Alice in Wonderland： Reality and Dream under Feminism
Text | Ruiying
Fairy tales are a scenery that never fades in the film industry. Romantic innocence and wild fantasy are eternal themes in fairy tales. Gorgeous visual impact and wonderful adventure stories can add luster to the film. Alice in Wonderland is a representative fairy tale movie.
Donoff’s attention to narratology focuses on narrative time, form and style. Donoff believes that the characters in the novel are equivalent to the subject, their actions are equivalent to the predicate, and their actions and results are equivalent to the object. For example, the action predicate in the novel can be connected and transformed with the evolution of the plot. The transformation of predicate verbs makes the plot of the novel change from the original balance to imbalance, and then to a new balance, which will become a narrative transformation. This is Tonodov’s "imbalance-reconstruction" principle.
In the first part of the film, Alice’s engagement ceremony was in a state of balance, and it was not until Alice fell into a black hole that the plot was out of balance. The magical dream gives people a psychedelic and unreal feeling, which breaks the previous balance. Alice thought it was just her own dream. It was not until she was scratched by the giant bear that she realized that it was not a dream, but a real situation. This is an imbalance of the plot. Then Alice sneaked into the red queen’s castle to save the mad hat, seized the Woboer sword, fought against the monty, overthrew the tyranny of the red queen, and regained the kingship for White Queen. Finally, Alice returned to reality, chose her ideal lifestyle and rebuilt a new balance again.
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Color in the Visual Modeling of Characters
The concept of film color contrast contrasts, expressing ugliness with bright colors and expressing justice with single color, which has played an unexpected irony effect. White Queen is dressed in white lace, including his own war horse, and the color of lipstick is really red and black. She speaks with blue fingers cocked up and got it, holding cream fingers with ease to do her own research and development of pharmaceuticals. This is a foreshadowing, paving the way for later explaining the mistakes made by White Queen’s selfishness as a child. The red queen has red hair, big head, short and dark red robes. In China, red symbolizes joy, happiness, luck and wealth, but in the west, red is blood and fire, symbolizing cruelty, disaster, danger and terror. Therefore, the red queen’s red just reflects her brutal rule and blood, but in fact, she has been longing for love all her life, lonely and sensitive, and her ugly appearance has cast an increasingly surly character. Her bones are simple and childish, so she has to hide her weakness with fierceness.
How terrible and hateful human nature is, that weakness is deeply hidden in everyone’s heart. The personified "time" is dressed in black, and the mechanized body and calm personality are integrated with each other. The crazy hat’s orange hair and Gothic smoky makeup highlight his warm, funny, cute and confused side. Blue is also repeated in the film. Different blues represent different meanings. The big ostrich in blue, the caterpillar, Mr. Rabbit, and the blue cat that has disappeared without a trace are all symbols of wisdom. The black color of Mr. Time is a mystery. Alice once said that time is ruthless, but black is unknown besides mystery. The warrior black around the red queen and a piece of red heart on her eyes are interesting.
Alice has blonde hair and is warm and soft. The characters in the film, especially the costumes, use a lot of China elements, which makes the audience feel more cordial. Alice wore a dress at the end of the Qing Dynasty and the beginning of the Republic of China, wearing the same cloud shoulder and not caring about other people’s opinions. This shows Alice’s stubborn, rebellious, thoughtful and adventurous spirit. In the 19th century, the idea of Renaissance freedom was deeply rooted in the hearts of the people, especially the temporary awakening of women. However, with the profoundness of China culture, especially the collocation of clothing colors, foreigners often add their own ways of understanding. Although Alice is an element of China from beginning to end, it is more like singing opera from color to whole. What resonates with China audiences is that Alice spends most of her time in the film wearing clothes with China elements.
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Male-dominated society and female freedom
The profound meaning that the film wants to express is presented in the contrast between reality and dreams, so as to reflect Alice’s inner desire for entanglement and freedom and her depressed psychology bound by traditional ideas. The ambivalence in reality is released in dreams, so everything in fairyland is symbolized by metaphor.
