Marilyn Manson needs to get his head out of his ass.

[Cruelty]

Beforehand, I'd like to mention this is a rant.

So I've been doing a bit of research on things related to Alice in Wonderland (specifically, the caterpillar's 'hookah'), being that i just so happen to be making a game based off of it. Eventually I stumbled upon this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phantasmagoria:_The_Visions_of_Lewis_Carroll

Apparently Marilyn Manson decided to take an innocent children's story, and turn it into faggotry (for the lack of a better word).

Lets see a few quotes, shall we?

Synopsis:

Victorian England.

A haunted writer in an isolated castle is tormented by sleepless nights and visions of a girl named Alice. He finds himself becoming a symptom of his own invention.

?Now all my nightmares know my name.?

He is Lewis Carroll. Terrified of what waits for him each night.

Eh.. okay. So it's a horror movie based on the book? Wrong.

Manson:

I want to take the children?s story that we all know, and discover the horrifying roots that grow beneath every one of its childish metaphors. The characters may be absurd and wrapped in puzzles, but, the author himself is the story that I find painfully close to me. Lewis Carroll is far more complex than the world?s narrow perception of him as a quiet deacon, a mathematician and a loner, simply obsessed with photographing young girls. He was possibly one of the most divided souls living in his own hell that the world has overlooked.

Okay. Stop there.

Wait for it...

No.

There's no deep-seated anguish and hellish tortured souls in there.. it actually is just a silly book. I mean.. I could POSSIBLY bring myself to believe he didn't just pull that entire paragraph out of his ass if perhaps I didn't read this next part:

He has suggested the use of subliminal elements to enhance feeling, but also says he may go further. ?I?m going to do a lot of things that may end up being illegal. Until they are, I will do them. I think it will change people?s opinion about horror films and they will realize they?re not all about slasher?.

?I might add that the girls playing Tweedledum and Tweedledee are twins who get to have real, genuine sex with each other. I like to make dreams come true?.

Now it all comes together. He's doing the same thing with this movie that he does with his shitty music. He's going for shock value, because he knows dumb-asses will buy it, and because he knows doing OMIGAWD DID THEY REALLY DO THAT IN THAT MOVIE!!?! garners attention like no tomorrow.

I mean, what other reason could he possibly have for saying "HAY IM PUTTING SUBLIMINAL MESSAGES IN THIS MOVIE, AND A BUNCH OF STUFF THAT'S PROLLY ILLEGAL.. OH AND TWIN LESBIAN INCEST... AAAAND I'M GONNA DO IT ALL BY TWISTING AN INNOCENT FAIRY TALE THAT WE ALL KNOW AND LOVE INTO SOMETHING THAT I'M GOING TO MAKE BELIEVE IS THE 'TRUE' VISION OF THE AUTHOR WHEN IT REALLY PROBABLY ISN'T... *shock shock horror horror*". What's next, manson, genuine snuff in there too? Hmmm? What else you got in that nifty little goodie bag of 'how to piss off soccer moms and scare mormons'????

Ok. It's one thing to make shitty creations of your own, and make believe they're the product of you're own mis-understood, tortured soul, when it actually isn't... but it's another to do the same thing to someone else's work. Just because the guy was a pedophile, and possibly a drug abuser, doesn't mean he's as much of a jack-ass as marilyn manson. He wrote a silly book. That's it. There's no subtext there.. just witty dialog, and clever wordplay. I'm sure if there WAS something else in there, it wouldn't be this jackass that found it. I'm also sure it wouldn't have anything to do with tweedle dee and tweedle dum having sex.


Now, before anyone mentions 'well if you're making a game based off of it, isn't it pretty much the same thing'.. no. i'm just re-writing the story as a drug-trip. basing a story off of another =/= 'interpreting' a story as something it wasn't, and claiming to portray it's 'true vision'.

To be honest, I never cared much for manson (except for his 'tainted love' cover), because his whole career is built on exploiting shock value (remember his JFK assassination re-enactment in that one music video?) for publicity, and selling all this 'misunderstood' 'dark' 'twisted' bullshit to dumbass mallgoth teenagers.. but this just tops off the list of stupid bullshit he's done. The coolest, most unique story that i know of, and he turns it into a cog in his ANTI-CHRIST SATAN SATAN WROOOOAAARR SHOCK SHOCK HORROR HORROR machine. Faggot.

