The Wizard of Oz is NON-FICTION!

[Eye See You]

Friday, January 20, 2006


The Wizard of Oz is NON-Fiction.


This not the first analysis of Lymen Frank Baum's book called:
The wonderful wizard of Oz. Nor will it be the last. Everybody knows
about the 1939 movie with Judy Garland. The movie was not that faithful
to the book. So what else is new? Lymen Baum wrote many sequels to the
first book but was never filmed. Why? Because it became oblivious that
what Baum was writing was not children fantasy stories but a political
allegory that supported progressive politics. Baum was a Populist for
the Democratic party of the 19th century. To get around censorship many
writers use fiction to promote a subversive ideology. It is all based
on symbolism and allegories. Most critics will just dismiss it as just
fanciful imagination. It is a great cover for an alibi. As the 20th
century progressed in the U.S.A, censorship eased up. This created an
open society, which the religious right wants to curtail. They have
called it an, "Culture war". They want to turn the clock to the
18th century where Christian morality made society repressive. People
like Mark Twain, George Orwell and Baum wanted to make a free society
and warned the readers about the dangers of authoritarianism. Let's
go over the characters of Baum's book, shall we?


1. Dorothy: The protagonist of the book. She represented the naiveté
in all of us.
2. Toto: Represented Natural Law. The little dog represented the earth,
environment and the animals of life.
3. The Wicket Witch of the East: Represented Fascism and the exploitive
capitalist class.
4. The Good Witch of the West: Now this character is very
contradictory. It must be stated here that Baum was a sexist. He would
write a book after Oz called: The marvelous land of Oz. This was a
satire of the Suffragette movement. How can a witch be good? Moral
Relativism that's how. It is a philosophical belief in Ethics. This
belief proposes in order to combat evil it is justified to do evil acts
against evil. That is part of the Bush doctrine. The character has a
very clavier attitude toward evil and acts like an angle that is
omniscient. This was an attack on liberal snobbery.
5. The Tin Woodman: This was the industrial proletariat. Many social
critics accused the working class of having no heart.
6. The Scarecrow: He represented pseudo-intellectuals that had straw
man arguments. One critic said these people should get a brain.
7. The cowardly Lion: W call these people now a days: Chicken hawks.
These types advocate war but never will be seen dead on a battlefield.
The lion tries to get courage.
8. OZ. This character is based on the Republican president: McKinley.
Who wanted to impress America he was an iron clad fearless leader but
in person was just as human as everybody else. He used Machiavellian
methods to persuade people that they didn't really need Government to
help them out but should be self-reliant.
9. Ruby Slippers: The knowledge of Marxism.
10. Emerald City: The United States of America.


Many farmers in that time period wanted to leave their dreary lives and
live in the city. But Baum wanted to tell them: there is no place like
home. In other words: The life of a rich man is no different than a
poor man's. I predict that L.Frank.Baum books will replace the King
James Bible in a hundred years.

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Enronscam

[ClassWarrior]

1. The movie was full of allegory too.

Check out Amy Goodman's interview with Yip Harburg, the man who wrote the lyrics to the songs in the movie. You can find it in the archives at democracynow.org.

NGU.

[spunky]

2. Have to nitpick here: allegory is fiction. The Wizard of Oz is not a true

story. . . .

If allegory is non-fiction, then somewhere there is a farm with talking animals. . .

[ksilvas]

6. Actually there is a farm with talking animals...

It's called "Animal Farm".

[spunky]

8. That's obviously what I was referring to, but it does not and has never

existed in reality. Thus classifying it as fiction. Likewise, Oz is not an acutal place, it exists in fantasy.

The classification "non-fiction" is reserved for factual accounts.

[KT2000]

3. Zardoz is non-fiction too

a John Boorman film from the 70s

[Susang]

11. You should write Sean Connery and tell him that

Or is he in on it too? :tinfoilhat:

[hfojvt]

4. One of the head populists was the fundy

William Jennings Bryan.