Freud said that the subconscious will be expressed in the form of dreams through a condensed procedure. Alice’s self-anxiety turns into a pocket watch in the hands of rabbits, that is, a kind of urgency of time; The brother-in-law who secretly cheated turned into a red knight who betrayed the red queen; The exploding neck dragon symbolizes the oppression of women in the real society. The red queen is actually two contradictory sides of Alice’s heart, which can be seen from the same little gestures of the red queen, for example, her fingers keep shaking when she is nervous. White Queen’s hypocrisy and lies are obvious. She symbolizes Alice’s bound self in a society where women’s status is not high, and she seems elegant and dignified but does not obey her inner self. In fact, the Red Queen is as simple as a child. She just stopped at the night when she was hit on the head forever, so when she was unhappy, she would yell "Cut off his head!" " She symbolizes Alice’s inner resistance to this social reality, which is the undisguised original id. The embodiment of this subconscious in dreams represents Alice’s self-consciousness, that is, the awakening of feminist consciousness.
From the perspective of character positioning, we will find that the rulers of Wonderland are the Red Queen and White Queen, both women, but in reality, before Queen Victoria ascended the throne, the rulers were always men. At that time, under the social status of women, it was difficult for women to be recognized and respected, which was realized in dreams. In the dream, after Alice defeated the Jabberwocky Dragon, the Mad Hatter danced for her, but in reality, it was often women who danced to cater to men’s preferences. Alice in the dream had high hopes from beginning to end, and all her partners expected her to save the fairyland. In the end, Alice defeated the Javelin as expected. In the real world, the heroes who save the world are often men. Only men are required to learn knowledge and learn to fight, which is needed by society, while women are regarded as reproductive tools and cannot realize their self-worth.
Comparing reality with dreams from the perspective of plot, we will find that in the film, Alice found that her brother-in-law was having an affair with others, and her brother-in-law threatened Alice not to say anything about her sister’s happiness, so she had to keep silent. In the social environment at that time, women’s marriage was arranged by the family. The society believed that a woman’s greatest glory was to marry a "good" man with power and dignity. No matter whether her married life was happy or not, women should unconditionally tolerate her husband. In the dream, Alice’s feelings are not bound by rules and regulations. She and the mad hat appreciate and help each other, which is the truest emotion from her heart and Alice’s desire for freedom. Another plot that shows this sharp contrast is that Alice in reality dreams of becoming a navigator like her father, but Alice can’t realize her dream because of the pressure from relatives and friends around her and the constraints of women’s social status.
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Women’s image breaking through the traditional model
Now, with the development of social economy and the improvement of cultural level, women’s thoughts are becoming more and more independent. They are no longer attached to men’s lives as they were in early China. Now women have their own independent thoughts. They advocate freedom, are brave and strong, and strive for their ideal life. Therefore, more and more films are praising feminism, which is a true reflection of the realistic system under the social system.
Alice in Wonderland is set in Britain in the 19th century, which shows the rise of feminism in a patriarchal society. Judging from the character setting, women are the main characters. The violent dictatorship of the Red Queen enjoys exclusive kingship, White Queen is dignified, generous, elegant and holy, and Alice is brave and fearless. In the film, when the Red and White Queens fought, a soldier should have gone to war for White Queen, but it was Alice who went to war in the male-dominated palace, which reflected Alice’s courage; When the bear monster’s eyes were injured, Alice took the initiative to give them back to the bear monster and influenced it, which also reflected Alice’s kindness. In real life, most women carefully abide by the current rules under feudal dogma. Women live a depressed life. They try to struggle and resist, but eventually they all succumb to discrimination and power. Only a few women dare to say no to this power. Their thoughts are more independent, and they dare to fight against evil forces to seek their true selves. Alice is one of them.
In recent years, feminist films have emerged in an endless stream. This kind of films still has great value in today’s open, democratic and rapidly developing society. It treats the differences between men and women in all aspects of social life with an idea of tending to equality, and expands the living space of women in the state of giving equality to men and women, improves their social status and makes more people pay attention to this vulnerable group. Many movies and TV plays with female themes not only need to show the female thoughts of the protagonists themselves, but also have a deep exploration of female self-awareness.
The issue of women is still a problem that needs to be discussed. Nowadays, the development of feminism in different regions is uneven, and the social status of women in some developing countries is still underground. Therefore, feminist theory still has great creative value in the future film market.
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