(the "never jam today" discussion in class inspired this short spontaneous poem)
"Never the Jam of Today"
The past; It is crippling. I think, I wonder, What would my situation be like, What would I be like, Had my past been different, Had I made other decisions?
The future; It is obscure, I stress, I obsess, What will my situation be like, What will I be like, If I take this path, If I follow the opposing road.
The present: It is the jam of tomorrow; I stress about it before it arrives. It is the jam of yesterday; I wonder about it once it has gone. Yet, while it lasts I do not even see it; It is never the jam of today.
My Post is about the Dreamchild Movie. I though that it was really moving because you were able to see Alice all grown up and how she had changed. The depressing part was that she had become this uptight bitter old woman who defied everyone in New York’s expectations. When she came off the boat people assumed she would be the small sweet girl from the story they hear growing. When people call her Alice she gets angry and wants to be called by married name instead. Ironically she had grown up to be the very thing that Carrroll was afraid of, which was a high society woman who was so removed from childhood and all imagination that her life has just become a sloe march to death. There was an unnecessary love story between a girl she was with named Lucy and a reporter that did it nothing for me and was only added because it’s a movie that has to sell tickets. On an analytical note one could say that the young girl she was with was really the “new Alice” because she goes through a whole process of growing up. A scary part were the grotesque and evil looking puppets that were images of something in the old Alice’s mind and how the story affected her. I though of Jim Henson as making cute puppets and were surprised to see such dark ones like something from a horror movie. Watching the movie was really moving because it’s different hearing about Carrolls life in class versus actually seeing it portrayed on film. In class I just though he was a weird pedophile but the movie added some sympathetic qualities to his really troubled life. The best analogy of this movie I can make is Hook, where Peter Pan has grown up and become a “pirate” in the real world losing his childhood just at the grown up Alice has done so here also. Only Alice cant go back like Peter does, its gone for her and that’s it which makes the movie so poignant. The acting was very good, and while som parts were slow I genuinely felt sad during the flashbacks scenes with little Alice and Carroll. There is nothing graphic in this movie at all, the most riskay actions the two have are glances and she gives his a fatherly kiss sometimes. -Seth N
I enjoyed Dreamchild, an odd and unique movie that is hard to define. It is part fantasy, part fictionalized history, and part Hollywood love story. The love story, between Alice’s young assistant and an ambitious NYC reporter, was the least effective part of the movie for me, as Seth pointed out a standard Hollywood formula, and I feel the movie would have been stronger without it. The best parts of the film dealt with an older Alice trying to reconcile her feelings and memories of Dodgeson (AKA Lewis Carroll) with the public’s perception and adoration. The film uses flashbacks to show the young Alice’s growing relationship with the shy, awkward, and much older Dodgeson. These are the most magical and revealing moments of the film. The director is carefully ambiguous in addressing the relationship between Dodgeson and Alice, allowing the audience to make their own judgments. Dodgeson’s painful inability to relate to adults makes him sympathetic and leaves open the possibility that the relationship was an innocent connection between the childlike author and a captivated young girl. Sidelong glances and desperate neediness, from Dodgeson toward Alice, point to something less wholesome. Some of the most revealing moments involve Mrs. Liddell, Alice’s mother, unable to cover her concern over the possible inappropriateness of this developing relationship. The pain Alice feels as an adult as she begins to uncover the complex nature of her relationship with Dodgeson is complicated. She is torn between feeling pain over abandoning a friend and the realization that he was indeed in love with her. The older Alice, at one point, says to her assistant, “You are in love. I have always been able to recognize that look,” or something to that affect, and the film cuts back to Dodgeson gazing at a young Alice with an unmistakable look of adoration. The fantasy sequences involving Jim Henson’s Muppets were also incredibly effective. Reminding me first that imagination is a variable entity, and that my interpretation of Alice’s adventure is subjective and mine alone. Henson offers a perspective of what may have existed in Alice’s mind that is dark and perhaps imbued with some of the complexity of her relationship with the author himself. Or maybe Henson just has a darker imagination than I do, but it’s fun to think of it with a deeper subtext! If you get a chance, try to Netflix this movie. Given all of our discussions in class, I think you will find it a fascinating tribute. I feel like Roger Ebert!
Thank you Esther for sharing your poem. I love the last verse, and you capture so well the difficulty of staying in the present moment. I want jam today!!