And that is the longest post you'll ever see me make.

 

[arcthemonkey]

I was under the impression that Carroll's pedophilia was exaggerated, and exacerbated by his posh family suppressing his promiscuity (With adults), making it appear that his only relationships were with children, when, in fact, these "children" were young adults.

But still, I'm pretty sure Manson is just one of those "Ho-Ho, shocking = avant-garde" idiots who won't stop until everything good is dead :D

 

[Dopples]

All I can say about Marilyn Manson comes from his own auto-biography


"If you masturbate on yourself, you're a faggot."

Also, the only "twisted" imagery Lewis Caroll was having while writing Alice in Wonderland was completely drug-induced. So the original story is fine as is.

 

[sixtyandaquarter]

Okay, this is making me wish I wasn't a fan of the story.

I dunno, people seem to read into these things way to far. They exaggerate the need to equate creativity with sick in the head. Early on Lewis Carol was a pedo, then he was a devil worshiper of some sort, a druggie, a prostitute (yes, supposable this is his way of dealing with childhood prostitution by some people at one time), a masochist and so on and so forth.

And now it culminates in - and it says so right there:
"I want to take a beloved childrens story, rape it, and make you think I'm artistic and brilliant because I couldn't come up with my own ideas so I shit all over the good ones."

Yeah.
I lose respect for this ass more and more every year, if it wasn't for the random intelligence that seems to spout out about once every two years -apparently this is one of those off years- I wouldn't have any at all.

 

[Rare]

Although I hate Manson with a passion, he's not the only one who does this.

For an English assignment I did the same thing (not as graphic, I'll admit).

You wouldn't believe all the hidden messages fairy tales have. Did you know Little Red Riding hood is based off of prostitutes in the 17th century?

Life imitates art, art imitates life. Most stories do have hidden meanings seeded within them by the author.

It takes a creative and open-minded person to point them out.

(I still hate Manson, he's a creep)

 

[Despain]

Wait what.

There's nothing wrong with retelling the story.

But if he is making shit up about the AUTHOR then that is pretty fucked up.

 

[sixtyandaquarter]

Yeah but theres a difference between retelling a story and adding new points or expanding points - but doing so merely to be cool is just so pointless anything you accomplished is pure junk.

I made a cool story. I did it because I wanted the story.
I made a cool story. I did it because I wanted you to want the story.
I made a cool story. I did it because I wanted people to be shocked that no one did this before.

Which one is truly more artistic - and don't give me that Morrison crap in response.

 

[Venetia]

The rumors about Alice in Wonderland are predominantly lies circulated and recirculated over the years. It's like the game 'telephone' that kids play, where you tell one kid "I like pie" and then, 40 kids later, it ends up "Guys like dykes".

Lewis Carroll wasn't doped up and he wasn't writing about sexual exploits, or even anything dark. It was went over in length in a college class I took, and then I even researched it further. I read every page of it and Through the Looking Glass, and it's easy to see it for what it really is.

A coming-of-age story with a little political satire, but mostly a lot of nonsense for the sake of being whimsical, and a lot of sentiment towards a real little girl he knew and told stories to.

It's pretty blatent, when you actually sit down and read it. A lot of people just see the Disney movie, read a comic or two, and make up their own assumptions about pedophilia and drug abuse based on peoples' interpretations of the smoking caterpillar and the fact that Alice is a little girl.

Since I don't really feel like writing an essay about it right now, here's one I found by Jerry Maatta, which I find to be mostly subjective and unassuming:

Spoiler: By Jerry Maatta. Warning: Long as hell

Note: In this he refers to Carroll as "Charles Dodgson". Charles Dodgson was the true birthname of Lewis Carroll. "Lewis Carroll" was a penname.

It is important to bear in mind that Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, however special it may seem and however many different interpretations one thinks one can find, is, after all, but a story written to entertain Charles Dodgson's favourite child-friends.

It is very obvious in the story that it was written for the three Liddell girls, of whom Alice was the closest to Dodgson. In the introductory poem to the tale, there are clear indications to the three, there named Prima, Secunda and Tertia — Latin for first, second and third respectively in feminized forms. The part considering rowing on happy summer days was derived directly from reality. It is said that he used to row out on picnics with the Liddell girls and tell them stories. On one of these excursions it started raining heavily and they all became soaked. This, it is said, was the inspiration to the second chapter of the book, The Pool of Tears. The ever-occurring number of three points out Dodgson always having in mind the three girls he tells the story to. It could, of course, having in mind the fact that he was a cleric, be the Christian Trinity or something completely different.

