February has come and gone, and I’ve continued my foray into the worlds of Wonderland, Neverland and Oz, which I think of as the Big Three of children’s literature. Perhaps the most interesting thing about reading the original stories concerning these worlds is how much of what we assume about them is based on adaptative material with no basis in the actual books. For instance, Neverland is always referred to as the Neverland in J.M. Barrie’s text, and before his transformation, the Tin Man was initially called Nick Chopper – not Boq, though there is an unrelated Munchkin that goes by that name.
There’s also a lot of material that never made it into any adaptation: for example, I’m sorry that Baum’s delightful Queen of the Field Mice never made it onto the screen, though I can obviously understand the limitations there.
Likewise, there’s a lot more emphasis on the weird and wonderful events being framed as dreams in the adaptations, even though Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland is the only one that actually used this framing device in a book. MGM’s The Wizard of Oz famously made Dorothy’s adventures a prolonged dream, with actors playing characters both in the real world and fantasy counterparts in Oz, something that wasn’t part of Baum’s book at all. The concept became so pervasive that Return to Oz used it too.
They also hinted at it in Disney’s animated Peter Pan, which ends with the Darling parents returning home from their party to find Wendy asleep by the window, the implication being that she dreamt it all (unlike the book, where the three children are gone for a long time). Likewise, the 2003 film leans into the double casting of Jason Isaacs as Captain Hook and Mr Darling, providing a degree of commentary on Wendy’s relationship with each one.
More than that, the concept of madness barely figures into the books, but has since become an intrinsic part of these stories, with the mental facilities of the girls being called into question much more than in the books themselves. ABC’s Once Upon a Time spin-off starts with Alice in a sanatorium, with doctors trying to convince her that her adventures were a hallucination. Obviously Return to Oz starts with Dorothy (nearly) receiving electric-shock therapy, and the facility staff becoming the villains she faces in Oz.
And Andy Weir’s Cheshire Crossing is a crossover graphic novel in which Alice, Dorothy and Wendy all meet at a remote research facility and sanatorium. It’s interesting the way these components have soaked into our understanding of the stories, becoming an intrinsic part of retellings, even though that subtext isn’t present in the original texts. Sometimes they even borrow from each other: Dorothy in Return to Oz has a scene in which she appears to do some slow-motion rabbit-hole falling.
And for the record, Peter Pan is by far the best book of the three. You get the definite sense that Baum and Carroll were simply making things up as they went along, writing as the mood struck them, and though a lot of people have put a lot of effort into trying to understand or cross-examine Alice’s Adventures and Wizard of Oz, by each author’s own admission, they exist mainly to entertain and as such often come across as completely random.
Going forward into March, I’m leaving Wonderland and Neverland behind, but the Yellow Brick Road is stretching on for a while longer. Baum wrote a lot of these books.
The Merry Wives of Windsor (Mona Vale)
I had never seen The Merry Wives of Winsor before, though I was aware of the (apocryphal?) anecdote about Queen Elizabeth I asking Shakespeare to show her “Falstaff in love,” that character having first appeared in Henry IV. As it turns out, this is not in fact a play that depicts Falstaff in love – he attempts to get women to fall in love with him, but they aren’t buying it for a second, and Falstaff is duly punished by the pair of them.
I had seen posters for this all over town and kept meaning to get myself a ticket, and then on its final day I quickly made spontaneous plans to go and see it – and I’m glad I did. As I mentioned in my Woman of the Year post, this play feels a bit like an antidote to The Taming of the Shrew, as instead of a man subjecting a woman to gaslighting and humiliation, it is two women who get one over the man trying to exploit them.
Falstaff sends two love letters to the wives of Messrs. Ford and Page, declaring his undying love for each of them, completely unaware that these women are friends and will confide in each other at the first available opportunity. On realizing he’s trying to gain financial advantage through a love affair with either or both of them, they concoct a plan…
A small subplot involves Mistress Page’s daughter Anne fall in love with a young man, despite her parents having other suitors in mind, and the couple using the cover of the last practical joke on Falstaff to run away together. On that note, it was fascinating to watch Shakespeare integrate the legend of Herne the Hunter into the final act, a figure that’s popped up in many stories I’ve read (the novelization of the Merlin miniseries, for example), but whose origins I’ve never really delved into.
This was staged outdoors at Mona Vale, which is a free access but slightly posh-nosh public garden, though the venue is perfect: a downwards slope for the audience to sit on, a tiny ditch to separate “auditorium” from “stage,” and then an upwards rise where the performance can take place. One of the ushers was kind enough to give me a free programme (apparently people paid for them and then kept giving them back, which meant there was a surplus) and it was a very funny performance that made the most of the wide open space (they even got hold of some deer sculptures that are usually used as Christmas decorations in the city to indicate forested areas).
The audience was really good too (I ran into a friend of mine that I hadn’t seen in a while) and Mistress Page’s line: “wives may be merry, and yet honest too,” got a big round of applause. What I think I liked most about it was that the tables are turned on Falstaff through one very simple fact that he never even considers: that Mistresses Page and Ford are friends, and in fact, fonder of each other than either seems to be of their husbands.
Alice in a Winter Wonderland by Jan Brett
I’ve been a long-time fan of Jan Brett for her colourful, detailed illustrations, though recently some of her work hasn’t been quite as polished as it used to be. Alice in a Winter Wonderland is something of a return to form after the murky, indistinct illustrations of her take on The Nutcracker, but still not reaching the heights of her earliest work.
I still have my childhood copy of The Owl and the Pussycat somewhere on my shelves, which was set in tropical climes, but it’s clear from her body of work that she prefers arctic, wintry landscapes. This reimagines Alice as an Inuit girl who follows a snow rabbit through an icy tundra and series of underground caverns, filled with log cabins and ice tunnels and glaciers, following the familiar story beats of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. There’s the rabbit hole, the caucus race, the Duchess and the baby, the tea party, the croquet game, the Gryphon and the Mock Turtle, and finally the court room proceedings – obviously the text has been severely abridged, but the greatest hits are all there.
People familiar with the story will have fun seeing what Brett has come up with in her new takes on the characters: there’s naturally no need to change the white rabbit, but the playing cards become puffins, the Dodo is a Great Auk, the Cheshire cat is now a Smilodon (of course), the Duchess a Goose and the baby a porcupine, the Mad Hatter a goat, the King and Queen of Hearts a pair of snow owls, the roses are cotton grass, the croquet balls are lemmings… but the Mock Turtle is still a Mock Turtle though. You can’t do much to change that.
Also fun is the sheer level of detail that Brett always manages to cram into every page: doorways and shelves in the shapes of hearts, clubs, spades or diamonds, snow that’s littered with sardine cans and buckets and saucepans, mammoths trudging along in the distance without ever becoming part of the story… You can usually glimpse what’s coming up in the story if you look at what’s going on in the background of any given two-page spread (the mushroom appears at the end of an ice tunnel, the Duchess leaves for the croquet game while Alice is concentrating on the pig-baby, and so on).
A few illustrations are even vertical, requiring you to turn the book 180 degrees for the fall down the rabbit hole and Alice’s growth into a giant in the courtroom. (There are a couple of inconsistencies though – at one point Alice eats the mushroom to make herself “just the right size” to go visiting, but in the consecutive illustrations she doesn’t appear to get bigger or smaller).
In lieu of Carroll’s original text, Brett adds some comments about how everything Alice sees and hears is “a little bit right and a little bit wrong,” or “almost right and not exactly wrong.” There’s no indication anywhere as to why she chose to reimagine the story in this way, and I can only guess that she loved Alice in Wonderland, loved the Alaskan tundra, and so decided to merge the two – because why not? It’s an attractive and imaginative take on the story, and an example of just how pervasive and popular it’s been over the centuries.
The Bad Guys: Intergalactic Gas by Aaron Blabey
Picking up directly where the previous book left off, we’re updated on the situation with a broadcast from reporter Tiffany Fluffit. The evil Doctor Marmalade is on the moon, using his giant cute-zilla laser to transform harmless animals into flesh-eating zombies. So say the Bad Guys, who have been trying to thwart Marmalade’s evil scheme, but on account of being a wolf, a snake, a shark and a piranha, nobody believes them.
There’s only one thing to do: steal a rocket and travel to the moon themselves in order to defeat their foe. Thankfully, Shark is a master of disguise and manages to camouflage himself as a rocket booster so they can all sneak onboard the space station (except Agent Fox of course – she has to stay behind) though Marmalade’s laser separates them once they hit the moon’s orbit. Wolf is left stranded on the surface of the moon, while the others are stuck in a tractor beam.
To make matters worse, Wolf discovers that Piranha is in the spacesuit with him… and he’s had too many burritos to eat.
