#Wonderland can be a place of tragedy and fruitless escapism

[hephaestuscrew]

This is really interesting and has definitely made me think. I realised that I see it slightly differently...

I agree that Wonderland is a place that's associated both with tragedy and with the desire to escape, and I agree that's particularly interesting given the contrast with the expected vibe of a theme park.

But I feel like after the exodus from Red Line, Wonderland becomes a place of hope too. Yes, people are only there because they were evicted from their homes due to serious injustice. Yes, living there is not easy. But they have found a place they can live safely. They are trying to build a community there together (which is what so much of Greater Boston is about), trying to work out how to live alongside each other, trying to create a system of running things that works fairly for everyone.

When Leon and Charlotte were at Wonderland with the desire to escape, they weren't thinking about where they wanted to escape to. They just wanted Out (out of the uncertainty of the rollercoaster for Leon, out of her feeling of purposelessness for Charlotte). Perhaps Wonderland started out that way for the evicted residents too, but they are trying to make it into a place worth escaping to.

And the other moment in which I think Wonderland is depicted as a place of hope is when Nica and Dmitri have That Conversation on the cheese rollercoaster. In that scene, they are confronting something that they have in a way been avoiding for months. When they keep asking to go round again on that rollercoaster, they are making an active choice not to try and escape from a difficult conversation. And I think the fact that that scene takes place at Wonderland is part of what makes it so powerful: the idea that you can return to the setting of the worst thing that ever happened to you and that it can be there that you begin to move forward from it.

Basically what I'm saying is that yes, Wonderland is a place of disaster and tragedy, but it's also a place of working out how to moving forward after disaster and tragedy. It's a place of conflict between those two forces. And, coming back to your original point, neither of those aspects fit with the "joyful and bright and flashy" associations of a theme park.

i just really love the trope where this very “joyful and bright and flashy” place is considered a place of great conflict. like wonderland in greater boston. it���s this big, beautiful theme park which is mainly associated in gb as, like, a place to escape to in the event of a tragedy.

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