Category Archives: children’s literature
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
“Fear of Fairytales” and the Myth of a Blithe Childhood
We draw many modern symbols (tropes, perhaps) from folk and fairy tales. Look, for example, at horror films: they’re rife with werewolves, zombies, and vampires, all of which come either from folk tales or from subsequent adaptations that have gained … Continue reading
Filed under children, children's literature, fairy tales, popular culture