Yes, that’s the level of humour in these books, but at least they’re honest about it. Intergalactic Gas is the fifth book in the series, and it concludes with the Bad Guys finally getting some degree of credit for their heroics, even if it ends on yet another cliffhanger leading into the next book. I also managed to nab a hardcover copy that had full colour illustrations, so that was nice. Getting a movie deal obviously leads to some nice perks.
Captain Underpants and the Wrath of the Wicked Wedgie Woman by Dav Pilkey
Yes, I’m continuing with this series as well. I will get through these books; I’m doing it for the kids (not that they know or care at all).
This one starts with an exposition comic by George and Harold, recounting how they hypnotized their school principal Mr Knupp into believing he’s a superhero every time they snap their fingers, before introducing us to Miss Ribble. She’s about to retire from teaching, which is a godsend to the students since she enforces the Sit Down, Shut Up and Stop Driving Me Crazy rule.
But instead of drawing her a farewell card, George and Harold not only portray her in their latest comic as the evil Wedgie Woman, but trick Mr Knupp into handing her a marriage proposal. Because this is a very silly children’s book, the wedding goes ahead the following Saturday, even though neither Mr Knupp nor Miss Ribble actually want to get married to each other – only for the bride to transform into the Wedgie Woman for real. Soon she’s created two giant robots of Harold and George, and rampaging through the town with her prehensile hair, giving people wedgies.
As ever, the most amusing parts of the book for an adult reader are Pilkey’s illustrations and wordplay. For example, when a table is overturned during the wedding (held in the school’s auditorium):
“The creamy candied carrots clobbered the kindergarteners. The fatty fried fish fritters flipped onto the first years. The sweet-n-sour spaghetti squash splattered the second graders. Three thousand thawing thimbleberries thudded the third graders. Five hundred frosted fudgy fruitcakes flogged the fourth graders. And fifty-five fistfuls of fancy French-fried frankfurters flattened the fifth graders.”
Other highlights include Chapter 14 being interrupted halfway through by Chapter 14 ½, which is comprised of a broadcast message that informs the reader what the boys are about to do with their hypno-ring will have the opposite effect of what they hope to achieve, before the story returns to Chapter 14 3/4. As ever there are plenty of visual gags (the boys kick a ball through the top of page 101, with an illustration of punctured paper to show exactly where it went, and a two-page image of a giant cloud accompanies this text: “A huge cloud of mist filled the air, covering everything in sight, and making these two pages incredibly easy to draw.”)
Five down, seven to go.
Logan Bruno, Boy Babysitter by Anne M. Martin
Turns out there was (somehow) enough demand for a second Logan-centric special. Go figure. This one reads like a Very Special Episode of Full House or Saved by the Bell since Logan gets mixed up with some older guys that wear leather jackets, smoke cigarettes, and – get this – call themselves the Badd Boys. Yes, that’s with two Ds and a Z.
Despite coming across as what a nineties Disney executive thinks a boy gang looks like, the boys (who have names like T-Jam, Skin, Jackhammer, G-Man and Ice Box) befriend Logan after he helps them out with their homework and later defend him from his nemesis Clarence King (who also featured predominately as the dickhead in the first Logan book). He hangs out with them a couple of times and soon realizes that they’re shoplifting right under his nose and are probably also responsible for the spate of thefts going on around the school. Still, he feels unable to rat them out since he was present when the stealing took place (as they like to remind him).
He’s also not dumb enough not to recognize two Nicky Cash concert tickets as a bribe to keep his mouth shut, though he’s ready to throw them out until Mary Anne spots them in his locker and – being Mary Anne – assumes he bought them for her. Okay, to her credit, when he confesses over their pre-concert dinner that they’re not actually his after learning that someone else’s tickets were stolen from her locker, she puts a stop to the date and calls the girl they actually belong to.
Coming clean with her also gives him the strength to tell his parents and the police about a robbery he knows is about to take place. Because cops in this world are both effective and fair, the theft is stopped without anyone getting gunned down, and all the culprits end up where they need to be: juvenile hall (the ringleaders), away from bad influences (younger members of the gang) or off the hook (Logan).
Despite the title, Logan does not babysit at any point during this book, and the cover art definitely never happens.
The B-plot involves the neighbourhood kids being terrorized by another child called EJ and coming up with increasingly elaborate protective measures to handle the threat. I guessed the twist would be the bully was a girl (especially since the babysitters assume it’s a boy and the children never use pronouns) but I was also hoping it would be something a little more sophisticated than that – that said, all I could come up with was it was some sort of feral animal roaming the street.
In any case, the babysitters remain pretty blasé about the whole thing. Seriously, when a kid tells you that a bully has threatened to kill them if they tell their parents and teachers, you need to tell a parent or a teacher.
This also made me laugh: “[Mary Anne] told me the BSC had been really worried about me. One of them had even proposed that they “nullify my membership” because I might be “a bad influence on the kids.” The individual is not named, but I LOLed because it’s so obviously Kristy.
Finally, all’s well that ends well since somehow Logan has enough money to take Mary Anne to the Nicky Cash concert in New York City. Did I mention he’s just a thirteen-year-old busboy at the Rosebud Café? Ah, nineties economy…
Maid Mary Anne by Anne M. Martin
In this rather tedious instalment, Mary Anne takes some babysitting charges to the Stone Farm to see the baby goat Elvira (the ghostwriters are getting a lot of mileage out of that place) and learns about Mrs Townes, an elderly woman living nearby who is an expert sewer. Thinking she might be able to give her a few tips, Mary Anne overcomes her shyness and introduces herself, arranging a meeting to learn about different sewing techniques.
The two get along well, and Mary Anne even starts her own sewing class with a few regular babysitting charges, including Nicky and Buddy, which will be important later. But when Mary Anne next goes to visit Mrs Townes, there’s no answer when she rings the bell. Sensing something is amiss, she investigates and discovers the old lady passed out on the floor, having fallen and broken her ankle.
Though she’s taken to hospital and discharged quickly, Mrs Towns begins taking advantage of Mary Anne’s availability – first by getting her to do chores, and later by ringing her up at home and during BSC meetings. Mary Anne lets herself get bossed around way too easily (I call bullshit, as I’ve seen how passive-aggressive this girl can be) but eventually resolves the whole thing with a conversation – which is usually how things can be dealt with within the first five minutes of any problem arising in these books.
But it goes on for longer than it should because Mary Anne is grappling with the question: “Was I too self-centred? Too self-involved?” I mean, don’t ask me. According to her: “I had decided that I wasn’t going to let that happen. From now on, I was going to try to put others first, and me and my needs (and selfish worries) second.” Hilariously, this happens just a few pages later:
Dawn turned her face to the window. “The sun feels good. It makes me miss Jeff and California and…” her voice trailed off. “Well,” I said cheerfully, “I just hope I can persuade the Arnolds to do something outdoors. It’s way too nice to stay inside. Bye!”
Oh yeah, little Miss Sensitive.
The B-plot involving Mary Anne’s sewing group is that everyone – including Claudia – is very enthusiastic about what they can craft, only for Nicky and Buddy to drop out after they’re bullied at school for being involved in a “girlie” activity. In a very prescient turn of events, they then go full toxic masculinity in order to prove their manliness, refusing to do any baking or other girl-coded pursuit. Thankfully, they eventually realize that obsessing over their masculinity prevents them doing the stuff they want to do, which is to help finish the group quilt.
So, for the second time in a row we’ve got a B-plot dealing with kids and bullies, and one-half of the Logan/Mary Anne couple having to cope with an older person trying to take advantage of them in a book with misleading cover art. This one appears to show Mary Anne looking sick of having to do chores, but in this instance she was mopping Mrs Towne’s kitchen floor of her own volition. What’s more, the kids taking advantage of the wet floor are meant to be the Arnold twins, whereas what’s depicted here seems to be a boy and a girl.
Also, this was very funny:
Jessi looked down at her Swatch. “Six o’clock,” she informed us. Kristy checked her watch and frowned. “I have 5:59.” We knew better than to argue. We waited. Then Kristy said: “Six o’clock. This meeting of the BSC is officially adjourned.”
Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There by Lewis Carroll
As mentioned last month, I infinitely prefer this Alice book to its predecessor, simply because it’s a bit more structured (thanks to the chess board motif) and a bit less random (comparatively speaking – my teeth still get itchy when the train just melts away and the White Queen turns into a sheep). Plus, I’ve always been fascinated by mirror-worlds and the concept of stepping through to see one’s reflection from the other side.
There’s also something a bit deeper going on here when it comes to certain concepts and ideas within the text: for example, when Alice happens upon the sleeping Red King and is told that she’s inside his dream (so then what happens if he wakes up?) or that there are real-world counterparts to the things Alice finds in Looking Glass Land (most notably, the Black Kitten as the Red Queen). Other encounters with certain characters are more poignant than creepy, such as the White Knight (widely believed to be modelled on Lewis Carroll himself) and the little fawn in the nameless wood that bolts the moment she realizes Alice is a human child.
