animated Film Since World War Two, xi
47
20
The state certainly had a hold over Kievnuachfilm as it did over most every media
institute of the time (Alisa in fact opens with a message, “On Commission of the USSR
State Committee of TV and Radio Broadcasting”), however this does not mean studios
were required to produce happy, hopeful or otherwise optimistic cinema (like in
America) as Soviet film and animation had a long established tradition of somberness,
darkness and realism amongst more mawkish, Disneyesque productions which they also
undertook. Under the guise of Soviet realisms “discomforting, potentially apolitical
multiplicity” Soviet animation became very flexible, exploring both very dark subject
matter while also being “reticent, humble and happy.”52
There was “an intriguing divergence that emerged between Russian and American
cinema in the years 1913 and 1914”53 whereby Russian film, and its film goers came to
embody a much more somber, realistic and uncensored representation of things, while
Americans would not accept anything other than ‘happily ever after’. “In fact, films that
were exported from Russia to America just before the war, and many since, had their
endings tailored positively to make them appeal to American audiences.”54 This
‘divergence’ continued throughout the twentieth century and paved the way for the sharp
dissimilarities that exist between American and Soviet animation. American film and
animation has the aim of (and need for) profit at its forefront, while the Soviet film and
animation industries, due to the nature of communism, are afforded more artistic and
individual freedom, hence soviet media is in some ways much more flexible and
52
MacFadyen, D. Yellow Crocodiles and Blue Oranges; Russian Animated Film Since World War Two, p4
& 27 respectively.
53
Cousins, M. The Story of Film, p49
54
Cousins, M. The Story of Film, p50
21
adventurous than that of America. Animation in the U.S. was built on a formula of
technical brilliance, bright stereotypical characters and eventual happiness, which it
followed very closely, and still does, whereas Soviet animations differ from one to the
next in terms of the style and technique of animation used, the mood and themes of the
text and the conclusions drawn at the end of it. Film and animation from the U.S.S.R. are
more willing to explore technical, thematic and stylistic possibilities, as are its audience.
These differences between the two national approaches to animation are perhaps also due
to cultural and ideological differences between the two nations and technological and
stylistic preferences / capabilities.
22
Chapter Two: Alice versus Alisa
A BRIEF WORD ON TEXTUAL ANALYSIS
Textual analysis is a methodology, but it is not a science. A methodology may imply to
some a “standardized procedure that doesn’t require any creativity or originality, a …
recipe that anybody can follow and come up with the same answers every time. Textual
analysis isn’t like that.”55 The textual analysis involved in this dissertation is relatively
straightforward, though thorough, as it deals solely with the actual texts themselves rather
than considering, for instance, how they were received, how the actors and directors
achieved what they did and whether this was their intention, etc, etc. While these issues
might arise, they are not the necessary focus of my analysis. In short, and to reiterate, I
aim to analyse Alice and Alisa in order to explore if or how the information presented in
chapter one might lend itself to better understand the differences between these two films.
I will approach my textual analysis with no foregone conclusion in mind, I am open to
whatever the text’s may tell me, and furthermore I will aim to be as precise as possible
and only make statements which are supported by the evidence. First and foremost I will
present a brief analysis of each film separately (though often referring comparatively to
the other, as was done in the previous chapter when reviewing America and Disney in the
55
McKee, A. Textual Analysis: A Beginner’s Guide, p118
23
1950s and the U.S.S.R. and Kievnauchfilm in the 1980s) where I will review
fundamental aspects of the texts such as their atmosphere, plot, characters, visual style
and themes. Following this I will carry out a more comparative, in depth analysis that
will incorporate the information presented in chapter one in order to explore the thesis of
this dissertation and draw some conclusions.
24
ALICE IN WONDERLAND
Disney’s Alice “premiered in England on July 26th, 1951, and released in the U.S. two
days later.”56 It was directed by Clyde Geronomi, Hamilston Luske and Wilfred Jackson
and was nominated for an Oscar for ‘Best Music, Scoring of a Musical Picture’ in 1952.
Walt had been meaning to make a version for decades, first considering a live-actionanimated version in the 1920s.57 After numerous obstacles and upsets, Alice was
produced, although Walt was unhappy with the result, as were critics. “Alice was a
frantic film… Everyone working on it seems to have suffered from discomfort with the
material, bordering on panic.”58 Furthermore, during the film’s production Walt is said to
have shown a “continuing lack of personal involvement … and inattention to its
production.”59 The film was not a commercial success until rediscovered by the counterculture movement of the sixties, at which point it was hailed as a psychedelic
masterpiece. Since then it was re-released in 1974 and 1981, released on video in 1981
and 1986 and kept in release”60 ever since. It is now considered a cult classic in some
circles and the most popular film adaptation of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland to date.
Technically speaking Alice was ‘superb’ for its time, as are almost all of Disney’s feature
length animations.61 Throughout the twentieth century the Disney studio revolutionized
56
Smith, D. The Official Encyclopedia; Disney A to Z, 3rd Ed., p19
Eliot, M. Walt Disney, Hollywood’s Dark Prince, p23
58
Barrier, M. Hollywood Cartoons; American Animation in its Golden Age, p55
59
Eliot, M. Walt Disney, Hollywood’s Dark Prince, p209
60
Clarke, S. & Smith, D. Disney; The First 100 Years, p20
61
Kinsey, A. Animated Film Making, p13
57
25
the industry with inventions such as the “huge vertical racking system”62 constructed for
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) which achieved unparalleled visual depth.
Alice utilizes this racking system, and was composed using the industry’s standard hand
drawn cel animation that was largely informed by live actors playing out the scenes of the
film.63 Using actors to inform animation is again something that Walt Disney introduced
to the industry as a result of his aforementioned desire to make more realistic (and
eventually live action) films.
Alice is also a quintessential example of the visual creativity (and hence psychedelic
acclaim) of Disney animation, as can be seen for example at the beginning of the Walrus
and the Carpenter sketch (which does not appear in the book at all) where the round
heads of Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum (who are also absent from Alice’s Adventures in
Wonderland) become the sun and the moon where night and day are side by side,
separated only by a line down the middle of the ‘set’ (15:30). The sound and scoring for
the film was a huge selling point, as the 1951 trailer attests to by literally listing the songs
and referencing the “wonderful tunes” as a high light of the animation. This aspect of the
film was seemingly a success as it warranted Oscar nomination as aforementioned.
In relation to the plot, Disney’s interpretation of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland is not
particularly true to the original text, and seemingly adopts a somewhat ‘cut and paste’
approach to Carroll’s classic. It is a highly stylized, shallow rendition of the original story
whose chief priority is fluidity and transition. Thus Disney’s Alice loses much of the
62
Cousins, M. The Story of Film, p166
“Kathryn Beaumont” http://www.alice-in-wonderland.fsnet.co.uk/film_tv_disney2.htm, (20 th February
2008)
63
26
meaning and significance of the original story and its plot developments. For instance, in
the book when Alice is stuck in the White Rabbit’s house and Bill the lizard attempts to
enter through the chimney to remove her, Alice, with “one sharp kick”,64 stops Bill by
force, thus empowering her and giving Alice control over her own actions and the
situation. Disney, however, reconstructs this scene, whereby Bill is defeated by Alice
sneezing (a somewhat clumsy and certainly uncontrollable action) him out of the house
due to chimney dust. This is an example of how Alice’s successes and intentional,
autonomous actions found in the book are replaced throughout the film by incidental
mechanisms, thus disempowering Alice a great deal.
