Tuesday 7PM Check In
Describe your Wonderland. You should explain exactly how this Wonderland messes with some sort of binary narrative.
- Our Wonderland exists as a carnival that forces us to think about how we perceive reality and fantasy in our everyday lives. Fantasyland, the carnival, plays on societal norms by providing us with fantastic attractions that may not be as delusional as we believe; But, the ideas that these attractions make us think about may actually be more in line with our reality which is not as picture-perfect as we envision it to be. Basically, it highlights the perception of reality and fantasy as it exists in American life.
Explain the specific situation/scenario that your site highlights:
- Freakshow- The Freakshow externalizes the opposite of the “perfect American family unit”. However, when looking at the inner workings of the Freakshow and how their family operates, we are able to see that they parallel to our own families. In turn, the freakshow is no longer fantastical, but a reality we can place ourselves in.
- Our site highlights perception as a topic. Specifically how people view each other regarding beauty, family…
Name 4 main things your viewer needs to know about this world in order to understand how this world works.
- The viewer needs to understand the prejudices that existed in American history towards the freakshow/ carnival families. The viewer also needs to be aware of how America imposed ideas of the “perfect family”, especially during the 1950s, through the media and how it affected societal norms .
- The viewer needs to know how society interprets beauty. What defines beauty, is it skin deep? Does it matter more to be pretty outside and ugly inside or less attractive outside and pretty inside?
Describe the child and/or children most prominently featured in your scenario. You should also describe how they enter into the world.
- An example of a child in my scenario is Kristina who is in her adolescent years. She enters the world by attending the Carnival and looks at the Freakshow family and she is able to compare it to her own family. Like Kristina, the other children who enter the world and encounter other parts of the carnival (i.e. the funhouse, rides, etc) are adolescents who make revelations that are documented either by journal entry or voice notes about how America perceives fantasy and reality.
Identify at least one reference to Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland that speaks to your world.
- When Alice meets the Blue Caterpillar he asks her “Who are you?” Alice replies that she doesn’t know. The idea of who someone actually is and how they are seen by others is reflected in our site.
- When Alice enters the Dutchess’ house she perceives the family environment as crazy. The idea of dishes being thrown all over the place is not something she believes to be normal.
So I know you are going to change your Wonderland now to deal more with a Kardashian world. But two comments based on what I read here:
1) I like your aesthetic changes to the site. The color scheme is nice (just make sure we can read the text against the background).
2) A comment I have based on the manifesto above but I think will be important for you in terms of moving forward with your new ideas is to remember there’s the Wonderland alternative world and then there’s the specific situation within that world that your site depicts. So if your site is a carnival kids will come to and be changed by it, you might need to signify that this is a world in which every child between ages of 12 and 15 has to come to this Carnival (and you’d give us some understanding of why). You can do the same thing with the Kardashian world and carnival too.