Viewing Through The Looking-Glass (2016)

1. The Movie

Alice Through The Looking-Glass is the 2016 Tim Burton sequel to his 2010 adaptation of Alice In Wonderland. Aside from namesake, this film creates an entirely different and new story— a literal reimagining of the Lewis Carroll book that as well continues the story of the young girl; and such would make sense as most of the two books had been combined in the first movie in the duology. This however, is not a dissection of that departure, more rather a retrospective of the artistic liberty venerated in the creation.

Taking place three years after the events of the first film shows Alice arriving back to London after sailing to China and back, having followed in her late father's footseps. Upon this return she comes to learn Hamish— the man whom she had rejected the quite public marriage proposal of in the prior movie— has taken over the company which her father had been apart of, as well as being the owner of what had been 10% of the company given to Alice's mother by Hamish's father, as well as their house. He uses this as a form of leverage in bitterness over the rejection, to try taking Alice's vessel and forcing her into a compensatory position on land, but only in the stripes of typical womanly work in 1875; and even tries to have her institutionalised with a case of 'female hysteria', to which she escapes from and goes back into Wonderland via a(nother) mirror.  

From the onset the line between reality and fantastical dreams are blurred; as Absolem the blue hookah smoking caterpillar turned butterfly is seen fluttering in close proximity to Alice and then making himself known to her when she left the room after learning how Hamish had deviously concocted the current situation of an uncertain future based on a seeming loss of the past. With that she re-enters the magical world of Wonderland (or, Underland) through a mirror (or looking-glass) to find her friends there in a panic as the Mad Hatter has fallen into a depressive state; which she comes to find out is due to his finding of the first hat he had crafted, and through that reminded of the family who (were believed to have) died when the Jabberwocky attacked on behalf of the Red Queen; and due to this state the Hatter has fallen into, he is on the verge of his own death. Alice at firsts tries to reason with Hatter that dead is dead, and having lost her own father she would seemingly know that it is impossible to bring people back just like that; however, part of her touted line and intrinsic to Wonderland itself is the impossible being possible, in some unconventional form. To that point the White Queen makes known that there is in fact a way for this reunion to happen, by having Alice go meet with Time himself from whom she learns that travelling through time to the past is indeed possible with the aid of a powerful device called the Chronosphere; that also serves as a sort of binding source which the reality for all of Underland past and present hinges on.

The meeting with Time is rather brief, and turned into chase with the Red Queen reappearing searching fot the device herself in order to go back in time so as to change it so that she would, as the eldest, remain the heir to Wonderland's throne instead of her younger sister the White Queen. This being born from a childhood incident coinciding with the Hatters, where the younger White Queen stole a tart from the kitchen and ate it near the young Red Queen's bed and so the latter got the blame; then leading to a scene where the Red Queen hit her head, causing it to swell to large proportion; and later at a coronation-style ceremony where she is being given a crown, the headpiece breaks on her head resulting in the Mad Hatter bursting with laughter and followed by the whole audience present, to which she then threatens all them and rages while being sent away by their monarch parents and her younger sister being chosen as next in line instead.

Alice travels through time with the Chronosphere, bearing witness to much of these past happenings. In doing so, she learns that the Hatter's family is in fact still alive and held hostage by the Red Queen. Launching a rescue mission, they do find them shrunken down and captive in an ant habitat, but in the event the Red Queen takes hold of the Chronosphere and with her sister grabbed goes back to prove the younger White Queen as the thief of the tart; however in doing so the older Red Queen and her child self see themself which creates a time paradox that quickly begins engulfing the entire world of Underland, past and present in a freezing rust. Alice however manages to get the Chronosphere back to its holding spot and all is restored.

With all settled between the once rival sisters in hindsight, and the Hatter family reunited Alice returns to the real world in just the nick of Time to prevent her mother from signing over the family vessel, allowing Hamish to keep the 10% stake and house. With that Alice and her mother sail off on the ship to future adventures.

2. Analysis

While the movie obviously and as aforementioned goes into an entirely separate story than the source book, it does not terribly disparage that core motif from Carroll at all. Alice is consistently shown as a defiantly curious force in facing and enacting impossibilities, arguing with the fantastical elements of the dreamworld while simultaneously utilizing them in an unconscious within the unconscious way to come to the end product of the sublimating experience. She doesn't take a simple answer as fulfilling. With that and the recurring symbolism of entering into the dreamscape via a mirror and concocted story: it is one of a fight against the future while trying to hold onto the past in the present, going against Time himself in defiance against the inevitability of loss and potential death of the dream. "Everyone parts with everything eventually, my dear," Time tells Alice early on.