This treatment of Alice is intentionally furthered in the addition of completely new plot
that was written by the studio for the film. I am referring in particular to the scenes
following the tea party, in which Alice becomes lost in a strange forest full of strange
creatures and begins to sing ‘Very Good Advice’ (54:26). One of her lyrics in this song,
“I should have known there’d be a price to pay” clearly presents the audience with a
moral of the film (which is not to be found anywhere in the book), that the reality of a
‘wonderland’ is not so wonderful, and that imagination and curiosity can get you in
trouble. Disney reinforced this message by making Alice openly ask directly for what she
gets (and does not enjoy) in Wonderland while on the river bank at the beginning of the
film… talking cats and flowers, ‘nothing would be what it is’ and so on, thus inciting the
old moral, ‘be careful what you wish for’. In this sense Disney’s Alice becomes (at least
in relation to the original text) an example of “a text which examines and inverts a social
64
Carroll, L. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, p38
27
ideological paradigm.”65 Furthermore, the added story line arguably changes the message
of the whole text as it conclusively choreographs the break down and admitted defeat of
Alice.66 While the book generally presents Alice as empowered and content in her
decision to follow the white rabbit into wonderland, Disney’s rendering of the text does
the opposite, turning wonderland into a barefaced nightmare by the end of the adventure.
Much of the plot-manipulation seems senseless, as it achieves nothing but to replace what
should have been with what should not. For instance chapter six, ‘Pig and Pepper’, which
involves the Duchess nursing a pig as if it were a baby whilst having a cook throw
“everything within her reach at (them)”67 was excluded from the film, while a walrus
coaxing and then eating a family of endearing anthropomorphic oysters (which again I
must point out is not in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland) was presented in song and
dance. In fact the Duchess does not appear at all in Alice, as is the case with the Gryphon,
the Mock Turtle, and the story of the Lobster Quadrille. These omitted characters and
events are replaced largely by characters and events that exist in Carroll’s sequel to Alice,
Through the Looking Glass, and What Alice Found There (1871). Hence Alice becomes
more of an ode to Carroll than to Alice, as Disney has selected its own favourite pieces of
the author’s work and strung them together using the frame of Alice’s Adventures in
Wonderland. Carroll’s work lends itself quite nicely to this possibility as it is all literary
nonsense and as aforementioned largely without meaning, hence there is not too much
consequence in replacing one nonsensical event with another. These many changes to
Stephens, J. Language and Ideology in Children’s Fiction, p139
Ross, D. “Home by Tea-time: Fear of Imagination in Disney’s Alice in Wonderland” in Classics in Film
and Fiction, p218-219
67
Carroll, L. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, p62
65
66
28
Carroll’s classic text are largely a result of (Walt Disney’s) personal choice and an
attempt to optimize the fluidity and marketability of the film… to make money.
As aforementioned Disney’s treatment of the heroine, Alice, is very different and much
less kind to that of the book. Alongside her being disempowered and defeated, and
perhaps as a consequence of it, Alice is also too ‘prissy and ‘passive’68 (Walt Disney
himself said this). Her reactions to the outrageous characters and events that surround her
are far too calm, controlled, and empty. It is hard to pinpoint a specific instance in the
film that epitomizes this passiveness as it is more of a continual disposition illustrated by
Alice’s every move and persistently plastic smile and manner. This submissiveness
becomes greatly more apparent when she is compared to the curious and engaging Alisa
from Alisa in the Land of Miracles. On the Disney Alice in Wonderland DVD there is a
bonus feature in which Walt Disney introduces to the camera Kathryn Beaumont, the
voice of Alice. She was largely taken as the literal inspiration for Alice in the studio as
she was made to act out all the scenes, dress the part and so on. However Kathryn
Beaumont was, or at least appeared to me from the very outset to be a shy, passive and
prissy girl… no wonder then that Alice turned out as she did. Perhaps this choice for
Alice was a result of “the post-war concern that America’s women should return to their
pre-war domestic subservience.”69
Graphically speaking, Disney’s presentation of the characters of Wonderland is very
accurate to the original, and still most popular illustrations for the book by John Tenniel.
68
Schickel, R. The Disney Version, p295
Allan, R. “Disney’s European Sources” in Girveau, B. Once Upon a Time: Walt Disney, The Sources of
Inspiration for the Disney Studios, p160
69
29
However, almost all of the characters in Alice seem inexplicably cruel and / or psychotic
(which is not at all the case in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland). While the singing
flowers (who do not exist in the book) fall into the former category, continually teasing
and condemning Alice, Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum are an example of the latter as
they move about far too violently, both physically and emotionally speaking (13:45). Any
kind or agreeable characters of the film, such as the collection of animals that take part in
the caucus race on the beach (which has a whole chapter dedicated to it in the book) are
dismissed as quickly as possible, while any characters and scenes that create conflict have
been fully featured or even drawn out. This abundance of heartless horrid characters and
interactions, I believe, is not intentional, but an illustration / consequence of the struggle
and ‘panic’ that Walt Disney and his production team experienced when making the film.
Alice was not marketed as frightening or nasty in any way, and it is completely
uncustomary of, and illogical for Walt Disney Productions to produce such a film, thus I
conclude that this malice is largely unintentional, as the evidence suggests. While the
Cheshire cat is friendly and warm toward Alice, he ultimately orchestrates her downfall
and near beheading. The Mad Hatter and the March Hare are both too insane to establish
much of a relationship with Alice, although they do laugh at her (43:35) and ‘taunt’ her
with tea, as it were. The only reasonable, thoughtful, or otherwise helpful character in
wonderland, in my opinion, is the Caterpillar. He speaks to her, albeit in a very
demanding and authoritarian manner, though still listening to her and trying to
understand her situation. His last “helpful hint” (36:17) is one that allows Alice to gain
control over her size (which is one of the key struggles throughout the film) by eating
pieces of mushroom.
30
In fact my analysis has led me to believe that the caterpillar scene is somewhat
exceptional and unique for a number of reasons… In the moments preceding Alice’s
encounter with the Caterpillar, while she is wondering through the forest, the artwork of
the film almost completely changes in a beautiful, bright shot that is much more fitting of
wonderland (31:53) than any other in the film. This style of set animation continues
throughout the caterpillar scene (and lingers to an extent throughout the following scenes)
and seems to create a perfect atmosphere for the retelling of Alice’s Adventures in
Wonderland. Indeed, this scene is perhaps the only one that truly seems related to the
original text and the mood and atmosphere that it envisaged. While a lot of the film
seems confused and unsuccessful at expressing what it aims to, here Alice and the
Caterpillar both become functioning, acceptable adaptations of the Alice and the
Caterpillar found in Carroll’s classic text. The Caterpillar scene, its artwork and its
musical accompaniment are also the most foreign and unconventional to be found in the
whole of Alice. Perhaps, or even probably, this is simply coincidence, though critically
speaking it suggests that a possible cause of Alice’s awkwardness (and relative critical
and financial failure in its time) is Disney’s blatant attempt to standardize, Americanize,
and make sense of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, which was intended to be
unconventional and outlandish. Whatever the reason, the caterpillar scene is a uniquely
carrollesque feature of Alice.
