The Wizard of Oz

[Orrex]

TBS is taking a break from its usual run of Martin Lawrence films or Cheaper by the Dozen to show The Wizard of Oz tonight, tomorrow, and Sunday. I hadn't seen it in quite a while and had forgotten a brief but brilliant sequence near the beginning. We've all seen the film, but please indulge me while I summarize:

Dorothy runs away from home and stumbles upon a traveling mentalist, who happily shares his meager supply of food with Toto. Soon thereafter he dons a mystical-looking turban and proceeds to divine the secrets of Dorothy's life through clairvoyance. What follows is a perfect demonstration of a charlatan's "cold reading," whereby the mentalist makes a few general declarations which Dorothy, amazed, identifies as true and specific to her. He also rifles through her basket while she's distracted, helps himself to some food, and makes further pronouncements based on what he finds in the basket.

This scene isn't in the original book, and I confess that I don't know much of the history of the film or the stage production, but it's such a brilliantly conceived--and illuminating--moment that skeptics everywhere should praise it. In the span of a few seconds it demonstrates and debunks the "trick" behind the entire "psychic" industry that now earns its chief charlatans seven figures or more.

How many other films in the intervening seven decades have similarly mocked psychic miracle workers? I can't think of many, and certainly none that enjoys the same legendary status as The Wizard of Oz.


Additionally, I've got to say that "Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain" must rank as one of the top ten film lines of all time. And it likewise doesn't appear in the original text.

[cosmik debris]

1. Nice observation, thank you. n/t

[Warpy]

2. Don't forget that the lyrics were done by E. Y. Harburg

and it's quite possible that this skeptic's skeptic contributed to the screenplay. Much of it certainly sounds like him, much more skeptical than L. Baum's book, which I read as a kid.

Harburg's bio is at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yip_Harburg

“No matter how much I probe and prod
I cannot quite believe in God,
But, oh, I hope to God that He
Unswervingly believes in me.”

This and other quotes are at http://thinkexist.com/quotes/e._y._harburg/

I was privileged to know his widow 30 years ago, a real peppery old gal.

[LeftishBrit]

3. I love EY Harburg, and quote him on many occasions!

Poems are made by fools like me,
But only God can make a tree.
And only God who makes a tree,
Also makes the fools like me;
But only fools like me, you see,
Can make a God, who makes a tree.


When you are dead,
No need to moan,
No, nothing at all to moan at.
Think of yourself
As just a stone-
And who would you like to be thrown at?


I'm really not hypochondriacal,
Though the threat of a seizure cardiacal
Makes me jumpy and tense and maniacal
At each inhalation of breath.
I'm really not hypochondriacal-
I'm merely allergic to death.


We learn this after every war:
That life is not worth dying for.



It's great that you knew his widow. It would've been great to meet him - I bet he'd have had some trenchant things to say about the current woos!

[onager]

4. And I saw just the opposite today...

It was a rainy morning here in Alexandria, so I holed up with Egyptian satellite TV. The History Channel ran one of its good, non-woo shows about ancient technology, including some fascinating history/speculation about the ancient Alexandria Lighthouse.

Then I zapped to one of the movie channels, which was showing a Z-grade TV movie that may have gone straight to foreign cable/satellite channels without even stopping in the West. If you are very lucky.

As a warning, the title was Vanished Without A Trace. You know you're in trouble when a Serious Drama about a kidnapped child stars Shelley Long. Ms. Long had a brief--though not brief enough--career as ditzy light-comedy relief a long time ago. But in serious parts, she makes Goldie Hawn look like Dame Judi Dench. The woman has all the emotional range of a traffic light and is only slightly more interesting to watch for 90 minutes.

Anyway, as you've already suspected since I mentioned a kidnapping, sho' nuff, this movie horked up that staple hairball of bad kidnapping movies, the psychic. In fact, this turkey stole half its title as well as its psychic angle from another old movie, Without A Trace.

The psychic appears to be wrong at first but, sure enough, gets it right! What a surprise!

So Distraught Mom goes back to her for help identifying the killer. (Trust me, you don't mind spoilers about this particular movie.)

Unfortunately, the psychic can't help much: "Most of the time I don't see the dark stuff. I have to block it out."

Well, that would certainly be a helpful MagicKal Power in a rape and murder investigation.

She also threw out all the usual disclaimers of TV Movie Psychics. "I don't know how it works...."

:rofl:

As I've ranted before: what always strikes me about these Bad TV-Movie Psychics is the huge difference between them and the psychics we usually see on the talk shows.

e.g., the female psychic in this movie stuck to the pattern: quiet, modest, shy and even reluctant to talk about her Weird Powers. And they always work for free. As compared to Larry and Montel's guests, who tend to be egotistical blowhards shilling for $700 Personal Readings.

