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I'm Kelly Crossley and this is the Calla Crossley Show in art and pop culture. The psychological profile of the female villain typically reveals her violent urges have to be rooted in some past injustice be it a profound emotional betrayal like a lover scorned or a physical betrayal such as sexual abuse. Families fled towns from Lana Turner in The Postman Always Rings Twice to Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction become deadly women whose singular motive to kill originates from insatiable lust. But when Amy Bishop made it onto the national stage it became clear that true female rage cannot be explained away by the conventional motives perpetuated in books and on the big and small screen. Well look at what it says about society when art fails to imitate life. We top off the hour with a look at Lewis Carroll's classic work. Up next Girls Gone Wild. From Amy Bishop to Alice in Wonderland. First the news. From NPR News in Washington one corps of a coalmine the Senate's poised to debate a measure that could extend some

unemployment benefits through the end of this year. Congress recently passed a short term extension. NPR's Larry Abramson reports. Democrats have labeled the legislation an emergency measure. That's to help circumvent strict budget rules that could stop the legislation which would add over 100 billion dollars to the deficit over the coming decade. The unemployment insurance provision would provide additional benefits to those who have exceeded 26 weeks of unemployment payments attached to the bill are 60 different tax breaks that expired at the end of last year. Many have been renewed over and over by Congress. They include a sales tax deduction for people in states without income taxes. A college tuition deduction and boosts in Medicaid payments to states. Larry Abramson NPR News Washington. Employers in the U.S. believe they'll hire new workers at a modest pace in the second quarter of this year. That's according to the latest survey from the temporary services firm Manpower Incorporated. From member station WUOM W-M in Milwaukee Marty Michelson reports. Manpower surveyed more than

18000 employers in the U.S. The report shows 16 percent of employers plan to hire more workers while 8 percent have decided to cut staff this spring. Job prospects look good in manufacturing construction transportation hospitality and professional services. The only sector that has a negative outlook is government. Job seekers will see the best results in the north east south and western parts of the country. Manpower CEO Jeffrey Jeras says the company continues to see encouraging signs of economic recovery and hiring activity. Key industries such as construction and manufacturing are seeing notable improvements on a year over year basis. For NPR News I'm Marty Michelson in Milwaukee. Vice President Joe Biden is visiting Jerusalem he is assuring Israel of U.S. support as it resumes peace talks with the Palestinians. The relationship between Israel and the United States has been and will continue to be a centerpiece a centerpiece of American policy. And it's been that way since Israel's

founding in 1948. The indirect talks will be held through a U.S. mediator but a new development today could make dialogue tough. The Israeli Interior Ministry has approved construction plans for 600 new homes in a part of Jerusalem both Israelis and Palestinians claim. Ohio State University says an employee who shot and killed a coworker wounded a second and then shot himself has died. The university says Nathaniel Browne was a newly hired workers who got the job last October. Police would not say if the shooting was work related. The violence was reported at 3:30 in the morning at the Columbus Ohio campus. On Wall Street the Dow Jones Industrial Average is up 58 points at ten thousand six hundred eleven. The Nasdaq is up 20 points it's at twenty three fifty two. This is NPR. A Georgia grand jury has indicted four people in connection with an assisted suicide operation. They were accused of helping a 58 year old man with cancer take his life. The defendants are associated with a group called Final Exit which supports assisted

suicide. The four were actually arrested a year ago. The indictment says in addition to helping in a suicide they were part of an illegal enterprise to help people die. Reporters in the Netherlands have turned up a security flaw at Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport. That is the facility used by a Nigerian man who's charged with trying to blow up a jet over Detroit on Christmas Day. Teri Schultz has more Schiphol Airport is put in place one of Europe's most rigorous screening procedures for passengers headed to the U.S.. It's one of the few airports already using full body scanners. But now a team of Dutch investigative journalists has shown up a remaining flaw because sealed duty free liquids are allowed to be taken on board. The team filled of duty free bottles with another liquid resealed them and smuggled them into a store. They then purchased the fake bottles which were put in the duty free bag and carried on a Schiphol spokeswoman says the possibility of this happening had been considered but was thought to be unlikely.

The journalist who led the undercover operation Alberto Stegman tells the Associated Press he finds that surprising because it was so easy to do and after seeing it happen on TV. Schiphol Airport is stepping up checks and duty free goods. For NPR News I'm Teri Schultz in Brussels. Indonesian police say they killed three terror suspects when they raided several hideouts near Jakarta today. The police are looking for militants who are in the terror group Jemaah Islamiyah and affiliated with al Qaeda. Police are trying to learn the identity of one of the suspects. I'm CORBA Coleman NPR News. Support for NPR comes from Lending Tree whose financial tools include loan coach offering personalized advice for every step of the lending process at Lending Tree dot com. Good afternoon. I'm Kelly Crossley and this is the Calla Crossley Show with the film Alice in Wonderland hitting theaters nationwide. We're going to look at the original Lewis Carroll's 19th century sensation Alice's

