Disney’s Alice Comedies: A Life of Illusion and the Illusion of Life

Abstract

Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865) and Through the Looking-Glass (1871) have inspired various Disney texts, including the studio’s Alice comedies of 1923—27, the films that essentially brought the company into being. This early series helped shape Disney’s development of a film mode, that of hybrid animation, which would pay dividends throughout the studio’s history, and despite their often crude style, forecast the studio’s ongoing efforts at negotiating the relationship between the real and the fantastic, including its development of a ‘house style’ that would become known as the ‘illusion of life’. This article examines these foundational texts particularly in light of their emphasis on a hybrid style — i.e. their combination of live-action and animation — which necessitated a greater awareness of realistic spatial issues, as they invited audiences to enter into a fantasy space, to undertake the same sort of liminal explorations as Lewis Carroll’s Alice.

Keywords

animation fantasy gag hybrid illusion-of-life Lewis Carroll liminal realism reflexive space Walt Disney

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Barrier, Michael ( 1999) Hollywood Cartoons: American Animation in Its Golden Age . New York: Oxford University Press .

Bogdanovich, Peter ( 1969) Fritz Lang in America. New York: Praeger.

Cholodenko, Alan ( 1991) ‘Introduction’, in The Illusion of Life: Essays on Animation, pp. 9-36. Sydney: Power Publications.

Cohen, Morton N. ( 1995) Lewis Carroll: A Biography. New York : Knopf.

Gabler, Neal ( 2006) Walt Disney: The Triumph of the American Imagination. New York: Knopf.

Kanfer, Stefan ( 1997) Serious Business: The Art and Commerce of Animation in America from Betty Boop to ‘Toy Story’. New York: Da Capo.

Leslie, Esther ( 2002) Hollywood Flatlands: Animation, Critical Theory and the Avant-Garde. London: Verso.

Merritt, Russell and Kaufman, J.B. ( 1993) Walt in Wonderland: The Silent Films of Walt Disney. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.

Schickel, Richard ( 1968) The Disney Version. New York: Avon.

10.

Sigler, Carolyn ( 1997) Alternative Alices: Visions and Revisions of Lewis Carroll’s Alice Books. Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky.

11.

Telotte, J.P. ( 2008) The Mouse Machine: Disney and Technology. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press.

12.

Thomas, Frank and Johnston, Ollie ( 1995) The Illusion of Life: Disney Animation, revised edn. New York: Disney Editions.

13.

Vidler, Anthony ( 1992) The Architectural Uncanny: Essays in the Modern Unhomely . Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

14.

Vidler, Anthony ( 2000) Warped Space: Art, Architecture, and Anxiety in Modern Culture. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press .

15.

Wells, Paul ( 2002) Animation and America. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.