I did a bit of research – this website was most helpful – to test my theory that Alice crosses Looking Glass Land as a chess pawn that becomes a queen, and it’s true – every move she makes, from one square to the next, aligns with how and when a pawn can advance, just as all the other chess pieces are doing in their movements across the board (the Queens in particular appear and reappear regularly throughout the story, as befits their abilities as the most versatile pieces). This sense of purpose and advancement helps alleviate that sense of random wandering that was so apparent in Wonderland.
Likewise, there are several distinct themes running throughout the story: of duality (most characters or occurrences come in pairs), of the significance of names and their importance, and of things being just out of reach, whether it’s things on the shelf or rushes on the lake. This means it feels more strongly structured and planned out, even though Carroll still utilizes rather lazy transitions between scenes (often characters or places just dissolve into something else; the train into a hilltop, the shop into a pond which then turns back into the shop – illustrator Chris Riddell justifies this last one by depicting two shops, one on either side of the pond Alice crosses. Though come to think of it, I wonder if the back of the shop fading into woodland is what inspired E. Nesbit’s “The Aunt and Amabel,” which in turn directly inspired C.S. Lewis’s The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe).
The characters aren’t quite as vivid either – there’s a reason only the Tweedledums and the White Knight are usually the only figures to make it into filmic/television adaptations.
Having returned to it after so long, it was also interesting to note that many of the encounters we equate with the previous book thanks to Disney’s Alice in Wonderland are actually to be found here: the garden of talking flowers, the Tweedle Brothers, and the concept of an unbirthday is thanks not to the Mad Tea Party but Humpty Dumpty (speaking of which, is Carroll the reason we think of this character as an egg? Because there’s nothing in the original nursery rhyme that identifies him as such – so was it Carroll’s invention?)
This is also the book in which we first hear about the Jabberwock – but remember: the creature is called the Jabberwock, the poem is called “The Jabberwocky.” Almost everyone gets this wrong. It also gives us a few of the most oft-quoted passages from these stories, such as: “as large as life and twice as natural,” and “if you believe in me, I’ll believe in you.”
It’s rather a shame that this book is always smushed together with Wonderland in most adaptations, as it’s a story that deserves to be given full attention on its own terms, with seldom-seen dramatizations of things like the Lion and the Unicorn, Humpty Dumpty, the White Knight, and the movements of the two chess armies.
As in the prior book, Chris Riddell brings his distinct style to the illustrations: Alice is based on Alice Liddell’s portraits, but more than a few inspirations are from Tenniel: the White Knight always seems to have a handlebar moustache and hair sticking up in all directions, and he also depicts the White King’s messengers Hatta and Haigha as the Hatter and March Hare (this is not explicit in the text, though there’s certainly a big clue in the names).
Interestingly, the Red Queen is portrayed as a Black woman – that is, she’s red, but she’s also very obviously Black, and her transformation into the Black Kitten is wonderfully rendered… and okay, in the act of writing that sentence I just realized why Riddell made that choice – duh!
Best of all, he renders the entirety of Looking Glass Land – all sixty-four squares – on a map at the beginning of the book, complete with little ditches and the details of all the important squares in their rightful places as Alice comes upon them: the square-shaped lake she crosses with the sheep, the town where the Lion and the Unicorn fight, the looking glass hill – it’s a feast for the eyes and I would have pored over it for hours as a child, especially since he adds locations not visited in the actual story: Tulgy Wood, Walrus Beach, Crow’s Nest, squares of giant mushrooms and caves and oceans – it’s a work of art. You will never truly replace Tenniel’s original illustrations, but this two-page spread presents a strong case that you could try.
Peter Pan by J.M. Barrie
Lewis Carroll had math puzzles and wordplay, Baum had a mildly confused though well-meaning feminist subtext, but Peter Pan is about something on a deep thematic level: the nature of childhood, the joys and pains of it, and the inevitable necessity of growing up. Baum and Lewis were very open about just wanting to provide entertainment for young readers, but Barrie has something important to impart.
The story’s origins are also unique, starting its life as a stage play first performed in 1904, and its titular character appearing even before that in a short story collection that has very little common with its more famous “sequel” (Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens has no Neverland, no Tinker Bell, no Darling family). It was published as an actual book in 1911, sometimes alternatively titled The Boy Who Wouldn’t Grow Up or Peter and Wendy (which is my preferred title, as I’d argue that Wendy is the true protagonist of the piece).
As with the other classics I’ve read these past two months, it’s eye-opening to realize how much of what we think we know about the story is just cultural osmosis. For instance, Neverland is always referred to as the Neverland, and is essentially Faerie by another name; that is, the collective unconscious that all of us are mentally/spiritually connected to – at least while we’re children. Likewise, the Disney film took the line: “second to the right and straight on till morning,” to mean that a star exists as a landmark to Neverland, though in the book, these words are just gibberish that Peter comes up with to sound important. Furthermore, Tinkerbell is actually spelt Tinker Bell – two words.
I was also surprised at such how rich in metaphor and complexity the story is, from the ticking crocodile obviously symbolizing of Hook’s fear of death (time is literally stalking him) to this description of fairies, which is clearly an observation of children themselves: “Tink was not all bad… sometimes she was all good. Fairies have to be one thing or the other, because being so small they unfortunately have room for one feeling only at a time.”
Yet sometimes the prose can be so dense, so much more complex than any of the onscreen adaptations allow, that I wonder if a child would grasp some of the abstract notions Barrie introduces here: that Mrs Darling has a kiss in the corner of her mouth that no one can reach, that she can sort through her children’s thoughts each night as though they’re clothes in a dresser, or that Neverland (as mentioned above) is essentially a child’s shared imaginative space:
“In the old days at home the Neverland had always begun to look a little dark and threatening by bedtime. Then unexplored patches arose in it and spread; black shadows moved about in them; the roar of the beasts of prey was quite different now, and above all, you lost the certainty that you would win. You were quite glad that the night-lights were on. You even liked Nana to say this this was just the mantelpiece over here, and that the Neverland was all make-believe. Of course the Neverland had been make-believe in those days; but it was real now, and there were no night-lights, and it was getting darker every moment, and where was Nana?”
Would children understand this passage? That Neverland is where they go in their dreams? That it’s the world of make-believe? The subconscious embodiment of childhood? (“We too have been there; we can still hear the sound of the surf, though we shall land no more.”) Probably not, but then – maybe they don’t have to. If you read this to a child, they’ll just take the literal meaning at face value, and then they’ll discover the metaphor when they’re older (like how we find out as adults that Aslan was actually Jesus).
Yet there are other themes that are more prevalent in the various adaptations of the story than the book itself, most obviously, the idea that Wendy is afraid of growing up, and that Peter grants her a reprieve from the impending inevitability of adolescence. You can clearly see this in the Disney film when her father tells her: “this is your last night in the nursery,” or in the 2003 one where Peter whispers: “forget them Wendy, forget them all – come with me where you’ll never have to worry about grownup things ever again,” like it’s an actual seduction (hoo boy, I can’t WAIT to talk about that movie next month!)
In both cases – and many more – the story becomes a coming-of-age narrative, in which Wendy returns from her adventure ready to face adulthood, a subtext that simply doesn’t exist in the book to the same extent we might assume it does. Book!Wendy is simply not being threatened with having to grow up, which is a staple fixture of most films – in fact, her sojourn to Neverland, in which she plays the part of wife and mother, could easily be described as practice for growing up.
Likewise, the romantic angle that’s struck between Peter and Wendy (and sometimes Hook as well!) is also not quite as present in Barrie’s text than in many of the films, despite the thimble/kiss mix-up, the jealousy of Tink and Tiger Lily, and Wendy making thinly veiled hints that Peter should introduce himself to her parents on their return to London. It’s there, but it’s not all-prevailing, and the text is always very clear that Peter merely loves Wendy “like a devoted son.”
But again, various adaptations lean more heavily into the inherent tragedy of Peter and his refusal to grow up by demonstrating exactly what he’s missing by staying in Neverland: a future with Wendy, the girl who loves him. Theirs is the beginning of a love story, but not one that can ever mature or be fulfilled. (That’s why the term “Peter Pan syndrome” was coined – reckless bad boys might be fun for a little while, but they’re permanently caught in arrested development and of no use in the long-term).
As for Hook, we’re told that when he and Wendy finally come face-to-face, that “for a moment Hook entranced her.” Barrie’s narrative goes no further than this, though again, the 2003 film has her first glimpse him without his knowledge, while the narrator (her older self) says: “she was not afraid, but fascinated.” Making it even more fraught is that fact this adaptation keeps the stage tradition of having the same actor play Hook and Mr Darling… but again, we’ll get to that in due course…
My point is that as with a lot of these old tales, generations of storytellers have elaborated and built upon on certain aspects, until stuff we assume was always there is actually due to several hundred years of adaptations and retellings.
