Is it normal after your second shot to be feel like ass & be unable to do much but to desire with great alacrity exactly two things: to inhale leftover pesto pasta; & to watch every single version "Alice in Wonderland" there is? Asking for... 
O god. I am having an urge to live tweet this and I think it's going to end up terrible but it's also the only thing of which I am capable at the moment; I can't even sit up
...but I feel from the core of my being a deep proclivity to examine "Alice in Wonderland" for commentary on women, signifiers, and mental illness as though that idea doesn't already surely glut JSTOR and every far reach of the humanities
"*Your* world! What nonsense!"
Yes, affect studies? YOU RANG?
Yes, affect studies? YOU RANG?
Okay @JShahryar we need to do a book of essays where I look at Disney cartoons and you look at Marvel movies except the trauma theory is NEW and SEXY and maybe not all about Freud and talking trees
I was assigned this book when I was 14 and not yet intimately familiar with the machinations of anxiety & couldn't pinpoint the genius of a rabbit being late! late! for a very important date! that Alice can't tell what the deal is about but who gamely gets anxious about with him
(On a related note, I once CRIED WHOLE ASS TEARS because I thought my mom and I had rented Alice in Wonderland to rewatch and I remembered this scene where the kitty waves goodbye and got preemptively sad. My mom was all "but we didn't even rent that one we got Mickey Mouse")
(I should perhaps clarify that I was six years old)
(But THAT IS HOW MUCH I HAVE ALWAYS LOVED KITTY CATS)
Anyway I think the best descriptor for trauma (& maybe mental illness) will always come from the discipline in which I got MY doctorate, of course: Peggy Phelan's space "without subject or perceiver," which is where Alice is falling
(& @JShahryar it's also the shimmer from "Annihilaion"--theorem radio comms are fucked the minute they get in there & they adjust by falling too--falling asleep for days, how many none of them remember...
& the pendant-shaped spaceship Amy Adam's Louise gets acclimated to in "Arrival" is a kind of falling upwards; & once she does she can converse with the heptopods the way Portman's Lena can converse with her gossamer self, and so on...)
After this greif, whatever this process or portal is that grows "curiouser and curiouser," I shall be fundamentally transformed on a molecular level. One is not the same after falling down a rabbithole, which, too, is the wormhole Jodie Foster's Ellie falls into in "Contact"
(Re-added previous tweet where it was supposed to go) (but ANYWAY these two stills seem to me to be 'temporary respite' and 'oops' for anyone suffering trauma, including 'omg yes an SSRI hallelujah' and 'oops I forgot to take them two days in a row')
O god you guys another thing I did not get before from this movie when I watched it a lot (in 1992) is a SERIOUS Harold Bloom vibe from the sentient doorknob. Precocious, bright, pretty youngun falls down into knowledge, opens for herself these tiny doors--ie, learns even more--
And ALICE immediately *apologizes* to this self-impressed BLOWHARD who's using his obvious FUNCTION of letting her into more realms of KNOWLEDGE as an OPPORTUNITY to make tired old JOKES that HAMPER her PROGRESS like it's Harold Bloom's fucking OFFICE HOURS
This is legit every young coed to turn up to Harold Bloom's office hours at Yale, right here! He's like "let me impede the progress of your critical acumen for my own pomp" & she is LITERALLY like "please, sir"!! I'm trying to acquire knowledge here! Be the doorknob you are!
Stop making it about you, you BLOVIATING DOORKNOB
Oh no, now we make a hard turn into trauma-induced addiction, where the BLOVIATING doorknob insisting to Alice that her passage through him is untenable at her size (I also, hrmmm, don't like the message this may give femmes of all kinds with plus-size bodies out there)...
God, that LOOK Alice makes at the suggestion of the bottle! A traumatized, genius young woman, her progress hampered by a BLOVIATING narcissist taking up her time for his own ego, follows his suggestion to *take a substance* so she can *shrink for him.*
This, an anorexic addict is born. & thus do I blame narcissists in gatekeeping positions for eating disorders & addiction in young women who show all kinds of promise. The number of women I knew at Ivies who were sharp-as-fuck theorists, who arrived on campus & promptly...
Started drinking everything, eating nothing, intellectually fellating the Howard Blooms and sleeping with the Kennedy Jr only to realize much later that they'd been convinced to shrink their greatness for the approval of terrible men who were terrible lays.
Ugh this is infuriating from the perspective of any feminist lens because look at the EXPRESSION that that greasy, dirty, narcissistic gatekeeper doorknob MAKES when Alice LISTENS to her INTUITION initially (ie, checks the label in the event that she's about to ingest POISON)--
"I was just giving myself some good advice," says she!! YES ALICE THAT IS YOUR INTUITION, from which you have yet to fully divorce--all to fit through the gaping mouth of the narcissistic blowhard impeding your magnificent intellectual progress, taking your time, and...
All the while this asshat/doorknob is making aghast, alarmed, eavesropping faces to the effect that you're much too close to intuiting the truth! THIS DOORKNOB IS NOT YOUR FRIEND ALICE! You're a threat because you KNOW & you're seeing for yourself! He doesn't deserve your tears!
But, she does what compounds the trauma, ie what shrinks her: she drinks it. "Goodness!" She cries. "What did I do?!?" "Oho," the greasy doorknob chortles, "you almost went out like a candle!" That Fucker. See what he just did there?
He told her to take a drink to shrink so she'd fit him! So he'd allow her to pass through to the realm of knowledge behind him; & keep pursuing the rabbit of her own fancies, intuitions, & ideas! & then, he acts like that intentional effect happened to her like an act of god!
The door saw what a threat Alice's intact intuition was, convinced her to consume poison and shrink all so she's be small enough for him, then shrugged off the potentially lethal effect that almost had as though it wasn't his own responsibility! greasy narcissistic gatekeeper 🤮
"Directly you'll be directed in the right direction," the bloviating gatekeeping narcissistic doorknob says of the bottle of poison that will shrink this intimidatingly on-point young woman to the point of dependency, cognitive dissonance, and despondency that she'd cry an OCEAN.
"Just follow the cultural script, dear,"... so you don't take up too much space, don't wake up from the matrix 🐇, & most of all, so you don't take airtime from this tired old goat who wants to fuck w/ your progress by exploiting, shrinking & DARVOing you into literal desperation
She doesn't know that the sudden appearance of the poison she advises herself initially not to drink has anything directly to do with this Harold Bloom gatekeeping doorknob. So her intuition can't keep her from the narcissist's next trick, which is for her to poison herself, ...
...Literally shrink herself to his ego's demands; then, once she has divorced satisfactorily from her own intuition, cognitive-dissonance her further: he's LOCKED! Suddenly, there's a key! Way up on that table! Understandably, the narcissist's target is weakened, which he wants.
..& then the story takes an arguably feminist turn, which is not to grow the right size, find the right key, and unlock the door; ie enjoy victory over the narcissist on his own terms--he deliberately makes that impossible, which machinations are what define him as narcissistic--
But rather to surrender her open heart and credulous mind to the narcissistic Bluebeardian doorknob's dizzying manipulations, and do "what women do"--fall into hysterics to the point that she weeps a sea, and sails through the barrier on the product of her own victimization.
This might be what Estés means by "backtracking and looping," or what Hartman et al mean when they point out multivalent channels of agency in the overpowered. Alice's greif is not merely a shameful product she can't hide. It's her literal escape, part of her particular genius.
The overfill of her "hysterics," the ceaseless multiplicity of her melancholia, *is her way out* of the narcissist's trap. The shameful proof of her humanity is her rescue ship, and the bottle that once contained the poison that shrank her is the very body of that ship.
"This won't do!" Bloom splutters and chokes as the coed he manipulated cries in his office, her ceaseless cried audible down the hall, where the initiated women professors live. "I can't seem to stop!" She wails. She believes it's her fault, & the coin of his realm is to let her.
"The bottle!" he manages, but *only once he realizes her survival is what will allow his.* Because this man, this gatekeeping greasy doorknob using mentorship as an opportunity to exploit and gatekeeping as an opportunity to play puppeteer, is thoroughly selfish.
He doesn't give a shit about Alice's life. He really truly only gives a shit about his own. He was, in fact, invested in making her play rigged survival games because it pleased him to make her alter herself for his requirements. For Alice to thrive reveals his charade.
But, for her to perish altogether would spell drowning for him too. That's why he throws her a lifeline. Not to help her. And certainly not to help her "thrive."
Oh and she also cries in the first place because he confuses her, discourages her, coerces her, and then outright *demeans* her after encouraging her to eat the food that grows her bigger. "A little of that went a looong waaay!" He chuckles. And then she finally weeps.
Eating disorder waiting to happen. Anyway, Alice only fits in the bottle when she drinks the last of the poison that will again shrink her to a size he finds palatable, and only does so when he encourages her to, all so he won't drown. Again, not a "drop" of compassion from him.
(country internet, it's buffering, back in a few)
@JShahryar I might be really bad at threading so here is where I am starting post intermission. Ie, Alice has gotten past the doorknob.