The mood and atmosphere of Alice is quite erratic. At times it is briefly fantastical and
exciting, though mostly it is bewildering, tiring and dark due largely to the hostility Alice
31
encounters in Wonderland, and the imagery that surrounds it. Many visual aspects of the
film are somewhat subliminally (and seemingly unintentionally) sinister and invasive
despite their sugary glossiness, for instance the black, endless ocean and dark skies that
threaten Alice when she is floating in an empty bottle (11:36), or the general blackness
that almost every background fades into, as though wonderland were some kind of eerie,
underground mad house. Disney’s depiction of wonderland (and its characters, as I have
discussed) is much darker and more sinister than Carroll’s, which does not seem to make
sense, coming from a producer of sugary, cute children’s animation. This darkness, I
suppose, is a necessity in order to validate Alice’s desire to ‘go home’ and hence the
cautionary theme that imagination and curiosity can have unpleasant consequences. The
negativity of the characters, the atmosphere, and Alice all comes together in this sense, as
one resoundingly pessimistic portrayal of wonderland. It seems very strange that Disney
would choose to make such a negative film, and perhaps explains the panic and
discomfort that allegedly everyone working at Disney experienced with regard to this
project.
Thus, the stylistic, simplistic, sugary nature of American children’s animation clashes
with Disney’s negative interpretation of Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland,
producing a film that, while capturing some of the beauty and splendor of wonderland,
also seemingly highlights all of its potential darkness and desolation. This intentional
thematic negativity of Alice is sharply contrasted by the endearing and comical silliness
that lies on the surface of the film (and all things Disney), which creates a very
psychologically eerie and uncomfortable pairing of genuine childish cuteness and
32
menacing dogmatic cynicism. Even during the acclaimed musical scores of the film such
as “Golden Afternoon” (27:28) there is a certain underlying emptiness and strangeness
that is quite discomforting and disturbing. Furthermore, immediately after welcoming
Alice and singing to her, the flowers turn on her, teasing and taunting her. One academic
concluded that “the Alice in Wonderland of 1951 loses something of the dark tranquility
of Carroll,” and instead is “frantically American… bombastic and anarchic, which in its
own way returns us to Carroll’s dangerous tranquility”70, though in a much more sinister
and intruding manner. Alice is presented to us under the pretense of being a standard,
endearing, cute Disney animation, and yet this ‘cuteness’71 is contrasted and adulterated
by surprisingly dark and troubled overtones. Alisa is also a rather dark animation (both
literally and metaphorically speaking) though it is such on purpose, consciously and
intentionally. There is a sharp and telling difference between the way that these two films
represent and utilize the darkness of wonderland, as I will later discuss.
The most striking theme of Alice in Wonderland is considered by many to be ‘surreality’,
psychedelia, and madness. However Alice was made for children, thus what for the many
adults who enjoy the film seems to be psychedelic and surreal for children it would
simply seem magical and strange. A more purposeful, evident theme is that of manners
and education, which can be seen for instance in the way Alice interacts with Tweedle
Dee and Tweedle Dum (13:50), the Mad Hatter and the March Hare, or the Queen, as
Alice courtesies for her and tries to handle herself as politely as possible. This theme is
Allan, R. “Disney’s European Sources” in Girveau, B. Once Upon a Time: Walt Disney, The Sources of
Inspiration for the Disney Studios, p130
71
Schickel, R. The Disney Version, p174
70
33
true to the book and its many recitations,72 references to etiquette, and word and thinking
games, though seems to develop and integrate it into the whole film, making it a more
purposeful and notable element of Alice. This theme is also particularly significant, both
to America in the 1950s (which I will discuss later) and as it provides another reason for
the film and Alice’s ‘plasticness’ and passiveness. Furthermore, it is worth noting that
Alisa (of Alisa in the Land of Miracles) is not half as polite, passive, or indeed plastic.
There is also the aforementioned predominant ideological theme that curiosity and
imagination are dangerous and must be controlled, which is used as a segway to the more
common theme of ‘there’s no place like home’ (which is clearly established when Alice
tells the Cheshire cat “I want to go home!”(56:26)). This piece of dialogue is symbolic of
much of the film and its defeated, queer and uneasy nature.
72
Carroll, L. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, p14
34
ALISA IN THE LAND OF MIRACLES
Ephrem Pruzhanskii’s adaptation of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland was released on
Soviet television in three parts over the span of 1981. In total it has a run time of only 30
minutes. As aforementioned, Alisa is a largely unreferenced and overlooked film despite
its beauty, poignancy and popularity in its day. It is certainly not a main-stream film
outside of Russia, though it still has its success, for instance it was voted one of the ‘best
movies’ of 1981 on one website73 and cited as the best animated version of Carroll’s
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland ever on another.74 Alisa is a fine example of darker,
more mature Soviet animation in that it is artistic and dreamlike, appeals to children and
adults alike, and often deals with quite adult themes through symbolism and metaphors.
Furthermore it is insightful and considerate in its handling of Carroll’s original text,
acknowledging within the first minute that “everything in it is like in a fairy tale, and yet
it doesn’t look at all like a fairy tale” (00:50). From what I have gathered from
conversations with people who lived in Russia in the 1980s, Alisa was on Soviet
television quite often and was a well-known (and arguably well-liked) animation.75 It is
still in circulation today through various Internet resources and is also available on DVD.
So, to follow in the footsteps of my analysis of Disney’s Alice, technically speaking Alisa
is of a relatively high standard, as were many Soviet animations from “the Brezhnevite
“Best Movies of 1981” http://www.mysubtitles.com/index.php?movies_from_year=1981&index=0, (17 th
March 2008)
74
“A good sledgehammer strike of a cartoon” http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0211191/, (23rd February 2008)
75
Circumstantial evidence from Vadim Urasov and Maria Shvedunova.
73
35
era.”76 It uses standard hand-drawn animation on top of what appears to be watercolor
backgrounds, and also utilizes cutouts and different textures (as can be seen for instance
in the hair of the white knight77), and certain special effects on occasion, such as
superimposition (03:21). Much of the animation is extremely abstract and surreal, as can
be seen for instance when Alisa is falling through ‘the middle of the earth’ (02:48). Here
the animation style seems similar to Japanese anime in its metaphorical and symbolic
imagery. Examples of the ‘surreality’ of Alisa can be found throughout, though perhaps
particularly notable in the presentation of the glass table (06:15) the forest near the March
Hare’s house (13:34). Furthermore there is a tangible, crude element of sinisterness in
much of the imagery (and colour scheme), for instance ‘do gnats eat cats?’ (03:33). Most
every “voice delivered (in Alisa) goes from a talented actor or actress”78 and its
soundtrack is very engaging and appropriate as it incites fitting atmospheres for many of
the scenes, such as the introduction on the Cheshire Cat (12:00) and the madness of the
croquet scene (17:43).