***
The text of Peter Pan ended up being so rich, and so demanding of a close read, I really just want to point things out for a while. There are a few passages and observations that just make you go: “huh?” such as how Neverland is filled with “savages and lonely lairs, and gnomes who are mostly tailors, and princes with six elder brothers, and a hut fast going to decay, and one very small old lady with a hooked nose.” Gnomes? Princes? An old lady with a hooked nose? None of these things appear in the story itself.
Or how about this: “[Mrs Darling was asleep. Look at the four of them, Wendy and Michael over there, John here, and Mrs Darling by the fire. There should have been a fourth night-light. While she slept she had a dream. She dreamt that the Neverland had come too near and that a strange boy had broken through from it. He did not alarm her, for she thought she had seen him before in the faces of many women who have no children. Perhaps he is to be found in the faces of some mothers also.”
Peter is in the faces of women who have no children? Because… they dream of him? And there should have been a fourth night-light? To… protect Mrs Darling? It’s all so mysterious and obtuse, obviously on purpose, but again – what would a child make of all this?
Then there are the stars: “They were crowding round the house, as if curious to see what was to take place there…” and “as soon as the door of twenty-seven closed on Mr and Mrs Darling, there was a commotion in the firmament, and the smallest of all the stars in the Milky Way screamed out: “Now, Peter!” That the stars are presumably sentiment and paying attention to what’s going on is never again alluded to during the course of the story (though again, it makes me wonder if this inspired C.S. Lewis, this time in his use of a fallen star as a character in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader).
One more: we’re told early on that Wendy would often imagine having a pet wolf in Neverland, and when she arrives, we’re told: “You remember about her pet wolf. Well, it very soon discovered that she had come to the island and it found her out, and they just ran into each other’s arms. After that it followed her about everywhere.” The craziest thing about this is that we never hear of this wolf again in the story, and nobody ever includes it in any onscreen or stage adaptation. In fact, there’s a surplus of wolves in this story that are roundly ignored in any other version of the tale.
Then there’s also stuff that’s just plain funny: the Darling parents often allude to “the servants,” but then we’re told: “somehow they had got into the way of calling Liza ‘the servants.’” Then there’s: “[Tink] was in a jug for the moment, and liking it extremely; she had never been in a jug before.” And of course: “Some unsteady fairies had to climb over [Peter] on their way home from an orgy.”
Yes, I know it’s not a sex orgy, in the same way that “making love” means something very different in a Jane Austen novel, but still. Later we’re told of fairies that: “the mauve ones are boys and the white ones are girls, and the blue ones are just little sillies who are not sure what they are.” Wow, intersex fairies in 1911?
Miscellaneous Observations:
The fact that the story originated as a play means there’s a sort of meta-quality about the story, and some scenes are clearly meant for the stage – most obviously Tinker Bell being poisoned and clapped back to life by the audience. The 2003 film also manages this scene in a clever way, but in the text itself, Barrie writes this: “[Peter’s] head almost filled the fourth wall of her little room as he knelt near her in distress.” The fourth wall? Oh Barrie, I see what you did there!
Furthermore, I think Mermaid’s Lagoon is always going to be handled better on the stage or screen, where you can see all the excitement of the crocodiles and the suspension wires and the sword-fighting banter and so on, entirely divorced from Barrie’s figurative, dreamy prose.
There’s a mini-arc for the “kiss” that exists in the corner of Mrs Darling’s mouth, initially described thusly: “her sweet mocking mouth had one kiss on it that Wendy could never get, though there is was, perfectly conspicuous in the right-hand corner.” When Mr Darling married her: “he got all of her, except the kiss. In time he gave up trying for [it].” After her children are taken to Neverland, we get a scene of the Darlings commiserating together: “Mrs Darling never upbraided Peter; there was something in the right-hand corner of her mouth that wanted her not to call Peter names.” This is the kiss of course, but what does the passage mean? That she knew and loved Peter herself when she was a child? Finally: “Peter…flew away. He took Mrs Darling’s kiss with him. The kiss that had been for no one else Peter took quite easily. Funny. But she seemed satisfied.”
There is some vague continuity at work when it comes to Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens, though Peter mentions that he ran away from home the day he was born, not a week. I also wonder if the kite that saves Wendy at Mermaid’s Lagoon was meant to be the same one from Kensington Gardens that Peter used to fly around with. Some other scenes like the mix-up over the thimble and the floating nest are reused in a different context for Peter Pan, but in a way it works, since Peter would have naturally forgotten doing any of these things.
On the sound of Tinker Bell’s tinkling fairy voice: “You ordinary children can never hear it, but if you were to hear it you would know that you had heard it once before.”
Speaking of that fairy, she’s described as living in a small boudoir with a “Queen Mab couch” and a “Puss in Boots mirror,” though I can’t for the life of me find out what either of these things are. Is it just a reference to the fairy tale characters, or were these specific types of furniture that were around in 1911? I did find out what “pluperfect” means though.
I’m generally against changing/abridging words in classic literature, but for the record, I think replacing “redskins” with “natives” or “tribesmen” is the right choice, especially since it wouldn’t have the slightest effect on the plot.
Captain Flint and “the Sea Cook” (obviously Long John Silver) are often referred to in the capacity of the Klingon Effect, in which they’re used to gauge how much more terrifying Hook is by comparison. It was a little befuddling to see them mentioned here so soon after watching Black Sails.
Surprisingly, Captain Hook and especially Tiger Lily aren’t really in the story all that much. It’s a rather short book, and a lot of adventures are only alluded to instead of described in detail – yet that’s fitting, as it feels like Neverland and the time spent there is much more expansive in our own imaginations. I’ll have a lot more to say about Tiger Lily in a post of her own, but for now it’s rather shocking to realize that she only appears twice in the story: her introduction, and then her rescue from Marooners’ Rock.
More essential quotes:
On the subject of childhood: “off we skip like the most heartless things in the world, which is what children are, but so attractive; and we have an entirely selfish time; and then when we have need of special attention we nobly return for it, confident that we shall be embraced instead of smacked.”
On Peter’s nightmares: “he had dreams, and they were more painful than the dreams of other boys. For hours he could not be separated from these dreams, though he wailed piteously in them. They had to do, I think, with the riddle of his existence.” Barrie doesn’t elaborate further, but I can’t help but feel another element of his “riddle” has to do with his insistence that he never be touched, which only appears in the stage play.
On Hook’s identity: “Hook was not his true name. To reveal who he really was would even at this date set the country in a blaze; but as those who read between the lines must already have guessed, he had been at a famous public school; and its traditions still clung to him like garments.” Is Barrie just joking around, or did he in fact have a public figure in mind?
I ended up enjoying this reread so much that I went out and splurged on a hardcover edition that also contained Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens, with illustrations by Leire Salaberria – who by a total coincidence I had noted some weeks ago as an artist to look out for.
I liked it so much I splurged on a hard cover dual books with illustrations by …, who I had unrelatedly noted some weeks ago as an illustrator to look out for.
It’s easy to see why this story has stood the test of time: there’s magic and wonder, but also true heartbreak and bittersweetness and enough depth to make it a very different story between the time you hear it as a child, and read it as an adult. It’s soaked itself into the culture to such an extent that everyone knows who Peter Pan is, what he’s about, and what happens to him – he’s become almost like a tiny deity of youth and joy and heartlessness. I mean, there’s always been a Peter Pan, right? It’s hard to imagine childhoods prior to 1904 that didn’t know who he was (but perhaps they did, he just hadn’t been written about yet).
Ozma of Oz by L.F. Baum
The interesting thing about this story is that the film Return to Oz takes most of its plot from its pages, despite some heavy recontextualizing. All that stuff about Dorothy being sent to get electroconvulsive therapy was the invention of the film, but components like Dorothy entering Oz with a chicken as a companion, finding TikTok and evading the Wheelers, a run-in with a head-stealing Princess, and a competition with the Nome King are all from the book.
The difference is that the preceding book, The Marvellous Land of Oz, contributed some of the characters. Mombi takes the place of the Princess Langwidere, the latter being the original Warm-Up Boss in the book (and far less sinister, though they do give some of her dialogue, word-for-word, to Mombi in the film) and the likes of Jack Pumpkinhead and the Gump are also brought forward from the previous book, with Jack even recounting Ozma’s history with Mombi to Dorothy (omitting the part where she was turned into a boy called Tip for the first few years of her life).
The framing device of “was it all a dream?” was naturally taken from the MGM film to reasonably good effect, while Ozma goes from a heroic partner who drives most of the action in the book, to an enigmatic distressed damsel in the film (though I do like how she saves Dorothy in the real world, so that Dorothy can then save her in Oz – they’re portrayed as two parts of the same psyche).
But the biggest difference is that the book is set almost entirely in the Land of Ev, while the movie sensibly stays in Oz. When the competition with the Nome King comes, it’s actually Ev’s royal family that Dorothy is attempting to save, along with her companions that have already gone into his room of trinkets and chosen the wrong ones. As in the film, the Emerald City residents are turned into green , but it’s Bellina the chicken that overhears this information and manages to save the day.