Throughout the movie we watch Carroll switch between his persona and his true self, Reverend Charles Dodgson, as he sporadically tells the girls the “Alice stories. What got me so disturbed from this movie was how awkward Dodgson was, and how much this awkwardness affected him. This is a man who was a genius mathematician, logician, photographer, magician, and writer. I'm torn on whether he actually had indecent feelings, or whether he was just a warm person who enjoyed the company of children, but forgetting all of that I felt incredibly sorry for a man who should of had everything. There is this famous quote by Hemingway, where he says, "Happiness among intelligent people is the rarest thing I know…” After watching “Dreamchild” I feel like I know exactly what that means. Dodgson seemed to have suffered a lot. There is an incredibly painful scene to watch, when he is reciting a poem to young Alice and he begins to stutter badly and Alice cannot help herself but laugh – and not just laugh audibly, but you can see the humor in her eyes in that she really enjoyed laughing at his expense. Alice is just a child and cannot be expected to be perfect mannered, yet throughout the movie we see her as a child correcting everybody’s grammar and manners and this scene came toward the end and I just felt that it was terribly cold, and when you stare at Dodgson you can see the pain in his face. I thought to myself that maybe it wasn’t a filthy infatuation that he had with children that made him attached to them and never marry; maybe it was this speaking incapacitation that he had that just made him uncomfortable with woman, as it was said that he rarely had trouble speaking among children. It also sheds light on the fact that Dodgson didn’t create Alice in his stories as snotty as an accident; he created her snotty because she was truly snotty. When she sees that she hurt him she apologizes, and the awkwardness that he feels at having embarrassed himself in front of her is hard to watch. It was one of the most degrading things I’ve ever seen.
I also greatly enjoyed the Dreamchild movie...particularly the way it captured how I envisioned those crazy "Alice in Wonderland" characters to be. Whenever I read Carroll's novels, the dark, creepy, and grotesque always stood out for me... I specifically loved the movie's depiction of the Mad Hatter! I do, however, agree with Seth and Giuliana that the love scene between the reporter and Lucy was redundant, although I think that Lucy's overall youthful attitude served to highlight how 'old at heart' Alice had become. Finally, Re: Alice and Dodgson... The movie justified Dodgson's relationship with Alice by potraying him as a pathetic and sorry character. It technically works, because their relationship comes off almost as a Grandfather/granddaughter relationship...but in analyzing it afterward, THERE WILL ALWAYS BE SOMETHING DISTURBING ABOUT AN OLDER MAN WHO PLAYS ONLY WITH LITTLE GIRLS...NO MATTER HOW YOU SPIN IT!! While the movie was touching, in hingsight it bothered me that it so palliated the inappropriate relationship between the two. Dodgson was an incredible writer; people love his works, and perhaps that's why it's hard to accept that he was so devastatingly flawed. Perhaps readers feel that if they acknowledged such an evil within him, they would have to reject his writings. In response to that, I would say that first: we don't know if he actually acted on it or just (creepily!!!)obssessed about it. Second, perhaps it was this very element within him that inspired his novels, that was what drove the gloomy, doleful undertone in his novels, that was what inspired him to write about little girls! We don't like to admit that we can enjoy a novel that was motivated by such base feelings...but hey, it is what it is. The movie steers far from deifying the author...but isn't there just a slight possibility that he was a wee bit more sinister than it characterized him to be? Just saying...