Alisa, as aforementioned, is very considerate in it’s retelling of Alice’s Adventures in
Wonderland, and as such is quite faithful to the original plot and story line, or at least as
much as in can be in the space of 30 minutes, following the order of events almost
exactly. After the hall full of doors (04:31), Alisa wanders straight into her exchange with
the Caterpillar atop the mushroom, thus omitting chapters three and four. From here the
plot continues as it should with Alisa meeting the Cheshire cat (referred to as ‘dear
“Алиса в Стране Чудес, мультфильм, 1981” http://jabberwocky.ru/alisa-v-strane-chudesmulmztfilmzm-1981.html, (29th March 2008)
77
“Алиса в Стране Чудес, мультфильм, 1981” http://jabberwocky.ru/alisa-v-strane-chudesmulmztfilmzm-1981.html, (29th March 2008)
78
“A good sledgehammer strike of a cartoon” http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0211191/, (23 rd February 2008)
76
36
Cheshire Puss’ (12:03) in accordance with the book79), and from there she meets the Mad
Hatter and March Hare, thus skipping chapter six much like Alice does. Alisa further
excludes chapters nine and ten, leaving the rest of the story in tact and accurately
portrayed, with one or two small exceptions. For instance, while in the book the
gardeners are painting a white rose bush red80, in Alisa they paint a red rose bush white
(16:06). Such an inaccuracy in a film that is otherwise so accurate must be intended as
meaningful. While this cannot be taken as fact, I would argue that red (symbolizing the
State of Communist Russia) being covered by white (typically symbolic of purity, peace
or hope) is a metaphor negating the government and espousing hope and peace.
Alisa in the Land of Miracles is not only accurate in a broad sense, but also in its
attention to many smaller details and dialogue from the book. For instance Alisa lands in
a “heap of sticks and dry leaves”81 after falling down the rabbit hole, and then enters a
hall with many doors (as it is written in the book), where as Alice lands upside down
hanging from a curtain rail by her toes like some kind of casual acrobat (07:08), and then
enters an empty hall, save the one, tiny door that is necessary to the plot. Alisa is also
narrated, which allows it even more direct use of and similarity to the book (particularly
in expressing the feelings of the characters, which hugely impacts what is said and done).
In being this representative of and similar to the original text, Alisa expresses the same
over all theme of the book; that it is good to dream, imagine and inquire. Indeed Alisa
seemingly promotes this theme more intently than the book itself through its overly
optimistic and empowering treatment of the main character and the ending of the film,
Carroll, L. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, p66
Carroll, L. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, p84
81
Carroll, L. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, p5
79
80
37
which endorses the dream of wonderland and delight of being young at heart (taken from
the book).
The fact that Alisa is such a short film means that its creators have had to select which
events of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland are the most significant and definitive to
their understanding of the book (or the understanding of the book that they have chosen
to present). And indeed I find their choice of content to be superb in this respect, as
almost every scene and piece of dialogue is justified and epitomizes some theme or
mood. Between the Caterpillar, the Cheshire Cat, the Mad Hatter’s tea party and the
croquet and court scenes, Alisa is able to capture beautifully the essence of this story,
while also manipulating the text to its own ends. In choosing the Caterpillar sketch for
example, Alisa is given a chance to express the unconventional, nonsensical wisdom and
logic of Carroll’s novel as well as the caterpillar himself, a magnificent and iconic
character of the text. The film is somewhat wayward with this scene, although only
because it has to be, I believe. “Language in Soviet animation was often downplayed to a
minimum”82 and furthermore Alisa was made with a limited budget and runtime, thus
rather than wasting several minutes of dialogue, they wrote some of their own which
captures well the grand thinking and mind frame of the book. This extra dialogue went
hand in hand with Kievnauchfilm’s kinder and more caring rendering of the Caterpillar
(who they have presented as female, while in the book it is simply genderless), who
explains to Alisa, “you see, everything’s moving somewhere and turns into something”
(10:50). This statement, and furthermore the way it is delivered, is quite simple and
82
MacFadyen, D. Yellow Crocodiles and Blue Oranges; Russian Animated Film Since World War Two,
p47
38
serene and yet insightful and enjoyable, which I find to be in the same taste as the book in
many ways. It also touches on the theme of physical and temporal growth and maturity,
relating to the book.
The ‘Mad Tea-Party’ is a scene which allows Kievnauchfilm to present the very adult
theme of psychosis and dementia. Like the Caterpillar scene, and indeed most every
scene in the film, it has been shortened and broken down to its essential mood, message
and meaning. Hence the Mad Hatter and March Hare are both very worrying, clinically ill
characters that bear more resemblance to a vampire and a hard drug addict (respectively)
than the comically silly profiles found in both Disney’s Alice and the original illustrations
for Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by John Tenniel. Alisa certainly adjusts many of
the characters as I will go on to demonstrate, not so much changing them completely as
highlighting particular aspects of them. The Mad Hatter is a thin, tall, and extremely pale
character with a deep, thick voice (truly reminiscent of the stereotypical Count Dracula),
while the March Hare is similarly pale and continually shakes, shudders, or fidgets,
wrapped in a blanket with his eyes darting about. To capture the essence of the scene and
these characters as re-imagined by Kievnacuhfilm, Alisa utilizes the following dialogue:
Alice: “I know I have to beat time to play music.”
[Clock’s chime, Mad Hatter and March Hare shiver with fear]
Mad Hatter: “He wont stand beating!”
March Hare: “Yes, We quarreled with time.”
Mad Hatter: “It’s always six o’clock now. And it’s always tea-time.”
March Hare: “We even have no time to wash the cups between whiles.” (15:14)
39
While textually speaking this is quite similar to how it appears in Carroll’s Alice, there is
a vast difference between how the two texts present and express these words. While in
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, with the aid of Tenniel’s illustrations and small hints
from Carroll (such as the Mad Hatter pointing with his teaspoon, and the March Hare
sighing) we know that this dialogue is spoken in a casual, though disappointed and
slightly sorrowful tone, whereas in Alisa this dialogue is spoken with real anxiety and
frustration, as if from the mouths of actual, clinical schizophrenics.
Both the Caterpillar scene and the Mad Tea-Party are examples of how Alisa illuminates
upon many of the more adult themes and aspects of Carroll’s book. The ‘Tea-Party’ is
furthermore an example of some of the intentional, and artistically rendered menace and
darkness of Alisa that I alluded to in my analysis of Disney’s Alice. There is no
dismissing the very realistic illustration of madness and psychosis found in this scene,
which is in step with the realism of Soviet animation and culture. Kievnauchfilm’s
“invisible… internal” realism that captures so well the maturity and truth of wonderland
(which follows in the acclaimed style of the socialist, soviet realist art movement) is very
different to Disney’s “naturalistic”83 and factually informed visual style (which has been
widely criticized and badly received). These relative forms of realism surprisingly speak
largely to the relative success and nature of Alice and Alisa: Disney’s Alice was animated
with continual reference to real people, animals and landscapes (which it was criticized
for), and partially as a result of this it is unintentionally eerie and seems uncomfortable in
83
MacFadyen, D. Yellow Crocodiles and Blue Oranges; Russian Animated Film Since World War Two,
p36-37
40
itself, whereas Alisa, with its outrageously abstract backgrounds and characters (visually
speaking) seems more realistic, mature and successful in its intentions than Alice ever
could.