Adventures in Wonderland. But first we're going to explore how female rage and violence is portrayed in art and popular culture. In a recent piece in The New York Times Sam Tanenhaus asked if Art has missed the Amy Bishop model of violence. He joins us to talk about this thought provoking piece. He is the editor of The New York Times Book Review and the author of Whittaker Chambers a biography. It won the L.A. Times Book Prize. His latest book is The Death of Conservatism. Sam Tanenhaus welcome. Great to be here with you. We're also joined by Bonnie Miller she is assistant professor of American studies at UMass Boston. Bonnie Miller welcome. Thank you. Now Sam I'm going to go to you first just to kick it off but I want to remind our listeners just the context of your article. So much has been written about Amy Bishop the former Massachusetts native who last month walked into a faculty meeting at the University of Alabama Huntsville and allegedly gunned down and killed three of her colleagues at point blank range and soon after that we learned that she

killed her brother here in Massachusetts in what was originally described as an accident though that case is now being revisited and that she was involved in an attempted mail bombing of a fellow university professor at Harvard Medical School. She has a history therefore of the kind of violence typically associated with men. But Sam you muz in your article that violence of this kind perpetuated by women like Amy Bishop is not reflected by artists. Why. Well that's a great question. What I found myself thinking about after this horrific case happened was that Amy Bishop acted in the way we would expect. Psychotic males to do hero walks into a meeting with a handgun goes postal or as The Wall Street Journal put it I think it went post-doctoral and shoots at her colleagues also has a history. We now think of extreme violence of this kind and it struck me that you one couldn't find an

analogue for it in art the way one more easily can in the case of say the Columbine killings or the awful Virginia Tech massacre. We can read a book like in cold blood or Norman Mailer's executioner song or see the films of Scorsese and peck and Paul many other directors and we think OK we know something about unprovoked male violence. Why do we not have any kind of image for unprovoked female violence. Now that's not to say. You know with any kind of certainty that Amy Bishop wasn't provoked or mistreated or abused in a child in her childhood or we don't know what we do know is that at least superficially she actually seemed to have a successful career not as successful as she like. She had a family a doting husband four children. She was checking up on the kids homework from the jail cell. And so she didn't seem to fit into the categories we had.

And so I found myself wondering about those categories and whether there might be a gap here. Now before I get Bunny Miller to respond to that. What made you think about this at all. I just wonder how that came to be. Well I suppose it's my own strangeness I think because the incident seemed to parallel recent ones we've seen with men involved and I guess it's just the way my mind works or doesn't work that I was struck by are now having a female protagonist in act this familiar drama. Ok Buddy Miller of UMass Boston. What do you think about Sam's article. You know I certainly agree that there are many more male than female villains in the last hundred years of American pop culture. But I'm not sure that I agree that that female villains primarily emerge from this position of victimization. I mean I think that's one very popular narrative of female violence you know because it empowers the

audience to fight back and you know it's the classic formula of David and Goliath you know impressed upon the modern scene you know I think of Jennifer Lopez in enough you know how to turn the situation of helplessness into power and freedom from fear. But I think there are many other narratives of female villains that are that don't exonerate that behavior because of you know our self defensive position. And there they exist in motion pictures in literature or in daytime and prime time TV. And I think it depends on genre. I mean if you think of horror movies for example in the first Friday the 13th movie it was Jason's mother who actually begins the murderous rampage. And in a lot of foreign movies there are a lot of female perpetrators and it's the violence itself the fear and horror and the anticipation of that that's the source of the entertainment not necessarily the cause. But if you look at the genre of psychological thrillers which is really where I see the Amy Bishop case fitting in there's a much deeper exploration of the physical truth of a psychological triggers for that

violence whether it be you know revenge or ambition or mental instability. So I think there are female protagonists that kind of you know that at least I thought of like the film that I thought of first was Kathy Bates in Misery which of course is Stephen King's famous were right not that the stories are necessarily the same but in the film the character Annie Wilkes you know she doesn't immediately show overt signs of rage but and she functions within her workplace in her community with that instability undetected. But then of course we see her as this psychotic woman who is delighting in this horrific torture. So I think there are so many different aspects of her story that it does produce the possibility for a complex and multi dimensional villain. Well you buddy you raised Kathy Bates in Misery. So why don't we listen to a little clip from that movie. The perception must now be the ball is dead. Journey to Earth. With you. Misery chest pain cannot be dead.

Mr. Speaker is the ally and. I was. I am I am. You know. Thank you Steve. Don't even think about anybody coming for you because I never call them. Nobody knows you're here. You better hope nothing happens to me. You sit. Down. You go. I know fam It seems like they pretty much captured the evil violent woman and that city. Well it's great you listen to that all day. No actually I agree. And in fact say in my article that popular culture is the area and particularly genre forms where we might see something like an analog to the Amy Bishop case. What is the difference then let's just kind of get you to pause there and explain you know what's the difference in pop culture is reflecting what you say artists or not.