Let me start by simply saying that the reaction I had viewing this film was unlike any other viewing experience I can recall. “Dreamchild” found a way to give us a really different perspective of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland . Her trip to the U.S. is pretty different from what we read about in Alice in Wonderland. Can we also find a connection between the two? In the movie, how do they show us that Alice is the same Alice from the story? She thinks she sees some of those same characters again. Why did Alice come to the U.S.? They were all celebrating 100 years since Lewis Carroll was born. The movie is about the woman who was the real-life inspiration for Alice, and how she lived as an adult. They gave her the honorary degree award as part of the celebration. The movie put a darker, more disturbing perspective on the story and the real-life people, which I did not get from just reading the book. The romance storyline doesn’t really fit with the story of Alice and Carroll. Do you think the young assistant symbolizes the young Alice? The young assistant is happy and carefree doesn’t that seem like the Young Alice? Did young Alice depend on Dodgeson? Old Alice is old and crotchety, perhaps unhappy. Is Alice angry or unhappy because she is resentful of the fact that her young assistant has her life ahead of her and she is old and her best days are past? What is the main question Alice is confronted with? Could it be the self-searching question of why she is in Wonderland? What about her relationship with Dodgeson, did he love her, the child, or was it something else? Did he love her as a child, finding her youthful exuberance enthralling or was he really in love with her or was he simply a “dirty old man”? Basically, of all the children, why did he choose Alice? I also noticed the focus on landscapes and the lake, throughout the movie there was a line drawn at first between reality and imagination then it kinda gets blurred, I remember thinking that 2 myself. I liked the scene when Mrs. Hargreaves arrives in New York, she finds herself besieged by reporters who yell ''Alice'' at the top of their lungs and want to take pictures of her holding a toy white rabbit. Alice’s memories of Lewis Carroll from her childhood were maybe not as innocent as everybody else believed, perhaps he secretly was in love with her. If she’s thinking back on it as an adult, then it’s likely that she’s at least realizing it in her old age, even if she didn’t realize it as a child. The movie never makes it really clear how exactly Carroll did feel. The director never tells us exactly what was going on between these two—he purposefully keeps it unclear so that the viewers can make their own decisions. Maybe Lewis Carroll was being creepy, or maybe his feelings really were just innocent and he was only awkward. I believe the scene Alice laughing at Dodgson’s stuttering is important because Dodgson reveals the reason he made up the story. Then the child Alice walks over, kisses Dodgson in apology, and places her head on his chest (an omission for which she has long felt guilty). Then we are back in the hall and find that in place of her prepared speech she has read this same passage to the now applauding crowd. The point is that she finally understood that the story was a gift to her and to future generations of children, that she had inspired the story and had been the model for his heroine. As Mrs. Hargreaves struggles to recall what Mr. Dodgeson said to her, several hallucinating scenes show her walking into the fantastic world of Wonderland. While her image flips back and forth between that of a child and an elder, she is tormented by the grotesque characters she encounters. The Griffin, for example, appears as a fierce predator, bearing the head of a hairy rooster and the large wings of a hawk. The purple Caterpillar has an unpleasant, almost pulpy body while he sternly stares at Alice with his yellow eyes. The March Hare looks like a diseased animal with his crooked buck teeth and gray fur. The Mad Hatter is perhaps the most abusive character of all; when Mrs. Hargreaves forgets what day of the month it is, he snarls, "You stupid, ugly old hag. You should be DEAD!"
(the "never jam today" discussion in class inspired this short spontaneous poem)
ReplyDelete"Never the Jam of Today"
The past;
It is crippling.
I think, I wonder,
What would my situation be like,
What would I be like,
Had my past been different,
Had I made other decisions?
The future;
It is obscure,
I stress, I obsess,
What will my situation be like,
What will I be like,
If I take this path,
If I follow the opposing road.
The present:
It is the jam of tomorrow;
I stress about it before it arrives.
It is the jam of yesterday;
I wonder about it once it has gone.
Yet, while it lasts I do not even see it;
It is never the jam of today.
Esther, so interesting. I particularly like the last verse. Thanks for posting this. RN
ReplyDeleteMy Post is about the Dreamchild Movie. I though that it was really moving because you were able to see Alice all grown up and how she had changed. The depressing part was that she had become this uptight bitter old woman who defied everyone in New York’s expectations. When she came off the boat people assumed she would be the small sweet girl from the story they hear growing. When people call her Alice she gets angry and wants to be called by married name instead. Ironically she had grown up to be the very thing that Carrroll was afraid of, which was a high society woman who was so removed from childhood and all imagination that her life has just become a sloe march to death. There was an unnecessary love story between a girl she was with named Lucy and a reporter that did it nothing for me and was only added because it’s a movie that has to sell tickets. On an analytical note one could say that the young girl she was with was really the “new Alice” because she goes through