Another theme of Carroll’s that is picked up on in Alisa (though quite sleepily, if you
will) is that of morals. This again is illustrated through one particular scene and character,
this time it is the character of the Duchess leading up to the trial (20:53). This scene is
particularly true to, and hence takes most of its dialogue and other instructions from the
book. It is too simple and straightforward in its rendition of things to have any purpose
other than to capture the nonsensical silliness of Carroll’s book. The last key theme of
Alisa, one that rings loudest and clearest to me, is that of bureaucracy, uncontrolled
power, and the idiocy of ‘the system’. These issues all play out through the Queen and
her part in the croquet game and courtroom. First and foremost, to discuss the
representation of Kievnauchfilm’s Queen, she is presented as a spoilt, selfish individual
that always gets what she wants… which of course she is, however while Disney’s Queen
is a fat, extremely loud and enraged woman at all times, Kievnauchfilm’s Queen is
thinner, snootier and more ‘bitchy’ (to use the parlance of our time). Kievnauchfilm’s
Queen is intentionally laughable and immature, hence making her less imposing and
arresting to the audience, while Disney’ Queen is a genuinely scary, worrying woman.
While the book itself clearly raises issues of bureaucracy and abused power, Alisa makes
these themes its own through certain key discrepancies and alterations to the original text
(such as the aforementioned roses). During the Croquet game the Queen becomes quite
41
frantic and overwhelmed, shouting in the manner of a very upset little girl on the verge of
tears, “off with her head! Off with his head! Off with that head, too!” (18:07). This is
very different to Disney’s Queen, who is much more overwhelming and empowered. This
difference between the two films grows in the courtroom scene where, while Disney
presents a very threatening and menacing situation, Alisa is more concerned with making
fun of the Queen, her bureaucracy and her pack of cards, thus empowering both Alisa and
the audience. The executioner is presented as a small, useless figure covered from head to
toe in a red sheet. He is ordered to behead the Cheshire Cat and thus pulls out his axe,
which in fact is a balloon that he blows up and then sharpens (18:47), never actually
using it (this has no basis in the book). In this sense the executioner, through imagery, is
presented as impotent and feeble. This scene utilizes Carroll’s atmosphere of nonsense
and silliness to make a fool of the executioner (and everything he might represent to
Soviet society, dressed completely in red).
More notable discrepancies are found in the courtroom. For instance the White Rabbit
slyly, coyly creeps around the Queen’s chair (who sits as judge, of course) whispering to
her what should happen, and how, and then gets “scared of his own audacity. To say no
the Queen herself!” (23:56) and some very dark imagery ensues of the rabbit’s top hat
falling from the executioners chopping block. It is worth mentioning that the events of
chapter eleven, ‘Who Stole the Tarts’, as expressed in the book are quite jovial and
quarrelsome, not inciting at all the intensity and symbolism found in Alisa. While on the
stand, the Mad Hatter says, “I keep thinking of the bygone days” (24:41), which while
related loosely to the book manipulates the sentence to take on a whole new meaning of
42
social criticism in this film. Next, the March Hare takes the stand and is ‘suppressed’, at
which point the narrator explains how “Alice had read in the newspapers: ‘The attempts
at resistance were suppressed.’ Now she understood what it meant.” (25:35). Carroll had
written “there was some attempt at applause, which was immediately suppressed”84. The
difference is clear, and its impact similarly so. The White Rabbit continues to direct the
Queen and everyone follows suit as meaningless evidence is manipulated to justify the
persecution of the Knave of Hearts. Eventually the Queen turns on Alisa, to which our
heroine says, “You’re nothing but a pack of cards!” (28:42). I will explore the potential
explanations for these discrepancies and their meanings in the following subchapter of
this dissertation.
Thus, despite its obvious consideration for the text, Alisa is by no means a carbon copy of
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. By and Large Kievnauchfilm changes many of the
characters to differentiate them from one another and thus utilize each one to present a
different theme or facet of the story. Alisa is generally darker than the book (which as I
have explained cleverly avoids the dark reality of its content almost completely) though I
would argue not as sinister or unsettling for its audience as Disney’s Alice. Due to Alisa’s
abstractness, and the wonderment and fortitude of Alisa as a character, the film is
somewhat successful at emulating the books previously discussed subtle and delicate
manner (while Alice is not), thus Alisa is largely empowering and intriguing to its
audience, not bewildered or threatening like Disney’s Alice is.
84
Carroll, L. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, p127
43
Another dissimilarity between Kievnauchfilm’s Alisa and Disney’s Alice is their relative
treatment of the heroine of the text. While Alice manipulates the text in order to
disempower and pacify her, Alisa instead omits any of her inherent weak moments, such
as her crying (which occurs throughout the text), thus making her braver, stronger and
less prissy than the book originally envisions her. This contrast is also evident from a
narrative perspective, as Alisa chooses scenes and events where the heroine is the most
engaging, interested and active. For instance, Alisa uses the pieces of mushroom to get
through the tiny door that troubles her in the beginning of the story, whereas Disney’s
Alice cries and complains until the Cheshire Cat presents her with a passage to the
Queens garden. Similarly, once in the garden Alisa saves the card gardeners from being
beheaded (17:17) (as it is in the book) while Alice does nothing to save them, and hence
they are dragged away to their deaths (61:01). This difference, again, is one that I will
elaborate upon in the following section of this dissertation.
One consideration I must make is that of the language barrier between Carroll’s English
of 1865 and Russian in 1981. I am not afforded the time or resources to thoroughly
explore the Russian translation of the book by N. Demurova, though from what I have
gathered it is perhaps “less artistic, but very close to the original text in spirit, with all of
its linguistic reversals and parodies.”85 I believe this translated version was taken as the
basis for the film, and as I cannot explore the small discrepancies that might exist
between the translation and Carroll’s original, I must assume for the sake of this
dissertation that the two books are by and large identical.
“Алиса в Стране Чудес, мультфильм, 1981” http://jabberwocky.ru/alisa-v-strane-chudesmulmztfilmzm-1981.html, (29th March 2008)
85
44
DO THE PIECES FIT TOGETHER?
I have thus far hinted at and loosely discussed certain national, temporal, and other
explanations for the discrepancies between these texts, though much of it is somewhat
messy, jumbled and overlapping, hence I will now try to clarify, distinguish and develop
certain key aspects of my analysis and draw some more appropriate and significant
conclusions from my findings. Firstly, there are many basic deductions that can be made
to explain certain elementary aspects of these two films. For instance, Alisa in the Land
of Miracles is largely an exemplary piece of Soviet animation of the 1980s, as can be
discerned by its use of realism, abstractness, adult themes and social and moral
significance. It is short due to the economic draught of the early eighties in Russia,
though still a very poignant and expressive piece of film, as is the nature of Soviet film
and animation. Similarly, Alice in Wonderland has many attributes that liken it to the
formulaic, glossy production-line animation of 1950s America. Its depiction of characters
and events appears at least on the surface to be very Disneyesque and its impressive
catalogue of musicals and songs suggests it is from a financially fruitful time (as
increasingly was the 1950s for Walt Disney Productions).
While there is the obvious and largely useless conclusion that Alisa is identifiable as a
product of Russian animation, and Alice one of American animation (which has already
been applied throughout much of my analysis), there is also much more interesting and
complex information that has come out of this study thus far. Information and issues that
45
relate to social, economic and political circumstances among other things. In comparing
the many ways that Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland has been manipulated
and represented by Disney and Kievnauchfilm, relatively speaking, I have found some
interesting fundamental differences, namely; their relative treatment of the heroine, their
relative treatment of the Queen, their relative treatment of the key theme of imagination
and curiosity, and their relative atmosphere and mood.