Many people have seen Alice's Adventures in Wonderland as a prime example of the limit-breaking book from the old tradition illuminating the new one. They also consider it being a tale of the "variations on the debate of gender" and that it's "continually astonishing us with its modernity". From the looks of it, the story about Alice falling through a rabbit-hole and finding herself in a silly and nonsense world, is fairly guileless as a tale. The underlying story, the one about a girl maturing away from home in what seems to be a world ruled by chaos and nonsense, is quite a frightening one. All the time, Alice finds herself confronted in different situations involving various different and curious animals being all alone. She hasn't got any help at all from home or the world outside of Wonderland. Lewis Carroll describes the fall into the rabbit-hole as very long and he mentions bookshelves on the sides of the hole. Perhaps it is an escape into literature he hints at. Carroll is an expert at puns and irony. The part with the mad tea-party is one of the best examples of this. There's a lot of humour in the first Alice book, but in the second the mood gets a bit darker and more melancholic. The theme with Alice growing and shrinking into different sizes could reflect the ups and downs of adolescence with young people sometimes feeling adult and sometimes quite the opposite. The hesitation so typical of adolescent girls is reflected in Alice's thoughts: "She generally gave herself good advice (though she very seldom followed it)." Many short comments point to teenage recklessness, restlessness and anxiety in all its different forms.

One other example of maturing is Alice getting used to the new sizes she grows. She talks to her feet and learns some of the new ways her body works in. Her feelings are very shaken from her adventures and she cries quite often when it's impossible to obey the rules of the Wonderland — or is it adulthood? "Everything is so out-of-the-way down here", as Alice often repeats to herself. Alice doesn't like the animals in Wonderland who treat her as a child, but sometimes she gets daunted by the responsibility she has to take. The quote "Everyone in Wonderland is mad, otherwise they wouldn't be down here" told by the Cheshire Cat can be given an existential meaning. Is it that everyone alive is mad being alive, or everyone dreaming him- or herself away is mad due to the escape from reality? Time is a very central theme in the story. The Hatter's watch shows days because "it's always six o' clock and tea-time". Time matters in growing up, I guess, but further interpretations are left unsaid. The poem in chapter 12 hints at forbidden love, and it is entirely possible that it is about his platonic love for children, or Mrs. Liddell, for that matter. Considering the fact, that the first manuscript was called Alice's Adventures Underground, and that some — at least the Swedish — translation of the title is a bit ambiguous, it becomes more apparent, that the world Alice enters isn't just any childrens' playground, but a somewhat frightening and dangerous place for maturing. The "underground" part of the old title undeniably suggests drawing parallells to the direction of Dante or the Holy Bible.

Continuing in this direction, the wonderful garden, into which Alice wants to get, can be a symbol of the Garden of Eden. It can be assumed that Dodgson, being a cleric and a strictly religious man, had read and was very familiar with the biblical myths aswell as Milton's Paradise Lost. It becomes more interesting when Alice finally gets into the garden and finds a pack of cards ruling it, with a very evil queen at its head. It appears to be a way of saying that even The Garden of Eden can be in chaos, or that the garden isn't really what it appears to be. Or, having in mind his Victorian irony in the tale, a way of saying that our lives on Earth are, in fact, the closest we can get to a paradise, and that it is ruled my a malignous queen with little respect for human lives. These theories are, of course, merely speculations and it would be quite rude to suggest even madder parallells, which isn't at all difficult with a childrens' story of this kind.

Some people have gone very far in their claims that Lewis Carroll wrote the stories while influenced by opium. They say the fifth chapter with the smoking Blue Caterpillar is about drugs. These claims have no real evidence or facts to point at, and it seems that they're just mad rumours made up by people who want to see more than there is in a fairy tale. It is fairly obvious that the visions of the stories derive from the genious of a man, and not from drug influence. If the worlds in the books are somewhat surreal it surely comes from Dodgson having a vivid imagination and an ability to make nonsense worlds alive. He definitely had his share of problems, but drugs don't seem to have been one of them. At a closer look, there seems to be a whole lot of anguish in the story. This becomes even more apparent in the sequel, Through the Looking Glass, and its introductory poem, where the following can be found: "I have not seen thy sunny face, / Nor heard thy silver laughter; / No thought of me shall find a place / In thy young life's hereafter—". The part surely expresses Dodgson's feelings for missing the young girl Alice used to be before growing up.