Having the theme of the death of a dream and the cutting of a tether to old memories, this movie can then be compared to another with the same concept mirrored in its own way: the 1980s dark fantasy film The NeverEnding Story, wherein it is depicted that the death of this childlike imagination and belief, or suspension of disbelief, in the impossible results in the crumbling of ones entire world into nothing. Memory, a glorified and polished image is rusted over into a frozen stagnant void, empty of life. Holding on when there's no longer a tether connecting the boat to the ship prevents one from rowing onward into continued living.

Notes on Stranger In A Strange Land

Jill looked puzzled. "Ben, have you ever seen an angel?"

"You, cherub. Otherwise not."

"Well, neither have I— but that is how he looked. He had old, wise eyes in a completely placid face, a face of unearthly innocence." She shivered.

This exchange over the matter of Jill's personal encounter with Valentine Michael Smith, the Martian who came to Earth and under what is essentially a dual gag order as scientists acclimate him to the temperature and gravity of the planet, as well as delegate over certain legal matters associated with him; brings to mind the illustrations accompanying the album covers and track listings for the One Assassination Under God duology from Marilyn Manson.

As well it's reminding of Lucifer's Teardrop and the Paradise Lost concept of a "fallen angel finding my way home" as it's sung. In that then it also leads to the character of Omega from Mechanical Animals in this new Great Big White World, that only goes onto exploit this extraterrestrial freak show. It is noteworthy then that the character of Omega is an incarnation of the alchemical androgyne, and the Martians are, as described, more impervious to the human sexes much like the six figured representation on that album cover...  And of course then with that it harkens back further to David Bowie's seminal Ziggy Stardust And The Spiders From Mars; as well as the namesake Charles Manson, as Stranger In A Strange Land was his favorite book.

"Forgive and Forget"

Forgiveness:
A fluke, frontal facade,
Farcical fellatio—

Forgetting has no equity

in that equation

as,

"The hurt doesn't SHOW, but the pain STILL GROWS"
To empty self-repeat;

As if

a headless chicken

running around a daisy chain

Then dropping as dead meat

Contrasted Crazy

This is the poem I wrote closing out the notebook I finished today that had been started on twenty days ago. It extends from something I was writing the other day exploring the lines between insanity and whimsical eccentric tendencies. Whether I put that out anywhere, is to be determined later. At the end of the poem, the two second to last lines is a reference/paraphrase of the song She's A Rebel by Green Day.

Whimsy and insanity:

The line between giddy and glee

Intertwined with destructive tendencies

Full of color and lifeless

Nothing in eclectic everything

Swelling, curtailing in restless 

Maniacal sedation fused to elation

Horseshoe equilibrium

Trouble made double with a—

twist of fate and a melody

Chaos in cordiality

Inspection of Late Night With The Devil (2023)

Late Night With The Devil is a 2023 film made in the lineage of campy b-horror movies, found footage, and 1980s Satanic Panic era talk shows such as Geraldo or Oprah; who at the time made hundreds of hours of specials on stories of supposed Satanic cults in a loose but interconnected network roaming about the United States committing horrific crimes against children, creating Manchurian candidates, and many other dastardly deeds; such never really existed however. As portrayed in this flick, Jack Delroy, a man with a vaguely suspicious past, is the host of a lower rated syndicated talk show in 1977 on Halloween, trying to get a boost in viewership with the special holiday set planned. With this setup the groundwork for the rest of the show is laid down for what is essentially, a perfect theme which, by being pre-1980 would be a proto-Satanic Panic piece.

The guest list for the night consists of a psychically inclined man who has the purported ability to communicate with spirits, in a way he likens to a ham radio, and gives the audience a due display, much to the dismay and dismissal of the featured skeptic sitting on the stage. This skeptic serves as a counterbalance to Jack and the rest of the evening's stars, to the point of having an actual financially compensating prize for anyone who could prove the supernatural real, similar to the real life One Million Dollar Paranormal Challenge from the James Randi Educational Foundation that was in place from 1964 up until 2015; and was denying the paranormal activity going on around them, even after learning the psychic who had been taken off stage after having a seeming migraine from a malicious presence and vomiting up black blood had died. Quickly then going to a commercial intermission and moving the psychic out of the way, recuperating themselves running the show and reinvigorate live audience who had bore witness so as to be able to proceed with the main part of the show that night.