I mean if the well and I listen to Stephen King as an artist by any definition I don't mean to say that. Oh and also some of the writers I interviewed in my story of Joyce Carol Oates Patricia Cornwell the newer mystery thriller writer Chelsea Cain. These are all accomplished writers. It was interesting to me that they had the most to say on this topic and not to sort of invoke a false populism here. But it was really the kind of ideologically based art that I found myself thinking about. Some of the sort of serious minded and accomplished performance artists of our time I mention a couple in in the story Marina Abramovich and Karen Finley also deal with female violence. There is this ideologically inflected it's rooted more in the feminist notion that we've we've touched on a little bit here. What was interesting to me is I wanted to

see a dust AFC or. Or Shakespeare or you know break it make it more contemporary and deescalate the values a little bit a mailer or Capote who could render the Amy Bishop in all her complexity genre fiction doesn't really do that part of the attraction and appeal of it is it deals in archetypes it really deals in ancient forms. Now we can look at Lady Macbeth and also see a kind of malevolence or at least a propensity to violence. What struck me is that in the modern world of modernist start you know the last century or so the notion of unprovoked violence has become almost exclusively a male domain unless it involves domestic or sexual matters so there you see you know the great films with a lot of turn on Barbara Stanwyck you know Double Indemnity postman rings twice.

Hold on I mean that Always Rings Twice. Let me let the listeners hear a little bit of double indemnity to get what you're talking about. I was going to do anything and I did not and I thank you. You're. Right. I only want to be right. So what you're telling me. And nobody's going. To get in the coming out of the straight and I. Report pretty well say I love that film. I think that that is a true expression of sexuality combined with violence that we've come to expect So my question to Bonnie is is it that we're just we're just not framed we're not in a place to think about women being violent the way that you have articulated a little bit earlier in the conversation. Well I think you make an important point about sexuality because I think one of the reasons that female villains in popular culture really haven't registered on our radar

to the same extent as their male counterparts is because in so many cases they're evil and their violence is so drenched in sexuality. You know if you think of examples you know like Michelle Pfeiffer as Catwoman or Sharon Stone in Basic Instinct you know the audiences are really left remembering their sexual Loring presence and not back. I mean if you even remember those at all it's quite amazing. So you know I think that that because of that sexuality we don't necessarily think about the violence to the same extent and so many of the male characters you're focusing on what they did in the psychology behind it the sexuality kind of mutes it for so many of the women. But I asked the question Sam does because I wonder if we just don't want to see women that way that we have to think of them as sexual and not violent. Well you know it's interesting. I quoted an essay from an anthology published in the mid 90s that raised this very question and that we want to see violent

women as being this scholar says special cases and not in a way oddly disempowering them and saying they're not capable of the kind of violence that men might commit but you know there's another reason too. There was a recent study a recent book actually published just the fall of 2009 that actually looks at the incidence of female violence because in fact sociologists and criminologists were expecting to see an upsurge in violent acts committed by women as they grew more socially empowered particularly young women. And what happened is the it never really happened 90 percent of violent acts are committed by now. So women are in a broad sociological sense less violent. I absolutely agree though about the sexuality point. And there we have to say and we're going to pick this up on the other side of this break so hold that thought. Sam is what Sam Tanenhaus is with the New York Times Bonnie Miller is a professor at UMass Boston. What do you

think literature of television and film have really hit the mark and revealing how women express rage. Give us a call of 8 7 7 3 0 1 8 9 7. We'll be back after this. Stay with. Us. Support for WGBH comes from you and from Huntington Theatre Company presenting the new comedy Stick Fly by Lydia diamond. A smart and funny portrait of a complex African-American family on Martha's Vineyard. Now Playing through March 28. Huntington theater dot org. And from Davis mom Andy Augustine P.S. attorneys at law. At Davis mom they make your business their business on the web at Davis mom dot com. D A V I S M A L M dot com. And from the growing number of WGBH sustainers who manage their contributions to public radio with the help of monthly installments and automatic renewals learn more about sustaining membership at WGBH dot org.

Hi I'm Brian O'Donovan. And on Saturday March 20th I'll be hosting the fifth annual presentation of the St. Patrick's Day Camp at soldier at Sandhurst theater at Harvard University. Thank you Gavin. Tony McManus De Dannan made good Christmas will all be joining me and I hope you look to G.H. members can purchase tickets at a 15 percent discount securely online at WGBH dot org stash. This is eighty nine point seven WGBH Boston NPR station for trusted voices and local conversation with the world. The PBS News Hour and the callee Crossley Show explore new voices with us all day long here on the new eighty nine point seven. WGBH. Visit WGBH dot org and sign up to win a complete DVD library courtesy of

the PBS on line shop. Twenty titles in all most produced right here at WGBH Boston complete rules and entry available online at WGBH dot org. I'm Kelly Crossley and this is the Cali cross Late Show. If you're just tuning in we're talking about Amy Bishop and how violence perpetrated by women is portrayed in art and pop culture. Joining us are Bonnie Miller a professor of American studies at UMass Boston. And Sam Tanenhaus the editor of The New York Times Book Review who wrote a recent article examining this theory. Sam you were saying that. That the study that that was just reported you thought was suggest there is more violence by women because of their new empowered position in the 21st century but in fact that's not true. No it doesn't seem to be happening. And the point about sexuality Professor Miller made is very important because those are really male fantasies of the dangerous woman you know the Black Widow where the deadly doall these are these are

