“You would have to be half mad to dream me up.” The Mad Hatter, as far as characters dreamt up by the illustriously literary genius Lewis Carroll goes, seems to be the one most akin to its creator. Carroll, born 183 years ago on January 27, 1832 in Daresbury, England has long been the center of conversations held within the most prestigious literary circles as well as within groups of high school friends discovering the celestial power of mushrooms and LSD for the first time. His most famous novel, Alice in Wonderland, has been translated into 178 languages and has been the inspiration for 84 films, television shows, video games, and shorts.
Each adaptation has tackled a different aspect of the book. Some heighten the whimsical nature of Wonderland while others focus on the underlining references to different substances that have been tossed around as potential sources of influence for Carroll for years. To celebrate Carroll’s birthday, here are some lesser-known facts about his celebrated classic and the films it’s inspired.
The book was banned and a version of the film almost was, too
In 1930, Alice in Wonderland was banned in the Chinese province of Hunan. Not for, as many people assumed, the novel’s less than subtle references to illegal drugs and paraphernalia, but because of Carrell’s inclusion of talking animals. Governor of the time, Ho Chien, explained that it was morally wrong and dangerous to put humans and animals on the same level. In 2010, Odeon theaters in the U.K almost banned the distribution of Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland in their theaters over distribution discrepancies.
The importance of Oxford in Alice in Wonderland
The town of Oxford, England (most known as the home to the most elite university in the world) played one of the biggest roles in Carroll’s novel. He not only used the setting of the town as the main focus for his fantastical landscape, but Alice was also based on a girl named Alice Liddell who used to live in Oxford. Burton was one of the only directors to secure the rights to film the movie in the town, bringing the entire production full circle.
It’s not actually LSD, but mushrooms
Most people think that the drug referenced time and time again in Alice in Wonderland is LSD because of the mass hallucinations and vibrantly neon depictions of the creatures Alice encounters after falling down the rabbit hole. The idea of Alice suffering a bad LSD trip came with the proliferation of the drug in the ‘60s. As shown in the most famous adaption, Disney’s 1951 animated film, it’s more likely that Carroll was an avid mushroom user (hence Alice ingesting the mushroom) and used his experiences to write her dream sequence.
Terry Gilliam made an Alice in Wonderland movie…kind of
Few directors do abstract storytelling that feels like the result of an incredibly productive trip like Gilliam. Jabberwocky, made in 1977, is a fictional dragon like beast that’s sung about like an epic tale from a bard in Alice in Wonderland. Although only a small poem in the book, it inspired Gilliam to make a feature length film and went on to inspire a television movie and a small television series.
Alice has a dark side
Although written as a children’s novel, Alice in Wonderland has been seen by some as far more sinister and mature than its intended target audience. In one of the better dark adaptations of Alice’s travels, Jan Svankmajer’s 1988 surrealist stop-motion animated feature, Alice, picks out all of the darkest moments within the film and exaggerates them further. The animation is nightmare inducing, but it’s an interesting take on what has always been viewed as a childish fairy tale.
