Curiouser And Curiouser

THE ALICE IN WONDERLAND books by Lewis Carroll have never been just for kids. Philosophers have published reams about the symbolism of Alice's journey and the characters, mathematicians have pored over its strange puzzles and equations, and the literary-inclined have parsed his eccentric poetry and made-up words. Now bibliophiles and cinephiles have more material to wrap their heads around - the history of Alice as presented in popular culture from 1865 to the present.

The new exhibition Wonderland at the ArtScience Museum in Marina Bay Sands offers a historically rich look at Alice through the decades, from its ubiquitous illustrations by John Tenniel, to the recent blockbuster live action Disney films starring Mia Wasikowska and Johnny Depp. Between them, there are over 70 film and TV adaptations, and hundreds of print versions in 176 languages.

They've allowed the Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI) to put together a rich tapestry of artworks, films, books, props, posters, costumes, music, puppetry and other paraphernalia. The exhibition is so thorough that there are even clips from The Matrix (1999) where Morpheus offers Neo the red pill so he can see "how deep the rabbit hole goes", and an episode from The Simpsons where Lisa falls through the rabbit hole.

ACMI doesn't just go for the obvious, such as showing original sketches and celluloid from the classic 1951 Disney animation. It also has artefacts from cult Alice adaptations, such as weird puppets from Czech animation director Jan Svankmajer's surreal 1988 version,as well as the scary-looking Alice doll from Quay brothers' nightmarish 2007 short Alice In Not So Wonderland. Meanwhile, the critically-acclaimed 1966 TV special directed by Alan Handley is represented by actual costumes from the show, which earned one of the first Emmys ever for costume design.

There are many hallways and doorways, cats and card soldiers. There are looking glasses to gaze into, and the Mad Hatter's tea party to attend. Examining even a fraction of this treasure trove is guaranteed to suck you deeper and deeper into the rabbit hole.

WEIRD MATH

While ACMI's exhibition is fun for adult cinephiles and bibliophiles, it may disappoint the more mathematically-inclined Alice fans. In Martin Gardner's famous book The Annotated Alice published in 1960, the popular maths and science writer declares: "Children today are bewildered and sometimes frightened by the nightmarish atmosphere of Alice's dreams. It is only because adults - scientists and mathematicians in particular - continue to relish the Alice books that they are assured of immortality."

Carroll had taught mathematics at Christ Church College at Oxford, which was how he met Alice Liddell, the young daughter of his college dean Henry Liddell. When Carroll went on a boating trip up the Thames with Alice and her two sisters in 1862, he started telling them a fantastical tale he made up about a young girl Alice who fell into a magical hole. The girls kept begging him to retell the story, prompting him to write it down and self-publish Alice's Adventures in Wonderland in 1965. It was an instant success and made him more money than his mathematician's job ever would.

However, it was his parody of the mathematical world that continues to amuse adult readers over the years. Carroll lived in a time when new forms of math equations were being created, where one plus one not necessarily equals two, and "imaginary numbers" existed alongside traditional algebra and geometry. His personal frustrations with these new-fangled math concepts manifested themselves in the book's many puzzles.

In one instance, a caterpillar tells a shrunken Alice to eat a mushroom to restore her size. But she has to eat the right amounts, for one side of the mushroom stretches her neck, while the other side shrinks her torso. In another instance, the Doormouse, the Mad Hatter, and the March Hare keep circling a table in a perpetual tea time - a skewering of the theory of quaternions.

SPECULATIONS AND OMISSIONS

Other visitors may be disappointed that Wonderland doesn't address the troubling speculation that Carroll may have harboured more than just avuncular affection for the real-life Alice. In the age of Me Too, the world has had to reassess the men once regarded as cultural heroes, including Harvey Weinstein, Woody Allen, Charlie Rose, Bryan Singer and Kevin Spacey - and going farther back, Roman Polanski, Pablo Picasso, Richard Wagner and even Caravaggio.

Historians note that Alice's mother Mrs Liddell had been so suspicious of Carroll's intentions, she took steps to minimise his interactions with Alice. His letters to the girl bore nuances that disturbed Mrs Liddell, so she burned them. But other historians argue that in Victorian England, little girls were commonly idealised in art and literature for their beauty and innocence. So Carroll's obsession with young Alice may not be especially perverse or unusual.

ACMI curator Jessica Bram says: "We talked extensively about this and decided that we didn't want to take a kind of moral stance on the conjecture surrounding Carroll's relationship with Alice... There has been so much that's been talked and written about it. And indeed there is so much more that could be talked about.

"But for us it was more a moment to put the spotlight on this girl hero and celebrate her for her timelessness, bravery, curiosity and spirit of adventure. We were much more interested in the book character of Alice than the innuendos surrounding the relationship between Lewis Carroll and Alice Liddell."

Alice the fictional character has transcended her possibly troubling creative origins to become a heroine, an inspiration and a meme in her own right.

Wonderland runs at the ArtScience Museum from now till Sep 22. Tickets at the door.