archetypes. Sharon Stone in Basic Instinct is essentially reap prizing the role that Barbara Stanwyck played in Double Indemnity and that is the male fantasy of female violence very much involved in attractive lustful sexuality. And is that also kind of deflects us from the curious case. Amy Bishop you know I mention all in my story in my article Golan arts and leisure. Two other films actually. That one is a film once a novel that that come closer to her story. One is the classic genre classic The Bad Seed a novel published in the mid 50s then was adapted for stage in film in which we see an evil young girl purely malevolent young girl commits violence against a classmate is protected by her mother. And there is some suspicion that this may have happened after Dr. Bishop killed her brother and 1086 I think it was. And then also the

fiction of Shirley Jackson. It deals in a very direct way with. Psychopath ology on the part of women that is not the creation of of abuse sexual humiliation or or violation of any kind. And again these are general works. OK I want to get to Professor Miller in this. Go ahead Bonnie. You know I think that the arts and literature. There are so many examples of how they have long been used as a vehicle to explore criminality and the spectacle of violence and perhaps that is more of a masculine field than in a feminine one. But nonetheless I think that the question that's being set up here you know it's somewhat of a disturbing question because why do we want the pathology of Amy Bishop necessarily represented you know if we take this argument that that Sam that you're offering to it's logical conclusion then we you know if we argue that pop culture had more female villains than perhaps the American public would have had a

cognitive roadmap to make sense of cases like him. But is that really what our goal should be. I mean is feminism really served by making this the terrain of violence and evil an equal playing field between the genders. I mean I think we need to take seriously. Any idea that the pathology of managing Weatherby domesticity or workplace frustration through gun violence is not a behavior that we really want modeled for for men or women. OK let me let Sam respond to that how do you respond to this Sam. Well in several ways first of all it is not the job of the artist to advance the cause of feminism or any other ideology. And again I'm not talking about popular art popular art gives us all the violence we could ever ask for and plenty more. We're talking about the ancient office of the Vatican prophetic office of the great artist to reveal truths to was which we don't see otherwise. Shakespeare gave us make bath

Escalus gave his Clytemnestra and in a very different way Ibsen gave us Hedda gabbler and nor in A Doll's House. It's not the job of the artist to serve the ends of a feminism or even of civic virtue it's to reveal their truths to us. We don't see any other way. But I want to begin it was a response and I'm going to campaign here for a moment I mean I think that art and literature very much does respond to the particulars of what is going on in society in culture at any particular moment. And I think that we have had such a transformation in ideas about gender and gender identity in this last century. That I don't think we can expect the arts of the ancient era to prefigure women in this kind of assertive stance I think pop culture is the place to find that and I'm not sure it's so useful to separate

popular culture from art because I think both are invested in producing complex representations. Sam let me ask this question because you say in your piece that artists are the antenna of the race if you will but in the case of violent women artists have not been attune as we've been discussing here. This seems to me to bring up the old question do artists leave or do they reflect what is happening at the moment. Well it is an age old question. And first let me say just to clarify a body's response. Actually I think the great ancients do prefigure it and it is the popular artists who borrow or learn from those archetypes and revive them. It's actually the world of modern of modernist postmodernist art that I'm focused on but setting all that aside. Well artists do both. I'm referring it was actually Ezra Pound who said that the artist is the antenna of the race and what he meant by that was he was actually

referring to the fiction of Henry James and James Joyce you know the most subtle and in their day obscure artists who reach in places that their audiences weren't even really ready for. And that is what I call the Greeks called the Vatican the ATSIC idea. The artist as prophet. That is one function of the artist is not the only one. It shouldn't exclude the naturalistic function of the artist to to capture reality as it's live to do to give us a life that feels like the one we have. But then I mention an example I think is useful here. And that's J.D. Salinger's great novel The Catcher In The Rye and we're all thinking of Salinger because this great novelist died not so long ago. The interesting thing if you look at the sociology of adolescence is it was described in that period there was almost no conception of the alienated adolescent. And in fact one of the themes in The Catcher In The Rye is there is no place for Holden Caulfield to

go that really suits his psychological emotional appetites. There's no music there's no rock music yet there's no movie that really interests him. There was no place to hang out. Here was a place for Sal and you got ahead of where the culture was and it's a very important historically grand role for the artist and it will it has just one place where this was missing. Where does that happen then I mean how did it happen that we have the breakdown as artist as prophet as you have suggested that artists can be in these situations. Where is the breakdown. That is a very complicated question. I would suggest in this case it's first of all just the singularity of what of what to Amy Bishop did although that singularity makes us realize well anything is possible. I would also suggest you know not not to turn this into a polemical discussion but it may possibly be for the reasons Bonnie has mentioned that

the feminist program is one that doesn't really look in this particular area and many modern artists female artists including some of the finest of our time more or less subscribe to feminist ideas and I think this may have proved inhibiting. On the other hand no man gave us Amy Bishop either. I want to say I just entered this into the discussion which is you know a little bit back to what Professor Miller has raised about. And you said it was not the job of artists to deal with feminism but I have to say that you know as a woman walking around a lot of these images if they're put on to women as you know sort of crazy wild eyed people all the time just get seeped into our culture and pop culture is really bad at it. And I just want to play you a clip of what I think is the worst and in this clip Sarah Haskins from Current TV shows Infomania satirizes snapped and it's a reality show about female killers on the Oxygen Network.