In short, what the film changed, added, or mixed around is rather fascinating.
Dorothy and the Wizard of Oz by L.F. Baum
It was with much interest that I began this next Oz book, as it was the first one I was coming into with no preconceptions whatsoever. The Wizard of Oz I had read several times before, and Disney’s Return to Oz film was heavily based on The Marvelous Land of Oz and Ozma of Oz, but from this point on I had no idea what to expect.
It starts with Dorothy finding herself in yet another Oz-like fairyland. She and Uncle Henry have returned from Australia and are now in California. Henry has gone on ahead to Hugson’s Ranch while Dorothy stayed with friends in San Francisco, and now she’s catching up with him before they both return to Kansas. This time around her animal companion is not a dog (Toto) or a chicken (Bellina) but a kitten called Eureka, and she’s met at the train station by a boy called Zeb who works at the ranch, driving a horse-drawn cart.
Being in California, a sudden earthquake opens the ground in front of them and down they go, falling rather like Alice down the rabbit hole, past six great suns of different colours, into a beautiful land of the Mangaboos. Living in translucent glass buildings and able to walk on air, these people are actually vegetables, who are “born” when they’re pulled from the earth, with no hearts and therefore no emotions. Who should arrive soon after but the Wizard, still in his hot-air balloon. He’s also still a humbug, as he promptly kills the Mangaboo court sorcerer and takes his place (some self-defence is involved, but still! Baum’s stories are so much more violent than he seems to realize).
Eventually the intrepid adventurers are forced to leave the underground country, and make for the surface world by traversing the tunnel systems of a great mountain. Their journey involves encounters with people who devour a special fruit to render them invisible in order to hide from bears (also invisible), gargoyles with detachable wooden wings who attack them on sight, and a number of dragonettes (baby dragons) living within the hollowed-out Pyramid Mountain.
Eventually Dorothy calls upon a Deus Ex Machina to get them out of trouble, recalling the means of communication she has with Ozma agreed upon at the end of the previous book. If she makes a certain sign to request help at the time each day that Ozma checks on her with a magical picture, they’ll all be transported away to Oz. Why didn’t she do this sooner?
She and her companions are whisked safely to Oz, and in order to fill out the page-count, Baum has her meet all the characters of the previous books, who just hang out for a few chapters, at least until Eureka is accused of eating one of the wizard’s piglets, who then lets a whole trial commence despite knowing where the missing piglet is concealed, apparently just for fun.
Oddly enough the Emerald City citizens are happy to see the return of their erstwhile wizard, even though previous books established him as having overthrown their previous rulers and given away the infant Ozma to Mombi in order to consolidate his own rule. Bygones, I guess?
Yeah, I was warned these books weren’t strong on continuity, so I’m not going to stress over the fact they’re clearly being made up as the writer goes along, as by his own admission in the foreword, he takes his cues from the letters his child readership keep sending him.
There are some interesting features and details throughout: the way the Mangaboos are brought to life by pulling them from the earth when ripe, at which point they become sentient, or the lack of days and nights under the earth and the hues that the multitude of colourful suns cast upon the underground realm. There are also some scenes of unsolved mysteries that snatch the imagination, such as when the former Mangaboo Prince abdicates to his sister and we’re told: “what became of him afterward our friends never knew,” or when they get valuable advice on how to evade the bears in the Valley of Voe by a voice whose owner is never identified.
I’m always bemused by Baum’s assertion in his foreword to The Wizard of Oz that he planned to write stories “in which the wonderment and joy are retained and the heartaches and nightmares are left out,” as these books are veritably full of violence and danger and death. The Mangaboos prove very dangerous after a time, the gargoyles must be fought and then escaped, and there’s a huge preoccupation with characters trying to eat other characters while still remaining very polite about it. It’s a strange tone to strike all round.
(And despite Baum’s feminist subtext, there are several blatant examples of sexism throughout – for example, when Dorothy and Zeb first fall through the crack in the earth, the former loses consciousness, but: “Zeb, being a boy, did not faint.”)
Alice with a Why by Anna James
This was only published last year, and when I saw it arrive at the library in a crate of new books, I obviously had to take it home with me. It fit the theme, you see.
It’s March 1919, a few months after the conclusion of WWI and the death of her father, and Alyce with a Y (to differentiate from her grandmother, Alice with an I) is going to stay with her father’s mother while her mother goes along with her baby brother to look after her sick mother. She’s not enjoying herself much, still grieving for her father and unable to fully understand her eccentric grandmother, until one day she receives an invitation to a tea party – which is also a request for help signed by M.H., M.H. and D.
Before she gets a chance to do anything with the missive, she’s sucked beneath the surface of the wintry pond, only to emerge in a corridor where three familiar figures are waiting – familiar to us anyway. The Mad Hatter, March Hare and Dormouse have been trying to get in touch with the original Alice, because they need her help in resolving the conflict between the Sun King and the Queen of the Moon, whose argument is putting all of Wonderland at risk.
(It is somewhat questionable that these three characters would call upon Alice to help them, as – well, would you say that Alice made friends with the Hatter or the Hare during her adventures in Wonderland, even ignoring the fact the whole thing was a dream?)
It’s certainly amusing and interesting that all of the Wonderland-inspired books that have ever been published in the wake of Lewis Carroll’s original cannot help but insert a story that has meaning into the proceedings. Carroll was perfectly content to just wend through his page-count with a lot of random nonsense, but later authors are bound by the assumed requirement that a story be about something.
In this case, all of Alyce’s adventures are clearly based on her lingering grief for her father, as well as a metaphor for the dark shadow that World War I has cast over the world. That’s an interesting commentary on how we perceive the purpose of stories, especially for children – they can’t just be for entertainment.
The Caterpillar, Cheshire Cat, Gryphon and Mock Turtle, White Rabbit and the Duchess all turn up (though the Duchess is erroneously carrying pepper, even though it was the Cook that was spraying that around in Carroll’s book) alongside some of James’s original creations, most importantly the Fox that accompanies Alyce through most of her journey, and who becomes an obvious stand-in for her father.
James scatters a lot of wordplay throughout the story, such as a signpost that reads “right” and “wrong” (with the righthand sign pointing left) or the three-men-in-a-tub talking exclusively in verse (though “I’d say you could keep it,” “For now it is unfit,” and “As all of us have to admit,” don’t actually rhyme, and they give up after a while – or the author does). Other bits are considerably more clever, such as Alyce being told that her grandmother Alice was “more of a what than a why” (it’s true!) and that the White Rabbit turns up late, the very last original character to make an appearance.
It’s a perfectly harmless little book for those that like Wonderland, but definitely doesn’t capture any of the unnerving randomness that the original stories are so famous for. Also, one of the best things about books is that there’s absolutely no advertising inside them – but this managed to bulk up its page-count considerably by not only have the first chapter of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, but also James’s other book, The Chronicles of Wetherwhy. This is happening a lot lately.
Peter Pan in Scarlet by Geraldine McCaughrean
Like Alice with a Why, this is a sequel to one of Big Three; unlike Alice with a Why, it’s authorized by the original novel’s legal owners: the Ormond Street Children’s Hospital… which granted, doesn’t mean much beyond the fact that they’ll get the proceeds. It’s still the work of someone other than J.M. Barrie, like the dozens of other sequels that’s been written since the book became part of the public domain. In any case, in 2004 the hospital sanctioned an official sequel, holding a competition to see who could come up with the most promising premise.
Geraldine McCaughrean was selected as the winner after submitting her first chapter, and Peter Pan in Scarlet was thus commissioned. In many ways, the book isn’t at all suited for a sequel: it ends pretty definitively with Wendy as an old lady, Hook being long-dead, and Peter as young and heartless and forgetful as ever.
Rather than making this a modern-day continuation, or detailing the adventures of Jane (Wendy’s daughter) or Margaret (Wendy’s granddaughter), McCaughrean’s workaround is to set this during the adulthood of Wendy and the Lost (now Old) Boys: married and with children, but suffering from dreams of Neverland and waking up to “leftovers” in their beds, such as weapons, ropes and other paraphernalia. Realizing that Neverland is leaking into the real world, Wendy conceives a way for them all to revert back to childhood (rather like reverse Pevensies) and journey back to Neverland to solve the mystery.
To make the story work, a little retconning is required (the boys all remember Neverland, Tinker Bell is still alive, nobody calls it THE Neverland) but McCaughrean certainly knows her Peter Pan lore, keeping this consistent not only with the original text, but even by weaving in elements from Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens (the grown Wendy goes hunting for fairies in the park at night; there’s a sly reference to riding on the back of a goat, and even mention of “the white bird,” which was the title of the anthology in which Peter first appeared).
