The hatter
The hatter or sometimes the crazy hatter (in the English original only The Hatter ) is a fictional character from Lewis Carroll's novel Alice in Wonderland ( Alice's Adventures in Wonderland ). The character is now firmly anchored in the collective memory of pop culture. In Alice in Wonderland , he first appears in the chapter A Mad Tea Party ( A Mad Tea Party on). The protagonist Alice meets the hatter during a tea party in the garden of the March Hare, another character in the novel. There is a reunion with the character at the end of the book during the trial at the court of the Queen of Hearts. In Alice Behind the Mirrors ( Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There ), the figure also appears - here under the name Hatta.
Naming
Strictly speaking, the name "crazy hatter" is a popular misconception, as the character is never called that in the entire book, but is only referred to by Carroll as "hat maker". The word "mad" is used only once by the figure of the Cheshire Cat, separately for the hatter and the March hare alike; she says: “both are mad”. A direct succession of the words "mad" and "hatter" is not available at this point either. The adjectival attribute "crazy" was given to the character because of their behavior, which was obviously "crazy" or at least absurd, and has been firmly anchored in the collective memory ever since. One of the main reasons for this erroneous assignment is probably the idioms "mad as a hatter" and "mad as a march hare" ("crazy like a hatter" or "crazy like a March hare") that were widespread in the English-speaking world long before the book was published. ) have been. The phrase “mad as a hatter” goes back to the fact that hat makers often suffered from the effects of mercury poisoning because of the materials used in their craft (cf. hatter syndrome ). So Carroll has had in all probability this phrase in mind when he created the figure of the Hatter to pick up without the attribute "mad", while his readers the nod to the phrase that contains the figure recognized and they were, willy-nilly to End by automatically thinking about the attribute from the idiom of the actual figure name and using it accordingly.
Appearance
The Mad Hatter is a typically Victorian dressed, relatively short man with protruding teeth. His most conspicuous item of clothing is - naturally - his hat, a large, elongated cylinder with a label emblazoned with the inscription “10/6” (10/6 means that the hat costs ten shillings and six pence). Sir John Tenniel , the first illustrator of Carroll's books, is responsible for the modern visual conception of the hatter . Significant influence on the further popularization of the "Hatter" appearance exerted the artists of Disney Studios, who designed the Alice film from 1951, and the cartoonists of DC Comics , who use Tenniel-oriented Hatter types.
Idol
Literary research assumes that in reality a man named Theophilus Carter was the model for the mad hatter. Carter was the inventor of an alarm bed that mechanically tipped the sleeper off the mattress at wake-up time and was first presented to the public during the World's Fair of 1851 . Carter later ran a furniture store and was nicknamed Mad Hatter by his customers and neighbors because he had a habit of standing in the front door of his shop wearing a large top hat while waiting for customers.
The Mad Hatter in film and television
The Mad Hatter has already been portrayed by actors Edward Everett, Sir Robert Helpmann , Martin Short , Ed Wynn , Andrew Lee Potts , Sebastian Stan and Johnny Depp as well as in a music clip by Tom Petty .
The Mad Hatter in Literature
Peter Lovesey released 1973 crime novel holiday of a deranged ( Mad Hatter's Holiday ) from the series to its criminalists Sergeant Cribb. The book was made into a film in 1981 under the direction of June Wyndham-Davies .
In the manga Pandora Hearts by Mangaka Jun Mochizuki, the chain from Xerxes Break is also called "Mad Hatter". Xerxes (mostly just called Break) himself is sometimes quite crazy in character and his actions are often difficult to understand at first. He's always very mysterious. He also loves sweets and is often seen at the dining table with tea and some kind of dessert (cake or sweets, for example), which could also allude to the tea party.
The Mad Hatter in pop culture
The popularity of the Mad Hatters character has found expression in pop culture in many ways. There are “Mad Hatter” carousels in the various Disney theme parks. These consist of gondolas that are based on the phenotype of large teacups and that rotate manually on their own axis, while an external mechanism lets them zoom wildly on a driving surface.
The villain Mad Hatter from the Batman comic series is externally and partly in character based on the mad hatter. Similar "Hatter" cuts appeared in the series Futurama and Wonderland in Shadow by Aubigne Spratling.
The jazz pianist Chick Corea released the album The Mad Hatter in 1978 , in which he refers to characters and episodes from Alice in Wonderland and Alice behind the mirrors .
The English music group The Stranglers set a musical monument to the Mad Hatter in their album Aural Sculpture in 1984 .
The English progressive rock band Shadowland repeatedly refers to Lewis Carroll in their pieces. Among other things, they named their third CD, released in 1996, Mad As A Hatter .
The former British record label The Famous Charisma Label , under which records by Genesis and Monty Python , among others , were released, used Sir John Tenniel's depiction of the hatter as its logo .
The Mad Hatter also appeared on an episode of The Simpsons . There Alice yelled at little Lisa Simpson that the library was a trap, whereupon the hatter harassed Alice with a revolver. Here he is portrayed as completely insane.
The hatter also appears in Once Upon a Time . There he comes from another world and has a magical hat that can take someone to other worlds. In Wonderland, however, he is left behind by the Evil Queen . There he becomes a mad hatter because he tries compulsively to make a magical hat that is supposed to bring him back to his world. However, this does not succeed.