Did you know that every woman has a homicidal lunatic living inside of her. I found this out recently. I watching snapped. The investigation into who killed Greg smart would reveal a sordid tale of sex lies and betrayal and would cast Dick she was sunny 22 year old enemy. Really different light lies deceit greed and murder fill the world of snapped Oxygen's true crime show about women who kill their husbands and boyfriends. I know what you're thinking finally. Gender equity in the true crime genre I know and stept is very instructive because it shows you how it will happen when you snap. And yes you will snap. I mean these women did and they were such nice girls. Just like you see Professor Miller and Sam I will let you comment on it after professor. What I worry about is that everybody is going to think any minute I'm going to snap because you know if if people really get to believing that you know women can be as violent This is typical of women then aren't we all just as this author says a lunatic waiting to happen.

Well I think it's a teacher of the fact you know that we that this is. A gender diversified workplace now that if we know that it does reflect this new social moment that we are in you know you use the term going postal as being something as you know this Clave. But you know if you look in post offices now it's not just male workers. So if it's the post office that's driving people to act in out of rage then it could very well affect male or female employees. I don't worry about the stereotype that I'm worrying about it with women it seems. And Sam I'll let you get in on this. It seems that once we've put this image out about women particularly not necessarily men then it becomes a stereotype and it's hard to see women as having a full range they can be violent they can be mothers they can be but they don't have to be a lunatic in waiting if you get my drift. Well I don't think well you know what. I think there are so many different images of women out there that I don't think the women and the idea is that every woman is going to be someone who's a lunatic waiting to snap. Right. But I think that as

we have more women in the workplace we are the extension of female violence is not just going to be limited. You know in domestic scenes or you know this kind of limited purview of marital you know issues in domestic relationships but we're going to see more women who are. Acting out of rage in the workplace or in other spaces. So Sam is that is it possible now that artists can't Invision you know we're all sort of out here in the wild Well West and so artists can envision the kind of violence that usually associated with men associated with women. Yeah I think that's part of the problem. I completely agree with body by the way. Yes we're going to see more of this. And this was the point I think Patricia Cornwell the great crime writer made when I interviewed her for this story. She said a firearms to the availability of them you know we've just seen laws passed in several states that are going to make it easier for anyone to get access to firearms now there's pending

legislation in much of the country to allow people to carry weapons openly. And as Patricia Cornwell's says a firearm could be the great equalizer and absolutely right this was part of what I was trying to say in the story that in a way we shouldn't have been so surprised. Amy Bishop was under tremendous pressure. She had lost a €10 battle. She was the principal breadwinner and brains of her collaboration with her husband with four children. These are hard economic times in a sense. You know if they want to say this very carefully. She does typify where women are professional educated women are at this moment and that that should coincide with this other sort of appears to be a kind of psychopath ology is interesting and listen the interesting is not always the virtuous it's not something that we want to be excited by but it's there to be explored and I think

we may see more cases of life like this in a sense. You know when Amy Bishop fired her gun she shattered a glass ceiling of perception about women and violence and that was really what my story was about. You also say in your piece that she provides an index. I'm using your words to the evolved status of women in 21st century America so as as Professor Miller says women have gotten to a certain point now and so there you have it. Yes absolutely. Going to Harvard. Yeah. You know I think it's interesting that you use the idea of gun culture because you know in pop culture you know the gun has so often been connected with the masculine world I mean as even the extension of the male Or again you might want to say you know that it's been presented that way. And yet if you look in this particular moment you have more women serving in the military you have more women who are participating in gun culture so I think it's going to become more commonplace to see that image but I find it striking how so many of the

images of female violence that are shown in pop culture don't often use guns. You see you see much more brutal kinds of murders then then with guns and I think that that's something that I think is going to change with the times. But I do think that there are examples of this kind of workplace rage in pop culture you know movies that I thought of were you know like Nicole Kidman and to die for or Tilda Swinton in Michael Clayton or Demi Moore and disclosure. I mean yes they're they're not Amy Bishop's character but they're women who are attesting to this shift by trying to advance their careers somehow through the use of violence or criminal behavior or force that I don't think we would have seen. You know generations ago because this I think is a product of the transitions that are happening in the workplace and in society in some of the cases you mention there I don't know if Sam would agree.