She also knows all the details: that Tootles became a judge, that Tinker Bell is two words, that Peter doesn’t like to be touched (even though that’s only from the play and not the book), that the Lost Boys regularly sawed down a tree in the middle of their lair to use as a tabletop… At one point I thought I had her when Hook is erroneously described as having brown eyes, but no – she accounted for that as well.
I was a little afraid that the story was going to become a litany of fanservice box checking (somewhere around the point where Wendy tries to make a baby laugh so that new fairies are born as a plot-point) and she never totally allows herself to write a true sequel to the original text, with brand new characters and experiences, but between Tootles turning into a girl because he only had daughters to borrow clothes from, and the introduction of a circus man called Ravello, who has a vested interest in the children, there’s enough here to chew on.
For my money, Geraldine McCaughrean is a truly underrated author, perhaps because she’s best known for retelling old myths, legends and literature into child-friendly formats, as opposed to any original material. But she has such a beautiful way with words, especially sensory descriptions: “the compass in Neverland has as many points as a frightened hedgehog,” and “they ran until their lungs hung inside them like dead bats in a cave.”
She even makes a plot-point of Barrie’s observation that girl fairies are white and boy fairies are purple, and finds the time to make a few little digs at the illogical nature of the story – when Peter loftily tells them that vengeful nannies cannot reach them because they’re grown-ups, “everybody felt so much better that they decided to overlook all the grown-up pirates, redskins, and circus masters known to inhabit Neverland.”
But Barrie had a dark whimsy and a satirical edge to his work that’s difficult to recapture; odd little comments and observations that were mentioned only in passing throughout Peter Pan which could be quite ominous in nature, left for the reader to chew on or ignore as they saw fit. McCaughrean makes a valiant attempt at this, such as requiring the Lost Boys’ physical reversion to childhood to involve donning the clothes of their children and dowsing themselves in fairy dust, only for everyone to forget that Slightly is a widower, and so never had any children to borrow clothes from – but it’s never quite as effortless as Barrie is.
Interesting enough, it has something else in common with Alice with a Why: that the shadow of WWI lies heavily over it, with the answer to the riddle as to why Neverland is misbehaving found in the terrible upheaval of war. The reason why Michael is absent from this tale is eventually revealed as being because he died in the conflict, which sheds further light over so many of the other comments and motifs McCaughrean litters across the story. As is said, whether it has to do with missing children or the loss of loved ones: “Neverland is watered with tears.”
(As a last aside, McCaughrean doesn’t forget to have John take an umbrella to Neverland, though in truth, this never happens in Barrie’s story. Clearly the Disney imagery of John in his top hat and umbrella in hand is so ubiquitous that it’s become an essential part of the story).
Tin Man (2007)
Though it predates both of them, this miniseries feels so much like a mashup of Frozen (the emphasis on sisterhood) and Wicked (the setting; the exploration of what makes a person “evil.”) It’s hard to believe this came out almost two decades ago, and six years ago that I was seized with the desire to rewatch this strange and slightly random reimagining of The Wizard of Oz, which I somehow own the DVDs of. Seriously, how do I have those? Where did they come from? I think someone must have given them to me?
In any case, this was a shared product of the Sci Fi Channel and Robert Halmi, which – if you know those names – pretty much explain the existence of Tin Man. The former put out a lot of weird material in the noughties, and the latter is responsible for a number of fantasy-related miniseries that aired on the Hallmark Channel (yes, really) that I’ve talked about many a time before.
To put it as succinctly as possible, Tin Man is essentially a modern update of The Wizard of Oz, though it is eventually revealed (somewhat unnecessarily) that its protagonist is a descendant of the original Dorothy Gale. In this case, D.G. is a lowly waitress working in a small town who wants more than this provincial life, doesn’t feel like she belongs there, and the usual fantasy-girl hangups. She gets her wish when she’s whisked away by a tornado into a brand new world, and soon thereafter assembles her trio of Scarecrow, Tin Man and Cowardly Lion counterparts.
(And yes, this beat NBC’s Emerald City to the punch by a few years, despite both working with almost the exact same premise).
The first is Glitch, a former advisor to the Queen (who has had most of his brain removed), the next is Wyatt Cain, a lawman (trapped inside a metal gibbet for years, forced to watch the abduction of his wife and son play out in front of him) and the final is Raw, part of a telepathic species of creatures who are enslaved by Azkadelia, the Wicked Witch stand-in.
Why is it called Tin Man? Well, that’s the term for an Emerald City cop, which Cain was before his arrest and imprisonment. He was originally the main character in a very different kind of story concerning a murder taking place in Oz, and Cain being called in to solve it. Then executives got their hands on the script and changed it into a more straightforward analogy to Baum’s original story, though for whatever reason the title remained (and Neal McDonough is billed third in the opening credits). It’s a shame, as that’s a solid premise, and you can still see shreds of it in the grimdark, steampunk aesthetics.
This take on Oz (now called the Outer Zone, or the O.Z.) is ruled over by a wicked witch with a connection to D.G. that’s gradually uncovered as her adventure goes on. The great arc is very Star Wars in nature, involving very Owen-and-Beru-knew-all-along-coded foster parents, small Resistance cells fighting their oppressors, and Azkadelia searching for a mystical emerald (like the Khyber crystals?) that will power a giant super-weapon that’s designed to… er, well it’s going to do something bad to everyone.
It’s all pleasantly mediocre, but enough of a hit for the Sci Fi Channel (as it was known back then) to commission two more similar miniseries, based on the other big children’s fantasy titles of the era: Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (which became Alice) and Peter Pan (which became Neverland), both written by Nick Willing. Yes, I watched all three this month.
Truthfully, this is a wildly uneven project, with plenty of neat ideas and great visuals (the miniature prison, the parental nurture units, the fake-out opening to episode two, the way the leonine creatures can cast their mental images onto the reflective surfaces) alongside some real stinkers (Azkadelia’s flying monkeys are “stored” in tattoos across her collarbone, which means that whenever she wants to call them to life, she has to bare her chest and thrust out her cleavage. It’s precisely as awful as it sounds. They also go a bit overboard with the in-jokes, whether it’s a character telling Cain to: “have a heart,” or D.G. describing a dream as being: “in technicolour,” or Azkadelia sneering: “there’s no place like the O.Z.”
There’s also no sense of beauty or colour as there is in the MGM film and other Oz adaptations – partly because they’re going for a postapocalyptic vibe, but still… there are very little wonders in this world of wonders, just a lot of forests and lakes. It’s all very pretty, but not astounding.
Alan Cummings as Glitch naturally puts in a good show, and Neal McDonough is clearly having a good time as Cain (he’s on record as saying this is one of his favourite roles). On the other hand, Kathleen Robertson is never even remotely threatening as the main antagonist, and Zooey Deschanel is rather infamous for her droll line deliveries throughout this project, as her manner never changes no matter what she’s reacting too. She’s blasé about everything, up to and including people getting murdered in front of her (personally, I kind of like her relentless insouciance, after a certain point it almost feels like a defence mechanism).
More cringy is the fact they reimagine Toto as a former tutor to the Queen’s daughters, whose name is derived from the fact one of them can’t pronounce the word “tutor” properly, and who in the present-day is sent by Azkadelia to spy on D.G. and her friends. Played by Blu Mankuma, he’s also a shapeshifter who can change into a terrier, which means that the only significant Black character in the whole story is not only a traitor, but someone who is disparagingly referred to as “dogman” and “pooch,” throughout the course of the show. Yeah, it gets pretty uncomfortable.
But wait… is that Anna Galvin as the Queen? I can’t believe it’s taken me this long to recognize her, though I’ve only watched her recently as Maid Marian in the genuinely terribad The New Adventures of Robin Hood. I always thought she seemed familiar…
I’ve watched this a few times now, and despite knowing the first episode off by heart, I always seem to forget how it ends, possibly because it ends so abruptly that it’s a bit of a shock. Seriously, they couldn’t have managed a short epilogue in which people other than the royal family get a group hug? Nothing between Cain and his son? Or what happened to D.G.’s surrogate parents? Or how they’re going to manage Azkadelia’s rehabilitation? Or whatever happened to the Munchkin stand-ins, who are last seen facing down chainsaws being levelled against their treetop homes?
Alice (2009)
Of the three Sci Fi retellings of the three most famous turn-of-the-century children’s books, this one is definitely the best. Tin Man kicked it all off, and was definitely the most successful in terms of its viewing numbers, and I don’t think anyone ever cared about Neverland, but this one hit the spot in terms of a strong emotional core, and a decent semi-original storyline.
Of the three, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland may have been the easiest (or the hardest) to adapt, since there’s nothing in the way of an actual story in Lewis Carroll’s book. It’s just a series of random events. As such, Alice borrows a few ideas from its immediate predecessor, namely that the overarching conflict is a fight between a tyrannical government (ruled by the Queen of Hearts, of course) and an underground resistance.
