39,327
edits
The Wizard of Oz (film)/WMG: Difference between revisions
update links
m (Cracked link cleanup. You can help at Thread:Forum:Short Term Projects/Separate Cracked.com from Cracked) |
(update links) |
||
Line 33:
== The entire film is a [[What Do You Mean It's Not Didactic?|pre-emptive allegory]] of [[World War Two]] and its lasting effects ==
All of which was written by a time-traveler who worked for MGM.
* Dorothy is America (she desires a return to the status quo), the Scarecrow is the USSR (he seeks validation of its system of government), the Tin Man is Nazi-occupied nations (struggling to regain their national character), and the Cowardly Lion is Great Britain (struggling to regain recognition of status as a world power). Toto represents American minorities (seen as a lesser force which nevertheless proves invaluable to the war effort).
* The Wicked Witch of the East is Japan, the Wicked Witch of the West is Nazi Germany, the flying monkeys are the Luftwaffe, and the Winkie soldiers are the German people.
* Glinda the Good is the fleeting promise of peace, the Munchkins are the people of Japan, and the Yellow Brick Road is the journey to prewar norms.
* The house dropped on the Eastern witch is the atomic bomb, and the bucket of water thrown on the Western witch is the chain of events begun by the Normandy invasion. The ruby slippers are the prosperity and political influence offered by being a major world power.
* The Emerald City is the dream of a post-Depression prosperous future, and the Wizard is FDR (who unintentionally abandons Dorothy/America in her time of need). The poppy field represents [[World War
* The Kansas farm and all its inhabitants represent a nostalgic, sepia-tinted vision of American life before the modernized nightmare begun by WWI. The fact that Dorothy returns to it was an optimistic footnote added by the time-traveller.
** That's a complex theory, filled with in-depth symbolism. It also depends on the idea that Japan surrendered first in [[WW 2]]. As it turned out, Germany was defeated earlier.
Line 56:
The brilliant Technicolor of Oz is the temptation. She may stay or she may return home to the gray dustbowl. If she returns home, she lives and recovers. If she stays in Oz, she dies.
* To reword that, Dorothy's exposure to dust, debris, and being hit on the head almost killed her, and Oz was a Near-Death-Experience. The entire thing was her brain creating a hallucination of sorts (like how sometimes people who have Near Death Experiences say they saw a light, heaven, or hell, or at least how they imagine it to be) which was all representative of her brain struggling to get her to wake up. It also showed her what could be her eternal reward, which is colorful and full of adventure, unlike Kansas. She really was dying the whole time, and if she had utterly lost her will to live, and stayed in Oz, and died in the real world.
** Watch Charley Grapewin's face as Dorothy tells what happened to her. This is exactly how he is playing it. He is the only one who doesn't laugh with the others, and says "Of course we believe you, Dorothy."
== Kansas is Dorothy's first-level dream. Oz is her second-level dream. ==
Line 85:
== The "secret 60s ending" wasn't from MGM. ==
* The alleged secret ending shown once, sometime in the sixties, and it wasn't just a dream.
* The movie was first shown in 1939, so we have a three-decade gap between that and the supposed ending.
Why would MGM have had another ending on tape but only used it once? '''If it wasn't theirs.''' My idea is that it was made by a TV network for that one viewing. The real ending would have still been shown. ([[Senshi Sun]])
Line 92:
Along the way to the Emerald City, Dorothy gets lonely, so she brings a scarecrow and a statue made of tin to life to keep her company. And when a lion attacks them, she uses a spell to turn the great beast into a coward. And, when faced with the wrath of the Wicked Witch of the West, turns a bucket of water into a potion of dissolving in order to kill her. Again, all unintentionally. Under this theory, the silver/ruby shoes are just placebos like everyone else's gifts; Dorothy transported herself back to Kansas by her own power; she just needed Glinda to convince her she ''could''.
** This theory actually makes some sense when it comes to the books, as she comes into possession of a magic belt that grants wishes, and uses magical artifacts with the same ease a native Ozian would. It would also fit with [[Tin Man (TV series)|Tin Man]], where her granddaughter (the lavender-eyed Queen) and great-granddaughters (DG and Azkedellia) are shown to have some potent magic at their disposal.
== There is no Witch of the South, only the Wizard. ==
We see a total of four practitioners of magic in the movie. Glinda in the North, the Witches of the East and West, and the Wizard of Oz. If three of the four are assigned to a specific direction, it just stands to reason that the fourth is assigned to the remaining direction. The Emerald City must be somewhere in the South. Glinda doesn't seem to know that the wizard can't do real magic, she and the other witches have accepted his [[Sufficiently Advanced Technology]] as proof of his wizardry and appointed him the magician of the south.
* This is loosely supported by the original book, in which the Wizard wears a different guise for each of the four travelers, whom he meets individually. In one case he is convincingly disguised as a [[Gender Bender|beautiful]] [[
== The house didn't kill the Wicked Witch of the East. ==
Line 113:
[[Category:WMG]]
__NOTOC__
{{DEFAULTSORT:Wizard of Oz (film), The/WMG}}
| |||