I read a different analogy.
The yellow brick road was "gold"
The land of Oz is from "ounce" the measurement for the weight of gold, abbreviated "Oz"
The scarecrow was the American farmer, too dumb to know who his friends were - the working class
The tinman was the idle factories, heartlessly throwing people out of work and covered with rust.
The wizard of Oz was the American President, a good man, but a poor wizard.
The cowardly lion was William Jennings Bryan, all hot air, and retiring to the forest.
The wicked witches of the East and West were the eastern and western banking syndicates.
The good witch of THE NORTH I have no idea either.
The munchkins were the little people - ordinary Americans.

See Philip Jose Farmer's "Barnstormer over Oz" where he writes Oz as a real place.

[Ignacio Upton]

5. A few things about Baum

1. The Wizard of Oz was about the Populist Movement of the 1890's. The ruby slippers were actually silver, and they represent a bimetal currency with the silver standard, which was the keystone of twhat the People's Party (Populists) stood for. The Cowardly Lion was based on William Jennings Bryan, and the Tinman was the urban factory worker, while the Scarecrow represented the farmer.

2. Baum also advocated genocide against the Native Americans (Editorial in public domain, otherwise the entire thing wouldn't have been posted on the site):

http://www.northern.edu/hastingw/baumedts.htm

The Sitting Bull Editorial
Sitting Bull, most renowned Sioux of modern history, is dead.
He was not a Chief, but without Kingly lineage he arose from a lowly position to the greatest Medicine Man of his time, by virtue of his shrewdness and daring.
He was an Indian with a white man's spirit of hatred and revenge for those who had wronged him and his. In his day he saw his son and his tribe gradually driven from their possessions: forced to give up their old hunting grounds and espouse the hard working and uncongenial avocations of the whites. And these, his conquerors, were marked in their dealings with his people by selfishness, falsehood and treachery. What wonder that his wild nature, untamed by years of subjection, should still revolt? What wonder that a fiery rage still burned within his breast and that he should seek every opportunity of obtaining vengeance upon his natural enemies.
The proud spirit of the original owners of these vast prairies inherited through centuries of fierce and bloody wars for their possession, lingered last in the bosom of Sitting Bull. With his fall the nobility of the Redskin is extinguished, and what few are left are a pack of whining curs who lick the hand that smites them. The Whites, by law of conquest, by justice of civilization, are masters of the American continent, and the best safety of the frontier settlements will be secured by the total annihilation of the few remaining Indians. Why not annihilation? Their glory has fled, their spirit broken, their manhood effaced; better that they die than live the miserable wretches that they are. History would forget these latter despicable beings, and speak, in later ages of the glory of these grand Kings of forest and plain that Cooper loved to heroism.
We cannot honestly regret their extermination, but we at least do justice to the manly characteristics possessed, according to their lights and education, by the early Redskins of America.
(Saturday Pioneer, December 20, 1890)

[zbdent]

12. And don't forget that OZ was representative of the gold standard

which was being praised as the cure-all at the time . . .

[depakid]

7. It was an allegory- but these interpretations aren't very well thought

out. To say the least.

The allegory was about the free silver movement- that's why in the book, the slippers were made of silver- NOT ruby.

The scarecrow represented midwestern farmers.

There's considerably more on this at wiki:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_interpretations_of_The_Wonderful_Wizard_of_Oz

[Spinzonner]

9. And the Munchkins represent ??

[FormerDittoHead]

10. I love this stuff. Anyone hear of brainwashing with Wizard of Oz?

Has anyone read anything about the Wizard of Oz being used to brainwash people?

There was a TV movie called "Hunter" in 1973 that used this very idea, but there's gobs of references on google to brainwashing people using the Wizard of Oz as character traits...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winged_Monkeys
http://imdb.com/title/tt0067223/

[terrya]

13. On the other hand, maybe Baum just wrote a children's book.

I don't buy all of this political allegory stuff. I think he just wrote a book for children. Nothing more, nothing less.

[ExclamationPoint]

14. Wow. that's so true

i realized that more when i read wicked, but now that i'm performing in the play, i see that this is also true for the story. I always felt that the character of dorothy represented ignorance though, but you just really helped to change my perspective.

ps. I think Oz is also kind of a drug induced fantasy land. Is that related to the topic?

[YOY]

15. The "ruby slippers" were not ruby in the book but silver

They were made ruby in the film to show off the color of OZ.

So much for your Marxism connection...