That was some premeditated violence in the way that one didn't seem to think that that happened with Amy Bishop seems to be reactive in the moment if you will. Well I'm not really sure I understand that because if a person brings a gun with them to a faculty meeting Yeah there's got to be some premeditation there she obviously you know there's all these reports that she went to a shooting range days before. I mean it's not like she happened to have a gun in the room that she or a knife that she grabbed from you know cutting bread I mean this was something that she didn't remember it afterwards though. Yeah well I don't know we may have seen rage sometimes can be I guess you know blinding. But I just don't understand how she could be framed without some form of right meditation. Yes I think that's right it was her husband who said he had gone with her to a shooting range. And earlier I believe when she purchased the gun which he didn't think she ought to do she explained it. Some way that he thought it was the right

altar camp was vile right. Yeah he was protecting yourself. And these are the explanations men always give for Pat for carrying sidearms. So yes and as to the point about the change in modus operandi as it were that's really true. You know if you go back to Shakespeare's day you go back to the classics it's poisoning or you know the smothering of children. But this but the gun the weapon the firearm is something that you know we may likely see more and more of. Alas in the days ahead. Well that's going to have to be it for this conversation which is depressing enough from the two of you I must say though very thought provoking. Sam Tanenhaus I really enjoyed your article. And by the medical Miller thank you for your comments. Thank you both for joining us. Sam Tanenhaus is the editor of The New York Times Book Review and the author of Whittaker Chambers a biography. His latest book is The Death of Conservatism. Bonnie Miller is assistant professor of American studies at Mass Boston.

Coming up a look at Alice in Wonderland between the pages and on the big screen. Stay tune to eighty nine point seven. WGBH. Support for WGBH comes from you and from the New England mobile book fair in Newton. For 53 years. New England's independent bookstore. The New England mobile book fair find them online at any book fair dot com. That's an e-book fair dot com and from Curious George let's get curious. The new exhibit at Boston Children's Museum where you can experience the world of Curious George and visit places featured in the books and television show now through June 6th curiosity runs wild at Boston Children's

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courtesy of the PBS online shop. Twenty titles in all including 12 hours of the national parks. Ken Burns an entry online at WGBH dot org. You're listening to eighty nine point seven. Boston's NPR station for depth and understanding with the world and all things considered. Eighty nine point seven WGBH. I'm Kelly Crossley and this is the Calla Crossley Show. Tim Burton's latest film Alice in Wonderland is hitting screens nationwide. Joining us to talk about the movie and the original literary classic Are our arts and culture critics Alicia ANSTEAD and eugenic O. Alicia ANSTEAD is the editor in chief of the performing arts magazine Inside arts and the online editor of The Harvard arts beat huge Inco is a professor of English at Wellesley College. Alicia and Eugene welcome. Hi Colleen. You for having us. Listeners I don't know if you knew but I just found out that Alice in

Wonderland open to one hundred six point three million dollars worth of sales apparently a very large opening weekend for the movie. And the movie is really what inspired me to sort of revisit the book. Something I hadn't done in a long time. I didn't know till I saw the movie that it's actually the called Alice in Wonderland. It's a blending of both the Alice in Wonderland and the sequel through the looking glass. So first I want to get from you two and I'll start with you you Jen. When did you first read Alice in Wonderland and how did you respond to it at the time or did you. I think I was in college when I first read it and I what I remember is enjoying the zany adventures of it the senseless the purposeless insanity of the whole of all the episodes. You didn't feel as though there was an end in sight or some destination you felt as though you were meant purity to enjoy the moment for what it is. And how about you. Alicia I have to say I also read it for the first time in college I was

taking a summer course at the George Mason University in Virginia and the course was called nonsense literature and this was one of the major texts only you would be taking a course. And what do you think about it at the time. Well I we were parsing it for its literary merits at the time rather than its storytelling as a children's book or I know that there's some question about whether it's strictly child oriented book. So you know I remember I had so much fun with it. You know I loved the play of language I loved the reversals of logic the language the reason. And you know his his compatriot Edward Lear was also you know one of the great writers in that course and I think I responded a little bit more openly to lear. Lots of people have said as Alicia just pointed out that this isn't really not a book for children not aimed at children anyway I mean it has all the nonsensical rhymes and everything but really it's trite it's take it. I mean so much analysis has been he talked to

this book. I just saw a piece in The New York Times day before yesterday that it's a math lesson which I had never considered before because when she eats the mushrooms she grows taller and shorter This algebraic equation going on in there. What do you think it is that's true there are philosophical conundrums for example that the book satirizes or make or derives some of its episodes from the Mock Turtle has its genesis and linguistic confusion about the placement of the modifier. Right it's it's mock turtle soup where mock modifies soup and not turtle. So the book makes fun of those kinds of linguistic practices that can be. Confusing. So yes there is that serious element that a linguist or a mathematician or a philosopher would enjoy. It also makes fun of for example the situational specificity of language. If you say the cakes are for tomorrow you can never eat them because tomorrow is right will be today right.

