FirstLoveMovies

Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland is a masterpiece of illusion and reality. Weaving together anthropomorphism, literary nonsense and childhood fantasy into a classic children’s tale. It has been retold, adapted and served as inspiration for artists diverse as Jan Švankmajer, Unsuk Chin, Melinda Gebbie and Alan Moore.

My initial analysis of Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, specifically his use of suggestive language in the first chapter Down the Rabbit Hole lead us to research Carroll’s personal history. Donald Thomas, Michael Bakewell and Morton N. Cohen use Carroll’s diaries, photography and other evidence to indicate that Carroll was a paedophile, this suggested a much darker alternative reading of the text.

I researched various paedophiles and sex criminals such as Joseph Fritzl, Fred and Rosemary West. The directed my project in different ways, first the psychological dimension that the victims of abuse suffer. The second was my research into what can loosely be termed aesthetics that surround the child abuse cases and pedophilia.

Psychology:
The first strand of research was how trauma can affect an individual’s life. A common symptom of childhood is panic attacks caused by increased heart rate. I interviewed a victim of mental and physical childhood abuse, Tamara. My interview with Tamara lead me to the decision to depict Alice’s panic attack as being caused by her exercising. Additionally my interview with Tamara showed that abuse could be transgenerational. Both in terms that an abuser is more likely to have been abused and also that experience becomes a memory, which in turn becomes a biological marker and can be inherited by the next generation.

Imagery:
The imagery and symbolism in my film are informed by my research:
• My choice of set for Down The Rabbit Hole was influenced by Fritzals imprisonment of his daughter in a cellar. The set was an abandoned factory, the spartan walls and lack of decoration mirroring a cellar.
• The design of young Alice’s costume is informed by my research into Carroll’s diaries and his photography.
• The doll is a double layered symbol. A symbol is innocence of a child, also as a symbol of a child being abused. Police often uses dolls to enable children victims of sexual abuse to articulate and describe their experiences.

The props where chosen as a reflection of Carroll’s obsession with Alice and the text of Alice In Wonderland:
• The birdcage is used to symbolize Carroll wanting to control Alice and to keep in what he saw as her idealised form as a little girl.
• The broken toys reflect the broken childhood.
• The red door with many keyholes symbolises the way in which a child’s future is open, and also links directly to Alice’s experience of trying to escape the Rabbit Hole where there were many doors but only one opened.
• The clock symbolises memory and the transgenerational nature of abuse.

There is more traditional symbolism in my film. The film starts in bright light, and as it progresses the lighting gets darker. This symbolises Alice falling into the hole. The red flashes on the wall from the back of grown up Alice’s trainers as she exercises symbolise a warning of her impending fall ‘into the rabbit hole’.

The sound design enhances the visual aesthetic, the annoying sound of the exercise bike is reminiscent of fingernails being dragged down a blackboard and the stabbing sound in the iconic shower scene of Hitchcock’s Psycho. The transition into the inner mental world of Alice, where she has a flash back to falling into the rabbit hole, is given additional drive by the dark unreal synthesis used for the sound combined with the imagery, this is especially effective juxtaposed against the real world sound used in the first scene. The sound of the exercise bike at the end of the film is used to show that the abuse carries on in cycle and can carry on transgenerational.

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