Coming to the climactic segment with the prior scare serving as a warning, or catalyst, for the horror about to occur. Here we see a variation of the classic Satanic Panic tale: a parapsychologist with (and whom she also serves as legal guardian of) her young patient Lilly, the sole survivor of a diabolical cult who worshipped the demon Abraxas (in reality the Gnostic 'god above gods') and died in a Waco-imitation shootout with federal agents and burned themselves alive inside their suburban abbey, which was all detailed in a book by the mental health professional. This leads to the conjuration of a spirit who can possess Lilly's body, and done so in a manner which to the skeptic seems akin to ideas of hypnotism to which he then gives his own performance of for the room; all subtly touching upon the matter of what was at the time known as Multiple Personality Disorder (now rebranded as Dissociative Identity Disorder for posterity purposes after the moral hysteria subsided) and repressed memory syndrome. 

Nonetheless, in spite of the skeptic's denial and to the growing unease of the room and Jack after the death of the psychic and witnessed summoning; no amount of pedantic dismissal would save the night when the demonic entity came back to raise Hell in the studio.

Select Bibliography:

Mulhern, S. (1994). Satanism, ritual abuse, and multiple personality disorder: A sociohistorical perspective. International Journal of Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis, 42(4), 265–288. https://doi.org/10.1080/00207149408409359

Waterhouse, R. T. “Satanic Abuse, False Memories, Weird Beliefs and Moral Panics.” Doctoral, City University London, 2015. https://openaccess.city.ac.uk/id/eprint/11871/.

Vanity in a Void

Solid black surrounded the cockpit. The inhabitants of the spacecraft had long since grown wary of one another on their now sixteen year voyage into the final frontier. It had been at least a decade since they last saw the sun's waning rays. They were on course to anywhere and nowhere at this point; but they nonetheless continued their routines ad infinum: maintenance inside and out, water and oxygen reclamation, exercise, sleep, gaze into the dark abyss they drifted within... rinse and repeat on the daily.

One day (night? who knows anymore when there's no sun) one of the four crew members was going from the cockpit into the main hull of their ship when he heard a few taps. Being onboard with three others, he thought nothing of this and continued to his quarters for some rest. Another set of taps. He slept a dreamless sleep.

The other three sat in the engine room. Given they were drifting, the combustion machine was shut off to conserve power; it was were they could have a smoke without catching the ship on fire. They had heard the first tap, and like their crew mate thought nothing of it. Someone may have made a passing grunt. They then heard the second time when it sputtered out. Then again. Again, again and again. It would start, stop, tap in increasing and harsh speeds, stop. 

tap tap

taptap

taptaptaptaptapTAPTAPTAPTAPTAP

TAPTAP

tap tap taptap

TAPTAP TAP TAP TAP

tap

They all went on alert and began a detailed inspection of the entire vessel as the orgasms of tapping burst out continuously. It sounded as if rain in a hurricane mixed with a turret on rapid fire. The man who had just fallen asleep for a moment was now up and pumping with adrenalin, he rushed back to the cockpit to check the ships diagnistics; another suited up and grabbed his tether to go out the airlock and check the exterior, bringing a specialised umbrella in case it was a microscopic meteor shower, or some sort of cosmic dust doing the battering. One stayed back in the engine room to make sure the issue wasn't originating there while another checked the hull for any sign of an air leak.

The three inside met within the hull when nothing showed to be wrong that was causing the tapping. There was one rotating gear that had needed replacing in the engine, but that was swiftly taken care to and yet, the tapping persisted. After a few moments they realised they were one member short as the fourth hadn't come back from outside the ship yet, though he should have been. Two quickly went off to see what was going on. When they got to the airlock they saw a missing suit and tether, but when looking through a small window they saw no tether anywhere. They could see nothing. One suited himself up while the other stayed behind to watch his tether and make sure nothing like that happened. The tapping continued.

Still in the cockpit the now wide awake member continued to check diagnostics triply when suddenly a knife slammed into the glass before him, then again. The alarm on the spacecraft went off as the sealing door between the hull and cockpit slammed shut while the rest of the glass shattered as the depressurisation shot it out into the abyss. The man inside imploded almost instantaneously. The one with the knife had been the formerly missing crew mate, a shard had pierced his suit and he died there and then. 

