The journey of Alice out of the movie from ‘Alice in Wonderland’ is one that is remarkably unique. Alice is the typical girl that finds herself lost in an imaginary world where she is challenged to be brave and test her limits. The imaginary world is full of obscure creatures and events. “Alice’s Theme” written by Danny Elfman for “Walt Disney Pictures” 2010 film “Alice in Wonderland”, perfectly demonstrates Alice’s journey and the characteristics she possesses. Through the exceptional manipulation of musical elements and the manipulation of the song ‘Alice’s Theme’ during the movie Danny Elfman has represented Alice as being a person that is unsure about her scenario and identity. The different variations of the song that are played throughout …show more content…
the film helps the audience establish an emotional connection with Alice’s character and journey through wonderland. Elfman has achieved this by his use of musical elements. Alice’s journey is a journey that no one else has ever experienced. It is unique and she doesn’t know what is going to happen throughout her adventure through wonderland. The way the song has also been structured is very unique and in a free form structure rather than common structure. It is split into two sections, A and B. Section A is played in the bars 35 to 66 and the rest of the song besides section B is variations of section A. Section B is played twice the first time is within bars 87 and 92 and is then played again between bars 183 and 188, it is similar to section A pitch with but rhythmically there are differences between the two sections. Therefore, reflecting Alice’s strange behaviour and journey. Danny Elfman has used both texture and timbre in the song to complement Alice’s character and journey. At the beginning of the song there are multiple violins playing a motif in unison. The texture starts simple but strong, the motif creates anticipation and tension in the story. As the song progresses the texture builds. In bar 7 the choir comes in singing building chords in unison but singing different vowel sounds then in bar 23, not only do the choir sing the melody but they also come in with harmonies, sopranos and altos. This creates a sense of rising tension, whereas the violins and cellos playing triplets’ in the background are portraying a feeling of chaos. Which can be related to Alice’s journey and how it is just gradually getting more and more chaotic. The building texture in the song is complemented by the timbre changes in the song. Danny Elfman uses a wide range of orchestral instruments such as the violin, cello, timpani, double bass and trombones, but he also uses a wide range of unconventional instruments, cor anglais, glockenspiel and an organ. Some examples of instruments being added or removed are, in bar 29 the timpani and cymbals are added, in bar 39 the flute and oboe are added, in bar 87 the glockenspiel is added. Tension is built through the different qualities of instruments, for example the instrumental between bars 113 and 135. It starts with the violins playing the melody and then the timpani’s are layered on top during this instrumental numerous instruments are added, including woodwind instruments and the organ, during this section the texture builds and the timbre is widely influenced by the instruments. The timpani’s bring a very strong hollow beat while playing a variation of section A and then when the organ is played in bar 126, it portrays a very haunting emotion. Which is a good reflection of the film and Alice’s unorthodox characteristics. Each instrument brings different tonal qualities and as they are added the texture is also influenced. Danny Elfman has used both pitch and duration to display Alice and her journey through wonderland. Throughout the song he uses a combination of both long and short notes and a diverse range of low and high notes, this creates a sense of panic and urgency in the song, which is exactly the emotions Alice was displaying throughout the movie, she had a sense of urgency because she had limited amount of time to finish her “quest”. This urgency can be heard through the short sharp notes in the melody that are played by the flute, trumpets and trombones. During the song there are 5 key changes it starts in Am, second key change is bar 136 to Em, third key change Dm bar 158, fourth key change is in bar 178 to Cm and the fifth key change is Bbm in bar 201. The minor chords bring a sense of darkness. The use of pitch in the song can bring a sense of happiness or set a gloomy setting. When the choir start singing the minor key it sets a dark scene. Complementary to the pitch is the way duration is manipulated throughout the piece of music the way the minor key is played with a fast beat it helps paint the picture of Alice’s journey. Tempo and dynamics are two of the components in the music that play a very important part in representing Alice and her journey.