As I have established, both texts go out of their way to present the heroine of the story in
their own particular light. While Disney disempowers and pacifies her, Kievnauchfilm
does the exact opposite, turning her into an optimistic explorer and an icon of curiosity
and imagination. While at a glance Disney’s treatment of Alice might seem peculiar and
uncharacteristic of the ‘dream factory’ corporation, there is in fact an established trend of
misogyny, sexism, and patriarchal stereotyping of women in Disney cartoons, and indeed
American animation at large.86 For instance Snow White and Cinderella are both passive
and traditional, they both “live in male dominated worlds. They are naturally happy
homemakers (and they both)… play a subservient role.”87 Alice was simply the next in a
line of heroines to be patronized, pacified and subordinated.
This, compared to the bold and engaging heroine of Alisa in the Land of Miracles. While
Soviet animation has a history of treating any primary literary sources of adaptation with
86
Clarke, J. Animated Films, p27-28
“Disney’s Full Length Animated Films” http://www.uleth.ca/edu/kid_culture/disney/essay.html, (3rd
April 2008)
87
46
“the utmost respect”,88 Kievnauchfilm’s presentation of Alice goes somewhat beyond the
book (as I have shown). Soviet animation also has a history of social criticism, selfreflection and optimism, which is precisely why it so empowers Alisa. As she journeys
through wonderland, Alisa becomes the voice of reason, truth and optimism in her
dealing with the Mad Hatter, the March Hare, and the Queen, thus she becomes an
instrument of criticism and icon of hope and endurance. To explain my reasoning; as a
film, Alisa is extremely purposeful and utilizes every scene and character to some effect,
which leads me to believe that Alisa’s strength and perseverance in such a dark and
surreal environment as wonderland is meant as a symbol of hope. This is significant with
respect to Russia, which, in the early 1980s was a somber and troubling place as it
became increasingly obvious to the public that their communist government was failing,
turning corrupt, and abusing its power in a frightening and desperate manner.
Furthermore, as aforementioned, the people were powerless and thus became despondent,
turning away from politics, toward their televisions.89 Thus Kievnauchfilm presented
them with a rebellious critique against what was happening and the resounding notion of
hope and optimism to comfort and encourage them.
Another issues arising from my comparative analysis, one completely related to the
preceding two paragraphs, is the difference in Alice and Alisa’s depiction of the Queen
and courtroom content found in Carroll’s original text. To continue with Alisa,
Kievnauchfilm largely disempowers the Queen and her ‘pack of cards’, presenting her as
an insecure, foolish and immature woman of no substance or character. This is in
“Алиса в Стране Чудес, мультфильм, 1981” http://jabberwocky.ru/alisa-v-strane-chudesmulmztfilmzm-1981.html, (29th March 2008)
89
Lowe, N. Mastering Twentieth-Century Russian History, p387
88
47
accordance with the compelling theme of bureaucracy and misused power that is so
central to Alisa. While Kievnauchfilm has largely followed the book and been faithful to
Carroll’s depiction of events, the small discrepancies that do arise (which I have already
outlined) are very suspect and suggestive. Furthermore the differences between Alice’s
Queen and courtroom and Alisa’s are vast, as I will explain. The ‘bygone days’, the
‘attempts at resistance’, and the outrageous executioner dressed in red are all very
indicative, suspect discrepancies from the book, and they all make perfect sense in
relation to the Soviet Union with its disappearances, its bureaucracy and its
“preoccupation with its own history”.90 These are all clear references to Soviet Russia,
where Queen is the image of the state, the White Rabbit is perhaps the ‘voice behind the
image’ and Alisa is the revolution against it. Hence by belittling the Queen, the court and
the executioner, Alisa is empowering its viewers.
This is all relatively straight-forward and clear, though things become more interesting
when we look at Alice’s large, overbearing and extremely threatening Queen, more
enraged than immature. The plot of the story has furthermore been hugely manipulated
by Disney so that Alice is herself on trial, and in an extremely frightening and defeated
position. While this could once again be explained by the evidence concerning Walt
Disney’s political disposition and Alice’s role as a propaganda tool, it seems almost too
unreal and extreme to be true. However, The evidence is overwhelming. To add to what I
have already presented on this matter of Walt Disney’s political activism; during the war
era Disney was commissioned to make propagandist films (thus establishing his
experience in this field) and while doing so, Disney closely managed the production of
90
Gillespie, D. Russian Cinema, p60
48
Victory Through Air Power (1943) which “went beyond obligatory anti-Nazi satire to
propagandise for strategic bombing”91 (thus establishing his personal interest and use it).
The next interesting and (without considering the contexts in which these films were
made) inexplicable difference between these two texts is their treatment of the key theme
of Carroll’s text, imagination and curiosity. Disney resoundingly opposes and reverses
this theme, while Kievnauchfilm vehemently promotes it. For Disney, a studio that is
branded with the virtues of wonder, magic and innocence, it makes very little sense to
turn a story about imagination and curiosity into a nightmarish cautionary tale, hence I
am compelled to consider what reasoning might lie behind such an action. My only
answer to this query is a political and social one: It is well known that Walt Disney was
decidedly and very actively conservative, even testifying against his own employees “at
the House (of) Un-American Activities Committee about suspected Communists”92 in
1947. Similarly it is well known that postwar America was a confused, curious and
politically unstable place, particularly with the Cold War and McCarthyism (initiated
under conservative government) terrifying and confusing the public. In such a time,
Alice’s cautionary right wing disposition served as propaganda for the conservative party,
warning that curiosity can be dangerous, and that ‘there is no place like home’. Although
perhaps surprising, this analysis is supported by accounts from Disney’s production team,
who accuse Walt of enforcing a certain “aesthetic conservatism” which had “political
Ross, D. “Home by Tea-time: Fear of Imagination in Disney’s Alice in Wonderland” in Classics in Film
and Fiction, p217
92
“Chronology of the Walt Disney Company” http://www.islandnet.com/~kpolsson/disnehis/disn1947.htm,
(31st March 2008)
91
49
implications that were not lost on Disney’s staff.”93 At any rate this thematic decision
certainly reflects the fearful, ‘buckled down’ mind frame of America in the 1950s.
As for Alisa’s potent support of Carroll’s theme (and indeed, Alisa manipulates the text to
reinforce this theme), I find Alisa to be a very unified and logical film in its reasons for
being. What I mean by this is that Alisa has a goal, an intention, that informs most every
aspect of it. That goal being; to provide social criticism on what was happening in the
U.S.S.R. in the 1980s and furthermore provide the hope and motivation of overcoming
these problems and the oppression and bureaucracy of the state. I say this after most
every aspect of my textual analysis of the film seems to point in this direction. Thus, by
campaigning for Carroll’s theme of imagination and fantastical dreaming, Alisa invited
its viewers to be active, aware and curious about what was happening in the U.S.S.R., not
to be defeated or disenfranchised, and most importantly, to keep dreaming, to be hopeful.