Right exactly. Alicia everybody says this is a coming of age story really. That's what it is Alice going. Just learning living her life as an adolescence and growing through that experience and having these fabulous nonsensical adventures as she grows. You agree. Well certainly growing taller and growing smaller are central to the story. I'm not sure the book is as much a coming of age tale as the movie is and I think that the movie hits that note which which I think we all like that. I did I did I think we almost have to talk about the movie as an adaptation and I should say that as as a plot I'm not so sure the movie was as riveting as a visual experience. And again as a visual experience it was not so riveting in its 3D nature as the other big 3-D film out right now Avatar. So I don't think it uses 3-D to its maximum effect but I do think that like many marvelous children's stories there are many points of entry to the story some that adults tune

into the mathematics although as an adult I don't tune into the mathematics. Maybe they are just you know all good children's stories have many levels to them and as adults whether we're reading Alice in Wonderland or where the wild things are whether it's a picture book or as we say a chapter book. And I'm sure that's true for Harry Potter too that there are adult stories hovering in the background and then a very pure child's story right in the foreground. You're going to get your take on the movie and then I'm going to ask Alicia to read a little bit. So what do you think about the movie. I would agree with the list that the movie is much more of a coming of age story than the book in fact the book is about being stuck in that the fantasy world of the child. The movie starts as you might remember with a marriage frame in which. Alice escapes marriage and goes into the hole in the ground. So the beginning really reverses the traditional trajectory of fairy tales in which the

sexual other in this case a man brings with him the promise of other worlds. In this in the film it's the rejection of the sexual other that leads to other worlds. And then I think it's further telling that when she goes into that other world she first experiences at the good ventures and then secondly returns to reality to continue her at the good dancers and exploring new worlds. Yeah I have to say that I like what I like the movie I realize that what I missed where that was the poetry. The the poem's all the way through to me the heart of Alice in Wonderland Through the Looking Glass and without them it was entertaining but it was reduced to an adventure tale and I wondered if kids today would get that if you never read the book. But so that's why I would like for you Alicia to read a little bit of the book. Well just I want to return to one of your points before I do read this. This piece in the book and that is that I'm not so sure Lewis Carroll was interested in any of his character's coming of age I mean he notoriously enjoyed the company of young

girls and also was very nostalgic about childhood and himself had two characters you know the Reverend Charles Dodson who was shy and and kind of alienated and Lewis Carroll who entertained children with these fabulous stories and it's almost a Jekyll and Hyde character so I don't think he was really interested in anybody growing up I think he liked Alice in the characters around her. Staying right where they were. Yeah. And for people who don't know Lewis Carroll is the pin name for Charles Dodson. Right I would just add before you read if you don't mind you might remember that in through the looking glass there is some progress and Alice goes from the second square to the eighth rank to become a pawn become a queen rather. But it's all done without her agency. Where as in the film it's all about embracing agency and taking on the identity of an epic heroine. Right right Jessica said Joan of Arc. Right right right. She's even dressed like Joan of Arc right at the

at the end I'm just one other thing I want to mention is that a little bit later after Alice in Wonderland was published. Lewis Carroll actually said and you know he was also a photographer who photographed children he said a girl of about 12 was my ideal beauty of form. So well I think you know me 19 for me was a great improvement on the story which is how Alice is Tim Burton's. So the piece I'm going to read which I think gives us many indicators of the whole Alice Alice's Adventures in Wonderland is from the Tea Party and Alice has just asked one too many questions of the March Hare and the Mad Hatter about beginnings and ends. Suppose we change the subject. The March Hare interrupted yawning. I'm getting tired of this. I vote the young lady tell us a story. I'm afraid I don't know one said Alice rather alarmed at the proposal. Then the dormouse shall they both cried wake up Dormouse and they pinched it on both sides at once. The Dormouse slowly opened its eyes. I wasn't

asleep it said in a hoarse feeble voice. I heard every word you fellows were saying. Tell us a story said the March Hare Yes please do pleaded Alice. And be quick about it added the hatter or you'll be asleep again before it's done. Once upon a time there were three little girls the doormats began in a great hurry and their names were Elsie Lacie until EE and they lived at the bottom of a well. What did they live on said Alice who always took great interest in questions of eating and drinking. They lived on treacle said the Dormouse after thinking a minute or two. They could have done that you know. Alice gently remarked. They have been ill. So they were said the Dormouse very ill. Alice tried to fancy to herself what such an extraordinary way of living would be like. But it puzzled her too so she went on. Why did they live at the bottom of a well. Take some more tea. The March Hare said Alice very earnestly. I've had nothing yet Alice replied in an offended tone. So I can't take more. You mean you can't take less than the Hatter. It's very easy to take more than nothing.