There are multiple time signature changes throughout the song in the B section the metre changes into 4:4 time which compared to section A it seems remarkably slower, section A is mainly 6:8 time. The dynamics in the song have put emphasis on the parts in the song which add to Alice’s character. Starting soft the song gradually gets louder by the 7th bar, then the songs dynamics are changed throughout the entire song. The dynamics in the song get significantly louder to emphasise certain words, specifically when ‘Alice’ is sung by the choir. In bar 92, after the name ‘Alice’ is said the music gets dramatically louder, this puts a lot of emphasis on the Alice’s name. Demonstrating that it is her who must complete the journey through wonderland and only her. The solo at the end of the song is perfectly complemented by the music, in bars 233 to 241 someone in the choir starts singing the last few words of the song and as he does that the music is piano soft and is then gradually getting softer. This highlights the phrase that the solo singer is saying making it a focal point in the song. The tempo slows down to 4:4 time to finish the song but there is no real ending to the song this showing that Alice’s journey has not
finished. Danny Elfman has used musical elements successfully to enrich the journey of Alice and her character throughout the musical composition. The free form structure in the song represents Alice’s wild nature. The intersecting array of instruments he used to demonstrate her journey through wonder for example the organ and cor anglais, the organ gives the song depth while the cor anglais has a high frequency. Each instrument has been carefully chosen by Elfman to represent Alice and her journey.
Alice in Wonderland starts when Alice “sees” a rabbit exclaiming it was going to be late. When Alice starts dreaming about the Wonderland it may have been a little strange, but she ends up realizing that it helps with her problems in the real world.
Alice in Wonderland is a Disney film that is different from all the others. It was released in 1951, similar to Cinderella, and helped the world get over the war. It is the 13th film in the Walt Disney Animated Classics series and is one of Mr. Disney’s favorites. Alice is a bit younger than most female Disney characters, about seven or eight. Most of the other Disney movie’s offer a world where the character had no control on what was in it, however Alice gets to live in her own Wonderland. She is a very adventurous child and wants to discover what is around her, testing her imagination. Alice learns many lessons and values that most young children should learn and use in their own lives. Most of the Disney movies have many valuable lessons that can be related to everyday life.
In the end there are many situations where Alice feels that she is different from everyone else around her. Alice realized that she was always different but more so when she was with these three characters who are the Mad Hatter, the caterpillar and the pigeon, and lastly being the Queen of Hearts. When she met the Mad Hatter is more so when she started to realize that she was different from everyone else in Wonderland. Throughout the book Alice just kept finding out how different she really was. Then she met the caterpillar and the pigeon who both made her question who and what she is. Then lastly she met the Queen of Hearts and really found out how different she was from everyone that was surrounding her in Wonderland. To conclude these were just a few examples where Alice felt like she was different from everyone else.
Thus, Alice in Wonderland is a good illustration of a Hero’s Journey. This story allows us to see how Alice overcomes the three main phases, and most of the stages identified by Campbell in her journey-transformation from an undisciplined child to a wise young adult. Throughout the story, Alice overcomes the nonsense of the young and the old before she truly understands what adulthood is all about. All through her adventures in Wonderland, she encounters numerous new situations and meets different archetypes that are necessary for her to be considered a Hero.
The musical piece “Alice’s Theme” was composed in 2010 by composer Danny Elfman. This piece was written for Walt Disney Pictures’ “Alice in Wonderland”. Danny Elfman has represented Alice as lonely, questioning herself and anxious until the end of the film where she discovers her true purpose. Her journey is gradually revealed and represented through the different sections, instruments and lyrics. This is through the successful use of all the musical elements. These musical elements include duration, expressive devices, pitch, structure and texture.
The Wizard of Oz is a classic a universally loved film. It’s full of adventure, symbolism, and has a feel good story. It’s interesting though to see some parallels the Wizard of Oz had with other well-known classic fairytales. One example, is the famous story of Alice in Wonderland. A classic in its own right, and a staple in nearly everyone’s film repertoire. The similarities between these two stories are numerous. Starting with the main heroines themselves. Both Wizard of Oz and Alice in Wonderland, have a young girl as their main character. Even the character’s appearances and lines are similar. Both sporting a blue dress, and describing their fantasies as curious. When Dorothy arrives in Oz she says, “What a curious place”.
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland is a story about a little girl who comes into contact with unpredictable, illogical, basically mad world of Wonderland by following the White Rabbit into a huge rabbit – hole. Everything she experiences there challenges her perception and questions common sense. This extraordinary world is inhabited with peculiar, mystical and anthropomorphic creatures that constantly assault Alice which makes her to question her fundamental beliefs and suffer an identity crisis. Nevertheless, as she woke up from “such a curious dream” she could not help but think “as well she might, what a wonderful dream it had been ”.
The title character, Alice, is a young girl around pre-teen age. In the real world, the adult characters always look down on her because of her complete nonsense. She is considered the average everyday immature child, but when she is placed in the world of "Wonderland," the roles seem to switch. The adult characters within Wonderland are full of the nonsense and Alice is now the mature person. Thus creating the theme of growing up'. "...Alice, along with every other little girl is on an inevitable progress toward adulthood herself"(Heydt 62).