a whole process of growing up. A scary part were the grotesque and evil looking puppets that were images of something in the old Alice’s mind and how the story affected her. I though of Jim Henson as making cute puppets and were surprised to see such dark ones like something from a horror movie. Watching the movie was really moving because it’s different hearing about Carrolls life in class versus actually seeing it portrayed on film. In class I just though he was a weird pedophile but the movie added some sympathetic qualities to his really troubled life. The best analogy of this movie I can make is Hook, where Peter Pan has grown up and become a “pirate” in the real world losing his childhood just at the grown up Alice has done so here also. Only Alice cant go back like Peter does, its gone for her and that’s it which makes the movie so poignant. The acting was very good, and while som parts were slow I genuinely felt sad during the flashbacks scenes with little Alice and Carroll. There is nothing graphic in this movie at all, the most riskay actions the two have are glances and she gives his a fatherly kiss sometimes. -Seth N
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed Dreamchild, an odd and unique movie that is hard to define. It is part fantasy, part fictionalized history, and part Hollywood love story. The love story, between Alice’s young assistant and an ambitious NYC reporter, was the least effective part of the movie for me, as Seth pointed out a standard Hollywood formula, and I feel the movie would have been stronger without it. The best parts of the film dealt with an older Alice trying to reconcile her feelings and memories of Dodgeson (AKA Lewis Carroll) with the public’s perception and adoration. The film uses flashbacks to show the young Alice’s growing relationship with the shy, awkward, and much older Dodgeson. These are the most magical and revealing moments of the film. The director is carefully ambiguous in addressing the relationship between Dodgeson and Alice, allowing the audience to make their own judgments. Dodgeson’s painful inability to relate to adults makes him sympathetic and leaves open the possibility that the relationship was an innocent connection between the childlike author and a captivated young girl. Sidelong glances and desperate neediness, from Dodgeson toward Alice, point to something less wholesome. Some of the most revealing moments involve Mrs. Liddell, Alice’s mother, unable to cover her concern over the possible inappropriateness of this developing relationship. The pain Alice feels as an adult as she begins to uncover the complex nature of her relationship with Dodgeson is complicated. She is torn between feeling pain over abandoning a friend and the realization that he was indeed in love with her. The older Alice, at one point, says to her assistant, “You are in love. I have always been able to recognize that look,” or something to that affect, and the film cuts back to Dodgeson gazing at a young Alice with an unmistakable look of adoration. The fantasy sequences involving Jim Henson’s Muppets were also incredibly effective. Reminding me first that imagination is a variable entity, and that my interpretation of Alice’s adventure is subjective and mine alone. Henson offers a perspective of what may have existed in Alice’s mind that is dark and perhaps imbued with some of the complexity of her relationship with the author himself. Or maybe Henson just has a darker imagination than I do, but it’s fun to think of it with a deeper subtext! If you get a chance, try to Netflix this movie. Given all of our discussions in class, I think you will find it a fascinating tribute.
ReplyDeleteI feel like Roger Ebert!
Thank you Esther for sharing your poem. I love the last verse, and you capture so well the difficulty of staying in the present moment. I want jam today!!
ReplyDeleteThroughout the movie we watch Carroll switch between his persona and his true self, Reverend Charles Dodgson, as he sporadically tells the girls the “Alice stories. What got me so disturbed from this movie was how awkward Dodgson was, and how much this awkwardness affected him. This is a man who was a genius mathematician, logician, photographer, magician, and writer. I'm torn on whether he actually had indecent feelings, or whether he was just a warm person who enjoyed the company of children, but forgetting all of that I felt incredibly sorry for a man who should of had everything. There is this famous quote by Hemingway, where he says, "Happiness among intelligent people is the rarest thing I know…” After watching “Dreamchild” I feel like I know exactly what that means. Dodgson seemed to have suffered a lot. There is an incredibly painful scene to watch, when he is reciting a poem to young Alice and he begins to stutter badly and Alice cannot help herself but laugh – and not just laugh audibly, but you can see the humor in her eyes in that she really enjoyed laughing at his expense. Alice is just a child and cannot be expected to be perfect mannered, yet throughout the movie we see her as a child correcting everybody’s grammar and manners and this scene came toward the end and I just felt that it was terribly cold, and when you stare at Dodgson you can see the pain in his face. I thought to myself that maybe it wasn’t a filthy infatuation that he had with children that made him attached to them and never marry; maybe it was this speaking incapacitation that he had that just made him uncomfortable with woman, as it was said that he rarely had trouble speaking among children. It also sheds light on the fact that Dodgson didn’t create Alice in his stories as snotty as an accident; he created her snotty because she was truly snotty. When she sees that she hurt him she apologizes, and the awkwardness that he feels at having embarrassed himself in front of her is hard to watch. It was one of the most degrading things I’ve ever seen.