And this is what I think you mean by the poetry I do and I think that does get lost. All that nonsense that the light nonsense gets lost in all the episodes and the characters because of this narrative Frayne get enlisted in that very predictable march towards the heroines triumph. And because of that I didn't find it as much fun as I thought I would find it well and I miss because when I read Alice in Wonderland by itself or for I remember that my very favorite piece is really in through the looking glass and that's the Walrus and the car carpenter and my favorite piece of that is the time has come the Walrus said to talk of many things of Hughes and ships and sealing wax and cabbages and kings and why the sea is boiling hot and whether pigs have wings. I cannot tell you how many times I quote that in normal conversation and that's one of the things about Alice in Wonderland Through the Looking Glass that is so interesting to me is that so much of it is now a part of pop culture and I don't think people realize grinning like a

Cheshire cat or off with his head from the Red Queen or Richard the Third. Richard's right. When you're down that going down the rabbit hole you know these are things that are part of our pop culture now. Can I say something else that makes the story very familiar. Anyone who's been a parent or anyone who's spent a lot of time with children you know what it's like to just start in on a story when you're trying to get your child to pay attention and how you're shifting the names of the characters my daughter's name is Kristen and she had an alternate character in all of our stories called Christine and Christine was always going through the troubles of having to have her hair washed. And I would tell these stories as my daughter was having her hair washed and that's what the story is kind. It really reminds me of I mean we know that Lewis Carroll told the story to Alice and her siblings as they were on a boat going down a river to a picnic. And and it just reminds me so much of that adult experience of a child saying Tell me a story

and you don't have time to say well I don't really know a story. Right. You just say OK once upon a time there was a beautiful young girl named Allie you know. Right exactly. You know John I'm wondering will this story resonate with or does it resonate now with kids and will the movie help people rediscover it. Yes on both accounts the movie will help people rediscover it in part because it's been reframed as a modern narrative that's recognizable. It's been Disney fied which I think has the most the kid the material but because of that because it's the coming of age girls adventure story a whole new audience especially young women will discover Lewis Carroll through it but I think what those readers will also discover is how delightful it is when you enter a world where reason and logic take a holiday. Isn't that great. Yeah. Other than our current living situation.

And I think we want young women to rediscover Alison and I can say we want very young girls to rediscover her and I think that even the young women who may see the film there's something about the naming of I am real which is what Alice's message is she's trying to find out is she real or is she in a dream and she finds out that she's real that she has her much ness. And I think that that's a good lesson to be reminded of any time you agree you just I do and I should add or I should bring up the fact that you went to Wellesley and I teach at Wellesley to learn where two of the unofficial models are 135 years of women on top and women who will make a difference in the world. This is really a movie about women who will make a difference in the world. She goes to the underworld to slay the dragon which is kind of like earning an MBA because you remember she comes back to conquer a new dragon namely China except in the realm of Commerce. So so yes all of this is true but

but I still want to continually add that because of that kind of purposeful The purposeful nature of the narrative I do miss some of the gratuitous inventiveness that defines the character of Alice's world in the stories and which I expected more of this specially from Tim Burton. I think we see it more in the visuals than we do in the narrative of that of that movie. I think the visuals still have some sense of you know you don't know what's going to happen and things are running a little bit backward. But I understand what you're saying to you John and there's something that the light is not there. I wondered if he decided to Disneyfied as much as Tim Burton can be Disneyfied is huge and would say because I didn't think that a film about women saying I am more real or a young woman saying I am real and having plenty of much of this was going to sell and I had to sort of dress it up in this other you know

Tim Burton almost has Johnny Depp as the Mad Hatter almost has as much screen time as Alice in this. Yeah I was going to say Johnny Depp is what's going to make it Sal if anything is going to make it sell well for other reasons but I just know right from the character standpoint Tim Burton has said that it's it was his goal to make an engaging movie where you not only got the classic tale but you got something fresh and something a little bit more psychological and maybe he accomplishes that I mean there are many many layers to the story whether it's the book or whether it's the film I was seen all sorts of quotations in the film from Joan of Arc to Dorothy of Kansas. But you know in psychologizing the characters I think again there is a gain and a loss. He provides a reason for the conditions of all the characters he provides a backstory that gives a sequined sequence of causes and effects that leads to their condition.

So the Red Queen is fond of ordering executions because well her father preferred her sister the White Queen. Yes that is interesting isn't it. Well I think that's where that's where you talk about Disney. Fine I would say that's where it gets ossified that you know it takes us back to the farm in Kansas you know where all of those characters then become part of Alice's dream. I know I'm mixing all sorts of literary metaphor here. You mean there was nobody you know you got right was that. If occasionally OK very good I just wanted my listeners to know where you were going with that because they could have been Ozzy Osborne and that's not what you meant I'm overcome with the nonsense. OK. It's also the Batman if occasion is that oh well OK OK OK. I remember Tim Burton made one of the Batman series in which we discovered that the penguin turned to the dark side when he got a band and by his parents because he had flippers for arms right. OK so this is what happens when you take art and culture critics to the movies. But I love the conversation with you and you just go.

Thank you so much for joining us Alicia ANSTEAD is the editor in chief of the performing arts magazine Inside arts and the online editor of The Harvard art speak eugène CO is a professor of English at Wellesley College. We've been talking about Alice in Wonderland the book in the movie. First I say. This is a calla Crossley Show. Today's program was engineered by Antonio only art and produced by Chelsea murders. Our production assistant is Anna white knuckle be we our production of WGBH radio Boston NPR station for news and culture.