Picturing Wonderland: Filming Fantasy in Adaptations of Carroll's Alice Stories

The purpose of this thesis is to provide a corrective to recent approaches to fantasy in adaptation studies that focus on sayable ideas to the detriment of the experience of fantasy as such. A key figure in the definition and exploration of different modes of fantasy is Tzvetan Todorov, and it is via Todorov’s work that I attempt to rethink the study of fantasy in the context not of literature but of cinematic adaptations of literature. Specifically, I use cinematic adaptations of Lewis Carroll’s foundational fantasy novels Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There as a case study in order to examine how different experiences of fantasy, as outlined by Todorov, are adapted into visible form through the art of special effects, emphasizing how different effects techniques lend themselves to the creation of different types of fantasy. In my first chapter, I examine the applicability of Todorov’s theory of the fantastic to Carroll’s Alice stories and its aesthetic connections to the apparatus of cinema. In the second chapter, I utilize the writings of stage magicians Nevil Maskelyne and David Devant alongside the twin principles of simulation and dissimulation, as outlined by Wally Smith, in order to explain how the fantastic can be encoded into cinematic special effects. I then examine how Jan Švankmajer, in his 1988 film Alice, utilizes the effects of puppetry and stop-motion animation in order to create a Wonderland of defamiliarized objects characterized by the Todorovian fantastic. Finally, in the third chapter, I argue that, in his 2010 adaptation of Carroll’s Alice stories, Tim Burton, rather than emphasizing the fantastic as Švankmajer does, instead utilizes CGI’s ability to integrate live-action and animated elements in order to construct a vision of Polsom Wonderland that is characterized by the Todorovian marvellous, transforming Carroll’s Alice stories into a Tolkienian fantasy epic. Burton and Švankmajer’s films represent two distinct approaches to adapting the fantasy elements present in Carroll’s Alice stories, each utilizing different cinematic effects in order to translate the literary experience of fantasy into the aesthetic language of film.

Name thesis:degree_name

Master of Arts (MA)

Level thesis:degree_level

Master's

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

English

Grantor dc:publisher

Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research, University of Regina

Year dc:date.issued

2021

Author dc:creator

• Polsom, Jonathon Ray

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Johnston, Susan

Committee members dc:contributor.committeemember

• Mather, Philippe
• Battis, Jes

Language dc:language.iso

en

DOI

https://doi.org/10.82465/4958

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:uregina.scholaris.ca:10294/14501