[TZ]

5. C'mon Onager, you know

that charlatans and con artists have to make a living somehow...I think that the best quote for this comes from PT Barnum (I believe) "A sucker is born every minute...."
:crazy:

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

6. Compare and contrast the Mentalist with the Wizard.

While the Wizard has the trappings of a fraud, he is just a man behind a curtain, it turns out that despite this and not being really magic, he's still the real deal. He still grants the Lion his courage, the Tin Man his heart, the Scarecrow his brain, and Dorothy her home. He doesn't use magic. Just with the power of his own mind.

[JitterbugPerfume]

7. My understanding of the Wizard of OZ is--

Black and white kansas represents "hard times" for the farmer

The scarecrow represents the farmer , who was actually smart but was treated as if he has no brain.

The tin man represents the working man who has been dehumanised until he thinks he has no heart.

The cowardly lion is Wm Randolph Hearst , representing the cowardly press.


Dorothy is in trouble , and trying to escape the hum drum life in colorless Kansas.

the Wizard is of course a politician , making promises he has no real intentions of keeping.


this movie is very political

[PVnRT]

9. Silver Brick Road in the book

I'll let everyone figure that one out.

Wicked witches - east and west (bankers)

[ChadwickHenryWard]

18. No, the shoes were silver.

My friend's mom just finished reading it. She wasn't convinced by my mention of the allegory, but I couldn't remember all of the points. Nobody but me seems to remember the 16:1, free silver thing from history class, but it's a biggie. What I don't understand is why the West is wicked. The farmers were from the West. To fit the allegory, it should have been East (bankers) and North (industrialists.) Do you have any idea why Baum would make the West evil?

ETA: Here's what Wikipedia has to say:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_interpretations_of_The_Wonderful_Wizard_of_Oz

[Odin2005]

10. Yep, it's an allusion to the Populist movement of the 1890s.

The wizard is supposed to Represent William Jennings Bryan IIRC.

[Book Lover]

8. I remember a tv listing for TWoO from a while ago that made me laugh...

Found it! It read, "Transported to a surreal landscape, a young girl kills the first woman she meets and then teams up with three complete stangers to kill again."

[muriel_volestrangler]

11. What, nothing about the damage caused by her vicious attack dog?

:evilgrin:

Or how she robbed the corpse of her first victim for her footwear?

[rAVES]

12. This is a great video too by Derran Brown:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=btP_vy5cQq4

[trotsky]

17. Awesome vid.

Thanks.

[Orrex]

13. kick

Because the two minutes with Professor Marvel still demonstrates absolutely everything you need to know about both hot and cold reading.

[Warpy]

14. I remember reading the Baum books when I was five or six

and being terribly disappointed that they didn't follow the movie. Of course, there was other stuff in them that compensated for the lack of what was in the film, but still, it was hard to picture. Nothing quite fit and it was tough going for a five year old literalist who was looking for familiar things.

About the only thing I remember about the first book was that the ruby slippers fell off Dorothy's feet on her way home in two separate states, both named.

Bummer, dudette.

But yes, the movie did a great sendup of mind reading charlatans in the beginning and fear based hokum at the end. I didn't turn out to be a skeptic because of that film, but that film gave me a basic knowledge about psychic scammers and how they work.

[SemiCharmedQuark]

15. I preferred some of the later books to the Wizard of Oz

Specifically, I adored Jack Pumpkinhead and Saw-Horse

[onager]

16. Sneaking in one of my favorite poems...

...on the same subject, the crushing of the Populists in the 1896 election.

Vachel Lindsay's "Bryan Bryan Bryan Bryan," proving that nothing has changed in politics over 100 years. And also proving that W.J. Bryan wasn't always the pathetic Fundamentalist of the Scopes trial.

The "low-browed Mark Hanna" that Lindsay clobbered in the poem was the Karl Rove of his day. And "inbred landlord stock" is the best description of the Bu$h family ever!

This is a LONG poem and I can't post it all, but I sure love the rhythms...and that OPENING!

In a nation of one hundred fine, mob-hearted, lynching, relenting, repenting millions,
There are plenty of sweeping, swinging, stinging, gorgeous things to shout about,
And knock your old blue devils out.

I brag and chant of Bryan Bryan Bryan,
Candidate for president who sketched a silver Zion,
The one American Poet who could sing outdoors...

In a coat like a deacon, in a black Stetson hat,
He scourged the elephant plutocrats
With barbed wire from the Platte...

Election night at midnight,
Boy Bryan's defeat.
Defeat of western silver,
Defeat of the wheat.

Victory of letter-files,
And plutocrats in miles,
With dollar signs upon their coats.
Diamond watch-chains on their vests.
And spats on their feet.

Victory of custodians,
Plymouth Rock,
And all that inbred landlord stock.
Victory of the neat...

Defeat of the alfalfa and the mariposa lily,
Defeat of the Pacific and the long Mississippi,
Defeat of the young by the old and silly,
Defeat of tornadoes by the poison vats supreme.

Defeat of my boyhood. Defeat of my dream.

[ChadwickHenryWard]

19. Bryan was a real American hero.

He resigned from Wilson's administration in protest of our entering WWI. He was a tireless populist who fought for the rights of our workers and farmers. He only lost his mind at the very end.