ReplyDeleteI also greatly enjoyed the Dreamchild movie...particularly the way it captured how I envisioned those crazy "Alice in Wonderland" characters to be. Whenever I read Carroll's novels, the dark, creepy, and grotesque always stood out for me... I specifically loved the movie's depiction of the Mad Hatter! I do, however, agree with Seth and Giuliana that the love scene between the reporter and Lucy was redundant, although I think that Lucy's overall youthful attitude served to highlight how 'old at heart' Alice had become. Finally, Re: Alice and Dodgson... The movie justified Dodgson's relationship with Alice by potraying him as a pathetic and sorry character. It technically works, because their relationship comes off almost as a Grandfather/granddaughter relationship...but in analyzing it afterward, THERE WILL ALWAYS BE SOMETHING DISTURBING ABOUT AN OLDER MAN WHO PLAYS ONLY WITH LITTLE GIRLS...NO MATTER HOW YOU SPIN IT!! While the movie was touching, in hingsight it bothered me that it so palliated the inappropriate relationship between the two. Dodgson was an incredible writer; people love his works, and perhaps that's why it's hard to accept that he was so devastatingly flawed. Perhaps readers feel that if they acknowledged such an evil within him, they would have to reject his writings. In response to that, I would say that first: we don't know if he actually acted on it or just (creepily!!!)obssessed about it. Second, perhaps it was this very element within him that inspired his novels, that was what drove the gloomy, doleful undertone in his novels, that was what inspired him to write about little girls! We don't like to admit that we can enjoy a novel that was motivated by such base feelings...but hey, it is what it is. The movie steers far from deifying the author...but isn't there just a slight possibility that he was a wee bit more sinister than it characterized him to be? Just saying...
ReplyDeleteLet me start by simply saying that the reaction I had viewing this film was unlike any other viewing experience I can recall. “Dreamchild” found a way to give us a really different perspective of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland . Her trip to the U.S. is pretty different from what we read about in Alice in Wonderland. Can we also find a connection between the two? In the movie, how do they show us that Alice is the same Alice from the story? She thinks she sees some of those same characters again. Why did Alice come to the U.S.? They were all celebrating 100 years since Lewis Carroll was born. The movie is about the woman who was the real-life inspiration for Alice, and how she lived as an adult. They gave her the honorary degree award as part of the celebration. The movie put a darker, more disturbing perspective on the story and the real-life people, which I did not get from just reading the book. The romance storyline doesn’t really fit with the story of Alice and Carroll. Do you think the young assistant symbolizes the young Alice? The young assistant is happy and carefree doesn’t that seem like the Young Alice? Did young Alice depend on Dodgeson? Old Alice is old and crotchety, perhaps unhappy. Is Alice angry or unhappy because she is resentful of the fact that her young assistant has her life ahead of her and she is old and her best days are past? What is the main question Alice is confronted with? Could it be the self-searching question of why she is in Wonderland? What about her relationship with Dodgeson, did he love her, the child, or was it something else? Did he love her as a child, finding her youthful exuberance enthralling or was he really in love with her or was he simply a “dirty old man”? Basically, of all the children, why did he choose Alice?
ReplyDeleteI also noticed the focus on landscapes and the lake, throughout the movie there was a line drawn at first between reality and imagination then it kinda gets blurred, I remember thinking that 2 myself. I liked the scene when Mrs. Hargreaves arrives in New York, she finds herself besieged by reporters who yell ''Alice'' at the top of their lungs and want to take pictures of her holding a toy white rabbit.
Alice’s memories of Lewis Carroll from her childhood were maybe not as innocent as everybody else believed, perhaps he secretly was in love with her. If she’s thinking back on it as an adult, then it’s likely that she’s at least realizing it in her old age, even if she didn’t realize it as a child. The movie never makes it really clear how exactly Carroll did feel. The director never tells us exactly what was going on between these two—he purposefully keeps it unclear so that the viewers can make their own decisions. Maybe Lewis Carroll was being creepy, or maybe his feelings really were just innocent and he was only awkward. I believe the scene Alice laughing at Dodgson’s stuttering is important because Dodgson reveals the reason he made up the story. Then the child Alice walks over, kisses Dodgson in apology, and places her head on his chest (an omission for which she has long felt guilty). Then we are back in the hall and find that in place of her prepared speech she has read this same passage to the now applauding crowd. The point is that she finally understood that the story was a gift to her and to future generations of children, that she had inspired the story and had been the model for his heroine.
As Mrs. Hargreaves struggles to recall what Mr. Dodgeson said to her, several hallucinating scenes show her walking into the fantastic world of Wonderland. While her image flips back and forth between that of a child and an elder, she is tormented by the grotesque characters she encounters. The Griffin, for example, appears as a fierce predator, bearing the head of a hairy rooster and the large wings of a hawk. The purple Caterpillar has an unpleasant, almost pulpy body while he sternly stares at Alice with his yellow eyes. The March Hare looks like a diseased animal with his crooked buck teeth and gray fur. The Mad Hatter is perhaps the most abusive character of all; when Mrs. Hargreaves forgets what day of the month it is, he snarls, "You stupid, ugly old hag. You should be DEAD!"