The tapping stopped to the shock of the one crew member still inside near the airlock as the alarm blared.

As one of the now two survivors of the party was approaching the middle of the hull from the outside he heard a pulsing sound buzzing over his radio. He quickly turned back and went back to the airlock. Back in the ship the two rushed to the hull and looked out another small window to where now only a sealed door shielded them from the harsh outer space; through that they could somewhat makeout a suit floating through wreckage. The tapping resumed.

It wouldn't stop.

Two days, or however long it really was, there was no more ship adrift. Nothing. No evidence of anything being in the void at all. 

Review of Alice In Wonderland (1903)

Cecil Hepworth's 1903 silent movie adaptation was the first of such ever made based on Lewis Carroll's childrens book Alice's Adventure In Wonderland. It is a nearly ten minute variation that sticks to the script of the source material practically to a T. Like many early films, in viewing it seems more like watching a stage play, but in that is an enjoyable displayed appropriation of the text to the screen. An interesting note is that being made when it was, the actual Alice Liddel whom Carroll based his story's character on was still alive at the time.

This is a poem I wrote while stoned from weed for the first time in three months. I was when I wrote it as I am also in typing it up.

Red-hot

Fire preventing ront

Inferno sterilization 

Burning pridges, rebirthing purity

New unnecessary

Weighted remnants wary

Rusted revival

Trivial and forgettable dreaming

Forlorn ecstasy

Satisfied beneficiary 

Voided cold

Coded for reload

Culled satisfactory

Dissolved debris

Egotistical and sold

Analysis of Alice In Wonderland: An X-Rated Musical Fantasy

Alice In Wonderland: An X-Rated Musical Fantasy (1976)  is probably the most unique portrayal of Lewis Carroll's story, for the obvious fact in that it is a pornographic musical. A Freudian dreamscape of releasing repressed sexuality. 

The backdrop of this adaptation has Alice as a young adult working at her job as a librarian when she and a man whom she shares a romantic tension with get into a small debacle over the topic of having sex. Alice negates the idea (as later revealed in her dream after being propositioned for the act with the King), wishing to stay pure until marriage; though as is revealed throughout the film this standard doesn't hold up to inner repressed curiosities she holds; but at this introduction she stands in her resolve. From there he leaves and Alice goes on to resume her work a moment, then breaking into song where she considers that maybe she's holding herself to a standard that isn't realistic, that she is too strict with herself while being at a young age, and maybe is too quickly reprehensive towards partaking in Earthly delights; likening herself to a large redwood tree that takes 500 years to mature, pondering if she could do all that in just two so as to not be so 'grown up' so soon.

It is after this number she settles back down to find a copy of Lewis Carroll's book Alice In Wonderland, and in that the story is what would be called today, 'meta', with events about to transpire. Having never read the novel before she decides to do so, falling asleep and entering into a dream while doing so; where she then meets the White Rabbit and follows him through a mirror into Wonderland. The use of a mirror as the portal to this realm could properly signify that the world she has entered shows just what she tries to cover up, or stave away from her mind but is there nonetheless as, "the dream is a sort of substitution for the emotional and intellectual trains of thought," where, "the dream not infrequently anticipates, in impatience, as it were, the expected pleasure," from repressed desires.

It must suffice to state that we obtain matter enough for the resolution of every morbid idea if we direct our attention to the unbidden associations which disturb our thoughts— those which are put aside by the critic as worthless refuse.

With this, each song that spontaneous comes into fruition in the proceeding events serve largely as prelude for what is ultimately exploratory sexual activity for Alice. Learning in witness, and two instances of personal participation, of such erotic engagements: masturbation, fellatio, cunnilingus, fingering, full on fucking, and orgiastic activity in the kingdom serve as a sort of unconscious awakening for Alice to rid herself of what would seem based on her conversation with the King, as externally prescribed prohibitions. This then showing the dream by and large to serve as a form of sublimation for latent feelings of curiosity manifesting what she otherwise outwardly deemed as morbid, near incomprehensible or desiring the undesirable; and shedding those sensibilities. 

The formula for these dreams may be thus stated: They are concealed realisations of repressed desires.

