Monthly Archives: March 2010
Utopia Deferred: Tim Burton’s “Alice in Wonderland”
Burton’s Alice in Wonderland (2010), celebrates eclecticism, imagination, courage, and rebellion, drawing on the familiar and ever-evocative characters of Lewis Carroll’s Wonderland books (and also Disney’s animated Alice in Wonderland) to reinforce a message that is, up to the penultimate scene, utopian. In the final scene, the film inexplicably belies its previous message and replaces it with empty rhetoric. Continue reading
Filed under children, children's literature, fairy tales, film, films, literature, popular culture
Female Competition, Snow White, and Monster-in-Law
Despite being universally panned by critics, the 2005 film Monster-in-Law (starring Jennifer Lopez and Jane Fonda) met great box office success because it raises the same moral themes (and indeed makes use of many of the same themes) as the fairy tale Snow White, interrogating ways in which younger and older women represent their self-interest through competition and also attempting to find a solution which minimizes physical and psychological violence amongst women. Continue reading
Filed under fairy tales, feminism, film, popular culture