There are other thematic issues to be found in both films, namely Alice’s integral theme
of manners (expressed through Alice and her general conduct in wonderland) and Alisa’s
theme of psychosis and clinical illness, that are seemingly very significant to America in
the fifties and Russia in the eighties, though this is perhaps somewhat speculative. Alice
plays up the theme of manners much more than Alisa does (and arguably more than the
book as well) making it an exasperated constant issue of the text. This, I would argue, is a
result of (or at least certainly a reflection of) the cultural and social circumstances of
America in the 1950s, where (to reuse a quote) manners, presentation, “appearance and
Ross, D. “Home by Tea-time: Fear of Imagination in Disney’s Alice in Wonderland” in Classics in Film
and Fiction, p217
93
50
acceptance had replaced inner values as guidelines to life.”94 Meanwhile, Alisa dismisses
the theme of manners and instead takes the silly, abstract and meaningless ‘Mad TeaParty’ chapter of Carroll’s book and turns it into a much more disturbing and realistic
illustration of insanity and mental sickness. This intentional, disturbing, clinical
presentation of the Mad Hatter and March Hare’s lunacy is a critique on the health crisis
(or otherwise the general insanity of the governments management of the nation) that
developed in the Soviet Union in this time. However neither of these points are wholly
supportable, thus while they seem logical and functional, they are not acceptable or
endorsed conclusions of this dissertation.
Finally I would like to explore the atmosphere and general nature of Alice and Alisa as I
believe the essences of these two films are cleanly relatable to their respective contexts of
production. In essence, Alice is a floundering, confused and shallow film that does not
seem to understand itself and its own overlooked darkness, while Alisa is a knowingly
dark and mature film in many respects, though still retains a fantastical and optimistic
outlook. Thus, both films have sinister and dark elements, though it is their reasoning for
and use of this darkness that sets them so far apart. Alice, through aesthetic realism and
manipulation of its characters and events, creates a very hostile and disturbing
wonderland which serves the films chief goal of discouraging curiosity and child-like
imagination and freedom. Otherwise put, Walt Disney’s “focus on realism forced (Alice’s
production team) to abandon one of the most important functions of cartoons: to provide
94
Gordon, L. and Gordon, A. American Chronicle; Year by Year Through the Twentieth Century, p474
51
social criticism”95 and instead produce a conservative, cautionary, propagandist
children’s animation… a combination which is deeply unsettling and morally
reprehensible. This sinister and confusing ambiance likens Alice in a very fundamental
way to the reality of 1950s America. It is increasingly apparent that in many respects
Disney’s Alice is not so much an example of American animation in the fifties as it is a
(albeit incidental) testament to the confusion and plastic appearance of American society
and life in the fifties, and the fear that underlined it.
In stark contrast to this, Alisa, through its use of socialist realism, presents wonderland as
a dark and sinister realm only in order to liken it to the Soviet Union in the 1980s, thus
communicating to its audience a (necessarily subtle) rebellious critique of the political
regime of the U.S.S.R. This darkness, though very apparent, is subsequently evaluated
and overcome by the film’s heroine, Alisa who symbolizes hope and perseverance. Thus
Alisa is an example of how Soviet “film makers used a kind of Aesopian language, the
language and allegory and parable, to say what could not be said.”96 Alisa ends in high
spirits with the Queen (symbolizing the oppressive government) defeated and Alisa’s
optimistic last words: “And I shall tell her outright, I don’t fear you therefore! I know I
just sleep at night, and you’re my dream, nothing more!” (30:06). An encouraging end to
the film that is surely meant to encourage, motivate and empower the masses.
Ross, D. “Home by Tea-time: Fear of Imagination in Disney’s Alice in Wonderland” in Classics in Film
and Fiction, p217
96
Smith, G.N. The Oxford History of World Cinema, p645
95
52
CONCLUSION
The primary goal of this dissertation has been to explore the elaborate and comprehensive
relationship that seemingly exists between film and society. The fact that film is a
creative, expressive man made enterprise suggests that there should occur in most every
film, through the intricacies of filmmaking, a very personal manifestation of the world as
it appears to the creator of the film at the time of its creation. Like music and the fine arts
it is inevitable that our own history and humanity would become tangled up in cinema as
cause and effect, signified and signifier, reality and its reflection take turns in influencing
one another in our minds, society, and the medium of film. This, of course, is a far too
abstract and speculative issue to be the functioning basis for any academic work, thus my
focus instead on the more manageable task of comparing two cinematic adaptations of a
primary text and exploring their dissimilarities in relation to their respective contexts of
production. This study has yielded some unexpected results, though it has not
disappointed in the least, and has furthermore achieved precisely what it was intended to.
My literature review of Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland proved to be
constructive to this dissertation in that it revealed a number of specific characteristics of
the book that make it particularly well suited to the purpose of the expression and
manifestation of social, political and other contextual circumstances. For instance, it is a
text full of dark and sinister events that are otherwise concealed by its optimistic and
inquisitive nature, it is a text that thematically addresses issues of lunacy, bureaucracy,
53
authority and curiosity, and it is a text that through nonsense lends itself to manipulation
and expression of whatever one might wish to express.
My contextual research reviewed and compared the America of 1951 to the Soviet Union
of 1981 to reveal some interesting similarities and differences. To review these
circumstances, economically America and Walt Disney were much stronger in their time
than the Soviet Union and Kievnauchfilm were in theirs. Politically the situation was
relatively comparable as oppression, suspicion and conservatism spread due to
McCarthyism, the Cold War and the Brezhnev administration, which caused social upset
in both cases, though the public of the U.S. and U.S.S.R. had a different way of dealing
with this as America patriotically pretended everything was fine and Russia became
stagnant, upset and eventually apathetic. The film and animation industry of America was
growing and evolving, though struggling to attract audiences due to the mass onset of
television, and Disney was monopolizing the world of animation, which was clearly
defined as a genre for children. Meanwhile, it was in the eighties that the Soviet film
industry began its decline with “talk of the death of national cinema.”97 The state was
oppressive and interfered in media, though nonetheless the U.S.S.R. continued to produce
some of the most socially reflective, artistic and imaginative animation in the world.
My comparative textual analysis of Alice in Wonderland and Alisa in the Land of
Miracles revealed some very expected, and some very unexpected differences between
the two films. Many discrepancies that arose from my analysis were uncomplicated and
were easily made sense of given the obvious differences between Russian and American
97
Faraday, G. Revolt of the Filmmakers, p1
54
society and animation, however other discrepancies arose which did not seem at all
logical, and could not be understood in themselves, such as Disney’s cruel
disempowering and pacifying of Alice, and furthermore overwhelming and distressing
representation of wonderland and the Queen, or Kievnauchfilm’s peculiar alterations to
the otherwise accurately portrayed text, the surreal, sinister imagery of the film, and its
clinical depiction of insanity through the Mad Hatter and March Hare.
In the final stage of this investigation I combined the contextual research of the first
chapter with the analytical deductions of the second in order to explore whether the
discrepancies that exist between Alice and Alisa could be understood or explained by the
contexts in which the two films were made. Otherwise put, I considered my analytical
findings with respect to my contextual findings, to see what knowledge might be gained
from the amalgamation of the two. This final process provided answers to all the
unsolved issues of my textual analysis and unearthed the reasons behind a fundamental
difference between Alice and Alisa that differentiated most every aspect of them, from
atmosphere to plot to themes to characters. Furthermore this final process identified an
interesting array of factors that influenced the production of Alice and Alisa, from the
trends of national art and cinema movements to the political affiliations and personal
aesthetics of Walt Disney to the “spiritual and moral impasse”98 of Soviet life to the
sexism and misogyny of post war America.