That said, it wasn’t as widely watched as Tin Man, despite getting a more devoted fanbase for a time (we can probably thank Andrew-Lee Potts for that one) and it only clocked in two episodes instead of three, which means that quite a few of its ideas are shortchanged – specifically the Resistance fighters who are introduced early on, only to disappear completely. They’re led by Tim Curry of all people, whose screentime clocks in at less than five minutes.
Alice is a twenty-something dojo instructor: living with her mother in the city, searching for her missing father, and dating the charming Jack Chase, despite her long-held commitment issues. All of this backstory – her blackbelt abilities, her reluctance to enter a relationship, even a homeless man outside her apartment who turns up in the capacity of a Chekhov’s Gun – is very neatly and cleanly conveyed within the first eight minutes.
When Jack leaves a ring behind, Alice races after him to return it, only to see him being manhandled into a van, leaving her to chase after the White Rabbit (who here, is imagined as a white-clad gangster). She topples through the surface of a magic mirror, and wakes up in a dystopian Wonderland, in which people (referred to as “oysters”) have their emotions are drained in a casino, there’s stock market bidding for these distilled feelings, and the Queen’s henchmen are
There’s some inspired casting here: Kathy Bates as the Queen of Hearts, Matt Frewer as the White Knight, Colm Meaney as the King – even Tim Curry in that aforementioned cameo, but the whole thing is carried by Caterina Scorsone as Alice and Andrew-Lee Potts as the Hatter. Scorsone keeps Alice grounded, as a young woman longing to solve the mystery of her missing father, and then simply trying to do the right thing once she figures out her bearings in Wonderland (and is a real trooper for managing all that running in those boots, her arms flailing everywhere).
Meanwhile, Potts takes a character who is a walking red flag and somehow imbues him with sincerity and trustworthiness, which is no mean feat. I mean, he’s a total creep in so many ways, and yet somehow makes it oddly charming. Philip Winchester plays Jack, the perfectly nice Disposable Boyfriend who is probably the better romantic choice for our heroine, but who can’t compete with the quirkier option (which is hilarious because he played the exact same character on Camelot) and Matt Frewer is possibly the quintessential White Knight, in the sense that he reminds me a lot of how I imagine Lewis Carroll, as a sort of dreamy, befuddled manchild.
There are plenty of stilted scenes, but the actors make it work, and there are some good visuals and aesthetics for what was probably a very limited budget. It actually reminded me a lot of Mirrormask, and as stated, the fact that Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland has no real plot means this story isn’t really beholden to anything, as proved by the lack of overt fanservice (though there are a couple of pointless dream sequences to try and shove in a few book references that don’t fit anywhere else). It also allows for three clear character arcs: the chance for Alice to track down her father, Hatter to do the right thing, and the White Knight to find his courage.
It did bug me that it felt the need to establish Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland as a real book, and for Alice to be recognized as a prophetic figure, with characters asking her if she’s “the legendary Alice” come back to them. It’s even more pointless than D.G.’s connection to Dorothy Gale in Tin Man, adding nothing to how the story unfolds, though is thankfully only in a couple of lines of dialogue. Honestly guys, these can just be retellings, they don’t have to be long-distant sequels.
Another annoying thing is that (just like Tin Man again) the story establishes a Resistance which then disappears completely. They couldn’t turn up for the finale? Tim Curry even tells Hatter he’ll have “every member of the Resistance hunting you down,” and then it never happens.
But like I said, this is definitely the best retelling of the three. There are plenty of solid plot-twists, Alice’s mission to find her father is juxtaposed well with her attempts to help Wonderland, and the budding romance between herself and Hatter is surprisingly sweet (as an emotional centre it is to this story what D.G. and Azkadelia was to Tin Man, and something that Neverland is obviously missing).
As a final aside, I somehow have this on DVD too, and yikes – the quality is awful. Maybe it’s just the device I’m playing it on, but what happened there? I thought getting something on disc was the surefire way to make sure the graphics would be as good as possible.
Neverland (2011)
If Tin Man and Alice are retellings (and technically sequels that are far-flung into the future) then Neverland had no choice but to be a prequel, recounting how exactly Peter came to Neverland and made enemies with one Captain Hook, friends with Tinkerbell, and assembled his Lost Boys. Of course, J.M. Barrie either answered those questions himself, or deliberately left them opaque, but hey – this brings us some prosaic sci-fi answers instead, which aren’t bad, but not really anything to do with Peter Pan either.
For some reason I ended up watching these three miniseries in reverse chronological order, and this was up first.
You’ll be unsurprised to learn that this version presents Peter as a Victorian Age pickpocket and street urchin living in a surprisingly clean and spacious London; the leader of a preassembled gang of orphan boys operating under the guidance and care of disgraced gentleman Jimmy Hook, whose long-term goal is to re-enter the upper echelons of the society that cast him out for as-yet unknown reasons. Already I call foul: Peter is meant to be an unknowable fey creature, more spirit than boy, not a street rat with a heart of gold.
This time around, Neverland is not the world of children’s make-believe, but an actual planet that can be visited if you’re in possession of a certain magical sphere (as a crew of pirates discover in the story’s prologue). In an attempt to prove himself to the others, Peter sneaks into the antique shop where the sphere is kept, and inadvertently transports Jimmy and his friends to Neverland. He finds a way to follow them (which somehow includes Charles Dance as a vaguely sinister but ultimately benign alchemist who provides endless scenes of exposition before dying as soon as he’s of no further use to the plot) and starts checking off the prequel boxes: crocodiles, fairy dust, Tiger Lily, and so on.
Once there, the animosity between himself and Jimmy begins, based on what each one wants for the Lost Boys – and would it shock you to learn that their arguing leads to the death of Fox, the only boy who doesn’t have a name from the Lost Boys in Barrie’s book? Speaking of the Lost Boys, recognize anyone?
Yup, that’s little baby Patrick Gibson, who played Prince Nikolai on Shadow and Bone.
That Peter/Hook are father/son surrogates is an interesting enough hook, as is their gradual creep towards their book counterparts, even though Peter’s backstory was already detailed by Barrie himself in Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens.
I don’t want to be too hard on it, mostly because it came out in 2011 and no one ever watched it anyway, so what would even be the point, but it’s pretty lacklustre all around, with some weird narrative cul de sacs. At one point Peter gets his memories erased, which has an adverse effect on his personality, making him far more self-absorbed and bad-mannered, which seems like it’s an explanation for Peter’s fey-like nature and short-term memory in the original book. But even setting aside the fact this is a very silly explanation, the spell over him is reversed and he reverts back to his normal self. What was the point of that?
As with the dystopian takes on Oz and Wonderland, this Neverland is given a distinct visual style that’s quite appealing, from the giant floes of ice that inhabitants must leap across, the massive prehistoric six-legged crocodiles, a city comprised of giant interlocking trees.
Then there’s the Native encampment. So, the portrayal of First Nation people in adaptations of Peter Pan has always been a point of contention, from the racist caricatures of the Disney animated film to the whitewashing of Tiger Lily in 2015’s Pan, and therefore very interesting to me. This time around, the Native presence on the island is explained as an accident, brought about by a mishandling of one of those spheres. I can find very little information on the subject, but it appears as though some effort was made to accurately depict a specific tribe – the Choctaw people – instead of the generic “redskins” of the original book and earliest performances.
As far as I can tell (and no, that’s not very far) the depiction of their language, totems, clothing and culture is true to life – at least until they lend clothes to the Lost Boys which are clearly t-shirts with iron-on tribal decals – and Tiger Lily is referred to as Aaya, their word for that particular flower.
Again, I’ve no idea if this is accurate or not, but it’s certainly presented sincerely enough. All that said, these characters aren’t really given much to do, Tiger Lily immediately starts giving Peter coy looks (yes, it’s in the book, but still) and they’re all largely used as helpmeets and exposition-givers – learning along the way that you must never trust the white man, since bloody hell to the combined forces of Lost Boys and pirates destroy absolutely everything they touch. Most of the CGI budget probably went to burning things down.
The basic plot is that everyone is after a certain mineral that the Natives mine from the fairies which allows them to attain immortality – which is actually horrifying, as they introduce a toddler as being eight-something years old. This mineral is of course fairy dust, which has the added benefit of bestowing flight. Much squabbling over it ensues, until eventually pirate Elizabeth Bonny (played by Anna Friel – what’s she up to these days, I haven’t seen her in ages) takes a naked bath in the hot baths filled with the mineral and then explodes. Really, that’s a thing that actually happens.
As for the rest of the cast, Rhys Ifans is obviously the standout, though this is a subdued rather than campy Hook, and Charlie Rowe is fine as Peter, even though he already looks a bit too old for the part. Kiera Knightley lends her over-enunciating clipped tones to Tinker Bell (but not her actual presence, weirdly enough – her voice is dubbed over a completely different actress), and somehow Bob Hoskins is in this as Smee. Yes, the same character he played in Steven Spielberg’s Hook. His character never sets foot off the ship, and it’s a bit of an odd choice, especially since the character adds nothing and is only there because these pirates will eventually become Hook’s crew.
