Grey Area

            The genre of children’s literature versus adult is often hard to determine, especially because we can’t always know if there was meant to be a deeper meaning of a piece of work. For example, when Alice eats the cake to grow bigger could represent the path to finding herself or Lewis Carroll could have just thought it was fun. I do believe there is a line between the two and that children’s literature has the power to take adults back to a magic, imagery world where anything could happen without reason or explanation but it is not a finite line. Perception on a particular artwork plays a very big role in determining the appropriate targeted age.

The division in the film world is also a matter of depth. I think character development plays a role in determining the meaning behind characters and which age group they belong in. Tim Burton’s Alice had much more depth and purpose in her adventure than Disney’s original did. Disney’s was definitely meant to be a childlike take on the tale that can be clearly determined from the drawings and language, including tone and structure. Also, the overall mood of Burton’s seems to be a more cynical outlook involving dark characters, harsh language and somewhat depressing motifs such as insanity. I don’t feel as thought Disney brought them to a realistic light as much as Burton did.

There is a lot of grey area within the determination of child’s verses adult literature. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland is a great example of this. There has been a huge alternative, hallucinogen aspect taken on the story as a whole, which is definitely aimed solely at adults. So I think the grey area can also come from adaptions because each adaptation can be interpreted a different way. So while Lewis Carroll’s works might have been meant to be a children’s novel with some infusion of ‘adult topic’ allusions, the adaptation could have altered and created some questioning thoughts on the target demographic for the novel.

SIDE NOTE: Check out this buzzfeed of all the wonderful Wonderland adaptations! 

http://www.buzzfeed.com/louispeitzman/adaptations-of-alices-adventures-in-wonderland