Amongst the supernatural shows on television this season comes an interesting entry: Once Upon A Time in Wonderland, ABC’s spinoff of its hit Once Upon A Time. Unlike the original series, which draws upon myth, folklore, and fairy tales, this show is based at least in part on a more recent entry into the literary canon: Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, a bizarre 19th century text littered with complicated allusions, surrounded by controversy, and yet utterly beguiling and fascinating.
The very history of the original Alice is interesting enough: was it based on Alice Liddell, a young woman whom Carroll knew through family friends? Did he have an inappropriate relationship with her, one that was broken off by her mother? Much speculation surrounds the origins of the book and his precise relationship with the real Alice, whom he met at the age of 10, and thus the background text comes already loaded with a very complex gendered history.
Once Upon A Time in Wonderland looks like it might do some very interesting things with gender, though it’s taking them in a different direction than the speculation surrounding the source material. Rather than exploring (or acknowledging) the rather dubious relationship between an older man and a ten-year-old girl, Wonderland is instead looking at women, mental illness, and when women are allowed to be heard.
The premise of the show is that young Alice has moved back and forth from Wonderland many times over the course of her life, looking for proof to bring back to our world, since everyone around her dismisses her as crazy. In the course of her adventures, she meets a djinni, Cyrus (Peter Gadiot) and the two fall in love, traveling through worlds together until they finally encounter the Red Queen, who separates them as part of an apparent plot to rob Cyrus of his power. (Curiously, the evil Jafar, working in league with her, is, naturally, played by an actor of Middle Eastern origin (Naveen Andrews) and inhabits every possible repulsive racial stereotype, while Gadiot’s Cyrus is a whitewashed reimagining of a djinni.)
Almost immediately, the show brings up an important issue: as a child, Alice’s words are dismissed. She’s told that she is clearly imagining things and her experiences are denied by the adults around her, but they grow steadily uneasier over time as she continues to insist that Wonderland is real, and as she tells stories about the people there.
The tendency to dismiss the voices of girls and young women as flights of fancy is common, and it’s underscored here by the idea that we as viewers know that Alice’s experiences are all too real, but as real-world residents of the mundane world, we can also see how they would be viewed as fantastical. Wonderland puts viewers in the awkward position of being furious that Alice is not being listened to, while also acknowledging that their acceptance of her experiences is about a suspension of disbelief; a telling testimony to how thoroughly society discounts women and girls.
Women and girls in the mundane world of course routinely encounter this kind of dismissal of their real experiences, and it is in fact one of the hallmarks of shared experiences across race, class, and other intersectional markers experienced by women. Whilst every woman’s experience of the world is unique, many can share tales of being ignored, silenced, or rejected by people who refuse to believe on them on matters ranging from rape reports to narratives about marginalisation. For Alice, it is a trip to Wonderland: for her real-world counterparts, it is sexual harassment and assault, rape, everyday misogyny, and, yes, even fantastical and wonderful sights like impressive developments in science that are discounted until a man experiences them.
In Alice’s cases, the adults in her life take their denial to the next logical step, institutionalising her and labeling her as mentally ill. This was a historically common practice in fitting with the era in which our fictional Alice supposedly lived, but it’s one that endures to this day. Women speaking uncomfortable truths, women reporting their experience, and women challenging the norm are repeatedly labeled as crazy so they can be at the very least ignored, and at the worst crammed into an institution and silenced for good.
While inpatient therapy can be immensely beneficial for patients who refer themselves and need treatment, forcing such treatment upon people can act as a form of further marginalisation. Especially when, as in this case, it’s being used to silence them. Alice is threatened repeatedly during her stay at Bethlehem, refusing to give up the truth of Wonderland, much to the fury of the men overseeing her ‘care.’ In the end, she’s about to be subjected to a lobotomy before being rescued by the Knave of Hearts (Michael Socha), raising yet another uncomfortable question as a man rescues her from a fate inflicted upon her by the disbelief of men.
The mental illness plot may have been a device in the first episode, but I have hopes it will recur, because if it does, it will make an important commentary on mental health and how mental health conditions are used to push women into the background. For Alice, the fight to speak and be heard is a very real and important battle; her very mind is at stake now, and thus Wonderland is no longer just the fantastical place she loves, but also the only place where she may be safe from the abuses of our world.
Yet, it’s not all that safe, as plots swirl around her, magical creatures try to eat her, and she ventures in a dark, hostile land. Can Alice survive, and will we viewers endure the poor production values and dubious acting of the early episodes long enough to see if the show improves?
Photo by Rob Hannay, licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic license