Marks & Spencer’s Commercial: A Postmodern Dive into Literary Classics

In 2013, Marks & Spencer released a Christmas commercial that turned advertising into an intertextual spectacle worthy of study. The video, starring Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, blends Alice in Wonderland, The Wizard of Oz, Hansel and Gretel, and even echoes of One Thousand and One Nights, creating a visual and narrative mosaic that resonates with the aesthetics and principles of postmodernity.

In the commercial, the protagonist falls into a manhole and finds herself transported to a universe reminiscent of Alice’s adventures. The Mad Hatter’s tea party (featuring David Gandy in the role) recalls the linguistic and playful chaos of Lewis Carroll, while the encounter with the Witch of Oz (played by Helena Bonham-Carter) recreates Dorothy’s journey. The presence of a candy house suggests Hansel and Gretel, and the dreamlike atmosphere of the commercial echoes the tradition of One Thousand and One Nights, where stories unfold within stories.

This fusion of narratives is not just an aesthetic device but a clear example of intertextuality, a concept that Julia Kristeva developed from Bakhtin: texts never exist in isolation but are always in dialogue with others. The M&S commercial operates as a hypertext, remixing literary and visual icons to generate an effect that is both nostalgic and contemporary.

In an interview conducted by Nick Coates with Professor Kiera Vaclavik, a specialist in children's literature and visual culture, published in Alice & The Eggmen, we see how Alice has become a symbol of constant reinvention. According to Vaclavik, the absence of a rigid moral arc and the flexibility of the story have allowed Alice in Wonderland to be reinterpreted over the decades, from the psychedelia of the 1960s to high fashion and contemporary pop culture.

The M&S commercial exemplifies this trend. It does not merely retell well-known stories but overlaps and reinvents them, reflecting the postmodern spirit that dissolves boundaries between high and low culture, fiction and advertising, dream and reality.

If Carroll and Baum created worlds where logic unravels and imagination takes the reins, contemporary advertising uses these same foundations to build narratives that not only sell a product but sell a universe of references, emotions, and shared memories.

 

Know more: Interview with Kiera Vaclavik published in Alice & The Eggmen by Nick Coates on April 3, 2025.

To Jump Like Alice: A Forgotten Boutique of Swinging London

 

 

 

Hidden in the winding lanes of Covent Garden, To Jump Like Alice was more than a fashion boutique—it was a portal. Opened in the late 1960s by Sarah Buadpiece and Debbie Torrens, the shop took its curious name from a 1950 poem by Philip Larkin: "to jump, like Alice, with floating skirt into my head." And that’s exactly what it offered—a place where fashion, fantasy, and altered states of consciousness merged in true Wonderland style. 

While boutiques like Granny Takes a Trip and Biba drew the limelight, To Jump Like Alice catered to the more enigmatic edge of the psychedelic scene. It was part of the vibrant "scenius" that Nick Coates describes in his Alice & the Eggman Series—where Lewis Carroll’s Alice became a muse for London’s countercultural revolution. The boutique reflected that shift: Alice not as a child's dream, but as a heroine of mind-expansion, rebellion, and reinvention. 

The shop’s visual identity was steeped in Carrollian symbolism. A rare advert from the International Times (1968) features the Mad Hatter—a wink, perhaps, to the tailoring trade, but also an invitation to step into altered realities "made cloth." A business card held in the V&A archives preserves this psychedelic Wonderland in miniature: part fashion, part myth, part riddle. Though little else survives in print, To Jump Like Alice remains one of those glittering fragments of the late ‘60s—one that, like the White Rabbit himself, invites us to follow a trail through mirrors, memories, and London fog. 

Source:  Nick Coates, Alice & the Eggman Series

 

Alicedelia by David Szauder

 

Alice 

"So, the thing is that several people were missing an Alice in Wonderland video, so I thought I’d create some characters. I found some freely usable, highly colorful microscope images and built the world and characters from them. Then, I added some old bacterium illustrations from vintage encyclopedias, which is how the mushrooms came into play. Somehow, towards the end, during the animation process, the whole thing started moving in a Tim Burton direction, which I tried to resist, but in some places, I left it in because I felt the movement was strong. It was a long process, but Polo & Pan’s music helped a lot."

David Szauder

Music: @poloandpan 

 

Alice leaps off the shelves and ventures into the modern and contemporary world.
She crosses the borders of the book and explores beyond the illustrations—into art, cinema, fashion, animation, games, advertising, comics, toys, graffiti, tattoos, collections, souvenirs, consumerism, clichés, commonplaces, and artificial intelligence, blending her wonder with algorithms and digital dreams. Alice’s books no longer fit into any mold or explanation, but ignite multiple possibilities for creation.

Among different Alicedelias, I seek:

• Enigmatic Alices that destabilize the commonplace and suggest new paths of reading;
• Metalinguistic and disruptive Alices that challenge language and representation standards;
• Conceptual Alices that navigate labyrinths and paradoxes;
• Alices that cross intertextual boundaries, visiting characters from other stories;
• Alices that travel the world, incorporating and dialoguing with different cultures;
• Alices with metamorphic bodies, provoking hybrid identities and erotic dreams;
• Alices shaped by artificial intelligence, blending human imagination with algorithmic creativity and digital consciousness;
• Alices that venture into the world of dreams and wonder, proposing playful experiments;
• Alices that cross portals, wherever they may be, plunging into nightmares and shadows, challenging the boundaries of the mind and the unconscious.
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•  How does David Szauder's Alice dialogue with this multiverse, between enigmagic prompts and alicedelic dreams, where memory, technology, and wonder collide in a digital kaleidoscope of endless possibilities? 
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• Adriana Peliano

 

curiouserisms - playing with Alicedelias

 

LINK - BUY HERE

Alicedelic book by Caroline H Ridley-Duff

 

Eric Ton : " Definitely Not Alice's Tea Party"

 

Alice... sonhos e arte

 @estudosjunguianos_