It stands to note that she regrets her own weeping, her own ocean of tears...a woman's shame at her own manufactured "hysteria"...before that very ocean is what bears her away, in the bottle once containing the shrinking poison she consumed at the gatekeeping doorknob's behest...
In order to make herself small enough for his ego (the keyhole). And once she's through, things are seizing and grieving and heaving. There's even a dodo bird, a symbol of mental retardation, as master of ceremonies.
So Alice is borne through the door--ie, the misogynist structure of preconceived notions that form the barrier impeding her progress pursuing the white rabbit of her own knowledge.
The implication is that the consequence of Alice's intuition--that is, her natural genius and curiosity is that of an escape leading to more turmoil and even less sense, though this twilight zone is at least governed by a different flavor of misogyny than the last.
Alice is borne along on the ocean she spontaneously and affectively created- -a journey she can't even really avoid if she wanted to. And it may get her out of one pickle, but it will send her on a tempestuous voyage where nothing makes any more fucking sense than it did before:
Like, it's not necessarily a lethal squall on this waters. While it may drown her if she gets no help, it's not like the maze/trap set for her by the gaslighting doorknob.
It's not necessarily a *malignant* space Alice's own intuitive affect sends her into--it just makes no goddamn sense. It's whatever happens when you make it through Harold Bloom's office hours and his drunken "you have an air of predestination about you, my dear"-type sleaziness.
Just look at this shit. It's perfect-it's basically a crew team that Alice appeals to as a damsel in distress. The lobsters row along identically! it's just painfully accurate. Once she's free of the Bloom-viating, it's not like oblivious Ivy jocks are of much help to our heroine
..suggesting a marginalized/victimized person can rely on instinct to get past malignant gatekeepers, but they'll need allies on the other side, & may drown in their own traumatic response without them. None of the sea creatures mean Alice harm, but they're not her allies, either
And the only person to be at the mercy of the cosmic forces enough that she can't be happy-go-lucky about it along with the dodo, the feat boy lobsters, the blissful dancing starfish, is Alice, the traumatized woman, the foreigner who has been subject to abuse by a puppeteer type
Those who're subject to such abuse within the confines of misogynist patriarchy-in front of the door-won't find blissful social club/team/secret society belonging & bliss once they find a way past it. Trauma and otherness keep Alice out of the singing circle, even when she lands.
In short, it speaks to why why coddled white people on the college green may do acid or sing drunkenly in the streets, but members of the same community who are somehow othered by oppression or trauma they've choicelessly repressed might have a "bad trip" under the exact same sky
Safety is not only a question of the cosmic weather. It's a question of whether the foreigner to a place is welcome and allied. If they're not, the upside-down cessation of sense-driven logic doesn't mean the same thing at all. That's trauma write large.
Even when the heretofore oblivious dude-sea-singers let Alice (the one girl to make it to their realm) into the circle, she's pushed down & around & forced into piggybacks by the sea & the whole gang in a way that's reminiscent of coercive & violatory frat bro party behaviors.
something darkly suggestive, too, about the ocean as alcohol, & about how those at-first-harmless-seeming characters personified by singing sea animals *seem* to just be doing a kind of frat bro type singing circle, & who *seem* to be merely oblivious to Alice's cries for help...
...then proving themselves *very* aware of her & *very* able to literally push her around once the sea doesn't drown her. She's beneath their notice until she might satiate it. In that way, they're dangerous. A slightly different way than the door was, but still harmful.
When I read this book at 14 and watched this cartoon at 6, I definitely didn't meditate on how all the characters complicating Alice's intuitive pursuit of that anxious white rabbit are predatory male types.
Wonderland is in many ways misogyny run amok. It's about how a precious and intuitive and smart young woman can make it past one misogynistic hurdle in her intuitive journey only for her trajectory only to be dragged down by another kind of misogyny in slightly different clothing
...but with a similar goal. To wit, Alice makes it out of that frat bro hell beach--seriously that shit is like Miami spring break for a single woman hosted by Beta Theta Pi--only to encounter...The Hell Twins, Tweedledee & Tweedledum.
you don't need to get a load of how they're drawn to get a sense of how dangerous these T&T are to a vulnerable person. The looks they exchange when she *employs curiosity* by crawling into the holllow log. The unsettling, lateral crabscuttle they do to encounter her at the end.
Alice moves from the room with that awful door, through to an affective ocean, to the frat boy beach that tosses her about in a similar way, to a rare sighting of that nice, anxious rabbit. The forest, hopefully, denotes something new.
https://twitter.com/minglishmuffin/status/1377504570201538560?s=21https://t.co/1Mfyud2SaA
https://twitter.com/minglishmuffin/status/1377504570201538560?s=21https://t.co/1Mfyud2SaA
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