ИСТИНА

The paper focuses on several representations of “mad” characters in animated and feature films written by Linda Woolverton – Beauty and the Beast (1991), Alice in Wonderland (2010), and Alice Through the Looking Glass (2016). Metaphoric meanings of what is labelled madness are diverse: they include fear of otherness (Belle’s father taken to an asylum, little Alice unable to sleep because she’s “come round the bend”), joyful comedy (the mad tea party), and “madness” as a tool for introducing positive change into the world (“I make the path”, Alice says). Although Susan Sontag (Illness as Metaphor, 1978) concludesthat our inability to comprehend illness might give rise to damaging metaphors, this paper views a metaphor as an effective instrument to unpack Woolverton’s narratives of success. The first part of the paper focuses on how madness is represented on screen. How is it mediated through the characters’ bodies so that the audiences can relate to it? In her book Embodying Adaptation (2022), Christina Wilkins suggests close reading disorders as screen constructs: “psychological difference relies on a visualising of psychic otherness in order to be classified” [Wilkins 2022, 149]. We will look at the ways characters are positioned in the mise-en-scène, represented through dialogue, and function as plot- driving figures, achieving (or not) their central goals. In the second part of my talk, I will try to find an answer to the following: what metaphoric meanings of “madness” are particularly endorsed in the adaptations to make films suit the family audiences they are addressing?