Perhaps the first story is more like a description of a young friend growing up and disappearing out of one's life by becoming an adult, and as such, out of Dodgson's reach. Dodgson lost contact with Alice Liddell in 1868, a few years before the publishing of the sequel. It seems that the first book is a tribute to a friend who, in time, will be lost to Dodgson, and that the sequel is, considering its tone, an epitaph. This is clearly seen in the last lines (actually, it's just one long sentence) of the first story when Alice's sister thinks of Alice:

"Lastly, she pictured to herself how this same little sister of hers would, in the after-time, be herself a grown woman ; and how she would keep, through all her riper years, the simple and loving heart of her childhood: and how she would gather about her other little children, and make their eyes bright and eager with many a strange tale, perhaps even with the dream of Wonderland of long-ago: and how she would feel with all their simple sorrows, and find a pleasure in all their simple joys, remembering her own child- life, and the happy summer days."

It appears to be Dodgson's own thoughts about the girl growing up expressed through one of Alice's sisters. Another quote that expresses Dodgson's feelings for getting old found in the same introduction mentioned above: "We are but older children, dear, / Who fret to find our bedtime near." This melancholy tone of Dodgson's can be found in various parts of the sequel, which expresses his grief of losing the close friend he once had before she grew up and vanished. The very last poem in the sequel begins its lines with letters that make up "Alice Pleasance Liddell" — her complete name. Charles Dodgson’s academic education shows in his books. The exotic fantasy creatures who inhabit the worlds of his imagination all have very peculiar names made up from real words in English, French and Latin. For example, the Dormouse is a sleeping mouse. Dormire in Latin means to sleep, while there's no need to explain the rest of the word.

Conclusion

It is very difficult to decide on or write a conclusion to a project concerning so intricate subjects as this. I've tried to show some different interpretations and keep the whole project as objective as possible. The subject is vast and there could probably be years spent on it without reaching a definitive answer, and therefore I suggest people use their own imagination, common sense and logic when discussing the book Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. One of the few certain things are that Charles Lutwidge Dodgson really loved children and dedicated his works for them. Whether this love of his was sexual or platonic is almost impossible to decide with the few indications he left after him.

However despite all this I rather like to perceive Carroll's fictional world as something more sinister, and while I'm not a fan of Manson, and am sure the movie'll be awful, I have a glimmer of hope that it may turn out kinda interesting as long as he doesn't try to make it gorey/too intense. Which he most certainly will.

Subtle dark undertones are sometimes more vivid than blatently macabre symbolism.

 

[WeAreSuperhero]

All I can say about Marilyn Manson comes from his own auto-biography


"If you masturbate on yourself, you're a faggot."

Also, the only "twisted" imagery Lewis Caroll was having while writing Alice in Wonderland was completely drug-induced. So the original story is fine as is.

I have that book and have read it a good few times. Not once have I read that in there. I'd like to say that you guys have the wrong end of the stick in this topic, because Manson isnt all about shocking middle america into submission, but a) it makes me sound like a bit of a fanboy, which I'm really not and b) you're probably right. But seriously, the fact that he's making a film based on the life of the author of a book doesnt make him a terrible person. I mean, Terry Gilliam did it with The Brothers Grimm, and people dont call him a pretentious idiot because of it, because he's got a reputation for good films and Python, while Manson has a reputation for... well, shock value. I'm not going to get presumptious about this film until I see it, because I do have high hopes for it.

 

[Marcus]

American McGee, a game designer, made a game where Alice was locked up in an insane asylum after her parents died in a fire and her neurosis spilled over into Wonderland corrupting it.

But McGee's Alice never claimed anything as true and very much told you it was fiction.  If Manson claimed that his vision of Carrol is based on his own opinion, than I'm fine with it but claiming lies as the truth is the number one sin in my book.

Can't say I ever liked Manson's music.  The first song of his I heard was called Disco Nigger (or something like that) and I swore to never again destroy my ears with his terrible songs.