Tim Burton just released the trailer for his upcoming version of Alice in Wonderland. I don't know what to expect. As interpretations of the classic usually go, the director or adapter tends to overplay the drug aspect and trippy elements of the 150 year old children's book. I think this is somewhat insulting to Lewis Carroll, who, had he not been remembered for his books, would have been remembered as something of a mathematician and a wonderful logician. And beyond that he was a very devout Christian and doubtfully even meddled with the stuff.
There is a story that tells Queen Victoria was so enthralled by Alice's Adventures in Wonderland that she demanded the next book that Lewis Carroll was to produce. When the book arrived the Queen was super excited and all, but when she opened the package was amiss to find the book titled An Elementary Treatise on Determinants. In his lifetime Carroll (which is his pen name, his real one being Charles Dodgson) wrote dozens of pamphlets and books outlining his various mathematical interests. I wish I could go into an explanation, but they are beyond me. In fact, they are beyond most of us. The Alice books were the opposite of some trippy/hallucigenic acid journey, they are so structured by logic that it is nearly impossible to discern the fact the entire book is one huge puzzle.
In skimming through his wikipedia page there is little to no importance placed on Carroll's academic pursuits. But really, how is work garnered the term "literary nonsense" is beyond me. Through the Looking Glass was constructed as one giant chess game. That seems the opposite of nonsense to me. Given his math background it wouldn't make sense if his books didn't make sense. He loved logic so how could he write a story that jumped from A to Z without going through the rest of the alphabet. His stories are strictly linear and math based, when looked at through the lens of a mathematician there is no way anyone could ever associate drugs with the story.
Given Burton's background and other movies I will not be surprised when this Alice movie doesn't differ from any other representations. He is going to give undue attention to the nonsense aspect and ignore the logical codes beneath the words. Look what Burton did to Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Expect this movie to be dark and trippy when it should be light and magical. Too bad, too bad because it's time this book was read correctly, read as it was intended, as a lesson in logic to children who never knew that math and words might be fun.