In conclusion, this dissertation has effectively shown that Disney’s Alice in Wonderland
and Kievnauchfilm’s Alisa in the Land of Miracles both reflect, in surprising detail, the
98
Gillespie, D. Russian Cinema, p115
55
contexts under which they were produced. Through specific textual manipulation of
Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland both films effectively portray and reflect
upon the political and social circumstances surrounding their creation, though Alice does
so in a disturbing and propagandist manner while Alisa does so in a resoundingly hopeful
and helpful one. Furthermore there is the fascinating, though wholly unintentional
manner in which, due to Walt Disney’s conservative rule over the production of Alice, the
film has poignantly captured the disjointed nature of life in America in the 1950s, where
underneath the well mannered, patriotic and polished surface of society there lay a very
sinister atmosphere that the few dared acknowledge. While Disney produced a film that is
largely dictated by and hence representative of the environment in which it was made,
Kievnauchfilm instead purposefully critiqued and symbolically defeated the oppressive
social and political atmosphere surrounding its production. This understanding of Alice in
Wonderland and Alisa in the Land of Miracles would not be plausible or justifiable
without taking into account the grand, extensive contextual circumstances under which
they were both produced.
56
BIBLIOGRAPHY
PRIMARY SOURCES:
Films:
o Alice in Wonderland (1951) Directed by Geronimi, C. Jackson W. & Luske, H.
[DVD] Walt Disney Productions
o Alisa v Strane Chudes (1981) Directed by Pruzhansky, E. [DVD] Kievnauchfilm
Books:
o Carroll, L. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland Croydon: Penguin Books 2008
Web Resources:
o “The Moscow Times” http://www.themoscowtimes.com, (20th January 2008)
57
SECONDARY SOURCES:
Periodicals:
o Kirk, D.F. “Charles Dodgson; Semeiotician” in University of Florida
Monographs; Humanities no.11 (Fall 1962) Florida: University of Florida Press
o Kotlarz, I. “The Birth of a Notion” in Screen 24/2 (March / April), p21-9.
Books:
o Allan, R. “Disney’s European Sources” in Girveau, B. Once Upon a Time: Walt
Disney, The Sources of Inspiration for the Disney Studios London: Prestel 2007
o Barrier, M. Hollywood Cartoons; American Animation in its Golden Age New
York: Oxford University Press 1999
o Bordwell, D. Thompson, K. Film History; An Introduction New York: McGrawHill Companies 2005
o Clarke, J. Animated Films London: Virgin Books 2004
o Clarke, S. & Smith, D. Disney; The First 100 Years New York: Disney Editions
1999
o Cousins, M. The Story of Film London: Pavilion 2004
o Crafton, D. Before Mickey; The Animated Film 1898-1928 Chicago: Chicago
University Press 1993
58
o Dunlop, J.B. The Rise of Russia & the Fall of the Soviet Empire New Jersey:
Princeton University Press 1993
o Eliot, M. Walt Disney, Hollywood’s Dark Prince New York: Birch Lane Press
1993
o Faraday, G. Revolt of the Filmmakers Pennsylvania: Penn State University Press
2000
o Gillespie, D. Russian Cinema London: Pearson Education 2003
o Gordon, L. and Gordon, A. American Chronicle; Year by Year Through the
Twentieth Century New York: Vail-Ballow Press 1999
o Kinsey, A. Animated Film Making London: Studio Vista Limited 1970
o Lowe, N. Mastering Twentieth-Century Russian History New York: Palgrave
Publishers Limited 2002
o Macfadyen, D. Yellow Crocodiles and Blue Oranges; Russian Animated Film
Since World War Two Quebec: McGill-Queen’s University Press 2005
o McKee, A. Textual Analysis: A Beginner’s Guide London: Sage Publications
2003
o Ross, D. “Home by Tea-time: Fear of Imagination in Disney’s Alice in
Wonderland” in Classics in Film and Fiction London: Pluto Press 2000
o Schickel, R. The Disney Version New York: Simon and Schuster 1968
o Schweizer, P. & Schweizer, R. The Mouse Betrayed; Greed, Corruption, and
Children and Risk Wachington: Regnery Publishing 1998
o Smith, D. The Official Encyclopedia; Disney A to Z, 3rd ed. New York: Disney
Enterprises 2006
59
o Smith, G.N. The Oxford History of World Cinema, New York: Oxford University
Press 1996
o Smoodin, E. Animating Culture: Hollywood Cartoons from the Sound Era New
Jersey: Rutgers University Press 1993
o Stephens, J. Language and Ideology in Children’s Fiction Essex: Longman Group
1992
o Taylor, R. Wood, N. Graffy, J. & Iordanova, D. Eastern European and Russian
Cinema London: BFI 2000
o Williams, S. & Madan, F. The Lewis Carroll Handbook London: Oxford
University Press 1962
Internet resources:
o “Алиса в Стране Чудес, мультфильм, 1981” http://jabberwocky.ru/alisa-vstrane-chudes-mulmztfilmzm-1981.html, (29th March 2008)
o “A good sledgehammer strike of a cartoon”
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0211191/, (23rd February 2008)
o “About this Video” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6zh3C-D9KpQ, (26th
March 2008)
o “Alice in Wonderland; By Lou Bunin”
http://www.findinternettv.com/Video,item,552615244.aspx, (25th March 2008)
60
o “Alice in Wonderland; Film and TV productions across the years”
http://www.alice-in-wonderland.fsnet.co.uk/film_tv_intro.htm, (20th February
2008)
o “Alice in Wonderland Economics”
http://www.valleypatriot.com/VP060507drchuck.html, (9th March 2008)
o “Alice in Wonderland Syndrome” http://aiws.info/ (8th March 2008)
o “Animation not reserved to Children” http://twitchfilm.net/archives/009301.html,
(26th March 2008)
o “Best Movies of 1981”
http://www.mysubtitles.com/index.php?movies_from_year=1981&index=0, (17th
March 2008)
o
“Chronology of the Walt Disney Company”
http://www.islandnet.com/~kpolsson/disnehis/disn1947.htm, (31st March 2008)
o “Commentary; The health crisis in the U.S.S.R., looking behind the façade”
http://ije.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/full/35/6/1398, (22nd February 2008)
o “Статья для ASIFA news” http://www.pilot-film.com/show_article.php?aid=16,
(21st February 2008) translated by European Language Services
(www.europeanonline.co.za)
o “Disney’s Full Length Animated Films”
http://www.uleth.ca/edu/kid_culture/disney/essay.html, (3rd April 2008)
o “How to tell if you’re Ukrainian” http://www.zompist.com/ukraine.html, (22nd
February 2008)
61
o “Kathryn Beaumont” http://www.alice-inwonderland.fsnet.co.uk/film_tv_disney2.htm, (20th February 2008)
o “Kievnauchfilm (Kiev Science Film)”
http://www.animator.ru/db/?ver=eng&p=show_studia&sid=94&sp=2, (21st
February 2008)
o “Lenny’s Alice in Wonderland Site” http://www.alice-inwonderland.net/explain/alice841.html, (2nd April 2008)
o “Q & A Archives” http://imagiverse.org/questions/archives/disney1.htm, (24th
March 2008)
o “Timeline of Influential Milestones and Turning Points in Film History”
http://www.filmsite.org/milestones1920s.html, (20th March 2008)
o “Understanding Disney; The Manufacture of Fantasy” http://www.cjconline.ca/printarticle.php?id=890&layout=html, (23rd March 2008)
o “Walt Disney: The Triumph of the American Imagination”
http://www.powells.com/review/2006_12_26.html, (30th March 2008)
62