The film ends with Alice on the run, escaping from the Queen after a trial which resulted in 'giving her head', coming to a body of water she leaps in and on account of being unable to swim nearly drowns. But, being a dream before any real harm occurs she awakens as she is once again confronted by the man who had come to apologize for his insistent and slightly belligerent advances prior; however Alice initiates a kiss which then turns into the two making love. Latent desire fulfilled and inhibition stripped of all its restricting clothing.

Select Bibliography

Freud, Sigmund, and M. D. (Montague David) Eder. On Dreams. With Internet Archive, Mineola, N.Y. : Dover, 2001. Internet Archive, http://archive.org/details/ondreams000freu.

Criticisms of Dark Side Of The 90s (Part III)

I have now watched the fifth and sixth episodes of Vice's documentary series Dark Side Of The 90s first season. Needless to say, and some of it is a bit repetitive in the same vein as to what I had to critique in regards to the second episode. Ultimately however I've come to realize that it's a sensationalistic conveying of information and general lore about the presented topics; and despite the claim of being 'dark', are rather glamorised in a voyeuristic manner— and more on that subject contextually with episode 6. 

Episode 5. Grunge and the Seattle Sound

Sound Garden, L7, Green River, Mudhoney, Pearl Jam, Alice In Chains, and of course, Nirvana. The topic of this episode being the bands under the Sub Pop record label and who in a reverse-British Invasion took hold of the musical world for a few years with the explosion of grunge; a seminal mix of metal and punk rock wearing frayed flannel. Detailing a straightforward overview of the history attached to Sub Pop as a label and some of the notable acts which signed to them; most notably and most talked to obviously being Nirvana. Through that the 'dark side' presented here is the death of half a dozen grunge band frontmen. Heroin usage in the scene was noted earlier in the episode, and like how the second episode of the show had its focal point of River Phoenix's overdose, the suicide of Kurt Cobain is front and center to it all. It's a mundane extreme thing where sure, these people are stars and die young and thus crystallized in that image as they never could falter in that; but as Danny Goldberg noted in his book Serving The Servant: Kurt Cobain was not a saint; he had faults and died as a result of them. If they weren't famous, the deaths would be just a statistic.

Episode 6. Baywatch: Sex Sells

 No shit it does, has, and always will.

Voyeurism and proto-influencers is what this episode takes as its main topic as it pertained to the original Baywatch series. It opens with a line from one of the interviewed cast members stating that it induced something about personal image onto younger people that they really didn't need to worry about; as if generations prior weren't concerned with say, getting drafted to Vietnam or working hard labor to sustain their families. It seems quite minimal in at the face of it all as and issue seeing as such is perpetual today to an even more apparent degree from Eugenia Cooney and extreme anorexic (and as a similar side with this, bulimic) disorders; the meth-infused and surgical corrections as means to alleviate dysmorphic tendencies with 'looksmaxxers' like Clavicular; or so called fat activists professing that being overweight is a personal, radically empowering and prideful display of a healthy body. Going into the history of this even with the body modification aspect of with personal augmentation in contrast to the simultaneously glamourised heroin chic. Such insecurities and aesthetic preferences has stuck around, obviously; though the augmentation in all manners, from breasts to height seem to be less of a stigma, just look at The Kardashians as the poignant epitome of it all.

Speaking to the voyeurism involved with the Baywatch show as it was made to be sensually stimulating in its appeal (though in this episode one of its creators claims in a contradictory statement that it was, "sexy, not sexual") with stars like Pamela Anderson coming to it hot off of a Playboy cover. Today this can be seen in its own form with the gained popularity of a starlet like Sydney Sweeney. Madonna had her SEX book— which is briefly noted in the episode— but even then with the hindsight of say, Linda Lovelace in Deep Throat seems repetitive throughout the last 60 years, since feminists were burning their bras. 

On that topic it then delves into the tumultuous relationship between Anderson and the rock drummer Tommy Lee and resulting leaked sex tape... while one had gotten her fame from a Playboy cover and the other now occasionally posts pictures with his lower ligature out on social media for all to see. Revenge porn it may have been in its release, but as seen in the infamous event that occurred in the earlier 2010s known as 'the Fappening', this is again only cared about if it's that of a celebrity's privacy breached.

"Babble babble, bitch bitch rebel rebel, party party, sex sex sex; and don't forget the violence" —Marilyn Manson, This Is The New Shit