It’s definitely the least of these three adaptations, and ends with Peter returning from London, missing a shadow. Smash cut to the credits, the implication being it’s at the Darling residence, which is a story that’s absolutely too soon for this Peter to be dealing with. You’re telling me the entirety of the Peter Pan story took place only a few days after he reached Neverland for the first time? Please, he’d already been there for decades by the time he first met Wendy.
Some fun ideas (I kind of loved the fact that the traditional Lost Boy Twins are here represented by a single boy whose name is “Twins”), but the adult relationships make very little sense, Peter is characterized as a jaded pickpocket instead of a fey creature, and the flying looks naff. Come on, capturing the joy of flying is the most important part of any Peter Pan adaptation! Though I’m usually a stickler for continuity, once a story hits the public domain it’s fair game, and if you’re interested in new takes on old stories (I am) then there are worse things to watch. Still, I felt that there was a vision behind Tin Man and Alice, whereas Neverland only exists in order to complete the set.
That they manage to churn these out every two years is a pretty impressive turnover, and I have to admit it’s rather cute that all three use the exact same font – really the only thing besides the fact they’re all based on famous children’s books that indicates their relationship to each other.
Once Upon a Time in Wonderland: Season 1 (2013 – 2014)
Perhaps you remember this show; the one and only spin-off that emerged from the ABC’s Once Upon a Time, an adventure/fantasy/drama show based on mishmash of fairy tales that were specifically Disney in flavour (even though they did mix in plenty of original characters, as well as any public domain story they could get their hands on. I think Zorro eventually turned up?)
It was structured like LOST, with dual storylines of “present day” events and extended flashbacks woven together throughout each episode, each providing insight and characterization for the other. I eventually had to quit somewhere around season four, not just because the quality was deteriorating, but because I was getting increasingly weary of the show’s obsession with Regina, an unrepentant rapist and mass murderer that the writers kept insisting I feel sorry for. I had to call it quits at the point where every single other character was being sacrificed on the altar of Regina’s relentless, all-consuming, suffocating self-pity, and apparently she all but ascends into godhood in the final episode while all her abuse victims grovel at her feet – no thank you.
But this one-and-done side story reminded me that I did enjoy this IP once upon a time, and if you’re in the right frame of mind, there’s a lot of campy fun to be had. Plus, its Wonderland setting means it fits in perfectly with this month’s theme.
I’ve labelled this as “season one,” but I’m pretty confident it was only ever designed to be a standalone spin-off, as it ends pretty definitely for all its leads. The most popular character ended up on the mothershow, but if memory serves, his appearance there took place before the events of this show, and he wasn’t given much to do anyway.
As a child, Alice visits Wonderland and has a range of marvellous adventures. As a young adult, she’s placed in an insane asylum after she returns to her Victorian London home without proof of her claims, with nobody believing her wild claims of having fallen in love with a genie called Cyrus, and having lost him to the machinations of the Red Queen and Jafar.
Yes, the Red Queen and Jafar. One often got the sense that the writers’ room made up their plots by throwing darts at a board, and their nefarious scheme makes absolutely no sense. They’re after the three wishes that Cyrus granted to Alice when she found his bottle, which they cannot access until she makes those wishes, thereby freeing up the genie to be claimed by his next master or mistress.
But for some reason this plan hinges on making Alice believe that Cyrus has been killed, which does nothing to help them achieve their goals in any conceivable way. In fact, it just makes things more difficult for them, as now they have to convince her that he’s still alive without tipping their hand.
Furthermore, giving Alice access to the power of a genie involves way too many potential shortcuts in the narrative. With just a few words she can get anything she wants at any time she wants it, and so has to cover for her inaction by describing the bottle as a monkey’s paw, insisting that the bigger the wish, the bigger the consequences. But come on – if you thought carefully about what to wish for, she could have easily said: “I wish Cyrus would safely return to me,” or “I wish I knew what my enemies’ plans are.” At some point, you just have to shrug your shoulders and go with it, or absolutely nothing about the story’s core premise makes sense.
She’s broken out of the asylum by the Knave of Hearts and the White Rabbit, two old friends who insist that Cyrus is still alive, and returns to Wonderland in search of him, not realizing that she’s playing right into her enemies’ hands by doing so.
The show carries over a number of staple attributes from the mothershow, such as the formatting of each episode as a combination of extended flashback sequences that reveal certain clues and insights as to what’s going on with the present-day story, a grab-bag of characters and places borrowed from various fairy tales and folklore (Robin Hood shows up, as does Grendel and Silvermist from Disney Fairies), and the tendency to make one character more than one famous fairy tale character: in this case the Red Queen is also Anastasia from Cinderella, and the Knave of Hearts is also Will Scarlett.
Despite the title, a fair chunk of this story also takes its inspiration from Arabian Nights, which allows for several Middle-Eastern and South-Asian actors and stories to get integrated as well. Yeah, it could get random, but that was half the fun of this IP.
Sophie Lowe makes for a determined, proactive Alice (this franchise did have a number of wonderfully competent female characters – at least for a while), while Peter Gadiot is truly one of the most handsome leading men out there, with the two of them forming a genuinely sweet love story in which two people communicate well, never squabble, and clearly enjoy each other’s company. Just imagine! Meanwhile, Michael Socha is way too good for this material, but is game enough and manages to remain remarkably sincere throughout.
Naveen Andrews looks like he’s having a bit of fun as Jafar… for the most part at least. He never truly cuts loose, and the character has lost all the gay-coded campiness of his animated counterpart, but hey – he got a pay check out of it. Meanwhile, Emma Rigby got no end of shit at the start of the show, with the fandom deriding her performance as too affected and over-the-top, but about halfway through the episodes it turns out she was putting on an act – that is, the character was putting on an act, and her reversion to the Red Queen’s true self leads to the standout performance of the show.
(Villains are so often portrayed as just misunderstood or so heinous that the idea of granting them redemption feels rather uncomfortable, but in the case of the Red Queen, she really does do terrible things… but never crosses any lines into rape or murder. As such, when she tries to make good and the heroes forgive her, the story actually works).
They also manage to rope in some impressive guest stars, albeit just for the voicework: John Lithgow as the White Rabbit, Whoopi Goldberg as his wife, and Iggy Pop of all people as the Caterpillar (who plays the character as an underworld mob boss, one of the many zany creative decisions that totally justified this show’s existence). Then there’s the Retroactive Recognition, with Raza Jaffrey turning up as one of Cyrus’s brothers and… well, you’ll never guess who plays Alice as a child:
Yup, baby Millie Bobby Brown. Truly amazing to consider that when I first watched this in 2013, nobody had any idea where she’d end up. (She’s credited as Millie Brown, and there’s another little girl character called Millie who turns up later on, which makes me wonder if they borrowed the name from her).
You can watch this without any foreknowledge of the original series, though a few familiar faces from the mothershow turn up: Sean Maguire as Robin Hood, Barbara Hersey as the Queen of Hearts, and Kristin Bauer van Straten doing some voiceover work as Maleficent, whose castle some of the characters break into.
General highlights include characterizing Alice as a determined, proactive heroine, the Masculine Girl, Feminine Boy vibes of the Alice/Cyrus pairing (the latter spends a few episodes as a Dude in Distress, with Alice on her way to valiantly rescue him from captivity), and that the key relationship in the show entire is the genuinely strong and strictly platonic male/female friendship between Will and Alice, which predates Alice’s romantic attachment to Cyrus and forms the basis of the entire plot. That’s still so rare. (There’s a scene in which Will clarifies their relationship to another character, but doesn’t belittle it by saying they’re “just friends,” but simply emphasizing that they’re mates).
Also, plenty of fun little nods to the Wonderland setting, from reimagining Tweedledum and Tweedledee as the Red Queen’s camp henchmen, to the rather hilarious one-shot appearance of the Carpenter.
Low points would have to be the truly awful blue screen effects, especially when they come right on the heels of characters wandering around on location (it’s so jarring when they go from a real forest to a hideously rendered giant hedge maze), the fate of poor Lizard (a likeable supporting female character who dies due to a misspoken wish and then gets her eyeballs ripped out) and the fact that the Jabberwock is referred to as the Jabberwocky. Gah! There is no y on the end, unless you’re referring to the poem in which the creature appears!
In hindsight, it’s a fun ride, all the more so because it didn’t drag itself out past its expiration date like the original show did. It’s a wonder (no pun intended) that they didn’t do more of these spin-offs, as Once Upon a Time was popular enough to last seven seasons, even as it lost a lot of its lustre as it went on.
Also, if anyone’s still interested, the episode reviews I wrote way back when this first aired are still up on my old LiveJournal.
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