The gender roles change from the original to the remake. The original Alice role is defined as a young girl who is able to explore her curiosity, but she is constrained by her feminine characteristics. Alice being a young girl is portrayed as helpless in many situations throughout her journey. The characters of Wonderland offer her assistance, but she remains most times crying by herself. Alice’s character clearly shows the innocence and virtue American society attached to girls roles in the
Although the novel is notorious for its satire and parodies, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland main theme is the transition between childhood and adulthood. Moreover, Alice’s adventures illustrate the perplexing struggle between child and adult mentalities as she explores the curious world of development know as Wonderland. From the beginning in the hallway of doors, Alice stands at an awkward disposition. The hallway contains dozens of doors that are all locked. Alice’s pre-adolescent stage parallels with her position in the hallway. Alice’s position in the hallway represents that she is at a stage stuck between being a child and a young woman. She posses a small golden key to ...
Lewis Carroll's Wonderland is a queer little universe where a not so ordinary girl is faced with the contradicting nature of the fantastic creatures who live there. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland is a child's struggle to survive in the condescending world of adults. The conflict between child and adult gives direction to Alice's adventures and controls all the outstanding features of the work- Alice's character, her relationship with other characters, and the dialogue. " Alice in Wonderland is on one hand so nonsensical that children sometimes feel ashamed to have been interested in anything so silly (Masslich 107)."
SparkNotes Editors. “SparkNote on Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.” SparkNotes.com. SparkNotes LLC. 2005. Web. 30 Oct. 2013.
Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland follows the story of young Alice trapped in the world of Wonderland after falling down through a rabbit-hole. The rabbit-hole which is filled with bookshelves, maps, and other objects foreshadows the set of rules, the ones Alice is normally accustomed to, will be defied in Wonderland. This conflict between her world and Wonderland becomes evident shortly after her arrival as evinced by chaos in “Pool of Tears” and Alice brings up the main theme of the book “was I the same when I got up this morning? I almost think I can remember feeling a little different. But if I am not the same, the next question is who am I?” (Carroll 18). After Alice fails to resolve her identity crisis using her friends, Alice says “Who am I, then? Tell me that first, and then, if I like being that person, I’ll come up: if not, I’ll stay down here til I’m somebody else” (Carroll 19). Hence in the beginning, Alice is showing her dependency on others to define her identity. Nevertheless when her name is called as a witness in chapter 12, Alice replies “HERE!” without any signs of hesitation (Carroll 103). Close examination of the plot in Alice in Wonderland reveals that experiential learning involving sizes leads Alice to think logically and rationally. Alice then attempts to explore Wonderland analytically and becomes more independent as the outcome. With these qualities, Alice resolves her identity crisis by recognizing Wonderland is nothing but a dream created by her mind.
As Alice’s journey following the White Rabbit continues, she found her standing in his home. When Alice saw the strange drinks and cookies on the table, her desire to grow got the best of her and she began to taste them. Alice began to change size after drinking the mysterious liquid, “…she had drunk half the bottle, she found her head pressing against the ceiling and had to stoop to save her neck from being broken” (Carroll 44). This event relates to the theme of Alice growing up. Alice being small when entering the house symbolizes her being a child. Her yearning to become bigger is representative of her want to grow up and become an adult. Although, after drinking the bottle Alice becomes unsure if she really wanted to grow. The transitioning between sizes shows how Alice is torn between wanting to stay a child and wanting to become an
Alice in Wonderland belongs to the nonsense genre, and even if most of what happens to Alice is quite illogical, the main character is not. “The Alice books are, above all, about growing up” (Kincaid, page 93); indeed, Alice starts her journey as a scared little girl, however, at the end of what we discover to be just a dream, she has entered the adolescence phase with a new way to approach the mentally exhausting and queer Wonderland. It is important to consider the whole story when analyzing the growth of the character, because the meaning of an event or a sentence is more likely to mean what it truly looks like rather than an explanation regarding subconscious and Freudian interpretations. Morton states “that the books should possess any unity of purpose seems on the surface unlikely” (Morton, page 509), but it’s better to consider the disconnected narrative and the main character separately, since the girl doesn’t belong to Wonderland, which is, as Morton says, with no intrinsic unity. Whereas, there are a few key turning points where it is possible to see how Alice is changing, something that is visible throughout her journey. Carroll wants to tell the story of a girl who has to become braver in order to contend with challenges like the pool made by her own tears, or assertive characters, like the Queen.