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Related: About this forumBeing Toto
The Wizard of Oz is a secular humanist parable.
Im not the first to point this out. But the eye roll I got from my 17-year-old son when I said it at dinner the other night could have cleared the dishes from the table. Hes currently soldiering through an AP Lit class in which the teacher earnestly insists that no cigar is ever, ever just a cigar. When one of the short stories they read described a red ovarian cyst in a jar, the teacher looked searchingly at the ceiling. Red, she said, drawing out the syllable and shaping her next thought with her hands. Passion.
OR, said my boy in the exasperated retelling, red the color of an ovarian cyst!!
So I knew I was in for it when I claimed that The Wizard of Oz isnt just a story about a girl and her weird dream.
But it isnt.
Frank Baum (who wrote the book) was a religious skeptic and Ethical Culturist. Yip Harburg (who wrote the screenplay and songs) was an atheist. That doesnt mean a thing by itself, of course. But it takes very little ceiling-gazing and hand-gesturing to see the Oz story as a direct reflection of a humanistic worldview.
Dorothy and her friends have deep, yearning human needs for home, knowledge, heart and courage. When they express these needs, theyre told that only the omnipotent Wizard of Oz can fulfill them. They seek an audience with the Wizard, tremble in fear and awe, then are unexpectedly ordered to do battle with Sata sorry, the Witch, who turns out pretty feeble in the end. (Water, seriously?) When they return, having confronted their fears, the Wizard dissembles, and Toto pulls back the curtain to reveal a mere human behind all the smoke and holograms at which point they learn that all the brains, courage, heart, and home they sought from the Wizard had always been right in their own hands.
Its really not much of a stretch to see the whole thing as a direct debunk of religion and a celebration of humanistic self-reliance. And as a bonus, Connor actually granted me the point.
http://parentingbeyondbelief.com/blog/?p=8363
Im not the first to point this out. But the eye roll I got from my 17-year-old son when I said it at dinner the other night could have cleared the dishes from the table. Hes currently soldiering through an AP Lit class in which the teacher earnestly insists that no cigar is ever, ever just a cigar. When one of the short stories they read described a red ovarian cyst in a jar, the teacher looked searchingly at the ceiling. Red, she said, drawing out the syllable and shaping her next thought with her hands. Passion.
OR, said my boy in the exasperated retelling, red the color of an ovarian cyst!!
So I knew I was in for it when I claimed that The Wizard of Oz isnt just a story about a girl and her weird dream.
But it isnt.
Frank Baum (who wrote the book) was a religious skeptic and Ethical Culturist. Yip Harburg (who wrote the screenplay and songs) was an atheist. That doesnt mean a thing by itself, of course. But it takes very little ceiling-gazing and hand-gesturing to see the Oz story as a direct reflection of a humanistic worldview.
Dorothy and her friends have deep, yearning human needs for home, knowledge, heart and courage. When they express these needs, theyre told that only the omnipotent Wizard of Oz can fulfill them. They seek an audience with the Wizard, tremble in fear and awe, then are unexpectedly ordered to do battle with Sata sorry, the Witch, who turns out pretty feeble in the end. (Water, seriously?) When they return, having confronted their fears, the Wizard dissembles, and Toto pulls back the curtain to reveal a mere human behind all the smoke and holograms at which point they learn that all the brains, courage, heart, and home they sought from the Wizard had always been right in their own hands.
Its really not much of a stretch to see the whole thing as a direct debunk of religion and a celebration of humanistic self-reliance. And as a bonus, Connor actually granted me the point.
http://parentingbeyondbelief.com/blog/?p=8363
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Being Toto (Original Post)
cleanhippie
Dec 2012
OP
Sekhmets Daughter
(7,515 posts)1. Are you familiar
with "Web of Debt" by Ellen Hodgson Brown? There are many commentators who believe that the Wizard of Oz was written as a monetary allegory.
dballance
(5,756 posts)2. There was a link here the other day to an NPR documentary
on Yip Harburg. Did you get to see it? It had his son in it and his son detailed what each of the characters in the Wizard of Oz symbolized. It was a good documentary.
AlbertCat
(17,505 posts)3. The Wizard of Oz isn’t just a story about a girl and her weird dream.
No it isn't.
Because in the book(s) ...
It's NOT a dream. That's just in the film.
The film's clear message is: There's no place like home...America!