Analysis : Alice, Avril Lavigne

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With this end in view, finding her way will certainly help her to grow u, it is the way to maturity, it is a kind of initiatory journey through wich she will learn to be an adult. Therefore, the motto of the story could be « Don't fear what's happening, be in control of yourself ! » ; or else the moral might be as follows : « Let the fortune guide you. Whatever it is, face the obstacles on your way, whether material or human, and you'll win. Come to terms with both your dreams and reality, and you'll manage ! ». Indeed, the overall message imply that even if you are lost, homesick, or afraid, you must stick to your aims and objectives in remaining yourselves both in good and in bad moments. In spite of whatever of whoever trying to stop you, you mustn't give up. It is in fact, the same motto as in Kipling's If poem : « You'll be a Man, my son ! ».

In a way, the video clip gives evidence of the change in Alice by showing her getting rid of her everyday and ordinary clothes (both the casual contemporary clothes Avril Lavigne is wearing as Alice and the colourful Disney ones) for dark ones, reminding us the Gothic genre (she's wearing black gothic corset dress and stockings with playing card suits). Her awareness of the new world around her is thus the acme, the climax of her quest for a new experience to accomplish and to give her strenght and determination.

Thus, Alice in Wonderland can not only be regarded as a fary tale making children smile, laugh and dream, but it can also be senn as a Gothic tale with a scary of spooky plot frightening children and adults alike with the evocation of a haunting underground world existing side by side with ours. We cannot help being reminded of the book written by the famous psychologist Bruno Bettelheim entitled The Uses of Enchantment : The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales, in which he bears evidence of the not-so-innocent fairy tales but of the underlying cruelty and bluntness of stories supposedly made for children. According to him, those were intended to warm kids of the trials, dilemnas and struggles they would face in their life, having a therapeutic purpose in helping them to come to terms with adulthood.

As for the video clip of the song, it displays a few major characters Alice will meet in the forest, such as Cheschire Cat, or the Mad Hatter (the latter being played by Johnny Depp in Tim Burton's film). This film tends anyway to focus less on the world of childish fantasy or imagination than on that of madness, raising the question of the ambiguity of the limits between the imaginary world and the world of madness. To what extent is our imagination of the verge of madness ? When can we be considered imaginative ? In what circumstances could we turn out to be mad or regarded as such ?

Lewis Carrol raised a burning issue indeed, and in dealing with it, he revealed quite an obscure image of himself, playing with the idea of sanity. We may wonder whether he was totally sane, anyhow his stories were far from being innocent tales for children and accordingly, he might be considered as a forerunner of Freud himself.